That noise you hear is the collective industry saying “told you so.”  In October at the Diamond Retailer Summit, DC comics announced it would be releasing Blackest Night #6 the last week in December in what was supposed to be a skip week.  However, they would send the books out a week early with big stickers saying with the street date clearly laid out.  I think it was pretty obvious it would leak and the street date would be broken.

Well, it happened pretty quickly.  Early this morning, pages and spoilers from Blackest Night #6 appeared across the internet including the CBR Forums, Penny Arcade, writer Geoff Johns own message boards at ComicBloc.com and the official DC Comics message boards.  The images have since been taken down by DC’s request.

The series writer Geoff Johns had this to say:

I’m glad people are excited about the book.

The issue has also hit Torrent sites within 24 hours of it’s shipping in lower than usual quality scans.

Really this was an experiment by Diamond and DC to see if such a release would work and I could of told them it wouldn’t.  I think the bigger question is why should I go to my comic shop to pick up one comic (other than I have nothing better to do).  This should of just been released this week.