Friday night was a disaster.

In game three of its opening round playoff series, my beloved Indiana Pacers were routed by the Milwaukee Bucks. It was an ugly game for the Pacers, but with how the season went — it was filled with comebacks — I held out hope until the very end. It didn’t matter. They lost, and it was not close.

Because it was the playoffs, and because it was the Pacers, I was locked in the whole time. While I’ll occasionally speed through social posts during TV time outs just to get a sense of how people are viewing the game, that’s it. There’s no browsing of the internet or keeping up with news or anything like that. My focus stays on the game. So, imagine my surprise when I checked my phone afterwards and found an intense and unexpected message from someone in comics. It was just three words, but it was pretty clear that something was up.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!” was all it said, with no follow up or hints as to what it was about. Obviously something significant happened, but there was no clue as to what it was until a link was sent my way. It took me to an ICv2 article with a headline that said it all: “Alliance Entertainment Terminates Diamond Purchase Agreement.”

When that hit, I understood the intensity of that person’s message. It seemed that Alliance, the winner of the Diamond Comic Distributors bankruptcy auction, had backed out of its acquisition of “substantially all” of Diamond’s assets. That was quite the turn, especially after the dramatic path everyone took in getting to that moment.

Before we discuss those current events, though, you need to understand that path. It’s been a long and winding one. To do that, let’s rapid fire the public timeline of this saga, just to make sure we’re all on the same page.

• Diamond Comic Distributors, the once largest (and effectively only) distributor in the direct market, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 14
• Alliance Entertainment, a company that distributes video games, movie, and music related materials, amongst other things — was declared the winner of “substantially all” of Diamond’s companies — a list that includes but is not limited to Diamond Comic Distributors, Alliance Game Distributors, Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, and Collectible Grading Authority — in its bankruptcy auction that wrapped on March 25
• Diamond changed its tune and elected to go with the back-up bidders in Universal Distribution (a Canadian distribution company) and Ad Populum (who owns a whole bunch of things, include NECA Toys, KidRobot, and Graceland of all things) on April 7, with Universal theoretically getting Diamond UK and Alliance Game Distributors while Ad Populum would get the rest
• The same day, it came out that Alliance Entertainment was suing Diamond for acting in bad faith during the bankruptcy
• On April 10, Alliance’s suit goes away because it is declared, once again, the winner of “substantially all” of Diamond
• This past Friday in the public but Thursday in reality, Alliance sheds itself of its victory and says that after all that, it no longer wants Diamond

Got all that?

Now, on the surface, this objectively big deal feels subjectively worrying. The faint whiff of doom and gloom’s familiar odor began to emanate from the story, and perhaps that’s understandable. This news was rooted in something that was viewed as potentially catastrophic for the space. That initial announcement of Diamond’s bankruptcy hit the industry like a thunderbolt, as the fear was that Diamond’s potential demise could lead to a larger collapse of the direct market. The fact that everything else that followed was, as I noted on Bluesky, the drunkest thing that has happened in my 16 years of writing about comics only exacerbated the unease surrounding it. It’s a giant mess, and the type of mess that can cause concern. So, let’s establish this up front: I understand the fears surrounding it.

But here’s where a hot take comes in. It’s one I’ve maintained throughout this entire journey, especially after talking to a bevy of people in comics about the subject.

Everything is, and will be, fine.