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

[Get Marwood & I]

Now, just to test the water, and encourage participation, can anyone post a comic that is cover dated later than this June 1978 25p T&P stamped copy from DC?

It has to have a 'T&P' on it to qualify - not like these later books with single unbranded prices:

 

[Gnasher]

56 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Now, just to test the water, and encourage participation, can anyone post a comic that is cover dated later than this June 1978 25p T&P stamped copy from DC?

 

It has to have a 'T&P' on it to qualify - not like these later books with single unbranded prices:

 

 

Can't meet that challenge  myself Steve, but I can tell you, somewhere out there is a modern age comic that incorporates the T&P stamp as a part of the artwork, a 3/6 one at that.

I  can't remember the title though... so, if anyone knows that, I'd be grateful 

Edited July 21, 2020 by Gnasher

[Get Marwood & I]

24 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Can't meet that challenge  myself Steve, but I can tell you, somewhere out there is a modern age comic that incorporates the T&P stamp as a part of the artwork, a 3/6 one at that.

I  can't remember the title though... so, if anyone knows that, I'd be grateful 

I'd like to see that too  

[Mr Thorpe]

I think you are being a bit harsh on the 'unbranded' T&P stamp!

I'm pretty certain the 'unbranded' stamp is a genuine T&P effort. Check out my Supermans  from 1975.

The real question is why keep switching back and forth?

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Mr Thorpe said:

I'm pretty certain the 'unbranded' stamp is a genuine T&P effort. Check out my Supermans  from 1975.

Me too, but until proven, have you got anything later than June 1978 with a tee and pee that we can see Mr Tee?

[Gnasher]

On ebay at the moment April 1979...

[Get Marwood & I]

15 hours ago, Gnasher said:

On ebay at the moment April 1979...

Pay 15p for the cents or 12p for the pence!

[Get Marwood & I]

@Gnasher

Your April 1979 DC book seems to be winning Bob - I haven't found a later one yet.

My understanding from various online sources was that T&P wound up around the middle of 1979 so this is in the right ballpark. You could understand why a T&P stamp would exist on a book issued prior to when they started distributing for, as we have shown in this thread, the books in question likely came over to the UK in bulk long after they were returned unsold in the US. But we should be able to spot the final T&P stamped books as they couldn't time travel into the future and once they stopped, their stamps should have stopped.

I'll keep looking though...

[Gnasher]

I did have a 40 cents copy of this, minus the T&P stamp, it would have been a random buy (I wasn't really collecting then) off the rack at my local newsagents, and very likely the last time I bought a comic again until the mid-80's.

I bought it along with these , which are also with no T&P stamp , either the  price was displayed, or I asked at the counter. I sold the Flash btw

  

 

[Get Marwood & I]

[Get Marwood & I]

50 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

I did have a 40 cents copy of this, minus the T&P stamp, it would have been a random buy (I wasn't really collecting then) off the rack at my local newsagents, and very likely the last time I bought a comic again until the mid-80's.

I bought it along with these , which are also with no T&P stamp , either the  price was displayed, or I asked at the counter. I sold the Flash btw

  

I wonder why they didn't have one of these then? 

[Gnasher]

I definitely picked them up at a local newsagent,  and there was no  price sticker on them anywhere, so it's a big 

I don't think even the bar code would have come into play, but

[Get Marwood & I]

51 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

I definitely picked them up at a local newsagent,  and there was no  price sticker on them anywhere, so it's a big 

I don't think even the bar code would have come into play, but

Don't worry, I've seen loads of cents stamped copies which exist as pence printed copies during this review. Maybe we got our own printed copies and the US unsold cast offs. Who knows. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On that theme, I wonder what operational process failure lead to the stamping of pence printed copies like this recent addition to the Archie UKPV box?

Archie's a funny one. A handful of UKPVs and a distribution battle between T&P who started off, then a year of Miller, then back to T&P. 

I'll leave you to ponder.

 

[rakehell]

2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

On that theme, I wonder what operational process failure lead to the stamping of pence printed copies like this recent addition to the Archie UKPV box?

Got a Strange Tales like that -

I seem to see this fairly regularly with Silver Age Marvels, though, of course, there are more of them available for this kind of chicanery. 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Time for a quick recap 

We know when UKPV's first started to appear in the UK by nature of the dirty great printed prices on them. Or dirty small prices, in the case of the Miller Charltons. No arguments there, with March 1960 being our first known cover date example (Archie). The point of this thread was to try to establish whether any cents books came over earlier than that, evidenced by the presence of an official UK distributor stamp. We have examples of books cover / indicia dated 1958, but they seem to be outliers and were likely brought over to the UK in bulk much later than their actual US production dates.

The current 1958 outliers are:

• Attack #54 (Charlton) 1958 – T&P
• Li'l Genius #17 (Charlton) April 1958 - T&P
• Hot Rods & Racing Cars #35 (Charlton) June 1958 – T&P
• Fightin’ Navy #83 (Charlton) September 1958 – T&P
• Fightin’ Air Force #12 (Charlton) October 1958 – T&P

Those handful of books aside, I put this table together to show where distributor stamps start to appear in earnest. Earnest wasn't happy about that by the way, but he was always a cranky one. The books start to appear sequentially from February 1959 and I have seen multiple copies of the early ones to prove that they are not random / one offs. So it looks like the process started 'properly' with books cover dated February 1959. We don't know of course when they actually went on sale in the UK, and have to take account of the shipping time, but it interests me nonetheless to see them summarised. I don't think anyone else has attempted to do this so we once again are trail blazing here. I say 'we'.... 

Anyway, here's the latest version of my ridiculously pompous chart showing the books I've captured so far (with help from the thread contributors), up to October 1959:

It goes all the way to December but I can't fit it into one shot.

Yes, I know.

Anyway, I've been mucking about in this area for a while and have some more ground breaking stuff to report. I say 'ground breaking'....

If you're reading this post having visited the thread for the first time, go back and read the lot. It's proper interesting once you get past the crappy medals bit. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Now, Golden Key. Why didn't any of our UK distributors like the keys of Gold? Could it be that they were silver age and they got confused? I don't know. Do you?

I have multiple examples of UK Distributor stamped comics for all the main protagonists apart from Gold Key. That is, apart from this one book which, incidentally, I have seen three T&P stamped copies of:

So here's a challenge for our readership - find me another Gold Key comic with an identifiable UK distributor stamp. And not these silly 'price only' ones mind...

 

...proper T&P or LM ones.

Get on with it then, I haven't got all ing day 

That book again, Thriller!

Number Two (January 1963 by the way. And a good read) 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

I put this lovely grid together to show all the different T&P prices 

Handily, they all fit nicely in the block 

 

 

 

What?

 

What?

 

Eh?

 

Oh, bollox! 

 

 

OK, I'm over it 

[Get Marwood & I]

Here's a fun one, which I snaffled from the bay of e for limited pee (pence I mean):

 

Bit of a bad spine roll there 

Or is it....?

 

[Get Marwood & I]

And talking of World's Finest (play the song you miserable...):