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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant impact worldwide. The impact to the comic book direct market is unclear at the moment. This topic is for articles related to the impact to the comic book direct market. Articles about stay-at-home notices impact which stores can remain open and if customers can get to them so those are fair game.

For each article, please put the title of the article, the URL of the article and the date of the article. If you want to include a summary of the article and your thoughts on it, that is fine. Just be sure to clearly indicate what is from the article and what is your thoughts on it.

To get things started, here is an article from Diamond about the shutdown of distribution of new comics:

Steve Geppi Addresses Coronavirus’ Effect on Distribution
https://previewsworld.com/Article/24155 ... stribution
Mar 23, 2020

We have to get Franklin to post a lot of his links over here on the virus!

Many shops moved to curbside pickup, similar to restaurants, to keep in business. Los Angeles shut down non-essential businesses by turning off power and water to them:
https://www.newsarama.com/49612-curbsid ... geles.html

Lakewood NJ keep having weddings and parties that is making the numbers swell in this area. Not being racist but they are a Jewish community that spread into Toms River and Jackson townships which could be the reason for those high numbers as well. NJ may be on a state restriction where we cannot leave the state along with NY and CON. My brother lives in the middle of Pennsylvania and said they arent having problems and only a handful of cases. Northern NJ is a mess because most work in New York and live in the northern counties.

https://patch.com/new-jersey/berkeley-n ... ean-county

http://newjersey.news12.com/story/41904 ... and-deaths

Also heard that ibuprofen makes the problem worse. Could just be a hearsay but take aspirin and not ibuprofen. Stay safe bros

Another party... Jersey is really full of rebellious punks

https://www.nj.com/news/2020/03/cops-br ... ssion=true

DC printing still? Digital still going through
https://screenrant.com/dc-comics-corona ... -canceled/

Diamond stopping all payments to comic publishers. Diamond may be trying to avoid invsolvency: https://www.cbr.com/diamond-halts-payme ... -covid-19/

I think the latest Diamond statement about payments to creditors is the #1 reason why they slammed the brakes on deliveries to even some stores. The industry can't function at 50 percent or less, and at least a full stop prevents their death by a thousand cuts. Hopefully this crisis will help to decentralize some of the distribution. Unfortunately there's a lot of dependent parts of the market that may not weather the turbulence well.

How comic retailers in Central Virginia are impacted and responding to COVID-19.

https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/loca ... a.amp.html

COVID-19 Survivor JOSEPH ILLIDGE Reveals What It's Like - via Newsarama

https://www.newsarama.com/49865-joseph- ... virus.html

DC's new print distribution plan in the face of COVID-19 - https://www.newsarama.com/49873-inside- ... olved.html

Retailers Initial Reaction - https://www.newsarama.com/49879-initial ... mixed.html

John (or anyone), did you watch the Comic Book News roundtable interview with Steve Geppi and prominent retailers on YouTube? https://youtu.be/XgN-JmPP0aM

I feel like he was very open and honest. Personally, I like the idea of multiple distributors because it insulates the industry from vulnerability that one distributor presents: if 2000 stores have one distributor and the distributor shuts down due to a natural disaster in their city, the entire industry is gonna be shut down.

I found the most shocking announcement to be Diamond’s plans to offer an app that consolidates all back issues in DM stores across the country for customers to make orders. That’s huge.