The new landscape of comic distribution just got another interesting wrinkle. As of now, we have Penguin Random House with Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and so forth. There is Lunar with DC, Image, Dynamite, and more too. Philbo handles a lot of indie, and Universal Distribution does a lot with comics in Canada along with games and such in the U.S. Universal recently announced they were going to distribute DC comics in America (nonexclusively as DC would be Lunar still too), and the idea was maybe game stores would carry some DC comics if they otherwise didn't do much with floppies. Well, now Dynamite Entertainment is signed with Universal, again, non-exclusively.
If a big comic shop orders a lot from PRH and Lunar, they don't necessarily need to order books from Universal Distribution. Should it be a game shop that doesn't want to hit the hefty minimum orders for Lunar, however, getting some DC and Dynamite comics to toss up on the shelves from Universal Distribution might be appealing in terms of diversifying comic readership. Now, you could have a hobby shop with trading cards, miniatures, tabletop games, and some comics for fun as well. With the demise of Diamond Comic Distributors (and that was all in this year), the market is still figuring itself out, and it is fascinating to watch.
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