Malacoda

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.

You don't happen to have any of Paul Gravett's Fandom Digest's do you?

Regarding our oft-discussed number i.e. what proportion of the Marvel print run was UKPV's ( I know, I'm back on topic, and Steve isn't even here), in 1973, with the impending hiatus looming, Rob Barrow seems very certain that the figure was 6%. Not only does he publish that number with the status of a fact, but he encourages everyone to harangue Stan directly, quoting that figure. It seems to me that Rob was a guy who knew his onions and I find 6% a believable number (there's something about the slight randomness of it...)

@Still Only 35c Hi - Thanks for the link and welcome to what is surely one of the more niche threads on the CGC. Can't imagine why I didn't find your channel before, although the number of comic related threads on You Tube is pretty startling.

We know that Transworld took an astonishingly good stab at reprinting the entire Marvel back catalogue in the 1970's, but actually Odham's made a remarkable fist of it as well in the 60's. Considering that they were really only in the super hero biz for a couple of years, they took a swing at every Marvel title, including Nick Fury and Sgt. Fury, except Daredevil who was only in the Fantastic summer special. They also came pretty close to hitting the buffers on a few of them (they were about 5 issues behind Hulk when they finished, 4 behind the X men and they burnt the whole run of Giant Man).

I agree. When I started collecting again after a 20 year hiatus, I divided the Marvel back catalogue into 4 tiers: 1) everything I had collected up to 1986 (i.e. if I had finished my collection at that point what would it have looked like). 2) those same titles, expanded all the way to the end of their volume ones (in fact I've collected most of the vol 2 & 3's anyway). The above 2 excluded Hulk & Spider Man because (a) I couldn't afford them (b) they weren't imported (c) I had the UK reprints. 3) The above including Hulk & Spider Man 4) Every title, including the legacy titles, back to number 1 (so TTA, TOS, ST & JIM back to number one). The last one is a financial impossibility, I'm sure, but it would be the dream. So yes, you're right, it's never over, but it's nice to measure one's collection against the wants list you had as a child. It feels like a real achievement. It feels like you didn't let yourself down and somehow, you are still you, still connected to the little kid who sat utterly absorbed in that world of wonder, for now we see as through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Or something less pretentious.

This one is nice. Did you buy this really recently? That crease / colour break from the middle top to the right side looks hauntingly familiar.

I agree with @themagicrobot. 3/2 is mathematically possible, three shillings and tuppence or 38d, but this is way expensive. In 1954, the exchange rate was £1 = $2.80, so 35c was 1 shilling and a ha'penny (12.5d). So compared to US prices, 2/- was daylight robbery, let alone 3/2. As the Robot says, the going rate for these seems to have been 2/- ........ However, this one seems to gone up in price when it was sold second hand Also, seven year old me would never forgive me if I didn't mention.... You can't keep an Earthman down!

Good point, well presented. I've opened it. Actually, I'm rather pleased. It was sold as a FN 6.0, but I reckon he could have got away with a 7.0 or even VF if it weren't for the flaw / nibble at top left. I say that assuming one accepts that the way squarebound books are bound is not a bindery defect, just life. What do you reckon? The corners are surprisingly non-blunted, the paper is off-white and supple, definite non-smoking house, it has clearly never been near sticky or unloving fingers, staples not rusted, no odour, no foxing, bright reflective colours, lots of eye appeal, flat, some tiny creases but you have to hold it at the right angle to see them, one small tear. Spine is in really good shape for squarebound, it doesn't have the issues from unevenness of / too much glue, but the downside of less glue is the innards are just beginning to come away from the cover at the back. I guarantee you're all better at grading than me, so what say you?

I've basically lost 2 rooms. (And counting).

Dude! This looks mighty interesting. I'm just going outside. I may be some time.

Lots of other goodies too. Hard to ignore JLA #1, but the silver trophy surely takes the biscuit. 6,000 comics doesn't sound like THAT much in the context of this guys madhouse, but for context, it's pretty much the whole of Marvel through the Silver & Bronze ages and well into the 90's. Britain's biggest hoarder amassed 60,000 items worth £4m crammed into terraced house - Mirror Online

Right, so it's directly comparable and moreso. A super-key to complete the run. (I know nothing about DC. My ignorance is actually quite wilful - when I do read a comic or see a movie, I have absolutely no history with or relationship to it. The DCCU always therefore has the potential to completely blow me away. I'll let you know if it happens )