Brian Hibbs, Beat columnist and owner of two Comix Experience stores in San Francisco has sent the following open letter to Marvel and provded the text to The Beat:

To: John Nee, Publisher, Marvel Comics

CC: David Gabriel, VP of Sales

CC: C.B. Cebulski, Editor-in-Chief

An open letter.

I was extremely disappointed at Marvel comics’ performance at the Diamond summit this week. NOT because of C.B. — he very obviously has a heartfelt passion and concern for the line — but because of the lack of preparation for, and proper response to, retailer’s sincere and existential threat from the now FIFTH week of the wild undercutting on new-this-week book product coming from Amazon. It is utterly unacceptable that Marvel is allowing 96%+-off pricing on a brand-new book like INFINITY SIBLINGS.

C.B. says you’re “trying to get to the bottom of” this, that you are “in talks”. This, to me, is the kind of situation that gets resolved in absolutely no more than 72 hours (and that’s 48 more hours than my heart tells me it really takes) because of the literal harm it is doing to an entire class of customers.

Because after FIVE weeks, five weeks where this has been reported FAR and WIDE, five weeks where that reporting is DRIVING customers to digital at the expense of print, I have decided that as of this FOC, I can no longer order new Marvel graphic novels, and have zeroed out my orders on all book format product published by Marvel at both of my stores. I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS, but the way that Marvel has slow-walked this tells me its the only thing I can do.

There’s still time to change this. Ceasing this program, and coming forward publicly with a full and completely transparent accounting of what happened, and I’ll happily reinstate those orders. Blissfully, even. But my economic power of purchasing, even if it’s only a fraction of Amazon’s, is the only power I have. And there are plenty of other publishers wanting to sell me books that are bending over backwards for me so that I will have no problem filling my racks.

I don’t know everything about what Amazon does and why, but in years of watching them, what C.B. described does not match any known behavior that I have observed, nor what I have been able to discuss with other publishers about the behaviors THEY have observed. C.B.’s picture simply doesn’t make any sense — Amazon does not take that kind of a loss on that kind of scale unless it is being made up in some other consideration from a manufacturer.

I hope this is dealt with both promptly and publicly; I’d like to keep ordering new Marvel book stock.

Thank you for listening,