Steve Geppi is the CEO of Diamond Comics Distributors and its parent company, Geppi Family Enterprises, a company that he grew from a tiny back-issue store to a major force in the comics industry.  From 1993 to 2020, Diamond was the sole comic distributor to the Direct Market.  For ICv2's Comics Direct Market 50th Anniversary celebration, historian Dan Gearino, author of Comic Shop: The Retail Mavericks Who Gave Us a New Geek Culture, talks to Geppi about his years in the business.  Part 1 covers Geppi's early days selling back issues in a tiny comic shop and how he moved from that to being a distributor.  In Part 2, Geppi discusses the growth of Diamond and how it weathered the market bust of the 1990s.  And in Part 3, he looks at the realities of the Direct Market today and Diamond’s place in it.

We are also making available lightly edited transcripts of the interview, in three parts corresponding to the three parts of the video interview.
ICv2 Interview Transcript: Steve Geppi, Part 1
ICv2 Interview Transcript: Steve Geppi, Part 2
ICv2 Interview Transcript: Steve Geppi, Part 3

For an overview article on the history of Diamond Comic Distributors, see "Origins, Dominance and Now a 'Gut Punch': The Story of Diamond."

This interview and article are part of ICv2’s Comics Direct Market 50th Anniversary celebration; for more, see "Comics Direct Market 50th Anniversary."