Malacoda

I think it would have been advantageous for list of reasons I posted a few feet back (I think, getting a bit punchy now and I lost a couple of posts when the power went off). However, I don't know if T&P originated this, I think Sparta going over to container shipping is the key and I don't think T&P did solicit UKPV's in the sense that that was the point of the exercise. I think that Sparta changing over to containers opened up the possibility that first run supply with container shipping was now viable and, as long as that was happening, it would have made no sense NOT to change to PV's.

I do love it. If you hadn't dropped a turd on my last theory, I wouldn't have had to come up with this one. I did point out right at the start that you kicked the carp out of that one, so I was basically grabbing my ankles on this one too. Also, I did call it DC PV 2: Electric Boogaloo. Clue in the name. But I think there's a lot of good info in there and I think doing this (hoisting a theory) is exactly how we move forward. Plus it's fun to get into it.

You say 'all they had to do' like a 3 month process of gathering up tens of thousands of returns in hundreds of trucks across 10 million square kilometres of country is easier than just leaving the printing press on for an extra 15 minutes. In our minds, these DC PV's are a big deal because they're a cool little mystery, but in terms of a Sparta print run, they are absolutely nothing. Keep in mind also that it's not the same place (as far as we know). Wherever DC batched up the returns, it wasn't Sparta. If it was, for example, the premises in Queens (which would be logical for the docks), that would be a thousand miles from Sparta. So sending a batch of returns by container from wherever returns returned to would not give you the same answer as from Sparta. However your point is completely valid: you could just ask my friend Mr. McLean 'how much to haul a million comics from A to B?' However again, my point is equally valid. Actually printing the comics was 15 minutes work. But you do raise a fascinating question: if we take the approach that the reason for the DC PV's has to be a question that is absolutely not more easily answered by any other method, then what the Hell was it? I mean, I still think my theory holds because I don't believe what they did was much of a stretch, but if we set ourselves the task of thinking of a reason that could not be satisfied by any other means, what on Earth would that be? (Again, I think we're in the business of imposing order on chaos here. If you ask an Ops Director a question, he comes up with an operational solution). If cost were the only issue, I think you'd have a valid objection here, but I think it was a massive change to the Ops process that was being dry-runned and the most efficacious way to check that would be to suck it and see. Think for a moment how Marvel tested the direct market. They didn't use focus groups and theory, they published Dazzler and Kazar as direct-only comics and waited to see what would happen. (Admittedly, if you publish Dazzler and Kazar and then wait to see what happens, you'd better get comfy).

They kind of weren't, which I think is a factor. This is the thing we parked.

Only that I think the explanation has to address a lot of questions and this one does, unfortunately without the proof we'd all like to see. For some things, you get a smoking gun. For others you can only work with the absence of one. I think the exact simultaneity of the product codes on both Marvel and DC, the change of Marvel's UK distributor and DC's flirtation with PV's are more likely to share a common cause than to be unrelated events. I think that the fact that the DC PV's were NOT returns is a key factor that needs to be addressed. I think 'why did they briefly do a small run of PV's?' is not the question so much as part of the answer to a different question.

It's not the price - and to be clear I mean it is neither the amount of the price nor whether it's stamped or printed on there. It's the change to Sparta sending it directly hot off the presses by container. The 9 unknowns. I think you're looking at the pence pricing as an end or target in itself. I think the experiment was everything else, but if T&P were getting new DC's off the presses (like they did Marvels), it would make absolutely no sense NOT to get PV's. They're not the reason, they're just a logical bi-product. Look at it this way: if T&P were going to trial new comics rather than returns, why would they not want PV's? If they were going to get DC's on the same basis now that they had always had Marvels, that would include PV's.

No, there was no blind shipping. They were loaded into a container in Illinois and didn't see daylight again until Ethel cracked open the crate in Thurmaston. The price would be for the container, regardless of the contents. The test is Sparta doing a run for IND/DC. And that is a world of unknowns, I believe. Sparta were a printers, not a DC warehouse (though the publishers all had offices nearby). Sparta did first run distribution to the local and regional distributors, wholesalers and in some cases the newsstands. For Marvel, they shipped directly from Sparta to the UK. For DC, Sparta shipped all over the US, and then IND rounded up all the unsold copies into the IND warehouse in God-Knows-Where, made them into logical batches (except we know they were a hot mess of bunching and multi-batching) and sent them to Leicester. Note: at the time Sparta flipped Marvel flipped onto container shipping, IND had not been their distributor for 2 years, so IND had no access to Marvel's shipping/distribution data. Old System: WCP distribute new comics to US wholesalers with cents prices, then IND round up the unsolds, batch them into sales consignments, haul them to the docks and ship them by traditional shipping / break bulk cargo to Liverpool, where they're hauled to Leicester to reprocessed by the Ethels and re-stamped with pence prices. New system: WCP print PV's and ship them by container directly, at time of printing, straight to Newark where they're shipped to Felixstowe in the same container, which is then driven to Leicester, where they're unpacked with no need for Ethel to re-stamp them and are ready for distribution. So there are 9 unknowns (not really unknowns so much as not-been-done-like-this-befores). Hence the test run.

Absolutely. Truth be told, for all we know this could have been an error. Maybe DC mooted the idea of PV's and then cancelled it, but these ones slipped through the net and actually served absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Right, but I think that supports my contention. There was no time to get sales results in. It was operational test with implications for the cost base. I think it would have had a big impact on T&P's sales if they had had regular consistent monthly supplies and I think, as they now owned T&P, IND should have cared about that, but I don't think they did for reasons I'll come back to. It doesn't work as any kind of a commercial experiment, only an operational one.

I'm booking this one for the moment, I'll come back to it.

It's not having the price printed on them or even what that price is. It's that moving from returns to newly printed copies changes everything: instead of getting a random selection of leftovers, T&P could order what they wanted, the ordering window changes because you're getting them hot off the presses, not 3 to 6 months later, and sometimes in the wrong order, which changes your distribution because suddenly your reps are delivering the next month's comics every month instead of the DC lottery, the cost of the comics changes, because they're new prints not returns, the container shipping changes the whole schedule of importing, everything about it, the length of journeys, the tracking, the cost and process of importation, even down to which port they arrive at and how they're transported from it, and completely changes the cost of shipping. Exactly everything is different. Everybody's dead, Dave. They're all dead. Everybody's dead. Dave. But some of that was going to change anyway. The key thing is they're new prints not returns and the changes that ensue from that.

That's cool. The spark keeps killing my internet connection.

No, this is brilliant. I'm loving this. I've just got an electrician, a flooring guy and 2 blokes pouring concrete (some of it where it's meant to be) at the mo so slow to respond. I whacked out the theory last night because I knew I wouldn't have time for the next few days, but failed to consider the ensuing bunfight (which is great).

Right, but I think 1979 is a 5th hiatus, which I don't think you do? That's a much bigger headbanging session. Let's park that one for a minute.

I am loving these questions. This is really hammering the steel. Thank you. Well, Marvel stopped the stamps because container shipping enabled them to switch distributors but World's different system required PV's, so the two things go hand in glove. Let's keep in mind that when you import a US product into the UK for sale, the normal thing is to have a UK price on it. The only reason T&P had stamps on the comics is because they were second hand US rejects. DC differs because they continued to take returns. I get the feeling that you're making a deeper point than this which I'm failing to grasp. When Charlton, Dell King & Marvel had PV's they were first prints of new comics shipped directly to the UK. DC's were returns. An interesting question at this point is: when Charltons, Dells & Kings were stamps, were they returns or were they freshly minted cents copies?

Very good question. So we're on day one of container shipping, so the huge cost savings are still theoretical at this point, but I agree they'd have estimated numbers. However, why wouldn't you just print a batch of PV's? It would take a couple of minutes to change the plates over and then literally quarter of an hour to knock off 10,000 issues. The effort & cost to test the system was virtually non-existent. I also assume that the whole chain of events in distribution was changed by containers, so to actually know how it would affect IND, the best thing to do was a test.

Well....why not? I've no idea, but I find the fact that they did 4 in July and then added on the Flash from August quite compelling. Although the Flash has a cover date a month later, these were all printed within about 8 days of each other, so basically a week's output. I think the Flash was added because it was GS and therefore a different quantity by weight & size, so a good test. The fact that it was five kind of makes me more convinced, tbh. If there was a commercial / UK sales reason for it, it would have gone on for months (until the sales figures were in). If there was some other reason, maybe they would have done a whole month's issues. But 5 may be a handsome number in terms of shipping. Maybe 5 x 10,000 = a pallet? You're saying 5 like it's not a lot, but 50k thousand comics is literally half a ton. I guess, to bounce your question back at you, what would you learn from 10 or 15 that you wouldn't learn from 5? I think this was driven by IND or even Sparta (who were presumably getting an increased print run and a separate job out of it) rather than T&P. I imagine T&P were definitely interested in (1) reduced costs (2) reduced aggro (3) a clearer proposition for newsagents (4) clean, freshly minted copies rather than returns and (5) consistent batches of comics every month rather than the random madness we know rocked up......however.......I reckon their super cheap deal on the returns would have been VERY hard to wave goodbye to.

Cheaper being the motivation, but basically a test run of the new system. I think the key point is that we don't know how much effort/cost was involved in retrieving all the unsold returns, sorting them into batches of so many Supermans, so many Batmans to make a logical shipment for T&P, but we do know (a) that Marvel never did it and always found it cheaper to print & export fresh copies and (b) that the reason T&P wanted the returns is that they could get them dirt cheap - significantly lower than even the wholesale price. So let's assume it was incredibly marginal for IND. We also know (though we find it hard to believe) that Marvel, DC & all the publishers printed vast amount of comics that were never sold, were never going to be sold, so clearly distribution costs were the driver (see what I did there), not printing costs. Also, however they got all the comics back in from the thousands of local & national distributors who in turn got them back from the retailers, it can't have been on container lorries for most of the ride, so the process of getting everything back in to ship to T&P must have been far more expensive than the process of sending them out once containerisation arrived. Now, if containerisation offered DC/IND the possibility to reduce their shipping costs by an unimaginable figure (if the cost to distribute domestically was reduced to one-thirty-six of the old cost, the international export cost saving must have been even greater), it seems entirely possible to me that with container shipping, it was cheaper to just print a few hundred thousand extra as PV's and send them straight to the docks in a container. It would certainly be worth knocking out a few batches to find out.

Less a summary, more a dump of my entire hard drive on the subject, but I thought there was so much juicy detail in there it would be a shame to delete it all out.

I know. It was a bit much for a chat room, wasn't it?

Yes.

Conclusion. 1) I think WCP, having built their Effingham plant for containerisation, completed the swap over to container shipping at the Sparta plant (where the comics were printed) in Q1 1971. 2) The different method of shipping where manifests contained the customer’s product codes rather than the name of the contents (as in the break bulk days) meant that product codes had to be added to all the covers. 3) They went live with the new system for both domestic and export distribution on April 1st 1971. 4) Container shipping facilitated Marvel’s long discussed move from T&P to World as UK distributor, but meant a PV only export run for Marvel at Sparta beginning with comics cover dated August 1971. 5) This led either DC/IND to trial a copycat run or Sparta to suggest it, as this was a new system for which they had no experience. 6) The experiment was either a straight up proof-of-concept for DC of the new system at Sparta or, more likely, a test to see if the cost efficiencies of that system (new comics, PV’s, container shipping) were so great that it outweighed the benefits (a) T&P were getting compared to returns or, more likely (b) that IND were getting from selling them returns. We would logically assume that the cost-benefit didn’t hold as T&P carried on having returns for the next 7 years, however, it might also be bad timing. Sparta proposed the experiment at the only time they could (Q2 1971), when containerisation was rolled out, but that coincided with T&P’s head office being shut down and the management rolled into Warner Communications based in London. If that was the case, it seems quite plausible that T&P didn’t so much take their eye off the ball as there were no eyes left to look at it. The once mighty T&P was just an imprint at Warner’s. (I told you we’d come back to that last point).

Part Four: So what are the questions after all that? 1) As Steve pointed out, there are stamped issues right through this period, including these very issues, so clearly T&P relocation was not an issue (and I don’t believe there actually was a relocation). So not that. 2) Clearly the tiny numbers of comics printed over just a few days were not a financial / commercial experiment by IND. Particularly as the experiment ended months before any results could have been collated (by which time the stamped returns would also have been in circulation, surely muddying the waters). So not that. 3) Production of PV’s stopped before these comics had even reached the UK, let alone gone on sale, let alone the results been collated, so it clearly wasn’t a commercial test initiated by T&P. 4) T&P bought comics on a final sale basis, so it made no difference to IND either way. Therefore, whatever the experiment was designed to test, it was not the impact on IND’s sales to T&P. 5) T&P had also been distributing alternating first run Marvel PV’s with first run Marvel stamps during the hiatuses AND Marvel stamps and PV’s together for the last 28 months AND DC stamped cents returns for 12 years by this point, so even if T&P had wanted to assess any impact of PV’s vs stamps, they already had vastly more data than these 5 comics were going to give them. 6) Likewise, IND had been Marvel’s distributor throughout the 60’s while they had done PV’s and stamps of new issues vs DC’s returns, so it wasn’t as if DC or IND needed to experiment with PV’s to see how it all worked or what the costs were. They had all that data, 12 years’ worth of it, millions of comics, so printing PV’s of 5 DC titles was not going to give them any fresh information about anything. Except one thing. There is one thing that makes sense. DC must have been incurring a substantial transportation cost to round up all the returns from across the US, collate them into mixed, saleable batches and export them to T&P in the UK. What if Sparta’s new system for Marvel – printing PV’s and then exporting them directly to the UK via container shipping – was such a massive money saver on shipping costs that it had the potential to be a game changer for DC? If it was potentially more cost effective to print & ship new comics direct from Sparta to the UK than to gather up all the returns and send them however far from wherever, then that would be worth looking into. However, there would be three issues with this: (1) Container shipping was brand new and Marvel had long since left IND, and were now leaving T&P as well, so whatever the cost / operational issues to ship new comics from Sparta to the UK, IND/T&P’s 12 years of experience with Marvel was all irrelevant as none of it was based on containerisation. That is the one thing that had changed. The one thing for which they had no data or experience. (2) If they were going to print new comics which were to be shipped directly from the printer to the UK, it made no sense to print cents copies (then requiring stamping) for UK export. As long as they were returns obviously they had to be cents copies for US distribution that had to be laboriously and expensively re stamped by the Ethels at T&P, but if they were new comics being dispatched straight from Sparta to the UK, it would be madness not to simply print PV’s (Sparta could knock off 10,000 PV copies of Flash or Jimmy Olsen in 15 minutes flat once the plate was amended; even working at 2 seconds per cover, stamping nonstop, it would have taken Ethel five and half hours to do that and made a right mess of the covers in the process). (3) If T&P were now getting new comics, not returns, presumably now at similar rates to those US wholesalers were getting them, they would surely have demanded printed PV’s like they had for Marvel. There would be no reason not to. Keeping in mind that WCP could not divulge to IND any company confidential information about Marvel’s deal, the only way DC/IND could ascertain if this was worth doing (for them) was to try it out. It could be a three-way coincidence that Marvel transferred distribution to World exactly at the same moment that the product codes started appearing AND that they started appearing on DC comics at exactly the same time, AND that DC experimented with PV's at exactly that moment for some other reason, but the balance of probabilities would suggest not. Assuming it’s not a coincidence and that we know that Marvel and World started a business relationship in 1968, we can infer that Marvel wanted to transfer their distribution from T&P to World ( not least because they did exactly that!) and that the dialogue had presumably been going for some time (it clearly wasn’t arranged overnight). However, given that they had been in communication for at least 4 years before it happened, it seems reasonable to conclude that something else needed to happen before World could take over. It can’t have taken 4 years just to agree a price and a date. World had the circulation department, the warehouse, the relationship with the national & local wholesalers and the retail chains all set up. They were owned by the News of the World Group which had then been taken over by Murdoch, so they certainly had access to the investment capital (if they needed any). The one thing I know for sure that was different about T&P in the 60’s and World in the 70’s is how the shipments arrived at the docks. The product code itself clearly had no relevance to UK distribution. It was added to all US comics, in one form or another, regardless of whether they were distributed to the UK. Demonstrably the code was not added for the benefit of the UK. However, a key point is that because print & on-sale dates differ by title (some had a 2-month lead time, some a 3 month, some a 4 month), so for this theory to be right, there would have to be a lag, a period of 3 months where the product codes began to appear on each month’s titles, but they weren’t ready to flip distributors until everything being distributed was within the new system. The last ever issues of any Marvel title that still had no product code were cover dated July 1971. The last time the T&P stamp appears on any Marvel comic is July 1971. Special Marvel Edition 3 is the only exception to this, but it still doesn’t break the rule….because it went on US sale 5 months in advance of cover date. The moment everything has a product code on the cover, the T&P stamps disappear. Something else that may not be a coincidence: the month that DC have this flirtation with UKPV’s is that same month that Marvel go over wholly to PV’s. Up to this point, Marvel’s order for T&P from Sparta has been made up of X amount of PV’s and Y amount of cents copies. We don’t know the proportions, but it seems like the cents part of the order was significantly varied from month to month (there are some comics of which you will find a hundred surviving stamped issues before you find even one of another). Clearly, if something went wrong with the PV order up to this point, there was a plan B. From cd July 1971, no PV = no UK order. It seems possible to me that PV’s were from this point given more focus and possibly more resource? They certainly became more important. It’s possible that the increased focus required by Marvel led WCP to suggest trialling it to DC. At any rate, it seems very likely to me that (1) DC’s experiment with PV’s (2) Marvel going all-PV all-the-time (3) Marvel’s transfer from T&P to World and (4) the addition of the product codes to the covers of both publishing houses ALL HAPPENING SIMULTANEOUSLY is NOT a coincidence.

Part Three: Metal Boxes. I think this brings the list of suspects down to 2 things: computerisation and containerisation. As you're all now experts on containerisation, let's dock that one and move on. Clearly, the new coding is computerisation. This is products being reduced to 5-digit number codes in 1971. Obviously, it’s for benefit of computer punch cards. However, it seems very unlikely to me that every comic book publisher went computerised and chose a 5-digit code (or code that could be reduced to 5 digits) pretty much ALL at the same time and started printing them on the covers, unless an external industry requirement made them all jump more or less together. WCP computerised during the 60’s, so although it was without doubt a computer code for their distribution, equally clearly, these codes were not put on the covers at the point of computerisation. Therefore there must be some other change to Sparta’s distribution in 1971 which required them to be put on the covers. I think this was containerisation. It must have made shipping so exponentially cheaper (remember: one thirty-sixth of the cost) that once Sparta flipped to it, their competitors had to follow suit to stay in the game. As Sparta were shipping not only by road and by ship, but also by rail (they had a bespoke rail stop literally at the distribution centre), containers would have been a no brainer for them. There is another thing that makes me think it was containerisation: the flip from T&P to World in the UK. To be clear: I don’t think that the coding was put onto the comics for the benefit of UK distribution, nor the flip to containerisation for the UK’s benefit. However, I think it’s likely that the flip to containerisation facilitated the change of UK distribution for Marvel and was the thing they had been waiting for. It’s not only the likely cause because it makes sense in terms of World’s distribution set up, but also because the timing is spot on, practically to the day. Marvel must surely have wanted to get away from T&P (who were owned by IND/DC and Marvel had finally got away from IND in the US in 1969). I think there were two reasons they were stuck with T&P: one was financial, which changed in the late 60’s and the other was logistical. World Distributors printed Marvel’s hardback annuals in the UK beginning in 1968 so lines of communication were provably open then if not before. Given that Marvel were looking to expand into the UK, start their own line of reprints, expand the yearly annuals and get a new distributor for the imported US comics, it’s inconceivable that they weren’t having this conversation with World in 1969 & 1970 (keep in mind that Comag did not exist and Moore Harness were a tiny, recently-formed niche distributor). Sydney Pemberton used to travel to the US personally to negotiate the reprint rights to cartoon & comic book characters (including Superman & Batman). He died at only 60 in 1968, so the 1968 Marvel annuals (published in autumn 1967, presumably negotiated considerably before this) may have been the last ones he did, but the lines of communication were clearly open between Marvel and World. It can’t be the case that the topic of distributing the monthly comics didn’t come up. That would be like the Man from Del Monte not asking about the oranges. So why did it take 4 years or more to happen? I think the impediment to moving to World may have been the logistics of importation. T&P were geared up to the old methods of importation where the cargoes were slowly and painfully offloaded by longshoremen. T&P Senior Manager George Jones, an ex-copper, used to drive down to the docks to supervise the offloading and make sure nothing went awry. T&P also maintained a pool fleet of lorries, so would have managed onward transportation from the docks to Thurmaston and then had the warehouse facilities to break the batches up and had teams (of Ethels) to rebatch (and stamp) every comic for their sales reps, who then distributed directly to the retailers. World didn’t have anything like that set up. Not one part of it. World did not self-distribute comics, they had deals with national & local wholesalers. The offices which arranged all the admin were separate to the circulation team which broke everything out into batches for onward delivery to the local wholesalers, which were ferried by local hauliers. It was a much physically (though not financially) smaller and more streamlined operation. World most definitely received Marvels by container. I don’t know when this started but I have no evidence to suggest it wasn’t day one (Felixstowe opened as the UK’s first container port on July 1st 1967, so container shipping was well established by 1971).

Product Codes So have we established what was not the cause? Different publisher, different owner, different distributor…but same printer. I think the fact that the other comic publishers changed around that time (Charlton Sept 71, Harvey Oct 71, Archie Dec 71, Dell June 72) tells you that it was something not only common to all publishers but it was also industry-wide at that time, but not a legal stipulation. The fact that Marvel & DC both acquired product numbers at the exact same time (same day as far as I can tell) tells you that whatever the industry wide change was, Sparta embraced it first which was no surprise (they were generally at the forefront of new ideas). Change of UK distributor. T&P had a national team of salesmen and operated a fleet of vans. World had nothing like this and outsourced haulage to local hauliers. The reps were primarily concerned with the book business. That said, I suspect the decision was more a financial one than an operational one. World could easily have arranged transportation from the docks to Manchester, but with the profit margins being down to a penny or two per comic, it would have been increased cost. T&P on the other hand already had a massive sunk cost and fixed overhead in the pool fleet, so by taking on more publishers, they weren’t adding additional cost, just increasing profit by spreading the existing cost over more revenue.