Bud Plant was a wholesale comics distributor active in the 1970s and 1980s during the growth of the direct market. He also published a selection of comics and zines during the same period. Starting in 1970 as a mail-order distributor specializing in underground comix, Plant absorbed some of his smaller rivals in the 1980s, and then sold his business to Diamond Comics Distributors in 1988. He still, as Bud Plant's Art Books, sells quality reprints and graphic novels.