Malacoda

True. Given the volumes, I think these must have come from T&P - it would make no sense for someone in Ireland to import tiny quantities direct from the US unless they were makeweights with other publications. T&P was the sole importer of DC & Marvel to the UK after Miller stopped, so could only have come from them. If they were only planning to ship a small quantity to Ireland, it would not make sense to ask Marvel to create a tiny run of PV's at a different price. It would make more sense to ask them for a batch of cents copies with the PV's and then stamp them for Ireland. I agree about the stickers but the evidence suggests that for several years they were being inkstamped rather than stickered, and obviously stamping a second pence price over a printed pence price would be a mess and having 2 different pence prices would be confusing, so getting some cents copies and stamping them would be logical. Once they'd been doing that for years, it seems more likely when they switched to stickers, they would just keep the same system they'd been using for years. It's odd though, isn't it? They were perfectly happy to stamp comics for the UK and Ireland, and then carried on stamping for the UK, but stickered them for Ireland, having previously stamped them? This is Marvel Tales for the same month, so having stamped this pile, they put away the stamps and got out the stickers for Ireland. Maybe the stickers were a later stipulation by Irish customs?

No I agree. Also, they had been stamped with UK prices in the case of DC and printed with them in the case of Marvels, so there is absolutely no way in my opinion that anything went back to the States from T&P and I know it for a fact in the case of World Distributors. I just expressed it as a belief rather than hard fact to keep Marwood from smacking me with a ruler.

True, SOR would have been madness, which then puts them in a slightly different category to the ones being sent to UK newsagents, but I suspect T&P had very few returns in fact. At least of Marvels. I suspect after a point, they tailored the amount of PV's they requested to what they could shift. DC is obviously a bit different. I suspect the extra penny was reflected in the wholesale cost and was to cover the additional export costs rather than the breakage, but you may well be right.

The story so far..... Two mysteries: 1) We have mysteriously stamped comics. The stamps resemble T&P stamps, but are not the normal ones. They are however in shillings & pence and the comics are US cents originals in English, so everything points to these being destined for Ireland. 2) When you google silver & bronze age Marvel & DC comics for sale in Ireland, you get virtually zero, which would seem to indicate that they were not imported in any quantity. This seems odd as, if T&P or anyone had established distribution and paid for shipping, and comics were their top money spinners, why would they ship them in tiny quantities? Ireland is a poorer country that the UK. Marvel & DC comics cost a lot of money (relative to a 1960’s Irish child’s pocket money) and 5x the amount of the Beano or similar, so it is extremely unlikely that they were treated as throwaway items. They would have been saved up for and looked after and their survival rate would be concomitantly higher than the UK, not massively below it. So those if those are the questions, what are the answers? I trawled eBay a few times, and found literally 1 silver age Marvel comic and 69 bronze age comics and even smaller numbers of DC. Most of the sellers selling comics have literally one or two, so they are not collections, they are randos. So I then wrote to a couple of online sellers in Ireland, including Big Bang Comics who claim to be the largest in Ireland. They do not sell any back issues at all. Do we think this indicates that sellers are constantly beating down their doors asking them to buy their enormous collections of silver & bronze Marvel & DC and they say 'no thanks' …..or do we think it indicates there aren’t any to be bought or sold? Of the 69 Bronze Age Marvels for sale in Ireland, 38 of them are being sold by one person. He seemed to know his onions (specifying artists of interests, first appearances, etc). So, never afraid of being obvious, I wrote and asked him. He said: “ Marvel and DC Comics were not widely available in Ireland until the 80's. Most of the older ones available were actually sent to children in Ireland from relatives living in the UK.” This actually slots everything together quite well: It explains why some stamped issues exist at all, but in such small numbers. It sits comfortably with Albert’s point about the infrastructure – so you would have comics on sale in Dublin (two thirds of Ireland’s port traffic comes in via Dublin) and you would definitely have them in Monkstown, per Albert’s post from Tony Roche ( Monkstown is half an hour – 20 minutes in 1960’s traffic - straight down the coast from Dublin). But with the rest of the road network as Albert describes and comics at this price being out of the reach of most kids, I imagine wide distribution was neither logistically nor economically viable. And to the Robot’s point, that there were only a few hundred rather than thousands, that seems right. Also, to your point about the lady now in England selling her Dad’s comics from Ireland, it’s not proof of anything but it dovetails rather nicely with the ebayer's statement that most of the ones that came over were sent by UK rellies. Same family connection but going the other way. So, where does that leave us? Small quantities of comics were exported to Ireland, probably by T&P, but then not widely distributed in the rest of the country. So….were they leftovers/returns? We believe that T&P did not return any comics to the US and we know that they (a) re-stamped them with discount stamps (b) re-distributed them for sale, particularly in seaside/holiday towns in the summer (c) chopped them into double doubles (d) chopped them into annuals, so it would be plausible to think that Ireland was a yet another cunning disposal method for their returns. However, these comics do not have original UK stamps AS WELL AS the ‘Ireland’ stamp, so they would have to have been out of the original batches, not returns (this is based on the tiny surviving sample base we have, of course). This would explain why they were more expensive – if T&P could shift these to their normal UK outlets for their average distribution costs, it would only make sense to export them to Ireland at a premium (not at a discount as they did in the UK with returns). This would also explain why they were in such small quantities. It was not distressed inventory; it was straight out of crates of stock that was extremely saleable. Did T&P export any other comics, magazines, periodicals or books to Ireland? If so, these might have been makeweights along with other items. I think I’m done with this until we get some more examples of those stamps. Meet back here in 30 years’ time to compare notes?

Fully agree with that Albert, but there is definitely something weirder than normal scarcity going on here. There are tribes up the Amazon, undiscovered by everyone except Paul Simon, who have more Marvel comics than the people of Ireland. I need to do a bit more homework (in case it's me) but there's something fishier than Namor's laundry basket going on here.

OK, who told you it was my birthday.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/01/14/spider-man-art-record/ seriously, that is such a terrible Shooter era page with no backgrounds or detail. There is nothing to enjoy there.

Sure thing, but we're not really disagreeing. As I said a page back, the stamped comics are cents editions stamped at a price seemingly not for sale in the UK, for a destination where the currency was pounds shillings and pence and was presumably English speaking. If it's not Ireland, I'll drop me chips.

Can you imagine the conversation? Mammy, I don't want the Beano, I want this. How much is the Beano? 3d How much is this? 16d Away to fcek with ye.

I agree and the higher price is indicative of our Irish theory, but it's an amazing jump, isn't it? Given that the Irish currency had parity with Sterling, this makes these 1966 comics 15d in Ireland at a time when they were 10d in the UK. Given that Ireland is a poorer country than the UK, I wonder how many kids had the 1/3 for a comic. I mean, come to that, 10d was an outrageous price for a comic in the UK as well.

I'm probably being thick here, but if our point is that comics distributed to Ireland are defined by having a round inkstamp at 1/- price with no actual indication that they're for Ireland, and then, as proof of this, we present comics which have a square sticker priced at 1/3 and clearly marked for Ireland, surely this does more to disprove that the earlier stamps are Irish? I mean, obviously they could have changed to a completely different system and price by this point, but I don't understand how these stickered ones being Irish help to prove that the earlier stamped ones were Irish when they have no points of similarity. I'm not being argumentative here, it just looks more like they prove something different? Is there also a stamp on these I'm not seeing?

Thanks for posting these. Very cool. It could be that they came over with batches of other magazines and publications as make-weights and therefore there were small and inconsistent numbers of them. I'm not sure the second lot does put the sequential theory back on the table does it? Not consistently anyway. CI....oh brother, please don't tell me we're getting separate pricing for the channel islands now. One thing that is completely amazing is that the price is 1/-. DC's weren't even 10d at this point, let alone 1/-. This is a really mad price. They wouldn't cost 1/- for over 4 years. This is like a comic turning up in 1973 and costing 12p instead of 6p.

Indeed, and if you don't have it, it's not there to be had. I know you always say you look for years for examples before something turns up, but given that virtually all of the imported comics from 1960 -1964 had the T&P indica ( and I only know that because you did a ton of research on it and published a pretty definitive list on here, so by the way), there would have to be an example. The fact that there is not one suggests either that these were not T&P, not Irish or that the period when these stamps exist does not coincide with the indica period. But if they are T&P, that's one Hell of a long stretch of indicas with not one corresponding cover stamp. And, as you point out, these stamps date back to 1956 at least, so they were definitely in play right through the indica phase. The fact that these stamps are so scarce and that there are bugger all comics in Ireland is a potentially interesting coincidence but might be a false syllogism (there are bugger all comics with this stamp, there are bugger all comics in Ireland, therefore these stamps are Irish. Hmmmm.....). If you think about it, it does actually have one self-certifying facet: if these stamps are Irish (rather than anything else) and there are virtually zero silver age Marvels left in Ireland, then it neatly explains why there are virtually zero of the stamps, but that is a MASSIVE stretch and we need more examples of the stamp to put some sort of time period on them. What happened to all the silver age Marvels in Ireland? Did St. Patrick drive them out? Time for me to be Ant Man for a moment: On the topic of whether these went via T&P or not, the dates might be suggestive. I have a TOS 71 from November 1965. It's a cents copy with this kind of stamp and an F. November 1965 is between the 1st and 2nd Hiatuses. This is before the period when T&P sold both PV's and stamped copies. All the copies sent to T&P would have been ( I believe???) pence copies. Yet this stamped one is a cents copy. It is also priced at 1/-. This is years (26 months to be precise) before the UK price increased to 1/-. So this comic is a cents edition, priced at a price seemingly not for sale in the UK, for a destination where the currency was pounds shillings and pence and was presumably English speaking. This has got to be Ireland, although Albert raises the intriguing possibility that it might have been Northern Ireland. Albert postulates this might have been an easy distribution route to Ireland, but maybe it these comics were just for sale in NI? Either way, the Ireland/NI thing would sit nicely with why these are cents copies at a time of UKPV's. If T&P needed to sell at a premium in NI (or Ireland) to cover the adding shipping costs, the most logical thing to do would be to get some cents copies along with the PV's and re-stamp them. Much less confusing for vendors than re-stamping 10d copies with a shilling price stamp and less messy than putting stickers over the cents price. I also note your Charlton one. The fact that that pre-dates the ban is pretty mid blowing ( ballast-era, presumably?). But I also notice it's 10d, which again is a premium price.

That's how we roll. We're both Hank Pym, but you're Ant Man and I'm Giant Man. (But without the wife-beating and psychosis, obviously....)

Thanks Albert. This is absolutely 100% what I would have expected i.e. exactly the same kind of joyous, Hovis commercial memories we all have from childhood. I was utterly gobsmacked when I looked on ebay and saw zilch. I'm even more bewildered now. What happened to them all?

Just me catching 5 connecting flights to get the point, as usual. But I am stunned by the dearth of silver or bronze Marvel/DC's in Ireland. Either I did the search wrong or the Emerald Isle was not at home to Mssrs. Lee & Liebowitz.

Wow . I just pulled 'Marvel comic' into ebay and location Ireland and got literally 838 results of which about 4 were silver age and a couple of dozen were bronze. 318 total for DC comic (if you do the same for the UK, you get 240k). We may have the answer to who distributed comics in Ireland. No one. Ever.

There's a really interesting question here which I haven't quite formulated. Transworld had the contract for all the exported Marvels. However, this, to my understanding means the Marvel content exported to other countries for re-packaging & reprinting including, in most cases, translating. This puts the UK (and maybe Ireland) in a different place to other non-US countries. Transworld's relationship with Marvel predates Marvel itself (back to the Timely days) and tries to subsume Marvel in the 70's when Al Landau (whose family owned Transworld) became President of Marvel and the tail started wagging the dog. Transworld originally distributed magazine content to south & central America in the 50’s. This is where Transworld’s connection to Martin Goodman starts (through Magazine Management rather than Timely/Marvel). Al Landau then expanded this into comics when he joined the family biz in the late 50’s. Fred Thorpe’s direct relationship with Timely & DC predates Transworld’s involvement, so I suspect the Landaus never had their hands on the relationship with T&P (though it would have been right up their alley....reprints!) and then the ban lifted in 1959 and T&P stopped re-printing and just imported the originals. No reprints, no Transworld. This means Transworld would have had the gig for Marvel in France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc, where the comics had to be re-packaged. They also cunningly acquired the reprint gig for the UK (1972 onwards) while Marvel US continued to export the originals directly to T&P/World. But where does that leave Ireland? Well, the other English speaking countries ( ex-colonies like South Africa, Australia & NZ) got re-print content through Transworld. This was actually handled through Ray Wergan’s London branch of Transworld, not Transworld Features Syndicate in NY. ( I say branch, but Landau sold it to him, so more of a sister company). Ireland, on the other hand, is our immediate neighbour and English speaking (if not by choice) with easy trade links to the UK, so it’s very plausible that they would have also exported the originals to Ireland rather than set up reprints. But here’s how I suspect it would have been done: from 1959 T&P was actually owned by Gilberton’s. Gilberton were the publishers of Classics Illustrated which was (I believe) T&P’s biggest seller in the 50’s (and, thanks to its reprinting of Bible stories, the part of the business least likely to get seized). Gilberton’s distributed all over the world via deals with local (national) distributors whom they liked to buy out: Ayers & James (Aus.), T&P (UK), Editora Brasil-América Limitada (Brazil), Ekdóseis Pechlivanídi (Greece), Editora de Periódicos La Prensa (Mexico), Serieforlaget (Norway), Illustrerede Klassikere (Denmark), Classics (Netherlands), Illustrerade Klassiker (Sweden), Illustrierte Klassiker (Germany). You will note that Ireland is absent from the list, which makes me think they didn’t actually own a subsidiary there, but they definitely sold there and even had a crack (craic?) at an Irish language translation of Classics Illustrated. This ownership of national distributors is the reason that when T&P gets folded into Warner Communications, it more or less disappears: because all the European offices that had been part of Gilberton’s became part of Williams, including T&P. So…..I don’t know the name of it, but I would guess that Gilberton’s had either a subsidiary or a very-dominant-supplier relationship with a distributor in Ireland, and I would imagine that this is your distributor of US comics in Ireland. Whether the comics came to T&P and were re-stamped and distributed or whether it was done through Gilberton’s is to some extent a moot point as T&P was part of Gilberton’s anyway. Though it would still be interesting to know the logistics. This, of course, may all be total cobblers and there may have been a direct deal with an Irish distributor, but Ireland had massive protectionist trade barriers with the rest of the world up to 1958. Thereafter most of the trade was still with the UK (they abandoned their bid for EU membership when we didn't get in because there was no point), so it would make a lot of sense for the comics to come from Leicester. Would also explain why it specifies no duty – because although it was American it was actually imported from the UK. That stamp is very T&P like, isn’t it? One thing that would surely be a big clue is if we can find a Marvel comic with this stamp during the period when Marvels had T&P indicas. That would be a smoking gun, either way. When I said I hadn’t formulated the question, I wasn’t kidding. Incidentally, unrelated, but I’m sure you’ve noted the timing of the T&P sale. The fact that Fred sold to a massive US publishing house right at the point when he needed deeper pockets and a much stronger relationship with a US counterpart is not a coincidence.

That's from 1959, so that's virtually day one of the imports. That makes it a lot clearer why it has that 'no duty' stamp because up to that point, there would have been heinous duty payable on it. What's more interesting is the price of 10d. That would not be the UK price of a DC comic for another 5 years, so this appears to have a stamp from 1959 and 1964 simultaneously. Maybe they were experimenting with prices? I assume it's not possible the mystery comic is a Miller?

Another nice crisp 6 - 2 years later but still predates Marvel. I like Robin's surprise that, having fired a harpoon at this beast, it's now coming towards him.

Well, indeed you'd need to take some change back with you, but I don't see that as a significant obstacle. The coins would also overcome your strong force / electromagnetic issue, as long as they were minted before the year you go back to (a 1959 shilling would still be a shilling in 1961, it's atomic nuclei wouldn't break down....the coin would however exist in 2 places in the same time so there might be some impact on inflation.... which wouldn't please Mr. Macmillan). Here for instance is chap selling 80 shillings for £11.99. This is enough to buy 106 pristine copies of Hulk #1, FF#1 and similar (you couldn't flood the market obviously). This would be about £24 million in profits, though obviously, there is the cost of building the time machine. And the £11.99. Plus postage. The question of disembodied atoms is of course the crux of the matter. Surely, if your molecules went back in time to where they were in 1961, you wouldn't even be a disembodied wraith? You'd be part of everything from George Harrison's E string to a jam sandwich to the Venera space ship to a shovelful of horse manure. However, thanks to atomic superposition, it is possible for atomic particles to be in 2 places at once, so it's actually possible for the relevant atoms to be vibrating under George's fingertips as he plays Buzz Buzz A Diddle It and in my own fingertips as I tremulously pluck my Hulk #1 from the T&P spinner. As for coming back, well, I always assumed I would have to take the mode of transport with me. Assuming its particles don't return to their 1961 locations, I would just jump back into my sports car / phone box / ship-in-which-I-fly-round-the-sun-really-fast and pop Back To The Future (...you can hear the music too, right?). Obviously, this will require a bit more planning before I set off. One mistake and I might out turn out to be Blackbeard.

Oh you definitely win. Hulk 1 is literally about 10x the value of FF2 and that one was re-priced twice. Indeed a time machine would be handy and you wouldn't have to go back that far. I remembered paying an eye-watering amount for that FF2, but when I took it out to photograph it, I discovered the bill of sale with it. £175. I mean, the FF hasn't even had a decent movie to push the prices up yet.

Oooh . Are we still playing who's got the best comic marred by a giant 6? Yay. I win. And yet....somehow...it doesn't feel like a victory....

Happy New Year, Fellow Boardsters.

Just realised something. A while back I posted the covers of Hulk 230 and MWOM 328 and wondered why they changed the word 'fear' to 'terror'. But I don't think they did. I think the original artwork for Hulk 230 said Harvest of Terror, but 'horror' and 'terror' are 2 words that were specifically prohibited from being on the cover by the CCA, so I think it was actually Hulk 230 that was changed and they pulled out the original artwork for MWOM. What makes this interesting is that MWOM was only a month away from catching up to Hulk, so it seems likely that the original artwork had already been re-pasted for MWOM when they realised they were in the trouble with Hulk 230. There would have been no need/point in changing MWOM as you're allowed to say the word 'terror' to British kids.

Hi David, That effect where you're turning the cover page of Nova #12 is fantastic - not just good looking, but very useful. I'm probably having a dumb day here, but I'm not clear what you're highlighting? UK reprint titles were weekly as you know, so they re-used pretty much all the covers from the US originals and then required additional new art (which was created in NY for Tony Isabella / Scott Edelman by the likes of Jim Starlin, John Buscema, Pablo Marcos, Gene Colan and others). There are some exceptions to this e.g. The Avengers also reprinted Shang Chi & Iron Fist, so, due to the kung fu craze they got a lot of the covers at that time, but for the most part, whichever title was the headline / masthead star, those covers were recycled. Here’s a little gallery of Mighty World Of Marvel from 100 to 111. The cover art is recycled from: MWOM 100 = Hulk 1 MWOM 101 = Original cover MWOM 102 = Hulk 136 MWOM 103 = Original cover MWOM 104 = Hulk 137 MWOM 105 = recycles the new cover Starlin drew for the reprint of TTA 92 in Marvel Super Heroes 47 MWOM 106 = Hulk 138 MWOM 107 = Hulk Special 2 MOWM 108 = Hulk 139 MWOM 109 = Original cover MWOM 110 = Hulk 141 MWOM 111 = is a substantial re-draw of GS Defenders #1, replacing Doc Strange, Subby & the Surfer with DD, the Thing & the Torch.