A message posted to the private FOC Facebook page on Wednesday stated, “Due to circumstances beyond our control, effective immediately and for the foreseeable future, new comic and graphic novels from Oni Press will only be offered via Lunar Distribution and will not be available via Diamond Comics Distribution. This will hopefully be a temporary situation, and we will advise on any other upcoming changes as soon as we have any updates to share.”
The titles affected are EC Catacomb of Torment #1, Benjamin #1 (second printing), and
Benjamin #2.
Oni is the latest publisher to move away from Diamond. UDON Entertainment stopped shipping product to Diamond in late May, citing “the current state of uncertainty and lack of communication from the new owners to both retailers as well as many publishers” (see “UDON Cuts Off Diamond”). Penguin Random House Publishing Services also ended sub-distribution of its publishers, including Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, and BOOM! Studios, via Diamond (see “Diamond Will No Longer Distribute Marvel Comics”).
Oni added Lunar as a distributor in December 2021 (see “Oni-Lion Forge Adds Lunar for Distro”) but has continued to distribute through Diamond Comic Distributors until now. They moved their book distribution from Diamond Book Distributors to Simon & Schuster in 2017 (see “Oni Press Moves to Simon & Schuster”).