Malacoda

“When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather did–in his sleep. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.” Though probably most famous is: When I said I was going to become a comedian, they all laughed. Well, they're not laughing now.

Is it me or has Johnny faded this stamp off with his blazing fingertips?

Bob Monkhouse, Roy Rogers & Lucy Ball. 2,000 toffees, please.

Indeed. Wikipedia has it that Millers went bankrupt in 1963 and ceased publication in 1966, which might be correct, but of course publication is not importation or distribution. To my understanding, when Parliament passed the Not In Front Of The Children Act in 1955, it was supposed to lead to a rash of prosecutions, but actually publishers just toned down the content or got out of the biz. Having been black sheeped by Daddy, Arnold Miller did what any self respecting prodigal would do and took his business to the competition - ABC becoming an imprint of T&P in 1953. However, after the 1955 act it all got a bit fraught and the Arnold Book Company shut down. T&P and Millers also steered clear of reprinting the kind of EC material that had been waved about in Parliament and nobody, but nobody was ever prosecuted under the 1955 act. The Act had a sunset clause meaning that unless reviewed it would expire on 31/12/65. I suspect largely to prevent this happening, the CPS were prevailed upon to launch a couple of almost completely gratuitous cases against T&P and Miller. Both prosecutions came to nothing, but the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 was entered as one of the acts under The Expiring Laws Act 1969, which removed the sunset clause and made it permanent, which was surely the real objective. The prosecutions which came to a head in 1969 and 1970 respectively ( I think T&P was 69, I have it somewhere) caused Florrie Miller to cancel the importations of these magazines. I reckon this is probably the smoking gun. I'm not sure what more harmless material they continued to distribute or for how long, but this feels like game over to me.

@Get Marwood & I Blimey, when you come back, you're really back.

If they can forgive us for burning the White House down, it's probably time to let go of this one, Albert.

While we're on DG and his Ethels ( I think I called them Donna, but Candy & Crystal seem about right), something that does throw up a couple of interesting factoids: he was sued for unfair dismissal specifically by some of his Ethels in 1976. The case is actually Noble vs David Gold (so I guess Donna sits better with Noble?). Weirdly, the company is actually called David Gold & Son, although he had no son. In 1976, there were lay offs in which women were made redundant (but not men) which were contested as sexually discriminatory. The case was found for Gold (and again on appeal) because of the division of labour. The men were used for the heavy lifting and the women for "sorting, distributing, arranging and labelling and so forth - which had diminished" which is why it was only women who were laid off. The interesting facts that surface for us are: They worked in a warehouse on a trading estate in the East End of London. Books and magazines came into the warehouse from publishers in England and in the United States. They were unloaded from vans, and carried in forklift trucks on pallets to benches where they were unpacked, sorted, arranged, priced and labelled. They were then packed again for distribution to some 600 outlets in England and Wales. There were about half a dozen women and somewhat more men doing this work. In the middle of 1976 the employers found that the work had fallen off and made redundancies. Specifically it was the lighter side of the work - the sorting, distributing, arranging and labelling and so forth - which had diminished. They therefore decided that some of the people doing that lighter work would have to be made redundant. Quoting from the tribunal: "… for various reasons it was the lighter work that had diminished by the autumn of 1976, and … this was caused by the fall-away of the importation of the United States 'pulp' magazines, as a result of currency problems, the higher cost of transport, and the improved competition of United Kingdom producers, who could put the prices in English money on their products at their factories, thus reducing the volume of work …" So the tribunal found that it was the lighter work which had diminished - the work of sorting, distributing, arranging and labelling - which was done on the benches in the warehouse. On appeal, it was decided that if the ladies could prove that women had been discriminated against in competing for the heavy manual labour jobs, then that would indeed have been discriminatory but as they had only ever applied for the packing & labelling jobs, there was no case to answer. So what we learn is that Gold collated all the magazines together (US & UK) in a central warehouse in the East End. They were re-priced and labelled as necessary by a team of about 6 Ethels there and then distributed to 600 outlets in England & Wales (not NI or Scotland). I assume outlets means local wholesalers not retailers as 600 would be a tiny number. I know that Gold was still putting stickers on US imported comics up to 1977: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu 32 - Jan 1977, I think the last issue of Savage Sword of Conan which was imported was 24 in November 1977. This is the exact point where the UK reprints in magazine form begin, so to Gold's point about being pushed out by UK priced editions this would seem to tie up exactly. Does anyone have idea which are the last issues of anything with Goldstar price stickers on them?

I hate to say it, but your best bet might be find some UK-located ebay auctions ending around the right time and get them sent to where you're staying. Man, that is a depressing state of affairs.

They closed involuntarily during covid, but found they made more revenue and profit working from home and they both had some health issues, so it was a no brainer to close the shop (or rather, not to reopen it). Gutted. Whilst shopping in comic stores is always more expensive than online, the joy of 30th was that they were such strict graders that a comic someone else would have passed off as FN, they would have called VG if there were the slightest issue about calling it FN. You could pick real bargains, not in terms of pure cheapness, but quality/condition vs price.

Indeed, and pretty much everything was there. All the Marvel, DC etc at street level in extraordinary abundance, and then down in the basement, an Aladdin's cave of old British comics, annuals, paperbacks. Also, Rob and Will were great to talk to, though I always found Will more approachable for a chat. Recalled the glory days of Dark They were and Comic Showcase. I never left there spending less than £100 and could always have spent a lot more. If Forbidden Planet is the O2, then 30th Century was the Marquee club. Notting Hill is worth visiting just because it's the last of the classic old LCS's. If you're out west, you can have a look at Ray Gun in Richmond, but the store is now mostly collectibles and TPB's as silver & bronze comics are mostly sold on online these days (They Walk Among Us on ebay is Ray Gun). I would definitely give Piranha Comics in Kingston Upon Thames a swerve. I was out of there in literally two minutes. Trying to spend money in there is like Brewster's Millions - you just can't do it. The Holy Trinity of survivors, if you can have a Trinity of four, were Gosh, Mega City, Orbital and 30th Century, but the latter two are now gone and gone online respectively. As Steve says, if you're in central London at the same time as the comic mart in Russell Square this coming Sunday, that really is your best bet. I find it overpriced, but you won't walk in and out in 2 minutes, that's for sure.

Hi Steve, so sorry to hear that and I know you're not out of the woods yet. We'll all be here debating vital issues of the day (the day in question being some time in 1971) when you're back. In the meantime, here's a virtual hug from the group.

Whereabouts were you? I was in West London, so yes there at least half a dozen newsagents in walking distance. That, of course, didn't help with the tracking down of back issues, which required miles of bike riding to neighbouring towns.

Yes, I had a very similar experience. When I was little I thought Marvel & DC were ridiculous. A proper comic was exactly that. It featured a Dennis the Menace / Minnie the Minx / Roger the Dodger / Beryl the Peril type character (always a child or adolescent) who would launch into some sort of scheme or naughtiness, things would go well to start with, then they would overreach themselves or there would be an ironic twist and it would all come acropper, usually resulting in a spanking or loss of pocket money and ending with a terrible "now that's what I call a sticky situation" type pun. Super Hero comics seemed ridiculous to me because they purported to tell a proper, grown up story, like you'd find in a book, in the form of a cartoon, which was ridiculous in itself, but then on top of that, the characters would all be running around in costumes like a birthday party, but that was somehow supposed to be taken seriously. When I graduated from the Beano / Beezer etc, I went straight to Warlord / Victor / Hotspur type comics. I remember collecting Warlord from issue 1, which was September 1974 when I was 8. My first MWOM was #138, but I didn't acquire it until I was 9. I still remember feeling like super heroes were a step back from the gritty, starkly-illustrated, depicting-real-events war comics.

Do you remember Marvels being in short/non-existent supply? Do you also remember the DC's being haphazard, or did you pop down every four weeks or so and find the next issue waiting each month?

The 255k sales for 1966 is copies sold in the US. If we take Avengers as a rough comparator for Xmen, it had av. 270k copies sold against 424k copies printed. So assuming Xmen was selling worse than Avengers ( I assume so as it was cancelled), it must have had a comparable number printed. 6% of 424k would be 25,440. I think we definitely want to exclude Scotland & NI because T&P seem to have been very poorly represented there (or not at all). I think we definitely want to include Wales as they were very strongly present. So 25440 / 55 would be 463 copies per county. Much higher, but still, as you say, tiny numbers. Particularly compared to the numbers of newsagents, railway kiosks, stationers, etc. That said, I think, exactly as you say, it was incredibly unevenly distributed across the country. I think the reason you got loads in Devon & Cornwall was the strong representation in Plymouth, although, depending on how they carved the territory up, there was another rep in Bristol who might have done Frome, Weston Super Mare, Bridgwater, Barnstaple and the more northerly parts of the West Country. If the comics sold well in holiday destinations, I could easily believe the Plymouth rep went all the way down the coast to Penzance. Like yourself, I always make comparisons to the UK comics, because they're our touchstones but when you actually consider the numbers, any comparison falls over immediately. In the 1950's, the Beano was SELLING 2 million copies per week in a population of 50m. That's 5.77 copies per month per head of population. If we compare to those Avengers stats from 1966, assuming 63.7% sell through and a population of 157.8m, Marvel would have needed to have printed 43 million copies of each issue of the Avengers to have achieved the same monthly market penetration. It's clearly not a meaningful comparison, but it certainly makes you realise why, when the Martspress deal fell over, Stan double down and was so determined to create a UK arm rather than just export the US comics.

I wondered why my Bunty was always late.

World also had Archie for a time, so they were probably more plentiful, but like me you were probably oblivious to comics you didn't care about?

These sort of anecdotes are solid gold. I've long believed that if we could collect hundreds of these anecdotes from all over the country, we'd have a consistent picture of what was going on. I might try it. Obviously, the something that changed in the early 70's was that distribution changed from T&P to World. Whereas T&P delivered comics by individual reps going to Thurmaston to pick up their comics, books and other products and then visiting individual newsagents themselves, World distributed Marvel comics via Surridge Dawson, John Menzies and the national magazine distributors and their infrastructure of local wholesalers, so it was no longer a case of T&P reps favouring newsagents near schools or whichever ones sold the most comics relative to the least amount of schlepping for him. When the newsagent cranked up the metal shutter in the morning, the Marvel comics were bundled in with Playboy, Exchange & Mart and the Pig Breeder's Gazette.

These are, of course, the T&P staples, so it kind of feels like your spinner was getting re-stocked by the T&P rep himself rather than the newsagent. I remember when one of my newsagents changed the spinner from comics to soft porn and she practically chased me out of the shop when I came in and, naturally, went straight to the spinner rack ("There's nothing for you there!!!"). As it had always been full of Marvel comics previously, I suspect the T&P rep had been round and threatened to remove it unless it carried T&P product only.

Interesting. Probably depended how determined you were to ram them in there or how many pages they had.

This is a fair point, but even if we go with 10% which is far and away the highest number I've seen quoted, that would still only be 625 copies over 40 counties, which still seems impossibly low so I don't think 6% is rendered unlikely by that consideration. I'm not clear what you mean by 40 counties? There's multiple ways to count the counties, but however you do it there's a lot more that 40. This, of course, just reinforces your point. I think T&P were pretty Midlands centric and what supply you got depended on where you lived. As far as I can see, Scotland was virtually not supplied at all, nor Northern Ireland. Wales was well supplied in the south, less so in the North, and so on, though the big exception to this, as per everyone's memories (and surviving copies do seem to back this up), was that seaside / holiday areas were better supplied. This makes perfect sense. Looking at where they had reps and depots (which is, of course, pretty anecdotal without an actual list) it was geographically very unequal. Some reps seem to have covered massive but less populated areas. London seems to have had just one covering 250 accounts (no idea how many newsagents made up an account. Most were sole traders, I assume, but there were also chains like NSS). Liverpool / Manchester and more southerly parts of the North seem to be extremely well served, but the further north you get, the more spaced out it gets. But you're right, however you slice it, the numbers seem really small. Looking at ebay (never a good way to start a sentence) is interesting. Obviously, the numbers of a particular comic for sale on ebay at any particular moment are not a good barometer for how many there were to start with because you don't know what the survival rates were or how many are sitting in people's collections and will never be sold until they die <ahem> but people have been selling comics on ebay for 25 years so it is an extremely mature marketplace. I think you can say that if a comic never turns up on ebay, you're going to struggle to find it elsewhere. If you look at the far end of the 60's - when T&P were selling both PV's and stamped cents copies, which I take to be peak Marvel distribution for them, if you look at the numbers available on ebay, you only find single digit volumes of most issues. Very few have 10+ and I guarantee you will never find 20 copies of any issue. We have no idea of the survival rate, but we can assume that any unstamped cents copies were brought in by dealers / collectors and not sold on the spinner rack. We can further assume that anything with a PV or T&P stamp WAS sold on the spinner rack. If, at any given time, there are only 5 copies of a comic for sale on ebay, does that seem to contradict the idea that there were only a few hundred to start with? I don't think it does. Likewise, I kind of imagine that, taking a long term view, the numbers for sale are actually even smaller than they seem because in many cases they're the same copies being resold every few years while the ones in the hands of True Believers are frozen in collections like Cap in the ice. Just to be clear, whilst I'm countering some of your points, I am fully agreeing with your key statement that based on the stated printed runs x whichever % you choose as being PV's, the amount of comics you get, spread over the area that T&P serviced, is startlingly low. That said, given that they were also distributing Archie, Charlton, Dell, Gold Key, King and presumably whacking quantities of DC, maybe it's not that startling. How many comics can you physically fit onto a spinner rack? This is where you guys, who were around at the time, take over.

In fairness to Paul, whilst it was indeed primarily a mail order catalogue, it also had articles. Paul Gravett introduced me to the Prisoner. There was not only an article, but a fold out poster, which I still have.

Hmmm. It seems odd as the handover from T&P to World was seamless. Why would they, or indeed Marvel, leave the contract so long it completely expired and then have to re-start everything again (container shipping, manifests, bank transfers etc). That said, it did fall over for 2 months in 1981, although the contract with Comag seems to be a really different kettle of fish to the one World got. Also, their contract seems to have started from cover date August 1971. Why would it expire in March 1974? Given the scale of the paper shortage generally and its impact on comics in particular, it seems the more likely candidate DC cancelled 4 titles specifically because of the paper shortage (Supergirl, Secret Origins, Superman's Girl Friend & Weird Worlds), lots of British comics weren't printed and questions were being asked in Parliament about the rationing of school exercise books. It seems the stronger contender. Alan might well be right that the contract was renegotiated - they reappeared with the UK specific banner when they came back - but as to whether that caused the hiatus, I'm unconvinced. Fascinating to read though, thank you.

It appears one needs to buy a subscription to Box (and be a company, though I suppose one can put anything there). Any chance you have this as a scan?

If you come across them in any format, please grab. The joy of his catalogues was that he separated out ND from the rest, so they're a compete statement of everything that was (or, perhaps more interestingly, was thought to be) ND at the time.