Steve Geppi

Early life and career

Steve Geppi was born on January 24, 1950, in Little Italy, Baltimore and completed the 8th grade before leaving school. Geppi's "first job was handling the comics for a local store," where the nine-year-old avidly read comics including "his favorite Archie comics" and others. Ever the entrepreneur, Geppi "asked to be paid in comics [because]... [h]e could sell them off to other kids and make a better buck." By 1960, Geppi was "doing tax returns for his neighbors," and later also "handled football pools."

Having left school to support his mother, between 1964 and 1969, he undertook a number of "manual-labor jobs," while "dodging truant officers." He "enrolled in vocational school," but did not feel challenged – later recalling that "I had missed 45 days at the half, and I was on the honor roll" – and again dropped out. Later he worked for Lester White's Detecto Electronics "install[ing] burglar alarms and doorbells," before joining the U.S. Postal Service as a letter carrier. Starting aged 19 with "the crap jobs," (loading trucks and substituting for other carriers), Geppi was "starting a family... [and] needed... solid, steady work, something with a future." A "few years" after taking the carrier exam, he was assigned a flat "route in suburban Maryland," while "[t]he Postal Service kept raising salaries [and] Geppi's pay tripled in five years," allowing him to move "his growing family out to the suburbs." In the early seventies Geppi was a

member of the Jehovah's Witnesses and conducted many free home bible studies. Whether or not he is still affiliated with this organization is not known.

Geppi and family vacationed every summer in Wildwood, New Jersey. In the summer of 1972, his nephew (Georgie Kues) was "reading an old Batman comic book" in the rain, and Geppi found that "reading that Batman brought [back his childhood memories of comics]... He still loved comics [and] figured there were a lot of guys who would feel the same way." Buying "a batch of old comics from a woman on his mail route," he was soon "spending weekends at comic shows, buying and trading with other fans." After "setting up at comic book conventions as a part-time dealer," he ultimately realised that he could make more money that way than at his job with the postal services.

Career in comics

In 1974, Geppi announced his intention to quit his job and "open a comic book store." Geppi recalls that his colleagues "all laughed their heads off," while The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles quoted him as saying:

"I remember when I left the Post Office, some of the people there said, 'See you in September,' since they were so sure I'd be back,” he said. But Geppi never returned to the postal job."

Already "making more money with the comics than as a mailman," he opened his first Geppi's Comic World comic store "in a hole under a TV repair shop" in Baltimore, and – while personally specialising in "older, collectible comics," – "began carrying new comics, chiefly as a means of attracting regular customers to the store each week." Geppi "stocked his store with collections he found through the classifieds, traveling the countryside in his beat-up blue Ford van." One of "the first specialty comic retailers in Maryland," Geppi built his business as the comics industry grew. Geppi recalls

"I would snowball one deal into another... [i]f I made $5,000 on a deal and another deal came up for $5,000, I would empty the bank account. I would take the risk."

By 1981/82 he had four stores, "including a tourist development in Harborplace, showplace of a reviving Maryland." Already "doing a little informal distributing... for smaller retailers," Geppi found himself "one of the biggest accounts" for New Media/Irjax. When his distributor "relocated to Florida, he asked Geppi to service more accounts for a bigger discount." One of the "last loyal customers" when New Media began having fiscal difficulties, Geppi made a deal: "[t]he owner was going into retail," so Geppi agreed to provide Schuster with "free books for a period of time in return for his account list," buying parts of the company, and founding Diamond Comic Distribution.

In June 1994, Success magazine featured Geppi on its cover, celebrating his "$250 Million Empire," and highlighting his co-ownership of the Baltimore Orioles.

In 1998 Geppi was described in Businessweek as having been the "[c]ompanion of Mindy Stout for eight years, with [at the time] one daughter." Geppi also has a son with Mindy. In addition, Geppi has "four children from a previous marriage and [in 1998] two grandchildren."

Foundation

Described by Mile High Comics' Chuck Rozanski as "brilliant," Steve Geppi had been a subdistributor for Hal Schuster in the late 1970s. In what Rozanski describes as an "incredibly risky and gutsy move," Geppi took over New Media/Irjax's "office and warehouse space" and, recalled Rozanski, had to "sort out the good customers from the bad overnight" negotiating with creditors to continue Schuster's distribution business as Diamond Comic Distribution. Almost overnight, noted Rozanski, "[h]e went from being a retailer in Baltimore to having warehouses all over the place." Geppi himself, according to Mike Friedrich "was someone whose work you could trust, who had a good reputation for honesty in the field [as a collector, retailer and distributor]."

Geppi named his company 'Diamond' "after the imprint Marvel Comics used on non-returnable comics," and although the "publisher discontinued the symbol" months later, the name remained. "Diamond grew an average of 40 percent a year," as comics retail took off. Many fans "with little experience" started rival companies only to "find they were in over their heads," allowing Geppi to "[buy] out the smart ones or pick... up the pieces after the stupid ones went out of business," according to Geppi employee Mark Herr. Geppi was aided in his efforts by the publishers themselves. In the early 1980s, Marvel and DC Comics groups provided trade terms favorable for larger distributors and those with efficient freight systems, effectively "play[ing] into the hands of the major distributors such as Capital and Diamond," and hastening the demise of smaller distributors.

In 1983, he hired an accounting firm, and in 1985 hired "no-nonsense CPA," Chuck Parker "as Diamond's first controller." Herr notes that this move was Geppi's "best decision," as Parker "cares nothing about the comics. To him, it's dollars and cents." Parker describes his role as "smooth[ing] the emotion out of some decisions. Steve [Geppi] is a visionary and a risk-taker... and I tend to be more conservative."

Criticism

In 1983, Geppi was criticised for taking exception to certain adult-themed titles and scenes, effectively causing the cancellation of a series called "Void Indigo" for its excessive violence. Later in 1987, Geppi responded to "a graphic childbirth scene in Miracleman #9 (written by Alan Moore), Geppi wrote to retailers that:

"Diamond values its retailers too much to take chances on such a dangerous situation... We are not censors. We no more want someone deciding for us than you do. We cannot, however, stand by and watch the marketplace become a dumping ground for every sort of graphic fantasy that someone wants to live out. We have an industry to protect; we have leases to abide by; we have a community image to maintain."

Geppi lost customers with this approach, however, "and eventually backed down." He recalls compromising, and accepting "that as a distributor, I owed the retailers the product they wanted."

Geppi's position in the comics industry, in which Diamond was "the sole source of most new comics products to comics specialty shops," ultimately saw the company become the subject of "an investigation by the U.S. Justice department for possible antitrust violations." The investigation was dropped in November 2000, "with no action deemed necessary."