Malacoda

Oxidisation is a fad. Phlogiston will be back.

Well, we were sticking rigorously to the point, but as you've completely derailed us now , I might as well ruthlessly exploit the opportunity while we're on the magazines. As we know, in the Mid 70's Marvel changed gear, went heavily into the B&W magazines and used their Curtis muscle to swamp competitors (primarily Warren and Skywald) off the newsstands. According to Al Hewetson, Skywald was run into the ground by..... "...Marvel's distributor [Curtis Circulation]. Our issues were selling well, and some sold out. Such returns as we received were shipped overseas, mainly to England, where they sold out completely... When Marvel entered the game with countless [black-and-white horror] titles gutting [sic] the newsstand, their distributor was so powerful they denied Skywald access to all but the very largest newsstands, so our presence was minimal and fans and readers simply couldn't find us. ... The Waldmans and I had a business lunch with our distributor in the fall of '74 and we were given very specific information about the state of affairs on the newsstands — which had nothing to do with Warren's or Skywald's solid readership base." I always thought the ads Marvel ran promoting directly to the retailers were the smoking gun on this. This is Planet of the Apes #1 from 1974, note the note to retailers bottom left and then inside. The thing that interests me here is that, whereas Hewetson says Marvel used Curtis to batter the competitors off the newsstands, this is (rather surprisingly) a direct deal between Marvel and the retailers, circumventing Curtis and having the retailers sign a separate promotion deal directly with Marvel. Surely you'd expect that sort of thing to be co-ordinated by the distributor, particularly as both Marvel and Curtis were owned by Cadence, so it was effectively in-house anyway. But the plot thickens. Back in (cd) November 1968, ASM and FF had similar notes addressed directly to the retailers. In this case, as you'd perhaps expect, the offer was from the distributor (IND) not the publisher. What's really odd is that these offers were only published in FF & Spider Man not other Marvel titles (although maybe these were the flagship titles), but also there was no such offer on DC. Given that IND had had a policy of strangling Marvel to death at the newsstand for the previous 9 years, this is a strange offer. It looks to me like having been bought by Perfect film in 1968, Marvel finally had a big stick. Ever since Kinney bought DC, the personal vendetta of the Donenfeld era was over. Kinney had already allowed Marvel to publish a whopping 8 new titles, so doing some retail promotion doesn't seem out of logic. However, I think the real reason was that Curtis Publishing were in hock to Perfect for $5m. At this point, IND can't have known that Ackermann's behind the scenes machinations would end with Perfect actually owning Curtis Circulation, but it was a perfectly logical call that the relationship of Marvel's new owner to a company which owned it's own circulation company was only going to lead to one thing. I think IND were trying to keep Marvel on board and subsidising a sales push both strengthened their relationship to Marvel and to the news vendors all at once (the latter being a very good idea if Marvel, which was beginning to outsell DC, was now going to have its own distributor). That's why the offer didn't extend to DC comics: because it was strategic, not commercial. All of that said, have a look at the wording of the offer that IND put out for Marvel comics in 1968 compared to Marvel's offer in 1974 above. It's not only the exact same offer, it's the exact same wording, obviously except for the necessary tweaks to names & addresses. And if you look along the top line, you can see that Magazine Management Co, Inc, has been cut & pasted into a space designed for a longer name. Any thoughts?

Wow, never seen that GSP logo with his mush on it. That's new and exciting. That 70's pic you've posted of him (on his way to trial....what are the odds?) is a rare pic. Given what a relentless self-publicist he became later, he was definitely in the Witness Protection Program back in the day. David Gold divorced his first wife due to her adultery. What do you reckon the first clue was?

Me too. This is the moment when T&P actually go bankrupt, but before IND bought them out, so maybe not a surprise that IND were already flirting with the B team. The 2nd hiatus is a really hot mess, isn't it? For fans of the dock strike theory (any that I haven't killed by this time), this issue actually could have been affected by the dock strike, though I believe it shipped about 2 months before. And there were PV's of it. So it really wasn't. But it is actually possible, which is more than can be said for the Oct-Dec issues that are usually attributed to it. @Albert Tatlock great catch.

@David BuckWow, well first off many thanks for posting this. Yes, I think you're right. DTW was practically next door to the Marquee (though Denmark Street was only 500 yards away). Forbidden Planet was new and relatively small. Dark They Were was uber famous and absolutely massive (bearing in mind the size of 1970's TV cameras, you'd have your work cut out for you filming in FP). Also, DTW had a whole wall, the length of 3 shops, filled with racks of the latest (not yet out in the shops in some cases) comics. FP had nothing like that area of vertical real estate to my memory. There seems to be almost an entire year of titles on the wall (I can see Cap 233 to 242 for starters and several months of Avengers). So I think you're right: DTW. The 1981 broadcast date the You Tube poster gives for this I think might raise an eyebrow. Iron Maiden played Reading in Aug 1980 ( I was there, still got the T shirt), and I think this gig is 3rd April 1980 (Harold & Barbara Pendleton who owned and ran the Marquee used the club to audition / book bands in the run up to the festival). The comics on the wall that I can see date up to about Feb 1980 cover date, so it ties in pretty well with having been filmed in April 1980 at the time of their Marquee gig and then edited and broadcast as part of the series in August 1980, as DB says, just before Reading which was Aug bank holiday 1980. Additionally, 20th Century Box was only broadcast in 1980 and 1981 and according to DB's bio, this piece was in the first series, so I reckon has to be 1980, which makes it still more likely to be DTW. (Of course, the YT poster may have recorded it repeated in 1981). DTW definitely had stickers on to the bitter end. I think you can just about make them out on some of the comics (but I wouldn't put the mortgage on it). Again thanks for posting this. Really superb.

Nothing wrong with a Rodney's type establishment (except possibly Glynn). Keep in mind that DTW was in deepest, darkest 70's Soho, so salubrious was not the first word that sprang to anyone's mind (lugubrious, possibly). Also, salubrious is more of a minus in my opinion. I mean....what makes you want to pile in more? This..... Or this.....

To this day, pretty much the definitive comic shop. Run by geeks for geeks, but had everything. And I mean everything. I remember it as being huge, and you always think that your memory plays tricks, but it actually was the largest SF bookshop in Europe (though it claimed the world). My big regret is that I have practically no memory of the upper (street level) floor. It was a head shop, populated by Tolkien freaks and fantasy nutters and it was magic (possibly literally). The Fortean Times was printed above the shop. Everyone who was anyone worked there at some point, including Paul Hudson, Nick Landau, Mike Lake and I think Dez Skinn, but perhaps more impressively, the staircase to the original property was designed by Dave Gibbons (who was a surveyor, training to be an architect at the time), the place was re-wired by Frank Dobson - whose day job was electrician. The ads & decor were designed by Brian Bolland and Bryan Talbot. According to legend, everyone got paid in comics. Of course, I was oblivious to all that as I streaked past it all (hey, it was the 70's), and bolted straight down the stairs to the absolute wonderland of comics that filled the whole bottom floor. Weird to think I was probably rubbing elbows with the likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore & Jonathan Ross. Even their paper bags were the business.

Yes, but literally. I can see it being done as a joke, but a completely straight, hand-signed, official response to correspondence on letter headed note paper? It's like having Irving Forbush submit Marvel's tax returns. I exaggerate, obviously, but given how formal they had to be to stay within the legislation to qualify for 2nd class mail, printing the address and location where it was printed in every single comic, the statement of ownership circulation data every year, etc, it's kind of weird that the subscriptions correspondence is signed off by a fictitious employee.

Great spot, thank you. Surely there cannot actually have been someone called Kent Wayne working for DC comics? If I didn't believe in nominative determinism before, I sure do now

Just flipping back to the subscription / indicias conversation: in a spare moment, I plotted all of the US, Canadian & foreign subscription charges, where the second class postal privileges were authorised, where the second class postage was paid and when any of the indicia details changed against the cover dates, release dates, sales lead windows, circulation figures, cover prices, additional postage costs, changes of printer and changes of head office address for the entire 402 issue run of Avengers volume 1. The table is a bit scary to try to post here, but here are some highlights (keeping in mind this is just one title, over 36 years). Changes to US, Canadian & foreign subscription rates are generally synchronised with increases to cover prices (rather than fluctuations in exchange rates or changes of Marvel head offices). Up to August 1965, there is no mention of Canadian subscriptions being available. Up to July 1966, there is no mention of where the postage is paid. This starts in July 66, including a second entry at Meriden, which is 20 miles from Waterbury where the comics were printed. Might be that domestic mailing was sent by ECP from Meriden and international by Marvel from NY. Up to Feb 1968, postage is paid in New York. Then, at this point, where printing switches from ECP to Sparta, all postage is paid in Sparta for the next 6 months. In August 1968, postage is paid in NY again and at 'additional mailing offices' which presumably means Sparta. This does not coincide with any price changes and occurs while other titles are still being transferred from ECP to Sparta. In May 1979 cover price increased to 40c, but subscription rates remained $4.50 for 1 month, so subscribers got the old price for an extra month. In August 1980, ahead of a price cover change, sub rates change. Then in September 1980, the cover price increases and the postage changes to 'application to post at controlled postage rates is pending at Sparta Illinois' for one month. Then it's confirmed in Sparta for 1 month, then reverts back to NY. This increase also wipes out any cover charge for posting. From this point, subscription charges only cover the cover price. This lasts for 14 years. In Feb 1986 cover price increased to 75c, but subscription rates remained $7.80 for 2 months, so subscribers got the old price for an extra 2 months. In Aug 1989, the foreign subscriptions rate dropped from $15 to $14. This did not coincide with a US change. This seemingly causes the need to reapply for second class postage status the following month. Postage address remains NY. There was a substantial drop in reported subscription sales from the previous year so this may have been to recover sales. On Jan 1st 1991, Canada replaced its MST (manufacturer's sales tax) with GST (Goods & Services tax). This didn't get reflected in Marvel's subscription charges until October 1991 In August 1995, sub rates increase to $4 per year above the cover price, so for the first time there was an appreciable postage cost over the cover price (in the 60's, the cost above cover price was 31c for the year).

"Clay Hollister traps desperate gunmen with an old printer's ink smudged clue". How ridiculous. Who would spend their time laboriously studying some ancient ink smudge left by a old printer as if it were a clue to something?

I have to say, I love this letters page. Note that there are two letters from Elmont, NY. Based on population, the chances of getting one letter from Elmont would 9,160 to 1 against and, out of the 3 letters, two of them are from the same tiny place. Odds against that? So where is it? Next door to Flushing, NY. And what's in Flushing? DC's offices. So who are these guys? Gerard Triano, whom they address as Gerry, who says in that very letter that he is always writing letters to DC and having them published (he went on to a career in publishing) - and Bob Rozakis, who, the following year begins a 25 year career at DC on the strength of the fact that he was always writing letters to them. And they both live next door to the DC office. Do you get the impression that DC was a bit short of fan mail? In his letter, Gerry Triano actually bemoans the fact that they keep printing his letters and wants to hear more from....well, anyone else at all, really.

From the other end of time, last issue of the Avengers with a 1996 style subscription envelope. Note the stamp is the same verbiage as the indicia.

Actually, the newsagent guy referred to them as 'parcels' so I think you're right.

This guy is definitely one of us. I wonder if the reason some of them got removed from subscription was just purely low numbers. Maybe the threshold for being worth the aggro of subscriptions was super low, but not zero. Maybe that's why the new explosion titles never got subs - they never got past a probationary period before they got cancelled. Or maybe you have to register a title with the post office and apply for 2nd class postage, so nothing is on subscription in the first few months? (Though you'd imagine they'd do that well in advance).

No, I agree. I was interested because if the subscription issues had not had the product codes on them (like direct editions originally didn't) it would have proved or at least suggested something very interesting. As it is, Eric & Kevin have demonstrated they were newsstand copies which is exactly what I expected, but you have to check these things out, don't you? That led to an interesting observation from the Robot that DC seem to have ceased to offer subscriptions for (what turned out to be) a period of several years, which was a bit of a surprise and that led to a bit of a jam session about subscriptions. Many thanks for the ownership statements. Once again, I feel like those numbers, whilst systemically inaccurate, cannot possibly be made up because they're so odd. If you were making up numbers to keep the post office quiet would you invent such eyebrow-raising numbers? If you were trying to reassure the post office that you were not deceitfully exploiting the advantage of cheap mail, would you post numbers so suspiciously low? Furthermore, whilst the main circulation numbers could be anything, the subscription numbers would have to tally to receipts from the post office of record, charges from Sparta, costs in DC's accounts submitted to the IRS etc. I have to kind of believe those numbers.

I don't think any of us really thought we'd stumbled onto a new variant, or if so certainly not one that was likely to have all those little quants reprogramming their key issue apps. It did however occur to me that, given that no one wanted to buy newsstand issues for years, so now they're rare = collectable, if there was some way of proving an issue was a subscription issue, they'd probably be worth a fortune. Of course, you could fake them, but how would you simulate that crease down the front? .....hey, hang on a sec......

I do actually have quite a sizeable one (Mrs) ready to go, but, with your indulgence, I think I’ll celebrate my 1,000th post with a little reflection. In the last 3 years of research, there have been some moments in my adventures which have recurred often enough for me to name them (no doubt you've all experienced the same, you're just not so weird as to actually name them). I call one the Kunte Kinte moment – when 2 separate chains of evidence suddenly meet each other coming the other way, you find the fact or event that links them and each corroborates the other. Obviously, this is named for the Roots moment when, having traced his American family all the way back to 1767, Alex Haley goes to Africa and after listening to endless hours of oral history from the year dot, suddenly arrives back at the very first details that were known about his ancestor. Then there’s pretty much the opposite, which I call the Michael moment – when the complete and utter absence of something itself is indicative of an issue in the narrative (“Logically speaking, this should be X, but if it was, then why is there no trace of it? Something else must have been going on”). I named them for this moment: But more obliquely, I have jasmine moments (I appreciate that ‘Jasmine Moments’ sounds like the sort of entrepreneurial young lady who wants to be your internet girlfriend, but it’s not). When my mum was little, her grandmother always loved the smell of Jasmine because when she was little (we’re back in the 19th century now), she lived in a house where wild jasmine grew directly across the road and the smell was heavenly to her. Many years later, my mum got interested in genealogy and tracked down as much of the family tree as possible. The area where her grandmother had lived was completely gone: buildings, roads, street names, absolutely nothing left. However, using Victorian maps, old photos from the years between the wars, old company records and triangulating by the geography that can’t change (e.g. the river) and the landmarks that still existed, she worked out where she thought the old roads and buildings must have been, where my great-grandmother’s street must have been and thus where her house must have been. She was convinced she’d got it right, but of course, couldn’t prove it. As she crossed the street to leave, she suddenly got an overpowering scent of jasmine and when she looked around, across the street, right where it needed to be, climbing up the last remaining Victorian building, was an ancient wild jasmine plant. Occasionally, in research I get these moments that don’t prove anything but it’s weirdly joyful when they crop up. When I track down people involved with T&P or World or in some way connected to the distribution of comics in the 60’s and 70’s, they all have memories to share, but usually they are... of limited use, shall we say. It’s like Winston Smith talking to the old boy in the pub in 1984. People remember nothing about T&P itself, but they remember the bakery round the corner vividly, nothing about distribution but everything about the lissom young ladies who used to tie the boxes up. In that regard, I chatted to a guy at one point who only had 3 memories of T&P, one of which was of the chatty, lively girls in dispatch and how they showed him how to tie up the boxes. He particularly remembered that boxes that were prepared for the reps to take out were not, as you’d imagine, sealed down with gaffer tape, duct tape, packing tape or 1960’s equivalent, but tied up with twine using a distinctive special knot which the Ethels had to teach him and he then tied up the boxes. Much later, I got chatting to a guy who used to work in his father-in-law’s newsagent in the early 60’s. One of his jobs was to take all of the outgoing comics out of the rack and pack them up ready for sending back to Leicester. This startled me as I thought the T&P reps themselves came and switched out the racks, but no, he did it. He did however confirm that it was a T&P rep who came to collect the box of returns and the thing he remembered most distinctly was that boxes of new comics were not sealed down as you’d expect but tied up in a distinctive fashion with a type of white twine. The joy of this was that the first chap worked there in the summer of 1962 which was the same time that the second guy worked in the newsagents. It proves nothing, but it amazes me that, 61 years later, one of these guys almost certainly tied up the exact boxes which the other one untied at the other end. And they’re both still with us and both remember the boxes and, quite ridiculously, they very specifically remember the string the boxes were tied with. Jasmine moment! OK, onto my next 1,000 posts…..

I think we're all going to be munching our millinery before this is over.

I have a feeling about this. Stay with me for a moment.... I used to read the stories (prose stories) in the old pre-hero Marvels. Which were rubbish. I always assumed that either they assumed their readership were very young / not very literate or that they were just space fillers or, most likely, it was cheaper to print a page of writing than a 4 colour illustrated page. Then I read an interview with Stan where he explained it. He said that if they printed only comic strips they were classed as a comic book and subject to a particular level of tax, whereas if their publication included X amount of prose, it was classed as a magazine and subject to lower tax. Hence, any old drivel would do, it was a tax dodge. I wonder if, by having subscriptions for the comics, it enabled them to use second class mail for all kinds of things. Maybe that was the point of the Merry Marvel Marching Society.....you could market direct to people at cheap bulk posting rates and technically they had requested it because they were part of the club. I can't see why else Marvel DC and all the others bothered to have subscriptions, have all the aggro of maintaining a separate department, delivering loads to the post office or having them collected, opening all those letters, cashing all the two dollar cheques when it was such a tiny part of the business, which they clearly put no effort or marketing behind. It's incredible that just once in a blue moon you'd get something like one of those Marvel subscription inserts. Why wasn't there a subscription form in every issue of every comic? Instead of virtually none of them. Unless running the subscriptions department was a loss leader for something else and actually, the last thing they wanted was more subscriptions. I mean, when you consider the burndown, the millions of comics printed that were destined for the pulper the moment they left the presses, you'd think a 100% guaranteed sale on subscription would have been pure gold, especially for DC. Unless it wasn't worth doing in and of itself, and the real reason for it was something less visible.

You kind of feel like it's this, don't you? And also that they just basically didn't give a toss about them. They don't seem to have done anything to promote, encourage or even facilitate subscriptions.

So, gents, what we'd love to know if there's any subscription details or information or any mention of subscription changes (when suspended or re-introduced) in DC comics between August 1968 and March 1972, so June - July 1968 and April - May 1972 would also be of interest. This would be Adventure Comics 369 to 419 and Lois Lane 83 to 122, though obviously it's the issues round the start and stop that would be most interesting. It seems to me that when they stopped taking new subscriptions in 1968, there must have been a whole load of people who had ongoing subscriptions. What happened to them? Was some reassurance printed in the comics that existing, paid up subscribers would continue to receive their comics? What happened when those subscriptions reached the end of the year? Were existing subscribers able to renew? If this was taken care of as part of the deal with Sparta it would make sense, but if it was handled in-house, you'd have staff serving an ever dwindling number of subscribers. This whole 'no subscribers' thing feels weird to me.

Indeed they aren't, and additionally Star Wars is a bad example because it has different indicias to everything else due to the Lucasfilm copyright notices (but gotta start somewhere).

So, the start point was that I am trying to learn more about the product codes, particularly at their introduction. I had noticed that when the direct editions started, they were different to the newsstand editions (no product codes), which made me wonder if the subscription editions had them. @Kevin.J provided a scan of Spidey 148 with a clear subscription crease and a product code, so that answered that (though I would love to have some more examples, please, anyone). During this exchange, @OtherEric pinged me his subscription copy of Star Wars 49, which added a further wrinkle in that it was a subscription copy mailed to Germany. He also provided the indicia, which proved to be the same as the direct edition indicia in Star Wars 49 but raised the question of whether the indicias were identical to the newsstand editions in the pre-direct days. I checked Rolling Stone as a start point (because you can very easily tell newsstand editions from subscription, because they were distributed by IND and because they were printed by WCP) and discovered newsstands have product codes but subscriptions don't. I then checked some Avengers from the same month as Eric's Star Wars and discovered the indicia was different in his subscription issue to both direct & newsstand editions (which were identical to each other), which seemingly suggested that international subscriptions were mailed from NY while domestic were mailed from Sparta, and you then ate your hat.....however, I've discovered something else about this now (more in a minute...you might need either cough up the hat you ate or eat another one ). Meanwhile, @themagicrobot looked at some DC's and discovered that there's a period where DC have a subscription address but then say 'no subscriptions' in the indicia. I established (on the basis of two titles (Lois Lane & Superman) only at this point) that the no subscriptions thing seems to run from August 1968 to March 1972. This is reflected in the indicia, though I don't know if there was any subscription info elsewhere in the comics. So the questions are: Is there any difference between newsstand & subscription editions? (specifically, I'm interested in July 71 to May 76, but generally...). What, if any, are the differences between foreign subscriptions and US domestic ones (and the differences between these and newsstand and later direct editions)? What is the DC no subscriptions note in the indicia all about? Were there actually no subscription issues during this period and if so, why? Is there any other subscription info in DC comics (before, during and after the no subscriptions period)? I have to say, on reflection, that I'm amazed that there seems to be no subscription offers or forms in Marvel comics. To subscribe, you would have to scour the comic and find the address and cost in the indicia and then write a letter detailing what you wanted. Given that Marvel comics are full of Marvel trying to sell you Marvel branded everything-under-the-sun with coupons, memberships, full page ads, and handy just-cut-this-out pre-addressed labels, it's astonishing that the one thing Marvel comics make no attempt to sell you is....Marvel comics. No idea about DC, Charlton, Harvey, etc.

I did Supes. More or less same pattern as his girlfriend. Up to July 1968, Superman 208, Sparta address and subscription info (same as Lois) 209, August 1968, changes to no subscriptions. Superman 239 June-July 1971 date, Sparta for the last time, still no subs. 240 July 1971, still no subs but the address changes to NY. 249 March 1972, the subscription information reappears.