After a skip week for good reasons, Comics Disassembled is back to look at the last week plus in comics. So, let’s look at the latest from comics as I highlight ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, including a cover for the ages.

Steve Lieber vs. a Cover, and We’re All Winners

I don’t remember precisely what he said, but when writer Matt Fraction joined me on Off Panel recently, he alluded to an upcoming hardcover release of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen, the series he did with artist Steve Lieber, colorist Nathan Fairbairn, and letterer Clayton Cowles. More specifically, he mentioned that Lieber’s new cover was something to behold, but did not share any details as to its specifics. I just needed to find out about it myself.

I’m glad he didn’t say anything, because Lieber gave himself — and all of us — a birthday present by revealing it this week. Needless to say, Lieber went all out on this new cover that homaged Neal Adams’ cover to Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, as he didn’t just depict key characters from the story in this vision but a litany of others as well as associated creators — Lieber and Fraction are up front, for example — and roughly a billion other people. This is probably the one time you’ll see JSA member Wildcat next to Chip Zdarsky, although one can never be too sure. It’s a joy to go through the crowd and see who you recognize, and Lieber promised on Bluesky that it will come with a key to who everyone is. It’s worth noting that this puppy doesn’t look this good without the tireless work of Fairbairn (who somehow has now colored two homages to this cover) and designer Amie Brockway-Metcalf, who appears in the details as well.

It’s an amazing thing, and the type of effort that might get me to finally buy a collection of this great series. The fact that it apparently has an introduction by Batman doesn’t hurt either. I’d love to read an essay by The Dark Knight. This was tremendous work by Lieber, though. It’s amazing that this could live up to Fraction’s hype and then some. It’s a hell of a thing.

Diamond, Changing, to Say the Least

The Hot Mess of the Week Award goes to Diamond Comic Distributors for the 18th week in a row, as the troubled distributor has brought all kinds of terrible treats to our lives this week. What are they? There are a bunch, so let’s drop a good ol’ fashioned bulleted list to get through them all.

• The end is officially here! Diamond’s acquisition was completed, with Universal Distribution picking up Alliance Game Distributors and Ad Populum doing the same with Diamond Comic Distributors, Diamond Book Distributors, Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, Collectible Grading Authority, and assorted other things — none of which were Diamond UK. That remains separate from the sale, apparently.
• Unfortunately and predictably, the completion of that almost immediately resulted in significant layoffs, as the one thing comic shops feared — the removal of the institutional knowledge at the distributor — came to pass. It seems as if it was really at all facets of the business, though, as Diamond Select Toys was shut down, effectively. Basically, most key aspects of the Diamond acquisition were erased immediately, turning the once essential part of the direct market into a shell of itself in the maximum sense of that phrase.
• In one of those two linked to articles, The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald connected some dots, as she suggested that Universal Distribution will attempt to fill Diamond’s void, possibly even hiring some of the employees laid off during the acquisition to aid that transition. I know it’s a little odd sounding that Ad Populum may have acquired a comic distributor so it could lay its employees off only for its partner in said acquisition to hire them down the line, but we live in a pretty odd world these days. Regardless of the order of operations, this has long been bandied about as a likely result, so MacDonald’s math checks out.
• Unsurprisingly, Penguin Random House was hard out on Diamond continuing to sub-distribute any comics published by the publishers it works with, including Marvel, Dark Horse, BOOM!, IDW, DSTLRY, and beyond. And why wouldn’t it be? PRH was one of Diamond’s biggest creditors and Diamond is disintegrating in front of our eyes. This was an obvious move before, and it was an even more obvious one after this week of tough turns.
• Hermes Press, a comics publisher that was new to me this week, revealed they were now without a distributor because its existing one in Diamond largely only lives on in name only. So, its products are in limbo, as are its customers. Hermes is probably not the only one.

That is all bad, of course, even if Diamond barely matters in the grand scheme of the direct market at this point. It’s bad because a lot of people lost their jobs, it’s bad because the direct market lost a lot of important knowledge, and it’s bad because of how the whole business of “acquire and destroy” works these days. More than that, it’s bad because — as Heidi MacDonald wrote at The Beat — the distributor has basically ghosted everyone in the process of all this. Now, that’s perhaps understandable, as it’s pretty difficult to respond to emails when much of your staff is gone. But to buy a company that was long crucial to an industry and communicate nothing about the transition after it happens is poor form at best and a disaster at worst. It’s not great!

What’s next? Who knows?! My line since the beginning of all this has been “the direct market will be fine,” and that remains my take. But this entire journey has been unnecessarily messy, and without a clear vision of the benefits for anyone involved (beyond these companies acquiring the licenses the varying arms of Diamond held before the purchase), it’s an absurd result even if it was also a predictable one. It’s a weird way to do business, which in some ways makes this a rather fitting conclusion to Diamond’s story, if that’s what this proves to be.