The Death of "Marvel Whitmans"...

[shadroch]

I'm confused. Back then, Marvel was pretty much the entire Direct Market. If the company that was far and away the market leader had 6-10% of its sales in the DM, where did the other sales come from to bring up a 25% figure. There were perhaps 500 comic shops in 1975, compared to tens of thousands of newstands. Mail order for new issues was either non-existant or just starting out. So how could 25% of the comics sold possibly be from the direct market?

In 1975, the only direct sales comic I can think of would have been Star Reach.

[gifflefunk]

What I think is being discussed is the sales directly to Sueling/Seagate at the time, which would be "regular" issues sold at a discount to him and then distributed to his clients (which would include a number of sub-distributors and comic shops). So for Marvel their direct market sales amounted to 6% in 1979, the Direct Market sales from Seagate are reported to be 25% which would include Marvel, DC, Archie, Harvey, et. al., that Sueling had made purchase agreements with... I'm honestly not sure how the pie-chart would break down if someone had all the metric data... 25% of the sales are claimed to be Direct Market, Marvel's Direct Market sales were 6% of their gross... so do all the other companies add up to the remainder? Does it work out that if DC, Archie, Harvey and Charlton are each hitting around 4.8% the combined sales are approximately 25% for the market?

 

I just noted the sources I didn't figure out the math to verify any one claim.

[gifflefunk]

It really depends upon what books are grouped as "Direct Market" for each... does Marvel's 6% in 1979 include all non-Curtis books: including subscriptions, Seagate books, Western Publishing books, etc. or is that figure just the amount sold to Seagate? Does the 1975 figure from Evanier include those things? It would be an interesting project to collect the sales data to verify and identify what the totals and percentages mentioned by various sources actually measure.

[ShieldAgent]

Thanks Gifflefunk. I always appreciate your posts.

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

Thanks Gifflefunk. I always appreciate your posts.

 

 

He said the same thing I said, just with numbers...

 

:shrug:

 

 

 

(Seriously, Gif, you're one of the best researchers I know. )

[underthebigw]

I'm confused. Back then, Marvel was pretty much the entire Direct Market. If the company that was far and away the market leader had 6-10% of its sales in the DM, where did the other sales come from to bring up a 25% figure. There were perhaps 500 comic shops in 1975, compared to tens of thousands of newstands. Mail order for new issues was either non-existant or just starting out. So how could 25% of the comics sold possibly be from the direct market?

In 1975, the only direct sales comic I can think of would have been Star Reach.

 

I think that figure is were the confusion lies.

 

I have some pretty concrete recollections of diamond books showing up in some drugstores and, very specifically, on the Jersey shore in 1977. The assumption at the time was, of course, that these stores were unscrupuously opening up mulit-packs of Whitman reprints and trying to sell them at full cover value.

 

We now know this to be wrong on so many levels. They weren't reprints, and I think that we can now safely assume that they were direct market books. I'm guessing some retailers AND distributors were willing to take a chance on trying a new way to distribute and pay for them, even if they weren't comic shops. In fact, I'd guess that direct distribution initially didn't target just comic shops, but was done by Marvel with the hope that they would no longer have to deal with the book-keeping, fraud-ridden hassle of returns.

 

Also, I do remember seeing the occasional stack of diamond books at some of the NY Creation shows around the same time. I think most people avoided them, based on the same assumptions.

 

JC, with all due respect, I would have to say that your experience as a Canadian is so far removed from the beginnings of direct distribution that it guarantees you would view them as Whitman only . When did Direct distribution really begin to begin in Canada? Even when I lived there in 1982, it was still relatively new in Quebec and a source of some confusion. I'm not trying to be dismissive, but I think your location pretty much guaranteed that you would only ever see them in Whitman bags during the 1970's.

[ShieldAgent]

 

He said the same thing I said, just with numbers...

 

 

I guess I missed that part

 

he did not mention the tooth fairy or flyingdonut once.

 

[jools&jim]

 

I saw those Whitman/"diamond"/whatever-the-fugg-they-were books all the time here in and around Baltimore back in '77-'79 or so -- they were available, bagged, in the local Woolworth's chain store in the mall, and "loose" in our one-and-only local comics store (which was owned and operated by a former Geppi employee & associate named Dave Weimer).

 

My friends and I didn't know what to make of them, and we didn't care -- if we hadn't read the book, we bought it. But IIRC (big "IF"!), the conventional wisdom at the time amongst the rest of the 10-13 year-old know-nothings who gave a carp about such things was that they were "reprints".

 

I know now--after working for 20 years or so in the publishing business--that they were probably more like "overruns" than "reprints"...but, eh...it's all semantics I guess.

 

Some kids cared; some didn't. I was one of the latter...and still am...

[shadroch]

I'll dispute your point number 2. Shooter and Carol Kalish state that Direct Sales were under 10% Marvels sales in the late 1970s.

 

The 25% figure is for the entire direct market, which comes from Mark Evanier. Marvel's Direct Sales in 1979 were approximately 6% according to Chuck Rozanski.

 

Also, those aren't "points" but source notes, so the [x] number follows the material... so that came from source #3: http://www.povonline.com/notes/Notes123104.htm (feel free to dispute Mark all you want )

 

 

I believe that article is off by several years. Please name the dozen other companies that were distributing direct sales comics in 1975. Anyone?

[the blob]

So show dealers who were socking away 500-5000 marvels a week during the 77 period were getting their inventory from where? Would those be direct market purchases?

[joe_collector]

and the proof is...what? Because Jon says so

 

Yeah, and ASM 121 is the start of the Bronze Age - and that's straight from the Editor in Chief and Editor of OS, the two top dogs.

 

OS is a joke, and Jon McClure sounds like yet another funny book genius.

 

Once again, that is an incorrect statement.

 

Huh, you posted the article, and it WAS written by the EiC and Editor of OS at the time. Which should have significantly more impact than a random article from Jon "Know Nothing" McClure.

 

1. "Could be" is a whole lot different from "is the"

 

and

 

"Joe_Collector" and "common sense" are two diametrically opposed concepts.

 

 

(thumbs u Joe Collector is genius whose IQ is double that of the average board member

 

fixed that for ya (thumbs u

[joe_collector]

So show dealers who were socking away 500-5000 marvels a week during the 77 period were getting their inventory from where? Would those be direct market purchases?

 

I sincerely doubt that they were "socking away" thousands of Fat Diamond/Whitman books a week during 1977.

 

Those were just newsstand versions distributed through the DM.

[shadroch]

So show dealers who were socking away 500-5000 marvels a week during the 77 period were getting their inventory from where? Would those be direct market purchases?

 

 

1977 is two long years after 1975,That article is referring to 1975, and I believe it was off by a few years. By the Summer of 1976, I was putting away about100 Marvels a week bought thru Imperial News, at 16 cents a pop for a 25 cent cover.

The first I heard of buying non-returnable books was from Peter Koch, and the cover price was either 30 or 35 cents. As I'd have topay for shipping, it was no savings for me as I drove past Imperial on my way to school. I did buy a few, but they are long gone and I have no idea if they were diamond books or not.

In 1977, I can't think of a single book store on Long Island that featured new books. In 1980, there were about a dozen and when I opened mine in 1982 or 1983, there were several dozen

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

He said the same thing I said, just with numbers...

 

 

I guess I missed that part

 

he did not mention the tooth fairy or flyingdonut once.

 

 

Well, I NEVER.

 

(But I probably will, at some point...)

 

[SolitaireOne]

Threads on this topic are always so great!

 

Whatever they seem to be, personally, I do feel that they are more elusive in HG than other issues from that same era by comparison. I'll continue nab HG slabbed, "big diamond" copies of those early Whitman/Direct Market (orwhateveryoucallum) books whenever I can.

 

ASM #186...