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Matt Hawes
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16407
Posted: 21 October 2017 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Rob Liefeld is my hero... Do pigs now fly??

Here is something he wrote on Facebook:

"...

Diamond Comics is an absolute shit show. They lost an order of 1000 comics and have repeatedly mislead and misinformed as to their whereabouts.

I’ve heard horror stories for years about how terrible Diamond treats customers and now I’ve experienced it first hand. Incompetence all around. I feel terrible for the abuses that Diamond puts on retailers. Your company is deplorable Steve Geppi. One lie after another. Get it together...."


Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. is notorious among retailers for its horrible service, and it's been that way virtually ever since the company got a virtual monopoly on comic book distribution in the U.S. after the Heroes World debacle of the late 1990s. Love him or loathe him, Liefeld's public reaction to Diamond's deplorable service practices may actually have some impact and shed some light on the matter so that Diamond might eventually take steps to improve its game.


Well... I can dream...


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Robbie Parry
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Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
Posted: 21 October 2017 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Diamond and the direct market have always bewildered me. It'd make more sense to employ an alligator to clean windows on an apartment block.

Where can one begin with it? Our host has commented on it far better than I could, but I am actually surprised that criticisms of Diamond and the direct market are few and far between. It's the anti-Christ.
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James Woodcock
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Joined: 21 September 2007
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Posted: 21 October 2017 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

I really don’t understand how this is not anti-competitive.
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 21 October 2017 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Robbie, there is good about the Direct Market, but Diamond doesn't help matters.

James, there was an investigation by the Department of Justice into the possible monopoly by Diamond in the late 1990s, but nothing came of it. I don't know if it was because the comic industry was too much "small potatoes" for the government to give a damn, or if it was because, strictly-speaking, there were other distributors that could carry comics. The thing is, Diamond had (and still has nearly 20 years later) exclusive agreements with Marvel, DC, Darkhorse, and Image (and maybe IDW these days, too).

As we in the industry know, though, when you have exclusive agreements with those publishers, you own the market.


Edited by Matt Hawes on 21 October 2017 at 4:56pm
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Adam Schulman
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Joined: 22 July 2017
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Posted: 21 October 2017 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Now if he'd only learn how to draw properly...
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 21 October 2017 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Adam, if that happened then pigs would truly have learned to fly!
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Shane Matlock
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Joined: 12 August 2012
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Posts: 1760
Posted: 22 October 2017 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

From everything I've read about Liefeld over the years he's actually a great guy that rarely has a bad word to say about anyone, even people that have had mocked his lack of artistic skills (I have to admit I laughed at JB's Liefeldesque character in She-Hulk and have had plenty of my own cracks about his art over the years, because, well, look at it). So if he does have some bad things to say about Diamond, it's with good reason (and echoes what I've heard from retailers about this monopoly for years). Most of the Image founders were actually pretty nice dudes, from Liefeld to Lee to Valentino. I think Image's biggest problem from a PR standpoint was that Todd McFarlane wasn't and was the most outspoken one.

That said, I believe when Liefeld was riding high on his success he was pretty hard to deal with as evidenced by the fact the rest of the Image founders voted him out. 


Edited by Shane Matlock on 22 October 2017 at 4:26pm
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Stephen Churay
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Joined: 25 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 8369
Posted: 22 October 2017 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I've had high dollar items come up
allocated, unshipped or just plain
missing. This is money I'm willingly
giving to my LCS, that they will never
see.

I miss Capital. They rarely shipped
damaged books, had a great customer
service department and never lost my LCS's
books.
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Shane Matlock
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Joined: 12 August 2012
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Posts: 1760
Posted: 22 October 2017 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

I've noticed at my own comic shop a lot of books get damaged by Diamond in shipping. And instead of sending them back for replacements, they usually just put them out for sale and most of the time it's the ones they pull for the pull lists while putting the undamaged ones on the shelf. Just about every week I have to put the damaged books on the shelf that they pulled and grab one that isn't damaged. I used to think it was coincidental but it's happened so many times at this point that it's obviously intentionally done. Though sometimes it's a case of every single comic of a certain title showing up damaged. I'd buy from another comic shop, but much like Diamond, they are the only game in town.
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