So my local store owner keeps complaining about Diamond Comics,

Why is the blood shooting upwards in the penultimate panel?

Diamond is pretty bad but I wouldn't say their sales are skewed. Anyone with a brain understand why preorder numbers can go a certain way (and if they don't know, they can at least read stuff like those month by month analysis numbers to fake it).

what am I looking at here

>>85586306
Because Giffen is not as talented a writer or as good at break-downs as he and his fan boys would lead you to believe.

>>85586269
Diamond operates pretty similarly to other distributors of national publications. The same thing your LCS might complain about them, another local store might do the same about Sports Illustrated or Reader's Digest. Almost no periodicals self-distribute so there's always a middle man.

NOW, chains and grocery stores negotiate different breaks so for magazines and books, they get better deals than your local mom and pop, but that doesn't really help since there's no such thing as a chain comic store. Even being say the biggest store in NYC or LA would mean diddly squat to most distributors, so it's not, per se, Diamond being a pain.

>>85586593
>grocery stores

Meaning chains like drug stores or grocery stores, or any other chain (like Barnes & Noble when they were decent sized or Tower Records when they were actually around and alive).

>>85586306
There's a wall behind him, the splatter is dripping downwards, not going up.

>>85586583
Seconding this question

>>85586269
Shops have leftover copies from every publisher

How new are you?

>>85586583
Supes from JL3k getting his head blown off.

>>85586593
>good at break-downs as he and his fan boys would lead you to believe.
This was evident in 52 backups when Morrison demanded certain paneling and Giffen had no idea what to do.

I know one shop got sick of Diamond running late and otherwise just fucking up their manga shipments so they switched to another distributor. You can't do that with US comics, but with manga they found one that ships to bookstores to get their books on time.