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

[Get Marwood & I]

36 minutes ago, Colin Nash said:

Thanks Steve. Amazing research from someone I see as a champion of the UK Variant.

Aw, thanks Colin. I think I've mentioned them once or twice, yes 

36 minutes ago, Colin Nash said:

I'm waiving my Union Jack reading your editorials.

My collection is 100% 1960's, UK price variant, as you know, with 30% price stamped. The history of US comic importation into the UK is revealing new facts and figures, thanks to you.

This, I hope, will make comic collectors in the US and UK think again about the validity and historic relevance of such comics. I feel passionately about UK issues. I grew up with them and UK pence price, or price stamp on the comic should be seen as an attribute giving it provenance and rarity value, and not something that degrades it. Its historic and unique and should be celebrated as such.

Keep it going please.

Colin

I will. Comics are great aren't they. I've always loved them. And all the little nuances and variations. It's great fun posting about them here, especially when other people get involved.

[Get Marwood & I]

17 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

I dont think IW was maliciously bad, I think of him more of a chancer, say like Del-boy

http://www.jonmcclurescomics.com/iw.html

http://www.toonopedia.com/iw-super.htm

 

[Mr Thorpe]

16 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

I dont think IW was maliciously bad, I think of him more of a chancer, say like Del-boy

http://www.jonmcclurescomics.com/iw.html

http://www.toonopedia.com/iw-super.htm

 

I don't know if this adds much to the debate. It's a page from the 1950's American Comic Book Chronicles published by Twomorrows. At least Israel Waldman did try and find someone to pay for the artwork he was going to use. The people that may have sold him artwork that was not rightfully theirs to sell are probably more at fault. Also, there was no hint of Israel Waldman being sued. And he did emege a few years later at Skywald.

The joy of the IWs and Supers was, certainly 'in the old days', you never knew what was out there!

[Mr Thorpe]

7 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

That's interesting @Mr Thorpe, the Attack there with the one and three stamp.

Here's a second copy of @Kevin.J's FAF #12, also with a 'one and three' stamp:

  

One and three would be right for these oversize 25c books of course - which makes Kevin's original FAF #12 a bit of an anomaly, stamped as it is at 9d:

The date stamp in the Attack adds to the unease, and leaves me thinking we should note these books as outliers still, until a more consistent pattern emerges. The Feb 1959 Charlton is part of a clear pattern, with books for each successive month in evidence in multiples. One Attack with a suspicious internal date stamp and two FAFs with differently priced stamps aren't enough to convince me - yet. They can clearly hold the title for 'earliest T&P stamped cover date' on paper, but I'm not yet convinced that they were shipped and stamped in line with those cover dates - much more likely that they were done later.

What do you boys think?

Meanwhile, here's a cool 'Out of This World' #8, indicia dated May 1958, with a cool one shilling sticker from 'S.B.S.': 

It's always Charlton isn't it, giving us more 

My copy of Fightin' Air Force #12 covers both bases -9d and 1/3d!

[Get Marwood & I]

52 minutes ago, Mr Thorpe said:

My copy of Fightin' Air Force #12 covers both bases -9d and 1/3d!

Show off 

[Get Marwood & I]

16 hours ago, Mr Thorpe said:

Giant Comics #3 dated 'Winter 1957'! According to Mike's an on sale date of Nov 1st 1957.

That shilling stamp looks remarkably similar to the Len Miller stamps of the mid/late 1960's. So was this in a warehouse for years and released to the great unwashed 10 years or so later?

By the way Mr T, what makes you think the shilling stamps above are the work of Miller? He always snuck an 'LM' into his stamps and printed prices:

 

[Kevin.J]

Just looked at my Christmas book to compare stamps with Mr Thorpe, nothing  

Still a nice book though  

I guess I am starting to hope for stamps defacing my comics for the first time in my collecting life 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Mr Thorpe]

42 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

By the way Mr T, what makes you think the shilling stamps above are the work of Miller? He always snuck an 'LM' into his stamps and printed prices:

 

I'm just really going by the typeface for the 1/- and the stamp overall. It looks remarkably similar, admittedly without the LM.

[Get Marwood & I]

I've changed your perception Kevin - the stamps are things of beauty.....

Anyway, I'm looking through the remainder of my files to see what else I can post that might be of interest to the 0.0000000000000001% of the boards that have taken the trouble to acknowledge that the thread exists.

I think we've more or less taken my initial premise for the thread - what came first - as far as we can and, whilst we can clearly provide some solid data around what books exist with definable cover stamps, and their cover date spreads, it is equally clear that we can't as yet definitively state when those books arrived in the UK and when they went on sale. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and individuals recollections to be found, but nothing concrete like shipping records (if such a thing even ever existed back then - would ballast require a bill of lading?)

I've got some folders with examples of stamps for other lesser known publishers - Tower, Atlas, M.F. Enterprises etc - but none of them appear early enough to be significant. And I have a lot of examples of stickers and such that turn up quite often - these Irish ones get about a bit on Towers and Dells:

Dell come quite late to the party by the way - the earliest stamped copy I have found so far is a February 1962 book. There are some fairly high profile publishers that I haven't found any examples of T&P / Miller stamps on - Gold Key for example. No wonder I'm struggling to fill my Tom and Jerry run. 

Spoiler

    

So that's probably it for me now, on this thread. 

I have a few avenues left to explore - if they turn anything up, I'll be back

Thanks for reading 

[Kevin.J]

I dont think Tower even existed until the mid 60s.

I think I probably have everything except a few of the teen type books, its been few years since I even looked at mine let alone chased missing issues but will have a look out of interest at some point anyway.

 

[Mr Thorpe]

Not quite finished! Take a shifty at the cutting from Melody Maker dated June 6 1959, attached. It looks suspiciously like the trigger to allow American comics to be imported into this country. It states 'The Board of Trade this week announced the lifting of the import ban on many goods ..... from the dollar area.'

Now let us speculate.

Messrs Len Miller and Fred Thorpe rush over to the States to clinch deals to import American comics to this country. T&P already had a relationship with DC and ACG to reprint their titles over here, so presumably it was fairly easy to agree that T&P would be the importers of DC's and ACG's. I speculate further! T&P asked DC and (ACG) whether they could print pence priced comics for the UK. DC either said no straight up, or quoted a price for the UK printing and T&P decided to just take the returns.

Len Miller had a relationship with Charlton, reprinting their books over the years. Basically, as Charlton did their own printing they would be only too happy to produce pence priced comics.

Now before T&P could import their DC's & ACG's into the country, they had the small matter of the Gordon & Gotch Batman and Superman titles to concern themselves with. The last issues of Superman (149), Superboy (131) and Batman (115) were Dec 1959 or Jan 1960 (source GCD)

Between June 1959 and Jan 1960 T&P imported whatever they could get hold of in the States, be they Archie or Charlton. Hence all these 'pre-distribution' comics.

 

What do you guys think?

 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Mr Thorpe said:

Not quite finished! Take a shifty at the cutting from Melody Maker dated June 6 1959, attached. It looks suspiciously like the trigger to allow American comics to be imported into this country. It states 'The Board of Trade this week announced the lifting of the import ban on many goods ..... from the dollar area.'

Great cutting there Mr T 

Google says May 59, so it's all in that ballpark:

From that we can take it that any US book that arrived, or was on sale in the UK prior to May / June 1959 was effectively illegal. So the earliest 'official' arrivals could only be from after that date I suppose.

Quote

Now let us speculate.

Messrs Len Miller and Fred Thorpe rush over to the States to clinch deals to import American comics to this country. T&P already had a relationship with DC and ACG to reprint their titles over here, so presumably it was fairly easy to agree that T&P would be the importers of DC's and ACG's. I speculate further! T&P asked DC and (ACG) whether they could print pence priced comics for the UK. DC either said no straight up, or quoted a price for the UK printing and T&P decided to just take the returns.

Len Miller had a relationship with Charlton, reprinting their books over the years. Basically, as Charlton did their own printing they would be only too happy to produce pence priced comics.

Now before T&P could import their DC's & ACG's into the country, they had the small matter of the Gordon & Gotch Batman and Superman titles to concern themselves with. The last issues of Superman (149), Superboy (131) and Batman (115) were Dec 1959 or Jan 1960 (source GCD)

Between June 1959 and Jan 1960 T&P imported whatever they could get hold of in the States, be they Archie or Charlton. Hence all these 'pre-distribution' comics.

What do you guys think?

Some reasonable speculation there. At the highest level, we know when the ban was lifted and we know who the two key UK distribution players were - T&P and Miller. And we know what books each of them took on, courtesy of their company specific price stamps. And it's almost certain that the Marvels were a formal request / process (given their printed UK prices) and that DC were likely unsold returns in the beginning. There are a few nuances here and there that could still do with a little finesse in understanding - Archie UKPVs from March 1960, Dell UKPVs from April 1960, Arnold Miller price stamps and the limited 1960 Len Miller UKPV Marvels for example - but in a nutshell, we more or less have the complete picture. What we can't say at this point is which book / publisher was 'the first' in the UK officially, as it's likely that our early examples all landed at the same time rather than by any natural cover / production date.

Maybe there is some documentation out there waiting to be unearthed that may tell us more. In the meantime, I quite enjoyed this run through. 

[Mr Thorpe]

Regarding the Archie UKPV and the Dells. More speculation, obviously, I do not have any facts. It is quite possible that both Archie and Dell thought they were big enough to enter the UK directly.

Remember this stamp? 'PDC'.Have a look at the Archie masthead above the letter 'e'. Coincidence? PDC stands, I believe for Publishers Distribution Company and they distributed Archies in the States. More questions though -what is the stamp doing on a Charlton and why have we not seen any other examples?

Re the Marvel UKPV's. We know Marvel were constrained by Independent Distributors -the distributors of DC and ACG, to just 8 monthly titles. Marvel were probably more than happy to provide any printing variation just to sell more copies, even if it was abroad.

 

Truth or idle speculation?  -You Decide!!!

 

[Get Marwood & I]

36 minutes ago, Mr Thorpe said:

Truth or idle speculation?  -You De-cide!!!

I feel like I'm on Big Brother Rich 

And I find your PDC speculation Pretty Darn Clever!

All good fun.

Now, who's that at the door I wonder? Hang on.... 

 

[creaturefan95]

[Gnasher]

15 hours ago, Mr Thorpe said:

Not quite finished! Take a shifty at the cutting from Melody Maker dated June 6 1959, attached. It looks suspiciously like the trigger to allow American comics to be imported into this country. It states 'The Board of Trade this week announced the lifting of the import ban on many goods ..... from the dollar area.'

Now let us speculate.

Messrs Len Miller and Fred Thorpe rush over to the States to clinch deals to import American comics to this country. T&P already had a relationship with DC and ACG to reprint their titles over here, so presumably it was fairly easy to agree that T&P would be the importers of DC's and ACG's. I speculate further! T&P asked DC and (ACG) whether they could print pence priced comics for the UK. DC either said no straight up, or quoted a price for the UK printing and T&P decided to just take the returns.

Len Miller had a relationship with Charlton, reprinting their books over the years. Basically, as Charlton did their own printing they would be only too happy to produce pence priced comics.

Now before T&P could import their DC's & ACG's into the country, they had the small matter of the Gordon & Gotch Batman and Superman titles to concern themselves with. The last issues of Superman (149), Superboy (131) and Batman (115) were Dec 1959 or Jan 1960 (source GCD)

Between June 1959 and Jan 1960 T&P imported whatever they could get hold of in the States, be they Archie or Charlton. Hence all these 'pre-distribution' comics.

 

What do you guys think?

 

June 6th appropriately D-Day 

[electricprune]

On 6/26/2020 at 9:07 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Hello 

Over the last four years or so some of you may have noticed that I have created a number of threads here on the CGC boards that seek to document which UK Price Variants (UKPVs) exist for the seven known US publishers of:

• Archie Comics
• Charlton
• DC
• Dell
• Gold Key
• King
• Marvel

Each thread has been a factual summary of what I have found to exist along with some speculation on gaps, what came first, printing variations and things like that. Those in the know know that Archie #108 is the first known US published comic distributed in the UK with a printed UK price:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey Marwood, I actually have a few of these. I don't know anything about them, but here is one with the stamp that isn't on the list. I'll check for the others, but I have 4-6 I think. All of them are DC Romance. It looks like the others, but for all I know the 8 could designate Military or something else that doesn't qualify this one.

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, electricprune said:

Hey Marwood, I actually have a few of these. I don't know anything about them, but here is one with the stamp that isn't on the list. I'll check for the others, but I have 4-6 I think. All of them are DC Romance. It looks like the others, but for all I know the 8 could designate Military or something else that doesn't qualify this one.

Cheers EP! That's a great cover isn't it. What's she doing up there in her yellow suit? Love it 

Looking forward to seeing the rest, if any are stamped 

[01TheDude]

Interesting thread. Not much to offer, especially in terms of examples having only two UK comics in my collection (ST 113 and JIM 125 - both printed 9d).

But I did have a thought about the mysterious top number on the Thorpe stamps that was sort of spurred on by the comment about the #5 stamper being "rubbish" (awesome). What if the top number was used to indicate a distribution area that the book was destined for delivery? That would sort of make the stamp number seem random even on the same book. I wonder if that can even be figured out if true since the provenance of old comics is surely difficult to trace. But it was a thought.

What was interesting to me was realizing that there ever was some trade restrictions on these materials. Is that to say that no US comics were sold unless they were printed UK versions?

[Get Marwood & I]

24 minutes ago, 01TheDude said:

Interesting thread. Not much to offer, especially in terms of examples having only two UK comics in my collection (ST 113 and JIM 125 - both printed 9d).

Thanks Dude - I always like it when someone comments in one of my threads, even if it's just to say they enjoyed reading it. 

Quote

But I did have a thought about the mysterious top number on the Thorpe stamps that was sort of spurred on by the comment about the #5 stamper being "rubbish" (awesome). What if the top number was used to indicate a distribution area that the book was destined for delivery? That would sort of make the stamp number seem random even on the same book. I wonder if that can even be figured out if true since the provenance of old comics is surely difficult to trace. But it was a thought.

A good thought, yes, and one which I'd considered. In a separate exercise before I started the thread I looked to see if the numbers stayed the same or varied on the same issue. Here's an example from the files of four copies of the same issue of Detective Comics #280:

Four different copies, from four different eBay sellers - all have a number 7 stamp. If the stamp numbers indicated regional distribution, you would expect to see different numbers on the same comic, yes? The scenario here with the four Detectives however - and the pattern exists throughout my research - indicates that that is unlikely. There's another one on eBay UK now - also a seven. That's too unlikely for me, that 5 copies appear on eBay and all from the same 'number 7' distribution source (if that's how you meant it).

Quote

What was interesting to me was realizing that there ever was some trade restrictions on these materials. Is that to say that no US comics were sold unless they were printed UK versions?

My understanding - although I haven't gone into too much detail on it - is that during the 1950's ban years we in the UK got either our own homegrown comics or reprints of US comics via the UK publishers like L Miller, Thorpe & Porter (Arnold), Alan Class and Streamline. There are suggestions that US original comics were sold illegally here and there but again, that's not an area I've looked into in any great depth.

The UK reprint titles from Miller, Class and the like were wonderful books in their own right and there were loads of them. I've owned many down the years and, in another life, I'd collect and document them all. But the 'keys' reprints have already started to move out of my financial sight - gone are the days when you could pick this book up (reprints Amazing Fantasy 15) for a few pounds: