We sat down with Christina and Cameron Merkler, Co-founders of DCBS and Lunar Distribution to get an update on the whirlwind year at Lunar since our last interview at ComicsPRO 2025 (see “ICv2 Interview: Lunar Distribution Co-founders”). Topics included the present and the future of the market, Lunar’s growth and change over the past year, and how they compete against two strong competitors.
ICv2: Last year we spent some time talking about your history, so this year we want to talk about what happened since our last interview. We’ll start with a big-picture question: what’s your evaluation of the status of the comic book business and comic stores this year versus where we were a year ago?
Christina Merkler: Holy cow. It’s incredible. It’s like it’s night and day from ’24. Almost every retailer that was really making a true effort and really seeing what was selling had double-digit increases. The overall industry? Incredible, at least from our side.
On the Lunar side, right now, the momentum is still going. The warehouse is just nuts. Every week, we’re hitting a new record for the amount of units we’re pushing through this warehouse.
You have DC, which is leading that charge.
Christina: And Image. It’s just been nonstop. Energon has still been just a behemoth. The exclusives have always been big, but they’ve exploded again. I feel like there’s a new energy with those, especially with the Absolute line. It’s a lot.
It’s funny. A few years ago, we were saying, “We’d really like to hit half a million units every week, on average.” Now we’re triple that. We’re going, “That’s great.” [laughs]
We talked a lot in our last interview about capacity, and you were talking then about trying to find a site for a new building. What’s the status of your ability to handle all this new volume?
Christina: We’re in talks right now with somebody who’s going to be building a bigger building for us, but we have two opportunities. We’re trying to find the opportunity that’s going to give us the most opportunity for the growth, and the way that it’s actually set up as a building.
Right now we do have an auxiliary warehouse, but we need the room. It’s going to take a good year, year and a half for that building to be built. We’re making changes and moving things around and creating the efficiencies that we can within the old warehouse.
Oni and Drawn & Quarterly will be going to PRH 1st of August, around that time, between August and September [Oni is going to PRH on August 1, D&Q on September 1, see “Oni Signs” and “D&Q to PRH”, ed.]. That will free up some space for us. That’s how we’re able to add VIZ and Yen Press in August, September.
A year ago, you were talking about how you had to pace adding new publishers because of capacity issues. How’s that gone over the last year? Where do you feel like you are now versus where you need to be?
Christina: I think we’re in a good spot. There are still a few publishers we can absolutely take on, but at this point, most are either under the Prana banner or the Massive banner. It was a lot. It’s a lot of work for any team to have to take in 10 separate publishers. It’s much easier to bring it in under one banner. That has actually worked really well for us.
Then some of those publishers will come out of their contracts. As long as their numbers make sense, we’ll take them on separately, outside those banners, once those contracts come up. That’s the plan for a couple of those publishers.
It’s been good. It’s been steady. There really haven’t been many hiccups. We finally have reached a good point. Yen was a big one because they have an average of 70 new solicits every month. That’s a considerable amount, and you keep it on as an evergreen product. Building that up is a very big undertaking. That’s why we’ve been very cognizant of how we were going to take it on and when we could, in the right way.
Do you feel like you pretty much wrapped up the comic publishers that you wanted to add?
Christina: We still have a few. We’re going to be adding PS Artbooks here. Then the other plan is Panini. Those are two that we’re going to source through Diamond UK.
We’re not fully done, but we’re feeling very good about the mix that we have now. We’re still willing to look at others that haven’t quite gotten in here yet. I have a smaller list now that are waiting in the wings until I can really have a bigger space.
Has your staff grown over the last year?
Christina: Yeah. I think it’s tripled. We had 142 people in the warehouse today. About a year ago, we had, I think, 45. It has grown considerably. We’ve built an entire inventory team. The CSR team has tripled. The vendor coordinator team has doubled. We have a safety officer who we took on several months ago. We have a social media director now.
We’ve really grown the team in what we feel are the right ways to maintain the culture. Because we still are, when it comes down to it, owned by two people who care a lot and care a lot about our employees.
Do you have any interest in selling to any channels other than comic stores?
Christina: Right now, no. Cameron and I have talked about it. Our best is dealing with direct market retailers. I don’t know that we want to get into book market; I don’t know that we want to get into other channels unless there are vacuums that we could fill in easily with some, maybe discount retailers. I think there’s a little hole in there, for distribution but right now, we feel pretty good about just taking care of those direct market retailers.
We want to talk about the distribution situation as a whole. There are now three companies selling to direct market retailers in the U.S. What do you feel makes Lunar unique in that group?
Christina: We have 27 years of experience of having probably the best packaging of anyone around, with DCBS. That and being open to new ways of selling comics, whether it’s through Whatnot, eBay, Amazon Marketplace, also online selling. We feel that being inclusive of sellers and the way they want to sell things is going to make us a stronger distributor. I don’t know what else you’d want to say about it, Cameron, that makes us unique.
Cameron Merkler: I totally agree with that. I think the retail background that we have is what makes us the most unique. It provides a lot of insight that we can give into the way we run the business.
You’re competing with companies with two companies. One’s the largest publishing company in the world, and the other has private equity investment. Both have larger sources of capital than you do. How do you deal with that differential in terms of how you compete?
Christina: We’ve competed with people who have a lot more capital on the retail side too. We’re scrappy, I guess, that way.
[laughter]
Christina: I think it doesn’t always matter how much money you have either. You just have to have the right focus. You have to understand the industry and what’s going to make it work and be willing to be flexible.
I think that with some people, that can’t happen. Because once you get so big, the flexibility isn’t there. We can still pivot very quickly and really do some things for our publishers within our own systems that no one else can do, and we can do it quickly. I think that’s a really big part. That’s the benefit to our publishers.
One difference between retail and wholesale, which I’m sure you’ve experienced over the last five years, is the management of receivables. We’ve had, recently, really good underlying business for comic stores, so receivables issues have been limited. How do you feel you’re prepared for a downturn in terms of managing that very important side of the distribution business?
Christina: I am concerned for any company that gives anybody 60-day terms at this point.
[laughter]
Christina: We top out at 28 days, but our accounts receivable team has a very rigid but also understanding way of handling accounts that struggle to stay within terms. We’re also very aware. We’ve learned some things over the last several years, let me tell you.
What we found was that customer service speaks to this a lot when people say, “Hey, I wish you would give me longer terms.” It’s generally to people who are already struggling. It’s like, “We don’t want to create this snowball effect where you get to the point where you can’t.” We’re trying to stop-gap that as much as we can.
Also, we understand things happen. We set up payment plans for people and still allow them to get shipments. There are a lot of things that we do to make sure that we’re not being so rigid that it’s just an all-or-nothing type of situation. We’re very aware and very cognizant of the stores that we need to continue to be stringent and strict with.
Prospects for 2026 for the overall business and for Lunar?
Christina: Our numbers already are so big now that it’s kind of unfathomable. Prospects for us are great. Image is killing it. DC is killing it. All of our smaller publishers are really doing incredible stuff. Our year was so big last year.
I would say, end of this year, I’d still see many people up at least five to eight percent by the end of the year, just based on what I’m seeing just in the first couple of months of this year, which is pretty considerable.
Any issues in the comics business we should be looking at?
Christina: Probably just the ability for the printers to keep up.
[laughs]
I really think so, I really do. There have been a couple things recently where I’m like, “Are they OK?” I think they’re taking on so much business. That’s the only thing I think we need to worry about, is the actual number of printers and the ability for them to print all the books we need them to.
ICv2: That’s a great problem.
Source: ICv2
