Perhaps lost in the shuffle ofall theeverythinggoing on in the world in the past few weeksis the potential end of an era for comics. For 20 years, the only way for comic shops to get their comics was through Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., the Baltimore-based company that once served as the sole warehouse and supplier of printed comics in the United States. Founded in 1982, Diamond owner Steve Geppi slowly built up the distribution business. When Marvel tried to operate their own in-house distributor in the mid 90s, Diamond went big, picking up distribution rights for the other major publishers, leaving them mostly in the drivers seat after Marvels distribution collapsed with their bankruptcy. Diamond became a functional, if not technical monopoly soon thereafter, and served as the only way to get books from Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, IDW and other publishers. Until, at the beginning of this year, Diamond declared bankruptcy.The comics business is, to put it gently, a very stupid way of doing business. A comic book company starts advertising a book months in advance. A shop guesses how many copies theyll be able to sell, takes preorders from regular customers, and orders enough copies to throw a couple on shelves and cover their subscriptions. The distributor gathers up orders from multiple shops, and tells the publisher how many they need printed. The publisher prints those copies, sends them to the distributor, and the distributor gets the books to comic shops. Any books that dont sell go in the dollar bins, and shop owners get a little bit more gun shy about new issues of those books for the next order cycle. The shop pays the distributor who pays the publisher, and the transaction is complete.Diamonds issue is that the buck apparently largely stopped there.Flash back a few years: Diamond shut down deliveries almost immediately at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving shops with no new books on shelves for weeks. This spurred publishers to find alternate distributors, like Lunar and Penguin Random House, which Marvel and DC either co-sponsored or helped stand up, and other publishers like Image and BOOM! have been jumping ship ever since. Meanwhile, Diamond was left with a toy and game distribution business, a number of small press publishers, and as a secondary distributor for major comics publishers, but the damage was done. Diamond, bleeding customers, also started bleeding moneyas the exclusive home of fewer and smaller comic publishers and niche collectibles, their business shrank and their revenue followed.So, according to the bankruptcy filings, Diamond got paid, but they had trouble passing it along to the publishers. And for smaller publishers like TwoMorrows or Antarctic Press, thats really bad. Court filings at the beginning of the month revealed that Diamond owed millions of dollars to a few big publishersmost of whom could afford the hit, like Bandai or Disneyand hundreds of thousands of dollars to a bunch of smaller publishers like Antarctic, who are in real trouble. They dont have the kind of catalog or consistent revenue to allow them to eat a six-figure gap in payments.It was bad when Diamond was alone in the marketplace. Diamond was notorious for late deliveries, missing product, and damaged goods. But its bad that Diamond is leaving it, too. If youre a comic shop looking for a copy of a new Flash series that is an unexpected, buzzy hit, when Diamond was the only game in town, you used to have to hope Diamond had it or wait for a second printing. Then, for a very little while, you could poke around and see if Lunar or PRH had a copy. Now, youre back to hoping for second printings. This isnt good for the business, its not good for the shops, and its not good for us as readers. Diamond may have been a pain, but its also staffed by people who love comics and its heartbreaking to know that theyre in a precarious position. The industry is locked into pretty significant change now. Heres hoping it comes out the other side stronger.