DC only comes thru Lunar unless you’re in the UK where Diamond still plays middleman for I believe.
Marvel, IDW and Dark Horse are from PRH but Diamond can resell them at lower discounts plus shipping.
Image is from Lunar but like with the PRH titles, Diamond is allowed to resell them at lower discounts.
There’s a whole herd of smaller publishers that are available from 2 of the 3.
Cheat code for Diamond is to just check Previewsworld.com
Final Orders Due - Previews World
That shows you most items but there are still others that are exclusive to PRH and some stuff is exclusive to Lunar so to actually have everything available, you have to order weekly or at least monthly from all 3.
Diamond historically has been the worst at packing and shipping and the most expensive to ship. Damages are a regular occurrence. Just today I got a box of Image trades from Diamond because I thought they would ship USPS as part of the test program and for some reason Lunar refuses to keep the Image trades in stock and available at anywhere near complete selection. I’ve been waiting patiently to be able to order the ones I’m out of that Lunar is also out of thru the lower USPS rates but instead they send the evil little box out UPS and as usually there was a corner ding to one of the ones on the end and I’m sure I will not be happy next Wednesday when I see what the UPS rate charged was.
To check Lunar just go to Home - Lunar Distribution and scroll down to their scrolling FOC list and you can see everything FOCing although there are currently two lists FOCing each week a day apart. Other items they carry like BCW can be directly searched from their search engine. Lunar’s great at shipping, the best at packing and protecting and the typical box, any size, any weight usually ships for less than $12 a box. Replacements and reorders usually arrive with the next weeks box where Diamond can take two weeks or more sometimes. General rule with Lunar is any time you have less then 200 comics coming, order 1000 comic bags or some BCW stuff and they’ll upgrade you to the double sized box so the bags essentially ship free. 1000 bags, 40 top loaders, anything that’ll fit in the space a single comic box from them normally takes up.
For Penguin, there really is no great option unless you’re on the wholesale site for retailers. The public site still doesn’t offer a simple everything that’s on FOC this week list like Lunar so the best I can say there is to just check Marvel, IDW and Dark Horse directly from previewsworld. They have a website if you want to look for specific items but I can’t made sense of it for weekly FOC needs. For items like Little Golden Books and other goodies that wouldn’t be on previewsworld, it would help to let your local store know you’re interested in other stuff so they can let you know what’s coming out or FOCing you may not be aware of. Coming Soon - Homepage - Comics (no mature, family-driven, not randomized) - Penguin Random House Comics Retail (prhcomics.com) Penguin larger shipments are as good as Lunar, double box surrounded by something between them. Small shipments that get the foldover are a crapshoot like this week and the other warehouse for trades is just a disaster waiting to happen. The good news there is they ship everything for free and have never turned down a replacement request, sometimes even shipping the same book for free 3 times before we finally get one with the corners intact. They also are usually the fastest to get anything to you. I get something from them every day most weeks. Don’t forget they’re also a huge real book book supplier so anything on the main website, Penguin Random House your local store can order in for you just like they do with comics. You need a cookbook or some Captain Underpants t-shirt, etc… just have it ordered and it should come fast. Maybe even a book with words for the wife. The ones that don’t have any pictures once you get past the cover.
