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What was the first Marvel UK edition?

Started by DavidTheDavid,

12 posts in this topic

goldust40

goldust40

Posted
Posted

Apart from the L. Miller / Alan Class black and white reprints, which don't really count, the first officially distributed original four color U.S. comics for the U.K. market (either pence priced or with a pence stamp) was for the November / December 1959 cover dated issues of DC and Atlas / Marvel comics.

 

The cover dates coincided with the actual dates the books arrived in U.K. newsagents, as until the arrival of the direct market and specialist shops in around 1979 / 1980, there was traditionally a three month delay, due to books being sent via ships (sometimes, in the case of non-distributed comics such as Amazing Spider-Man 129, as ballast).

 

Note that both DC and Marvel books were sent at the same time, often in the same shipment, due to having the same distributor (in the U.K. it was Thorpe and Porter). Newsagents in England in the 60s and 70s generally had both Marvel and DC comics, although where I lived (north London), it was mainly DC.

 

Until the late 1960s, there were still reprint titles in the U.K. featuring Marvel characters and inventory (Fantastic and Terrific) and in 1974 Marvel introduced the Mighty World Of Marvel / Spider-Man Comics Weekly titles to boost the company's burgeoning dominance in the British market. They even advertised the books (large format with black and white interiors that featured reprints of stories from two or three years earlier) on television.

 

This was a genuine effort on behalf of Marvel (who by then had gained independence from DC) rather than as it had been in 1959, when it had been from the distributor. Of course what that meant was that certain U.S. titles (Amazing Spider-Man 121-214, Uncanny X-Men, some issues of Avengers, Hulk 180, 181, GS X-Men 1, X-Men 94, all Giant-Size books, and others) were annoyingly not distributed to the U.K., making them scarce in our marketplace until the arrival of eBay and online markets.

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AKA Rick

AKA Rick

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Question:

 

When a book was released in the US, was the same release date the same date as in the UK?

 

Or was it a staggered release?

 

I don't consider it being delayed by a month or so, based upon freight (probably the slow boat) costs and time from the publisher to overseas.

 

But, if it's more than a year from the original release date, I might consider any publications overseas to almost be "reprints" and not 1st runs.

 

I see UK versions of X-Men #1 as well as X-Men #100, but am not sure if it's select issues in the UK vs US and if it's staggered releases or not.

 

To me, in theory, if the hobby itself is clamoring over print runs and scarcity, I'd speculate, 'tho price guides say different, since the UK versions are still in English, readable by the masses of fans, that the UK versions in fact has a fractional size print run to the US versions, so should in theory be way more valuable.

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goldust40

goldust40

Posted
Posted
Question:

 

When a book was released in the US, was the same release date the same date as in the UK?

 

Or was it a staggered release?

 

I don't consider it being delayed by a month or so, based upon freight (probably the slow boat) costs and time from the publisher to overseas.

 

But, if it's more than a year from the original release date, I might consider any publications overseas to almost be "reprints" and not 1st runs.

 

I see UK versions of X-Men #1 as well as X-Men #100, but am not sure if it's select issues in the UK vs US and if it's staggered releases or not.

 

To me, in theory, if the hobby itself is clamoring over print runs and scarcity, I'd speculate, 'tho price guides say different, since the UK versions are still in English, readable by the masses of fans, that the UK versions in fact has a fractional size print run to the US versions, so should in theory be way more valuable.

 

All pence copies or pence stamped copies meant for the U.K. market were printed at the same time on the same press as U.S. cents copies. Usually the percentage of the run for pence copies was around 2%. Also, distribution was always spotty and erratic, with certain books (FF 7, X-Men 8, Avengers 9, for example) being sent over in very small numbers and only in selected areas. Some books never got sent over at all, such as X-Men 94, 95, 108, Avengers 121 - 152, plus all the others I mentioned in my previous post. As for the current market, the scarcity regarding pence copies is self-evident but not the demand, although that may change.

 

The release of each and every issue was never delayed. In order to keep costs down for distributed copies comics were shipped as cheaply (and therefore as slowly) as was possible, which usually meant a three month delay in the books arriving in the country, but never any more than that.

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mrc

mrc

Posted
Posted
Apart from the L. Miller / Alan Class black and white reprints, which don't really count, the first officially distributed original four color U.S. comics for the U.K. market (either pence priced or with a pence stamp) was for the November / December 1959 cover dated issues of DC and Atlas / Marvel comics.

 

The cover dates coincided with the actual dates the books arrived in U.K. newsagents, as until the arrival of the direct market and specialist shops in around 1979 / 1980, there was traditionally a three month delay, due to books being sent via ships (sometimes, in the case of non-distributed comics such as Amazing Spider-Man 129, as ballast).

 

Note that both DC and Marvel books were sent at the same time, often in the same shipment, due to having the same distributor (in the U.K. it was Thorpe and Porter). Newsagents in England in the 60s and 70s generally had both Marvel and DC comics, although where I lived (north London), it was mainly DC.

 

Until the late 1960s, there were still reprint titles in the U.K. featuring Marvel characters and inventory (Fantastic and Terrific) and in 1974 Marvel introduced the Mighty World Of Marvel / Spider-Man Comics Weekly titles to boost the company's burgeoning dominance in the British market. They even advertised the books (large format with black and white interiors that featured reprints of stories from two or three years earlier) on television.

 

This was a genuine effort on behalf of Marvel (who by then had gained independence from DC) rather than as it had been in 1959, when it had been from the distributor. Of course what that meant was that certain U.S. titles (Amazing Spider-Man 121-214, Uncanny X-Men, some issues of Avengers, Hulk 180, 181, GS X-Men 1, X-Men 94, all Giant-Size books, and others) were annoyingly not distributed to the U.K., making them scarce in our marketplace until the arrival of eBay and online markets.

 

....thanks for the interesting info. If I can just add, Mighty World of Marvel started Oct 1972 & Spider-man Weekly Feb 1973 and I think they were printed in black/white & red?

 

 

 

 

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goldust40

goldust40

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....thanks for the interesting info. If I can just add, Mighty World of Marvel started Oct 1972 & Spider-man Weekly Feb 1973 and I think they were printed in black/white & red?

 

Apologies if I got the dates slightly wrong (and the dates make more sense, as ASM 121, the first in the long run of non-distributed Spideys, was published in 1972). As I recall, the covers were full colour and some of the stories had a third colour, similar to other British comics of the time.

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