{"id":34307,"date":"2025-01-19T11:13:39","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T16:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34307"},"modified":"2025-01-19T13:57:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T18:57:35","slug":"diamonds-bankruptcy-and-my-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34307","title":{"rendered":"Diamond’s Bankruptcy and My Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, Diamond Comic Distributors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For almost eighteen years–212 issues, counting the unpublished (though finished) May 2020 COVID issue–I’ve been the copywriter on Diamond’s monthly PREVIEWS<\/em><\/b> catalog, though that only scratches the surface of what I do. I wear many, many hats at Diamond, and I have joked my business cards should really say “Problem Project Person.”<\/p>\n

I am very limited in what I can say about the bankruptcy. Reports in the media say the company is looking to sell divisions of the company and reorganize the debts in order to continue operations. I won’t add to that.<\/p>\n

What I will say is this:<\/p>\n

1) I have a job, and I remain hard at work. I began my work on the March 2025 catalog on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

2) I won’t say I was taken by complete surprise by Tuesday’s announcement; Hemingway got it right in The Sun Also Rises<\/i> about how one goes bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Yet it still came as a shock, and I am still processing the news and what it means.<\/p>\n

3) I work (and have worked) with a group of fantastically smart, talented, passionate, and dedicated people. I am proud to call you my colleagues, and whatever happens in the future, I remain inordinately fond of you all.<\/p>\n

4) Diamond has been a part of my life since 1991. (A vintage 1991 shipping box is in my closet.) I saw my work on PREVIEWS<\/em><\/b> as a great responsibility–it is the<\/i><\/b> tool of the comics industry–and I always tried to do right by the publishers, the readers, the industry as a whole.<\/p>\n

5) I am thinking about the future… which may well be exactly what I’m doing now. But I would be negligent to not investigate other options. Which also means revising my long-neglected LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2020, Steve Warble, one of our sales managers, happened to be in the office on a day I was working on PREVIEWS<\/i><\/b>, and he asked me if I was worried about the future–DC Comics had left, much of the company was on furlough. (I was one of two non-managers retained in April 2020.) The odds were against us, the situation that COVID summer looked grim. “All I can do,” I said, “is to do the best job I can do today, and I will deal with tomorrow when it comes. If we go down, at least I will know I did everything I could.”<\/p>\n

I carry on, doing the best job I can do. That attitude carried me through COVID, and it carries me now. Bankruptcy is out of my hands, but my work, that I can control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, Diamond Comic Distributors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections. For almost eighteen years–212 issues, counting the unpublished (though finished) May 2020 COVID issue–I’ve been the copywriter on Diamond’s monthly PREVIEWS catalog, though that only scratches the surface of what I do. I wear many, many hats at Diamond, and I have joked my businessContinue reading “Diamond’s Bankruptcy and My Future”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[4846,4843,4124],"class_list":["post-34307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-work","tag-diamond-comic-distributors","tag-diamond-comics","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}