Has anyone had any direct experience of this impacting Marvel Comics at their locals?  We were discussing this on FB and I thought I'd see if anyone here had encountered it - apparently many comics stores are reporting having received their shipments from Marvel's new distributor, Penguin Random House, heavily damaged last week -  and this week, as well.

I haven't, but I don't buy that many Marvel books that regularly, so I might not have noticed.

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  • No, not that I know of, but damaged comics wouldn't make it to the shelf. From time to time, I'll enquire about something I was expecting if I don't see it and the owner will tell me it was damaged, but that rarely happens and hasn't happened in a while. I'll ask about it tomorrow if I remember. 

  • Are you saying that a majority of the books are damaged or just some?

    From (not recent) discussions with my LCS owner, I know that when it all was distributed by Diamond there would be occasional damaged boxes resulting in varying quantities of damaged books (a few in that box or many in that box). These would be returned to Diamond and replaced, only resulting in a delay being available to customers.

  • To clarify,  all I'm saying that apparently many comics stores are reporting that their shipments are arriving heavily damaged, and I'm asking if anyone had encountered this because I hadn't seen any signs of it. All I have heard is in the link I referenced in my initial post.

    Richard Willis said:

    Are you saying that a majority of the books are damaged or just some?

    From (not recent) discussions with my LCS owner, I know that when it all was distributed by Diamond there would be occasional damaged boxes resulting in varying quantities of damaged books (a few in that box or many in that box). These would be returned to Diamond and replaced, only resulting in a delay being available to customers.

  • I haven't heard anything from my LCS, but I do know Duncanville Bookstore has reported a bunch of damaged Marvel comics the past 2 weeks.

  • I’ll ask at my LCS when I go in Saturday. 

    I’ve seen reports on Bleeding Cool, but don’t buy enough Marvel to have noticed anything locally that would differ from the routine “shorts” my LCS always suffered with Diamond.

  • So, I asked at my local today, and they said that a number of their Marvels did arrive damaged today. "Just thrown into boxes", they said.

  • "I'll enquire..."

    "Inquire"!

    "...not that I know of..."

    Exactly. The actual answer is that 36% of today's Marvel order was damaged so badly it didn't make it to the shelf. Last week = 41%. Apparently the retailer organization to which my LCS belongs provided guidance months in advance of the actual transition which could have alleviated many of these anticipated problems but their advice was ignored. 

  • Was this guidance to the shippers on how to pack or to the retailers on how to unpack?

  • It was advice from the retailers to the shippers (Penguin). 

  • I texted the owner of my LCS to see what his experience is. His response...no damages. Apparently, you can still use Diamond as your distributor. You sacrifice some of your discount though.

    An interesting dilemma, I think.

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