Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Dynamite | Tagged: diamond, lunar

Nick Barrucci Talks Diamond And Dynamite, Past, Present And Future

Nick Barrucci talks Diamond distribution and Dynamite, past, present and future

The comic book industry has been in ructions since the announcement that Diamond Comic Distributors had entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Comic book publishers are closing down, firing people, seeking crowdfunding, moving distributors, panicking because they can't move distributors and setting up their own new distributors or sub-distributors.

Talking to comic book publisher Dynamite Entertainment CEO Nick Barrucci on the post-Megacon Industry Of Comics video podcast, retailer Dennis Barger stated that, as we had previously reported, "Dynamite didn't have any solicits in the current FOC except for a couple of high-end variants". Nick Barrucci replied, "I can't say anything". But then gives some context without getting into too much of the inner parts/sausage being made. Let's dig in. Emphasis ours.

Nick Barrucci continued, "Boom and Dynamite have been the biggest supporters of Diamond, and Image was a huge supporter of Diamond. I know some of the reasons why they left, but that's not my story to tell. I would love to see things stabilized for a lot of people. Whatever Diamond comes out of this, it won't be the same company for better or worse. It will probably be a viable company. Again I think you know if Boom hadn't sold to Penguin Random House. I think they would not be leaving Diamond, they definitely wouldn't be expediting leaving Diamond. So it's something that we can hopefully come to terms with and, if not, you know, after 33 years, there's nothing much more I can do."

Dennis Barger pointed out, "I talked to a very big Diamond person two weeks ago, and they said they're from the lower offices, and they went to the upper offices… and they said it's the first time they've seen every door in the upper offices closed. Nobody is talking. All the information at Diamond they are finding out from the leaks that happen on Bleeding Cool and ICV2, and they have no clue because there's no inner office memo saying 'hey guys we're doing this, we've got this many interested people'."

Nick Barrucci answered, "They're not allowed to. the banks and the other companies are in control; they make all the decisions. When the Diamond bankruptcy filing happened, a publisher emailed the printer where we were, telling them not to ship their books to Diamond. And the printer we're at emailed everybody openly, do you want your books distributed? Now, between the 14th and the 17th, we found out that Penguin Random House wasn't delivering any books to Diamond for January 29th. They just weren't until they'd worked things out with Diamond. So, anybody who backed Diamond 100% with their Marvel, IDW, and Dark Horse orders was not getting any PRH books because Diamond had to sit down and talk to PRH. What we also found out that week was Image cut Diamond off entirely, so if you didn't pivot quickly enough to put your orders in at Lunar, you might have gotten allocated. The week of the 29th, Diamond was not getting Image; they were not getting Marvel, IDW, or Dark Horse. Diamond also announced that Previews was going to be a week late because they had to work it out with the printer. So the printer sent out this email, and let's say the biggest publisher after us, and we'll leave it at that. No guessing, a titan of the industry said not to ship our books."

I think we can all guess what London-based publisher is being hinted at there. Dennis Barger certainly could as he coughed "Conan". And Nick Barrucci followed that saying "Yes, they flexed their muscles."

But as for Barrucci and Dynamite? Who at this stage are Diamond's biggest comics publishers on their books? "I sat there, and we had a conversation with Diamond, we had a conversation with the bank, and we made the decision to ship that week because we had specifically saved Silverhawks and Thundercats for the last week in January because the fifth week is always the weakest week, and January is a weak month, so we decided what was best for the retailers was to give them some strong books at the end of January. So, we had a really big week doing that. I mean, we're talking about 120,000 units at $4.99 to $9.99. That's a solid week for retailers, and so then we continued to have conversations, and we shipped for two more weeks, but things weren't coming together the way we felt they were discussed. And now we'll see what happens." But Barrucci would not go into fuller detail as to the reasons why.

Which all felt rather ominous. "Nothing would make me happier than to have this resolved and to move this forward. The problem that we have, first and foremost, is that Diamond had released information, or the courts released information, that they owed us $217,000. Well, we found out a few days later that it's going to be over a quarter of a million dollars because when they did the filing, they missed some payments that fell into the filing date.  But the thing you have to keep in mind is that we paid the creators for the art and editorial. We paid for the printing, and the second we shipped, we had to pay licensee royalties as if we had collected the money because it was our responsibility to pay royalties no matter what. So that $250,000 is now more like $420,000. Diamond always says they have very thin margins on their books, we have very thin margins on our books. They have a machine, we have thin margins, right? We shipped that week, and we came to an agreement. Part of that agreement came through, but then we shipped for two more weeks, and it wasn't coming together the way we felt we discussed it, so we just had to make a decision. I mean we can't afford to keep going to press printing books that we can't pay for and then paying royalties I mean we're going to keep creators working regardless because one way or the other it's going to work out. we have offers from three different distributors. There's a third distributor that may come into play, and you know. It's a reliable, established company. We could have pivoted instead of shipping for January 29th through Diamond. We had an offer on January 14th. We could have pivoted and left on January 14th or 15th, but we chose not to."

And Barrucci reflected on the legacy of Diamond and how he got all mixed up in that. "I do think that I allowed my relationship with Diamond to affect my decision because I've always been a strong believer that we needed Diamond to have smaller Publishers to allow you wouldn't have Jeff Smith's Bone, you wouldn't have Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, you wouldn't have Mark Spears' Monsters if Diamond wasn't around. Lunar is doing a good job of bringing on a bunch of people, but it's still people of a certain size. Lunar is gearing up for expansion, but there's only so much expansion that I think can be done. Everybody else is too small for Penguin Random House. So maybe I was a little idealistic in wanting to continue to help the industry, and I allowed the feelings I had for people at Diamond to affect my judgment. But if we were to continue to print and keep my employees employed, we couldn't continue to go to press if we didn't know where the books were going. We couldn't afford to incur the printing expense or the distribution and royalty expense if it couldn't work out. I would be irresponsible to my employees, to my creators, to my licensors, even to the printers… I've talked like an hour a week to rights holders just to keep them posted."

Barrucci also complimented Diamond for allowing others to move on with Free Comic Book Day as it is important to the industry, including the newly announced Post Malone title. But it does seem that decisions are being made if you read between the lines. One final thing to note: Dynamite has not furloughed any employees yet, and they have also been Diamond's biggest supporters.

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