Sparkle Pop Pushes Back on Proposed Diamond Bankruptcy Settlement

The long Diamond Comic Distributors bankruptcy saga has a new wrinkle: Sparkle Pop, the company that acquired Diamond's assets through parent company Ad Populum, has formally objected to a settlement negotiated between Diamond's Chapter 7 trustee and a group of publishers. Sparkle Pop says the deal was hammered out without its input and would force it to hand over registry and escrow funds even as it claims it's still owed more than $400,000 in processing fees and upwards of $1 million in storage and rent.

At the center of the dispute is roughly 8.25 million units of consigned inventory — worth an estimated $47 million — still sitting in Sparkle Pop's 600,000-square-foot Mississippi warehouse. The proposed settlement would let publishers send their own people in to retrieve that stock directly, which Sparkle Pop argues is a logistical and liability mess it can't sign off on. The company also says it hasn't been paid for warehousing since November 2025. A hearing to sort out the disagreement is set for October 6.

For shops still waiting on product tied up somewhere in the Diamond estate, this is a sign the wind-down is far from over — worth keeping an eye on before counting on any of that consigned stock showing back up on shelves soon.

Original reporting: Bleeding Cool