Uncertainty around covid-19 continues to concern the direct market, so publishers like Dynamite are continuing to update strategies to help retailers. In its latest update, the publisher announced that its pruning back its July releases to its best sellers only, in hopes to limit the amount of product left on comic stores’ shelves during a Five Wednesday month.

Dynamite is also moving all merchandise out of July completely and, as mentioned before, will continue to take returns of new titles through the next 4 weeks, minimum.

Read CEO Nick Barrucci’s letter below, and stay tuned to The Beat for more updates as publishers like Marvel, Dynamite, Image and Vault move to provide financial relief.

To our Retail Partners and Fans, As we stated previously, these are extremely trying times and we’ve been monitoring what you, our retailer partner have been saying as much as possible during these trying times. From what we can see of the online retailer discussions regarding the backing up of titles to retailers all over the world, and the news that keeps morphing, we have had many internal discussions on taking decisive actions. Dynamite, as other publishers, are working on May coded titles for July in store releases, and this may be an additional burden to retailers and fans with so many titles currently, and potentially more titles, being pushed back. We don’t know what is happening next. We know that more and more states are shutting business and that retailers and fans will not be getting titles for a few weeks at least, and that may be extended. We hope that things are back up and running between now and then but it seems the best course would be to limit the number of July releases to only our best sellers, especially considering it is a Five Wednesday month. This way, if things are still being pushed back, it’s less of a commitment of titles for fans and retailers. If things are back in place, retailers and fans will have the best sellers to enjoy. We are also moving all of our merchandise out of July all together. This is in addition to taking returns of new titles starting this past Wednesday and at least through the next 4 weeks. At the moment, we will be releasing Vampirella #13, The Boys #4, Red Sonja #18, Sacred Six #3, Bettie Page #2 and Green Hornet #2. We will also be deep discounting our best-selling collections for retailers should things turn for the better, including Vampirella, Red Sonja and The Boys Omnibuses in time for Season 2 on Prime. We are a community – the Publishers, retailers, creators, distributor and fans – together, we will get past this. It’s time to make safe and calculated decisions. We hope that this one will help us all through for our part. Sincerely, Nick Barrucci

CEO/Publisher