The 2nd Print Newsstand Phenom...or "This Shouldn't Exist!!" 6 6

[RockMyAmadeus]

Sellouts in the comic book industry...historically...had always been fairly rare. In the decades prior to the the 1990s, there were very few sellouts in comics. Because of the method of comics manufacture and distribution, in which publishers would print far in excess of what they needed to sell, and vendors could return the unsold copies for credit, you almost never had sellouts. This was especially true after World War 2. You had books like Superman #1 and #2 (1939) and Marvel Comics #1 that were demand reprinted....but after that, not many, as publishers followed the newsstand model: print far in excess of what might actually sell, since printing past a certain number meant per copy costs went way, way down.

After the introduction of superheroes, then, in the late 30s, there weren't very many sellouts. Essentially, you had Conan #1, Amazing Spiderman #121-122, and then Star Wars. Star Wars took everyone by surprise, and was such a monster hit, Marvel didn't really know what to do...as evidenced by the haphazard markings on many of the reprints. Is it on the cover, is it in the indicia, is it a square price box, is it a diamond price box, which is it?

After Star Wars #1-6 were reprinted out the wazoo, things quieted down a bit. While Marvel started a reprint program of bagged comics in the 80s, these were not related to sellout demand, and were usually printed months, and often years, after the original books came out, and usually focused on licensed or tie-in properties, like GI Joe, Thundercats, Secret Wars, and the like. 

In the 80s, we'd essentially see a handful of instant sellouts: Thor #337, ASM #252, Batman #428...plus the prestige format books and graphic novels, which don't *really* count in this discussion, as they were produced under different rules and circumstances. For the purposes of the discussion, we're talking about plain ol', standard format comics.

At the time, Marvel seemed to have forgotten what they did with Star Wars, and they didn't reprint either Thor #337 and ASM #252...a move they probably regretted. The 'Nam #1 was an oddball, in that it sold well enough in 1987 to prompt an immediate second printing..the first since 1977, by the way...it was the only standard Marvel comic book reprinted (in the same format) in the 80s based on demand from a sellout, and that second printing wasn't identified in any way on the cover.  More on that in a minute.

Batman #428 was another monster hit, with everyone wanting to know the results of the infamous phone call, and the TPB reprinting all four issues of Death in the Family was announced before #429 even hit the stands, and was published shortly thereafter. 

Interestingly enough, DC would strike twice with Batman in a very short amount of time, resulting in their next sellout issue, Batman #436, the first part of the four part "Year Three" storyline. Instead of waiting, however, to issue a trade paperback, they did what they hadn't done since perhaps 1939: they immediately reprinted the book in the same format. While the book does say "second printing" in the indicia, the only indication of its status on the cover is a green, rather than blue, DC "bullet" in the upper left hand corner.

In any event, as we move into the 90s, with a dying (but NOT DEAD YET!) newsstand, publishers started to trim the fat, as it were, and didn't print to excess as much as they had in the past. With the success of the Direct market, publishers didn't have to print as many excess copies; they could print much closer to order than before. As a result, you start to see books like Ghost Rider and New Warriors and yes, even Spiderman, selling out. This was essentially uncharted water for the comic book companies, so they did what they thought they should, and reprinted the books. Ghost Rider #1 was second printed without much fanfare, and very little in the way of identification, aside from a Ghost Rider skull in the UPC box, instead of the original Spidey head.

Spiderman #1, however, was an interesting case. Even though it had record orders, it apparently still sold well enough to prompt Marvel to make a second printing, and this they did, with the novel idea (at the time) of changing the metallic ink on the cover from silver, as on the first printing, to gold, thereby making a striking change to the book that sent everyone scrambling to make sure they had "the complete set." Marvel continued to repeat this procedure, mostly in gold, sometimes in silver, for their reprints throughout the first 1/2 of the 90s.  

DC had a similar reprint program for their best selling books, reprinting recent issues and bundling them in 2- and 3-pack carded sets. These, as with Marvel, had only minor changes to the cover to note their reprint status. After Batman #436, DC didn't have another sellout until Batman #457 and Superman #50, which, oddly enough, both came out on the same day in October of 1990. Both were instant hits, and instant sellouts, so much so that it inspired DC to go back to press and issue second printings for both of them.

DC's method of identifying reprints at this point, however, was much more subdued than Marvel's: they added some additional blurb at the top of the cover, but were otherwise indistinguishable from the first printings.

Collectors quickly learned to avoid the "HISTORIC ENGAGEMENT ISSUE!" and "NEW ROBIN ISSUE!" as "worthless" second printings...as, indeed, prior to the 00s, reprints were avoided like the plague by the entire collecting community; to be shunned and discarded, or perhaps donated to a local Goodwill or a younger sibling as the trash it was. 

As luck would have it, the very next month, DC published the first issue of Robin's solo mini-series...the first such series in the character's 50 year history...and it, too, was an instant sellout. This time, however, they not only changed the cover blurb, they put a stately Roman numeral "II", in Times New Roman font, to identify them as second printings (perhaps because of backlash from customers who didn't know they were buying second printings of Superman #50 and Batman #457.)

Robin #1 was such a hit, it even went to a third printing, with the addition of a Roman numeral "III" and the changing of the starburst near the comics code seal from white to black.

So what does any of this have to do with the newsstand? Well, the newsstand was different from the Direct market in a number of crucial ways. One of them was that individual newsstands had absolutely no mechanism by which to order books. None. They simply "got what they got", with distribution generally determined by the local or regional magazine distributor that serviced them. This would include, by the way, not only the traditional sidewalk news vendors, but also the expanding book market, like Waldenbooks, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and the like. 

So, while the Direct market could (and did) order these new second printings in whatever quantity they wanted, the newsstand market had no way to do so.

Enter Wal-Mart.

(Probably.) 

The leading theory is that someone at Wal-Mart, noticing the tremendous sales of Spiderman #1 in June of 1990, contacted someone Marvel circulation and said "we need more!" Marvel, which obviously could not send Direct copies through the newsstand distribution system, decided to call up the printer (in this case, Ronalds, a division of Quebecor in Montreal), and ordered what seems to be 10,000 or so copies of the gold second print of Spiderman #1...but with a UPC code, so they could be sold through the newsstand system.

And the rest...at least for Spiderman #1....is history. These were noticed fairly quickly by the collecting public, and scooped up and saved in droves. After all...these are books that theoretically should not even exist...again, there was no mechanism by which, through the normal course of things, anyone in the newsstand distribution system could order these. But, because someone asked to have these specially made...and again, the leading theory is Walmart, since that's where most of these were found...a book that should not exist came into being.

And you'd think that would be the only time that special exception would happen. But, a scant six months later, lightning struck again, and Bats #457 and Superman #50 also became instant sellouts, and were reprinted. And just as before, someone, somewhere, this time notified DC that they had to provide additional copies for these sold out books. And so, DC sent the books back to the presses, not just for second printings of the Direct version, but second printings of the newsstand version...again, totally unprecedented in all of comics history.

Keep in mind that these books should not exist. They could not be ordered through routine ordering; there was no mechanism by which to do so, and they only exist because someone, somewhere, decided they could use more copies for the newsstand distribution system and contacted the publishers directly to make them happen.

As luck would have it, the next month, Robin #1 would continue the streak, and also be an instant hit and sellout, and the process was repeated. The format would be repeated as with Batman #457 and Superman #50, and the Roman numeral "II" would be left off the cover.

But, this time, unlike with Spiderman #1, nobody noticed that Batman #457, Superman #50, or Robin #1 had these second print newsstand versions, or didn't care if they did notice. The mercurial nature of the comics market being what it is, and since there was no way to chronicle these things easily pre-internet, the first printings had shot up in value, then fallen back to earth just as quickly, so that by the time these second printing newsstands actually showed up, demand had evaporated, and they quietly slipped into the channels of commerce, unheralded by all. The vast majority of them would have, almost certainly, remained unsold and "returned for credit" (aka destroyed) at the end of whatever sales period to which they belonged.

And, because of the stigma against reprints, already strongly emblazoned on the hearts and minds of collectors everywhere, it's unlikely that, even if they were known, there would have been a rush to find them, as there was with Spiderman #1. They weren't dynamic enough, they weren't different enough and...after all..they were "second printings! GROSS!" There were no throngs of collectors rushing out to save them; it's likely that not a single collector even knew they existed to be saved. Those that survived, then, did so by pure chance, bought by readers who wanted a copy, and happened to be where they were, at the right time and place, and then happened to save them. And that's where they remained, unknown to anyone.

Then, somewhere in the mid 00s, the existence of the Batman #457 was discovered, and, without much fanfare or notice about how rare it might possibly be, it hung on the fringes of the collecting world for several more years, too scarce for any sort of realistic market price to be established, or to inspire others to search for them. It had turned out, in the ensuing years, that publishers could do interesting things with second (and third and later) printings, and some later printings were, in fact, worth more than the first printings! What an amazing turnaround! No longer were reprints shunned and discarded; now they were avidly sought by collectors, precisely because they had been so shunned and discarded by previous generations of collectors! And so, slowly but surely, on this site and others, more and more copies were documented, a few high dollar sales occurred, and by 2016, the book had achieved fairly widespread popularity.

But what of Superman #50 and Robin #1? No one had noted them, or even theorized as to their existence. One morning, in late 2016, I was sitting at the computer, pondering the unlikely existence of such books like Spiderman #1 gold UPC and Batman #457, when it hit me like a freight train: Superman #50 came out the same day as Batman #457, and had a second printing just like it...so there was a chance, at least, that a UPC second printing of that book could exist, too! So, my search began. While Batman had always been a popular character, Superman struggled to do so in the 90s and beyond. Batman #457 would be a much likelier candidate for discovery, and, in fact, that is what happened. Superman #50? A bygone book in a time that had moved on. Superman hadn't even maintained the numbering that Batman had, so it was much less likely for people to be looking for it.

So, I looked and looked, and one day, while perusing eBay, I found a copy, hidden amongst a lot of other books. I couldn't believe my luck! I crossed my fingers, bought the book, and waited for it to arrive. I was sure it would be a regular second printing, but lo and behold, what showed up was an honest to God second printing UPC! So, I did quite a bit of research, to see if anyone had mentioned it anywhere, on any website, or in any publication, and...nothing, nada, zilch. I had made a new discovery, unknown to the collecting world, 26 years after the book was published! I did a short writeup for "The Comic Book Forum", and that was when the information became public.

BUT...the search wasn't over. Because, of course, I also remembered that Robin #1 ALSO had a second printing, and a third, so it followed that it had to be out there, too. And, as it turns out, of the three, Robin #1 looks to be the most common. I published that additional information, and the comics world took notice...now there are several eBay listings for Robin #1 second newsstand, and, as of this writing, even a listing for the third or fourth known copy of Superman #50! 

Are there more...? Well, as it turns out, just about two years later, DC would have an even more monstrous hit with the "Death" of Superman in issue #75. That book sold an estimated 4+ million copies, and the demand was so intense, DC immediately printed up an additional 3 printings. But, more astonishing, they'd apparently forgotten what they'd done with the newsstand two years prior, and printed up special UPC stickers and stuck them to the covers of regular 2nd printing Direct copies. Well, they fixed that, and there are printed copies of the 3rd and 4th in newsstand versions.

Any after that? Who knows. There are some good suspects, but nothing's panned out so far. Some of these books...like Ghost Rider #5 and X-Men #270 and the like...can't possibly have UPC versions hiding out there, or someone would have discovered them long ago, as they did with Spiderman #1. And at least one, X-Factor #71, was second printed with a UPC already, even though it never went to the newsstand, and there is no "Direct" version. 

So, of the known newsstand later printings, we have:

Spiderman #1 (gold UPC)

Batman #457

Superman #50

Robin #1

Superman #75 3rd

Superman #75 4th

And that's it. Just a small collection of 6 books, that, due to time and circumstance, managed to survive despite the odds. Are there more? Time will tell. Are there examples from other publishers? As of yet, no one knows. There are similar versions of these books from the New 52 ( @Cpt Kirk can fill you in on those), but they're not quite the same, in my mind, as these books that were made in just a small window in the early 90s.

They are interesting little artifacts, these comics that shouldn't exist at all. And it's amazing that they were discovered, long after the era of the internet, quietly hiding in tiny numbers throughout the land. It's amazing they survived at all. By rights, they could all have been destroyed, and no one would have ever known they existed. It remains endlessly fascinating that such things exist, waiting to be discovered, in an era of massive overproduction and glut. If these can be discovered, decades after they were made, then there's no reason there aren't others out there.

I guess we'll see!

Edited April 8, 2019 by RockMyAmadeus
Double your pleasure, double your fun!

[Cpt Kirk]

9 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

They are interesting little artifacts, these comics that shouldn't exist at all. And it's amazing that they were discovered, long after the era of the internet, quietly hiding in tiny numbers throughout the land. It's amazing they survived at all. By rights, they could all have been destroyed, and no one would have ever known they existed. It remains endlessly fascinating that such things exist, waiting to be discovered, in an era of massive overproduction and glut. If these can be discovered, decades after they were made, then there's no reason there aren't others out there.

I guess we'll see!

 

Awesome posting.   Thanks!

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

I don't understand the "should not exist" claim. If there was no mechanism to order for the Newsstand, that just meant that the publisher was deciding how many copies to send out there. Since publishers knew the books were an instant sellout, it would make sense that reprints for newsstands would sell as well, without anyone requesting them specifically

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 hours ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

I don't understand the "should not exist" claim. If there was no mechanism to order for the Newsstand, that just meant that the publisher was deciding how many copies to send out there. Since publishers knew the books were an instant sellout, it would make sense that reprints for newsstands would sell as well, without anyone requesting them specifically

Did you read the whole post? The answer as to why they shouldn't exist is found there. The Direct market and the newsstand operated in completely different ways, under completely different principles. Without the special request of someone in the newsstand distribution system, these books would not exist. 

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

3 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Did you read the whole post? The answer as to why they shouldn't exist is found there. The Direct market and the newsstand operated in completely different ways, under completely different principles. Without the special request of someone in the newsstand distribution system, these books would not exist. 

I did read the whole post, but I'm not seeing any more support for what you're suggesting than the scenario I tossed out there. (Not saying that I have it right, just that the evidence isn't there either way.) There may have been no mechanism in place for an outlet to order specific books, but certainly the publisher is deciding what books get out there in the first place. It's logical that they would want more copies of a book out there (without an exterior influence askign for them) of a book that was an instant sell-out, since the probability is high that the new copies will sell as well.

[RockMyAmadeus]

56 minutes ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

I did read the whole post, but I'm not seeing any more support for what you're suggesting than the scenario I tossed out there. (Not saying that I have it right, just that the evidence isn't there either way.) There may have been no mechanism in place for an outlet to order specific books, but certainly the publisher is deciding what books get out there in the first place. It's logical that they would want more copies of a book out there (without an exterior influence askign for them) of a book that was an instant sell-out, since the probability is high that the new copies will sell as well.

Because there's a fundamental difference between the Direct market and the newsstand distribution systems. The Direct market printed to order. The newsstand printed as they always had: in excess of what was expected to sell, expecting a typical sell-through of 25-50%. Sellouts in the Direct market were rare but they did happen, and there was a mechanism by which retailers could immediately let the distributors know if something sold out: the reorder system. The newsstand market had no such device, and circulation departments wouldn't know if something had sold out for months after the fact. It's unlikely that anyone in the circulation departments even considered that a sellout in the Direct market would translate into a desire for reprints to the newsstand market. It's not that they couldn't...it's that they simply never considered it, nor would they have reason to...as demonstrated by the fact that Marvel only did it once, and DC only did it twice, despite there being dozens of immediate reprints during the time frame. Nothing was preventing them from doing as you suggest...but that's not how the circulation departments dealt with the newsstand market.

And we know they never considered it, because it didn't happen again at Marvel, and only happened again at DC because of the once-in-a-lifetime event of Superman #75...and they still forgot how to do it for the second print of that book!

In fact...the people at Marvel and DC probably thought the idea was a bit strange, if they thought about it at all. After all, this was a time when the publishers were actively pushing the Direct market (remember the "find your local comic store" ads....?) and would likely have figured that anyone who missed out at the newsstand would certainly be able to find a reprint at their local comic store. The newsstand market was dying, and would soon become a non-factor in publishing decisions. Sending additional copies to the Direct market AND the newsstand likely seemed redundant.

If, as you suggest, this idea came FROM the publishers, if they thought this was a legitimate source of additional revenue, then reason says they would have done it more than once or twice...but they did not. And Marvel and DC were under orders to milk every dime they could. As well, we can be reasonably sure that Wal-Mart was the customer, at least for the Spidermans. If the idea came from the publishers, the books would have gone into the distribution system...not just to one retailer, which happened to be, at the time, one of the biggest in the world. The numbers thrown out...10,000 for the Spiderman....reinforce that. 10,000 copies into the national newsstand distribution is nothing; that would have been perhaps 1 or 2 copies per newsstand account across the US and Canada at the time...maybe less. But to one retailer...even a large one...it's a decent amount.

I recognize that a lot of this is speculation, but looking at the facts and understanding how the two systems operated, the conclusion becomes clear. These books shouldn't exist...and under normal circumstances, wouldn't...but they do. These were one-offs, special favors done for special circumstances, not plans for new revenue streams.

Finally...though not quite in the same timeframe, Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics, has stated that Supergirl #1 (1996) third print was made specifically at the request of a single comic retailer, and printed to the tune of 1,000 copies...which, in 1996, would have been unheard of for a DC title, outside of that special request.

Edited April 8, 2019 by RockMyAmadeus

[valiantman]

26 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Finally...though not quite in the same timeframe, Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics, has stated that Supergirl #1 (1996) third print was made specifically at the request of a single comic retailer, and printed to the tune of 1,000 copies...which, in 1996, would have been unheard of for a DC title, outside of that special request.

That's essentially a retailer-exclusive prototype masquerading as having legit distribution. I'm not sure that history is going to look kindly on all these retailer-exclusives, since they're basically "cratered" on the map around the location of the shop/convention. 

Splat. 

[WolverineX]

Excellent post. Now I'm wondering if I should go pick up that 4th print Superman 75 newsstand that had a ton of dead bugs in it. I picked up 2 near mint copies this weekend

Edited April 8, 2019 by Wolverinex

[AGGIEZ]

Did you reprint your post? Looks like it's doubled up in the OP...

[valiantman]

10 minutes ago, AGGIEZ said:

Did you reprint your post? Looks like it's doubled up in the OP...

That doesn't count because his duplicate post doesn't have a UPC. 

[RockMyAmadeus]

53 minutes ago, valiantman said:

1 hour ago, AGGIEZ said:

Did you reprint your post? Looks like it's doubled up in the OP...

That doesn't count because his duplicate post doesn't have a UPC. 

That was an unauthorized reproduction; all copies have been gathered up and destroyed.

 

[mr_highgrade]

X-Men #270 2nd Print with a 272 newsie cover. 

 

 

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

18 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Because there's a fundamental difference between the Direct market and the newsstand distribution systems. The Direct market printed to order. The newsstand printed as they always had: in excess of what was expected to sell, expecting a typical sell-through of 25-50%. Sellouts in the Direct market were rare but they did happen, and there was a mechanism by which retailers could immediately let the distributors know if something sold out: the reorder system. The newsstand market had no such device, and circulation departments wouldn't know if something had sold out for months after the fact. It's unlikely that anyone in the circulation departments even considered that a sellout in the Direct market would translate into a desire for reprints to the newsstand market. It's not that they couldn't...it's that they simply never considered it, nor would they have reason to...as demonstrated by the fact that Marvel only did it once, and DC only did it twice, despite there being dozens of immediate reprints during the time frame. Nothing was preventing them from doing as you suggest...but that's not how the circulation departments dealt with the newsstand market.

And we know they never considered it, because it didn't happen again at Marvel, and only happened again at DC because of the once-in-a-lifetime event of Superman #75...and they still forgot how to do it for the second print of that book!

In fact...the people at Marvel and DC probably thought the idea was a bit strange, if they thought about it at all. After all, this was a time when the publishers were actively pushing the Direct market (remember the "find your local comic store" ads....?) and would likely have figured that anyone who missed out at the newsstand would certainly be able to find a reprint at their local comic store. The newsstand market was dying, and would soon become a non-factor in publishing decisions. Sending additional copies to the Direct market AND the newsstand likely seemed redundant.

If, as you suggest, this idea came FROM the publishers, if they thought this was a legitimate source of additional revenue, then reason says they would have done it more than once or twice...but they did not. And Marvel and DC were under orders to milk every dime they could. As well, we can be reasonably sure that Wal-Mart was the customer, at least for the Spidermans. If the idea came from the publishers, the books would have gone into the distribution system...not just to one retailer, which happened to be, at the time, one of the biggest in the world. The numbers thrown out...10,000 for the Spiderman....reinforce that. 10,000 copies into the national newsstand distribution is nothing; that would have been perhaps 1 or 2 copies per newsstand account across the US and Canada at the time...maybe less. But to one retailer...even a large one...it's a decent amount.

I recognize that a lot of this is speculation, but looking at the facts and understanding how the two systems operated, the conclusion becomes clear. These books shouldn't exist...and under normal circumstances, wouldn't...but they do. These were one-offs, special favors done for special circumstances, not plans for new revenue streams.

Finally...though not quite in the same timeframe, Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics, has stated that Supergirl #1 (1996) third print was made specifically at the request of a single comic retailer, and printed to the tune of 1,000 copies...which, in 1996, would have been unheard of for a DC title, outside of that special request.

I'm not stating that the scenario as you present it isn't possible, but I think you're jumping to some conclusions about what should and what shouldn't have happened, and what people would have been considering.

One possibility: as noted, the reprint for Spider-man was different from previous reprints in that the cover was significantly different. Perhaps that was reason enough to distribute the reprints through the newsstand (especially since the anticipated demand for this book was very high, before release).

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 hour ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

I'm not stating that the scenario as you present it isn't possible, but I think you're jumping to some conclusions about what should and what shouldn't have happened, and what people would have been considering.

I don't, for all the reasons given. The books shouldn't exist because there was no reason for them to, aside from a special request outside the publishers. They were a one-off at Marvel, and a twice-off at DC (the second time during the once-in-a-lifetime event of Superman #75), never to be repeated in the same way. We may not have the smoking gun...but we can see the body lying on the floor, a bullet wound to the chest, spent shell casing under the radiator, and the faint odor of cordite still lingering in the stuffy air of the 3rd floor walkup in Brooklyn...

[RockMyAmadeus]

I will concede this: Superman #75 3rd and 4th newsstands were produced because of internal consideration at DC. Without a doubt. But that's because Superman #75 was...and I cannot stress this enough, to those who didn't live through it...a legitimate once-in-a-lifetime book. Nothing in comics history compares, either before or after. DC would have been absolutely flooded with the results of their fun little experiment, and they not only rushed back to press three times within two months, it's certainly completely plausible that, for the first, last, and only time in newsstand history, they would have received a tremendous response from the distributors in the Curtis circulation system, and as a result, they decided it would be worthwhile to send reprints out into both streams...and we can see how awkward it was, with the 2nd print "sticker" copies. It was clearly something with which DC had very little experience (as before, with Robin #1 and the Roman numeral II being left off the cover.)

But, again, I have to stress the "once-in-a-lifetime"ness of Superman #75.

[RCheli]

I suspect that, if the newsstand sales had stopped (or even slowed) cratering at the rate that it was in the early 90s, there would have been more of these newsstand second and third prints. Comic sales overall were higher than they had been in 15-20 years, and Marvel and DC were ready to keep all of the hot books available. But even if some issues were selling through at the newsstand, which they hadn't done in a while, there wasn't the sales opportunity there. What was the distribution ratio in 1992? 7:1? Higher?

[RockMyAmadeus]

56 minutes ago, RCheli said:

I suspect that, if the newsstand sales had stopped (or even slowed) cratering at the rate that it was in the early 90s, there would have been more of these newsstand second and third prints. Comic sales overall were higher than they had been in 15-20 years, and Marvel and DC were ready to keep all of the hot books available. But even if some issues were selling through at the newsstand, which they hadn't done in a while, there wasn't the sales opportunity there. What was the distribution ratio in 1992? 7:1? Higher?

For the reasons stated above, I don't think that would have happened. Reprints were not something that the newsstand market was capable of handling.

Here's another reason: these reprints didn't occur instantly. It took two months for these books to get made, printed, and distributed. But they couldn't give a new cover date to these books, obviously. The cover dates were still the method by which the newsstands knew to remove remaining copies for sale. Superman #50 came out in October of 1990 (and the newsstand 1sts came out a week or two later, depending on local conditions.) The reprints didn't show up until December. But the book had a December cover date. So what were newsstand vendors supposed to do with December cover dated books they got in December...?

[RCheli]

17 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

For the reasons stated above, I don't think that would have happened. Reprints were not something that the newsstand market was capable of handling.

Here's another reason: these reprints didn't occur instantly. It took two months for these books to get made, printed, and distributed. But they couldn't give a new cover date to these books, obviously. The cover dates were still the method by which the newsstands knew to remove remaining copies for sale. Superman #50 came out in October of 1990 (and the newsstand 1sts came out a week or two later, depending on local conditions.) The reprints didn't show up until December. But the book had a December cover date. So what were newsstand vendors supposed to do with December cover dated books they got in December...?

That's not true. By the 80s, newsstands did not go by dates on the cover; they went by the color stripe at the top of the book. (Think about it: not every comic published even had a month on their cover.) So all the comics with the green stripes were shipped on the same week, and the newsagent -- before putting the new books out for the week -- would pull all the green stripes that were still for sale on the rack. They'd put them aside, strip off the top cover, and return them for credit. 

Then the next week, it was a red stripe at the top; then black; then... another color I don't remember. (They had 5 different colors.)

So if you wanted a second print, you'd just have to make sure that the distribution stripe was the same color as what was being put out for sale that week. They'd be up for 4 or 5 weeks (depending on that month's cycle).

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

13 minutes ago, RCheli said:

That's not true.

It is true.

14 minutes ago, RCheli said:

By the 80s, newsstands did not go by dates on the cover; they went by the color stripe at the top of the book.

That wasn't true for every newsstand. It depended on what the regional distributor did. It's why you don't see paint strips on every comic prior to the Direct market: not all of them went by the color code system, and some of them did, indeed, still go by cover dates. You'll find far more books without color coding from the 50s/60s/70s than you will with.

15 minutes ago, RCheli said:

(Think about it: not every comic published even had a month on their cover.)

And? Prior to Image, which was a mess, you don't find many books on the newsstand which didn't have their pull month on the cover...and most Image books did, even though they were a disaster and cover dates were completely unreliable. Again: that's what cover dates were for, and had been for for decades. 

Let me belabor the point: the purpose of cover dates...from the 30s to the 10s...was to tell vendors when to remove books for sale and return them for credit. That some newsstand distributors used the "stripe" method doesn't negate that. It is why, in the 90s and 00s, you see the move of the cover date to the UPC box for newsstand Marvels and DCs, and the removal of it from the cover entirely for Direct editions.

 

 

[RCheli]

You are wrong. Yes, cover dates were used in the 30s through the 60s to see what had to be pulled (though removing an old issue from the stands was usually prompted by when the next issue of the series came out). In the 70s, many local distributors were marking the top with spray or markers or something so the newsagents could more easily manage their comics. But by the 80s -- AND CERTAINLY BY THE EARLY 90s -- the comic companies were printing the colored bar on the top of the comics. Newsagents did not have the time to look at each comic to see the cover date. They looked at the top of the comic and just pulled every one of those colors off.

I know what I'm talking about. I worked at Matz's Newsstand in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for about 3 months in 1984 (for the sole purpose of getting my comics early; my friend, Jen Hassler's grandfather owned the place). That was how the comics were removed.

Image was not the only publisher that didn't have a date on the cover. No comic from Western/Gold Key/Dell/Whitman -- which had many more titles than Image -- had them. And while their comic output was much smaller by the 80s, they had the colored bar on the top to let the newsstands know when to remove them.