Diamond Comics Distributors has been bought by Alliance Entertainment. Oni Press is trying the Compact Comics format for Rick & Morty. Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon’s Spectators gets collected.
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Episode Transcript:
Alliance buys Diamond.
Rick And Morty gets compact comics.
Spectators gets collected.
This is Comic Book Club News for March 27, 2025.
Alliance Entertainment Buys Diamond:
Alliance Entertainment Holding Corporation has announced they’ve won the bid for Diamond Comics Distributors (U.S.)., pending court approval on March 27.
In addition to Diamond Comic Distributors, per a press release, Alliance has announced they also won the bid for three other divisions of the bankrupt company: Alliance Game Distributors, Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, and Collectible Grading Authority. That represents four of the 12 divisions of Diamond that were up for auction over the past two days, so more to come on that.
Alliance — no relationship to the Game Distributors they just purchased — is a “global distributor and wholesaler specializing in music, movies, video games, electronics, arcades, and collectibles” based in Florida.
In addition to the comic book distribution represented by Diamond’s US branch that includes Marvel, BOOM!, and Dark Horse, Alliance now distributes, among other things, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Digimon.
The purchase should be finalized in court on Thursday, followed by a closing on April 10. While there are a lot more questions here to be answered — not least of which is who got those other eight divisions — this seems, at worst, not bad, and at best, a good fit for Diamond’s future. And the stock market agreed: Alliance, which is a publicly-traded company, was up 13% after the release of the news.
Rick And Morty Gets Compact Comics:
Given the overwhelming popularity of DC’s Compact Comics format, it’s surprising more publishers haven’t embraced the smaller size, affordably priced trades. Marvel has released their slightly bigger, slightly more expensive Premier Collection, which also seeks to be new-reader friendly. But now, Oni Press is jumping in to help make Compact Comics an industry-wide thing.
Per ICv2, the publisher will release Rick and Morty Oni Compact Comics Edition: The Unkillable Collection. The 248-page full-color paperback will, like DC’s books, be priced at $9.99. However, unlike DC’s Compact Comics that collect one, usually complete run or story arc of a book, this will collect several Rick and Morty comics from various series.
The collection will go on sale on October 8, and here’s hoping it’s the first of many.
Brian K. Vaughan And Niko Henrichon’s Spectators To Get Collected By Image Comics:
Get ready for what might be the most graphic, graphic novel of the year. Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon’s Spectators, which was first serialized by Vaughan’s newsletter, is getting collected in all its violent and sexual glory by Image Comics.
Said Vaughan via press release: “Spectators is a story I’ve wanted to tell my whole career, and after more than three years of meticulous hand-painting by genius co-creator Niko Henrichon, we’re excited to finally share our epic standalone graphic novel with all of you mature readers out there. This is a spicy one, so thanks for supporting the retailers who bravely support comics for adults!”
After first working together nearly twenty years ago on Pride of Baghdad, the duo take on a decidedly different project, set, per PR, “Hundreds of years in the future, New York City is haunted by many ghosts, including a voyeuristic woman who died in our present day and a mysterious gun-toting man from the distant past. Normally solo travelers, these two specters meet each other just in time to observe what might be the end of the (living) world.”
The extremely not safe for work book hits stores on September 23.
For Comic Book Club News, I’m Alex Zalben. And if there’s one thing you can trust, it’s the stock market.
Got tips or stories you’d like us to cover? Email us at comicbookclublive@gmail.com.
For more comic book news, reviews, and interviews, check out comicbookclublive.com.
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