“Previews is dead,” former Manager and Editor Marty Grosser posted on LinkedIn. “R.I. P. (1988-2025).”
Diamond’s Previews #445, October for December releases, will be the final issue. The catalog has been digital-only since June, when Diamond discontinued the print version (see “R.I.P. Previews”).
Before Diamond filed for bankruptcy, on January 14, 2025, Previews was the most complete listing of weekly releases for the direct market. Even after losing DC Comics in 2020, Diamond carried comics from Marvel Comics and other publishers on a wholesale basis, so the catalog has long been a comprehensive resource for retailers. Since the bankruptcy and ensuing proceedings, however, most publishers have pulled out. Previews #445 is just 98 pages, compared to 600 before the bankruptcy filing and sale, and it carries listings for just 257 items, six of which are resolicited.
“The whole comics industry is built on a weekly schedule,” Jacob Shapiro, co-owner of Fantom Comics in Washington, DC, told ICv2. With Diamond out of the picture, he said, he will no longer get weekly Final Order Cutoff files from publishers not carried by Lunar Distribution and Penguin Random House. He can still source many graphic novels and manga, including VIZ Media and Yen Press titles, from book distributors such as Simon & Schuster and Hachette, but books are solicited by season, not monthly, and often many months in advance, so there’s no weekly listing for retailers to refer to.
“There was a long time when, even once we stopped ordering from Diamond and we started ordering from Simon & Schuster and Hachette, we still used the Diamond catalog, because it listed the VIZ and Yen books” Shapiro said. “I would use Diamond’s catalog to research release dates, and then I’d go and place an order through Simon & Schuster. Now there’s nowhere that I can find that stuff. There’s no centralized place that has all of the VIZ manga coming out in October.”
Both VIZ and Yen Press were listed in Previews #444, but Previews #445 carried no solicits for VIZ titles.
Source: ICv2
