Tim Leong's Comic Foundry Magazine has been rejected by Diamond Distributors for rather curious reasons (read here).
According to Diamond: "a B&W title at the price you're using just won't work well in the current market we believe." Fact: our cover price is $6.25 for an 80-page B&W magazine. Now they might not think that will sell, but it isn't consistent with what they're already approving. Such as Issue 14 of Draw! magazine, that's 80 pages, B&W and retails for $6.95. Same with issue 15 of Write Now! Both same specs, but 70 cents more.I called Diamond for more clarification and spoke with Tim Huckelbery, who let me know the news in the first place. He said, among other things, "When I was looking though it and reading a magazine of that type, which is about comics, which has lots of images of comics characters, that is looking to be timely and topical, I was expecting color. That, just for me, is how my brain is wired." So, to be a timely magazine with topical content (and feature images of comic characters) it has to be in color? I'm sorry, I've thought about this all afternoon, and I don't really see how this makes sense. What about The Comics Journal or Comics Buyers Guide? Neither of those are full-color, right?
I'm a fan of Comic Foundry and level of quality they consistently bring to our market. This magazine would fill a niche that other comic-related publications do not, offering reasonable competition in a limited field. It's a shame Diamond has made such an error. However, I'm encouraging everyone to e-mail Diamond's Tim Huckelbery and request they reconsider this decision.
