Monopolies in the Comic Industry. I AM PISSED

I didn't get my comics today.

Yes. It IS wednesday. Yes Wednesday is Comic Book Shipping Day.

Yes, if it were a good, free, world, and Capitalism was alive and well here in the U.S. of A, I would be sitting down with a nice cold Diet Coke and my issue 2 of Kabuki. But No, It isn't and I'm not because I don't have issue 2 of Kabuki. It is being held hostage by some UPS truck somewhere outside of Milwaukee.

To those of you who are unfamiliar with Comics and the business of your Local Comic Store (LCS for short), I shall explain.

1. You get a catalog called Previews, about every 4-5 weeks. Similar to a 1" thick phone book. It is filled with goodies and fabulous wonderful comics and figures and t-shirts and trading cards that you can order from your LCS. You have an order booklet with it that you fill out and give to the wonderful proprietor of your LCS. My LCS owner's name is Eileen. I LOVE Eileen. She is awesome. She goes ABOVE AND BEYOND for me. Well, anyway, your LCS owner then sends the order out to Diamond Distributors. (No, they don't have an option. they MUST use Diamond. There are NO other companies out there that sell Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, or a variety of other publishers as they have signed exclusive comics with Diamond Distributors.)

2. Diamond then Fills the orders, sometimes Carefully...or like 2 weeks ago, not so carefully, and ships them out.

3. On Comic Shipping Day, your LCS gets the order. You dutifully show up, your comic money in hand, anxiously awaiting your latest installment of Powers (Go Ben-Diddy!) or Kabuki (David Mack is what happens when A Raging ADHD hottie writes comics...) If all goes well, you hand your LCS your money and you leave a happy lil camper. (With me, its about $25-35 a week).

4. On September 15th, I was looking forward to Freaks of the Heartland issue 5. I go in. Get my order. No Freaks! No freaks?? Huh? No freaks? Now, If I wasn't so devoted to Miss Eileen, I could have hopped into my car and drove 15 minutes North to another LCS and gotten it. I could have driven 25 minutes South and picked it up, There is a store near my job...I could have gotten it on my lunch break.
You see, Diamond wasn't so careful when it packed the books up. The comics were SO damaged, bent up, torn up, that she had to send them back. She wasn't about to put damaged goods on her shelf. However, When you are late on Comic Shipping Day, some people do just get them somewhere else, and don't buy the items the LCS ordered for them from the LCS. That means my LCS is out the $$$ if she can't sell them to someone else.

MY POINT: TODAY
This is the SECOND time this has happened in as many months. NONE of the comics arrived. Not ONE.

The box is on a UPS truck outside of Milwaukee. It got put on the wrong Truck. The other four LCS's within a 30 minute drive from me ALL have their books. She just didn't get hers. Every time this happens she looses about $300.00 in sales.

It gets better, when there was a comic shop open in the mall, it was a branch of another shop in the county. They had their Wednesday ships out TUESDAY night. Why? Because they got their shipments on Monday. She tried calling her rep because they broke street dates (you get fined for that) but she had no proof, they didn't offer itemized reciepts...they just said *CB 2.95 *CB 2.99 *CB 2.99 TBK *14.99 TC 1.75 or whatever. The reciept has to be timestamped, dated, and have the title of the book written on it.


It is F'd UP and I don't see how Diamond can Get Away with it!!! Its not like there is someplace else she can order from.

It drives me BONKERS! I would love to see some compitition to Diamond, or at least Diamond treating ALL of their clients equally. Not likely any time soon, I'm sure.