The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982) 15 15

[Malacoda]

On 1/15/2022 at 7:40 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

 

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. 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Malacoda

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/15/2022 at 8:02 PM, Malacoda said:

Away to fcek with ye. 

Getouttathegahden!

[themagicrobot]

????? Time moves on and stickers becoming a thing seems reasonable to me. Later there would be price guns and then bar codes. Didn't T & P have a fling with sickers too? I dont want to start an argument about this trivia. I'm sure I could find examples of magazines and paperbacks that display a higher price for Ireland if I tried. Let's agree to disagree and I'll move on and return this thread to Marwood.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/15/2022 at 7:56 PM, Malacoda said:

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. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/15/2022 at 8:07 PM, themagicrobot said:

????? Time moves on and stickers becoming a thing seems reasonable to me. Later there would be price guns and then bar codes. Didn't T & P have a fling with sickers too? I dont want to start an argument about this trivia. I'm sure I could find examples of magazines and paperbacks that display a higher price for Ireland if I tried. Let's agree to disagree and I'll move on and return this thread to Marwood.

Don't give it to that idiot!  I'll never get it back. 

[Malacoda]

On 1/15/2022 at 8:07 PM, themagicrobot said:

????? Time moves on and stickers becoming a thing seems reasonable to me. Later there would be price guns and then bar codes. Didn't T & P have a fling with sickers too? I dont want to start an argument about this trivia. I'm sure I could find examples of magazines and paperbacks that display a higher price for Ireland if I tried. Let's agree to disagree and I'll move on and return this thread to Marwood.

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. 

[Malacoda]

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. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Now then, where shall I put the stamp on this one....

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/16/2022 at 3:07 AM, Malacoda said:

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. 

Look out, he's got a shooter!

Oh, sorry. Misread that.

Two please 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/15/2022 at 5:08 PM, Malacoda said:

I was utterly gobsmacked when I looked on ebay and saw zilch. I'm even more bewildered now. What happened to them all?  

Just as UKPVs are rare in comparison to cents, because the population of the UK is only a fraction of that of the US, so we should expect the Irish stamped versions to be much scarcer than the pence or UK stamped versions, as the population of the Republic is only a small fraction of that of the UK. Also, the road system in 1960s Ireland wasn't up to much, so maybe outlying areas received few or none. We know they were on sale in Dublin, it would be nice to hear from Irish collectors in the hinterland.

As to how they arrived in Ireland, to be sure (or maybe that should be to be sure, to be sure), it might help if we could find any with a US arrival dates on the cover. That would identify them as unsold returns from Stateside retailers.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/15/2022 at 6:34 PM, themagicrobot said:

Adventure 313 has an "E" stamp. Adventure 314 has a "H" stamp. So that blows the sequential theory.

Remember that the T & P stamps are not always exactly sequential, there were late arrivals, owing to the haphazard nature of the returns procedure from US outlets.

[Malacoda]

On 1/16/2022 at 1:14 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Just as UKPVs are rare in comparison to cents, because the population of the UK is only a fraction of that of the US, so we should expect the Irish stamped versions to be much scarcer than the pence or UK stamped versions, as the population of the Republic is only a small fraction of that of the UK. Also, the road system in 1960s Ireland wasn't up to much, so maybe outlying areas received few or none. We know they were on sale in Dublin, it would be nice to hear from Irish collectors in the hinterland.

As to how they arrived in Ireland, to be sure (or maybe that should be to be sure, to be sure), it might help if we could find any with a US arrival dates on the cover. That would identify them as unsold returns from Stateside retailers.

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. 

[themagicrobot]

I messaged the seller of the comics I posted yesterday. She is selling the 1960s DCs on behalf of her father. He now lives in England but grew up in Ireland which is where the DCs were purchased new. Out of the batch of 1960s DCs he owned, quite a number of them had the Eire price stamps and quite a few (like this one) contained no price stamp at all. So does that satisfy @ Malacoda or not? We still don't know if they arrived via T& P or not though but the stamped ones must be as rare as hens teeth? The fact that the collection she was selling contained very few Marvels leads me to speculate that very few Marvels of the early 1960s found their way to Ireland. I believe I have mentioned this before but growing up in the 1960s in the UK I found 8 out of 10 spinner racks in my region to be exclusively DC and really had to hunt for Marvel comics (usually FFs as I always preferred Superman and Batman to most Marvel comics of the time anyway). 

Edited January 16, 2022 by themagicrobot

[Malacoda]

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? 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:21 PM, Malacoda said:

Meet back here in 30 years’ time to compare notes?

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:21 PM, Malacoda said:

so they would have to have been out of the original batches, not returns

Possibly T & P sent these across the Irish Sea without the SOR facility enjoyed by UK newsagents.

That would account for the limited distribution, as the Irish retailer would take only what he could expect to sell, and at a penny over the odds to cover any wastage from the unsold residue.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:21 PM, Malacoda said:

We believe that T&P did not return any comics to the US

Very unlikely that DC would take back unsold T & P stock.

They were comics which had already passed through the US retail system and had failed to sell once, so would not be wanted back in the US at any price.

[Malacoda]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:35 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Possibly T & P sent these across the Irish Sea without the SOR facility enjoyed by UK newsagents.

That would account for the limited distribution, as the Irish retailer would take only what he could expect to sell, and at a penny over the odds to cover any wastage from the unsold residue.

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. 

[Malacoda]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:39 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Very unlikely that DC would take back unsold T & P stock.

They were comics which had already passed through the US retail system and had failed to sell once, so would not be wanted back in the US at any price.

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. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:48 PM, Malacoda said:

I just expressed it as a belief rather than hard fact to keep Marwood from smacking me with a ruler.