This is an interesting story of having a company driven into the dirt, arguments with Diamond Comics Distribution, and eventually going bust only to want to return later on as a newly recharged and energized company. As a former fan of Devils Due Publishing, it is good to note that on 01 May 2012 they announced to the world that they are coming back after what ended up being one of the more disturbing comic book printing blowouts of 2010.
I love DDP, I loved them back in the day, and we still have a bunch of DDP products in the store. And that is the problem, I still have a bunch of DDP products in the store, and so do a lot of other people along the way. While I think it is awesome that they want to payback the authors for the work they did, getting into the printing business side of comic books is tough. Our own Kickstarter project is showing just how tough this can be as we fall further behind the process of getting donations. While according to Newsarama DDP has paid back the authors a staggering sum of money, with Hack/Slash over to a different printing company, as well as the stagnation in the comic book market, we are running into some interesting issues and I am not sure if DDP can stage a comeback that puts them back in the top 10 of independent publishers even with Diamond Comics as a distributor.
The reason I think this is that either the DDP web site has not been updated lately (which is a horribly bad sign of things to come), or DDP is running way behind on their releases (which is also a horribly bad sign of things to come) because there is nothing on the web site that shows or talks about the releases. A web site filled with “More information to come” really does not show that we are on track and on target to meet the end goals required to meet the needs of comic book store owners. Nor is their line up as proposed on the web site anything to really get excited about other than the rise and fall and rebirth of DDP, which was due winter 2012, and is in the “more information to come” category.
I love Josh, I love DDP, but does he really have the ability to bring back DDP from the horrific flame out in 2010?
The reality is that the original issues with Diamond that caused DDP to go away have not changed. What has changed is that there are no independent distributors out there that have any real market penetration. He is not talking about how he is going to get this thing back under the profitable line, but the flip side to that is he has according to his statement paid off nearly a million dollars owed to comic book creators. That is a good sign that he might do this, but with the lack of information on this one, and the loss of Haven Distributors with no one picking up the slack, I do not know if he can do this. We might be reading two years from now about another blow out with Diamond, or otherwise.
I have to give him props though, he is persistent, but the economy still sucks, comic books are still on the endangered species list for anything other than digital, and the lineup that he has is uninspiring. In the mean time I have a pile of DDP hack slash and mercy sparx for sale if anyone wants them. We gambled big on DDP titles in the past and lost, it will take a lot of time for us to clear out the old inventory (going on two years now), and a lot of faith in them to even consider purchasing their titles again.
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