The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982) 16 16

[themagicrobot]

I've always thought the T & P indicea looked like an afterthought. But if that was the case  and it was added later then the UKPV inside cover would still have been different to the regular issues as it means they were originally planning to send them over here with no indicia displayed at all. 

[Albert Tatlock]

Yes, two completely separate printings, one with a cents cover and regular USA indicia, and a second with UKPV cover and T & P indicia, but it looks, from my example and the ebay sale one at least, that the ink (at the bottom only) was still wet when the book was assembled. So this inside cover has had two separate printing operations.

Here is the other one, recently sold. It too has faint transfer of ink.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MY-GIRL-PEARL-7-Atlas-1960-THE-RAREST-MARVEL-PENCE-VARIANT-only-2-known-copies-/154339705958?hash=item23ef5d0466%3Ag%3A-zwAAOSwK1df9o1f&nma=true&si=4u4TwiMssU7409xu5XFRJpEqDcM%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Can we find any more examples, from the time of the large T & P indicia?

[Get Marwood & I]

I've checked four of my copies in that indicia type period (see table below from my T&P indicia types journal page) including my MGP#7 and I don't see the ink transfer in any of them.

Here's my ST#75, clean as a whistle:

 

I'll check the rest later.

[Albert Tatlock]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I've checked four of my copies in that indicia type period (see table below from my T&P indicia types journal page) including my MGP#7 and I don't see the ink transfer in any of them.

Here's my ST#75, clean as a whistle:

 

I'll check the rest later.

Best bet might be the Westerns.

[Get Marwood & I]

15 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Best bet might be the Westerns.

No evidence in my T&Ps, but one example in one of my Millers:

[Albert Tatlock]

5 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

No evidence in my T&Ps, but one example in one of my Millers:

Could it have anything to do with the size of the print run? In a long run, there would be time for a higher proportion of the ink on the freshly printed area to dry.

[Get Marwood & I]

12 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Could it have anything to do with the size of the print run? In a long run, there would be time for a higher proportion of the ink on the freshly printed area to dry.

Who knows Albert.

If you think about it, we know the covers were printed separate to the innards, and logic says that they would have been run off and placed in a pile prior to assembly. Consequently, I would expect any ink to transfer to the next cover in the pile, not the splash page of the finally assembled comic.

But who knows. It's fascinating, another physical clue as to what went on. I love what a comic can tell us about itself, before we start any Googleating - it's always been the bedrock of my own research approach - letting the comic tell its own story. Or at least, give us a few hints. 

[Malacoda]

3 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

If you think about it, we know the covers were printed separate to the innards, and logic says that they would have been run off and placed in a pile prior to assembly. Consequently, I would expect any ink to transfer to the next cover in the pile, not the splash page of the finally assembled comic.

I think it may be because comic printing fell between two stools.  

Typically different processes of printing (and therefore different ways to make the ink dry) were used for newspapers vs magazines.  Comics,  of course, required both because they are like newspapers inside, but have glossy covers like magazines. 
World Color invested heavily in web printing the 50’s and upgraded to a best-in-world web offset system at their newer plant (in Effingham) in the 60’s.  Cold set web offset printing relies on the ink to dry into the paper – this is what you typically use for newsprint.   Hot set offset printing, like glossy covers, requires the printed paper to be dried by heat because most of the ink doesn’t soak into the paper, it just sits on top of it.  Then, because of the heat of the paper/ink, it has to be artificially cooled because it’s too hot to work with.  However, it’s the first bit, the heat, that determines how fast it dries. The cooling bit is to counteract the drying process, not part of it, however it does catalyse it. 

In Sparta. they were producing up to 40,000 comics per hour per machine (don’t know how many presses they had) and by the next day the whole lot was shipped, every day. So, we can say that when the comics & covers were put together, they had been printed by two entirely different processes, the ink was dried by two different processes with different time frames and the whole thing was done at breakneck speed.  But the key point: the covers were made by a process where the ink is dried artificially onto the surface of the glossy paper and the innards were designed to dry by letting the ink sink into their rougher, cheaper paper. So….if you put a not-quite-dry-yet cover onto a comic, the inner paper will do its job and absorb the ink.   
If, at the end of your print run, you have to re-set the press to print the UKPV, and then get this last 2-5% of the run out of the way to do the next 20,000 comics, it doesn’t seem a big leap to me to believe that the UKPV’s were more likely to suffer ink separation. 
I think another clue might also be in the fact that you only find it in these super-oldies (?)  By the 70’s in Sparta, you can see stacks of the finished covers piled up together waiting to join their innards, so by that point they must have been long since dry (though you do still see colour bleed on the covers themselves). 
 

[Albert Tatlock]

5 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

I think it may be because comic printing fell between two stools.  

Typically different processes of printing (and therefore different ways to make the ink dry) were used for newspapers vs magazines.  Comics,  of course, required both because they are like newspapers inside, but have glossy covers like magazines. 
World Color invested heavily in web printing the 50’s and upgraded to a best-in-world web offset system at their newer plant (in Effingham) in the 60’s.  Cold set web offset printing relies on the ink to dry into the paper – this is what you typically use for newsprint.   Hot set offset printing, like glossy covers, requires the printed paper to be dried by heat because most of the ink doesn’t soak into the paper, it just sits on top of it.  Then, because of the heat of the paper/ink, it has to be artificially cooled because it’s too hot to work with.  However, it’s the first bit, the heat, that determines how fast it dries. The cooling bit is to counteract the drying process, not part of it, however it does catalyse it. 

In Sparta. they were producing up to 40,000 comics per hour per machine (don’t know how many presses they had) and by the next day the whole lot was shipped, every day. So, we can say that when the comics & covers were put together, they had been printed by two entirely different processes, the ink was dried by two different processes with different time frames and the whole thing was done at breakneck speed.  But the key point: the covers were made by a process where the ink is dried artificially onto the surface of the glossy paper and the innards were designed to dry by letting the ink sink into their rougher, cheaper paper. So….if you put a not-quite-dry-yet cover onto a comic, the inner paper will do its job and absorb the ink.   
If, at the end of your print run, you have to re-set the press to print the UKPV, and then get this last 2-5% of the run out of the way to do the next 20,000 comics, it doesn’t seem a big leap to me to believe that the UKPV’s were more likely to suffer ink separation. 
I think another clue might also be in the fact that you only find it in these super-oldies (?)  By the 70’s in Sparta, you can see stacks of the finished covers piled up together waiting to join their innards, so by that point they must have been long since dry (though you do still see colour bleed on the covers themselves). 
 

This would explain why the ink transferred over, but not why only part of the page was affected. In the early days, they would have been putting the UKPV covers through the press twice, the second time to add the relevant T & P indicia. Then some bright spark realised that two operations would be unnecessary if all the information on the indicia could be combined, hence the later version where T & P just get a small mention at the end.

My Strange Tales 75 also has the ink transfer, quite faint, but I hope it is visible on the attached scan. It showed up OK when I held a mirror to the bottom of the page, it is clearly the imprint from the facing page and not just some random blotches.

[Malacoda]

Good point.  I also thought of something else that might be relevant, but doesn't answer this point:  we know that Eastern were using inferior paper for the covers compared to the paper used by Sparta because of the Marvel chipping. 

[Get Marwood & I]

19 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

This would explain why the ink transferred over, but not why only part of the page was affected. In the early days, they would have been putting the UKPV covers through the press twice, the second time to add the relevant T & P indicia. Then some bright spark realised that two operations would be unnecessary if all the information on the indicia could be combined, hence the later version where T & P just get a small mention at the end.

I've gathered lots of evidence to support a theory that the UK cover details (cover price / indicia) were applied after the event in the early days - different ink strike, different price locations on the cover, etc. Some of the early Charlton UKPVs certainly give the impression that the prices were added post production:

 

From what I know of the printing process, which isn't much, they may have 'struck out' the US cover price and indicia from the plates, run the covers, and then added the cover price / indicia details in a second printing event. That would help explain moving prices above, and the ink transfer that you have identified on the Marvels Albert. It would also mean that the covers would, initially, have no prices and no indicia details after the first run. Should we expect to see examples that missed the second run therefore? There are a tiny handful of no price examples to support the above, e.g. TTA#16, but these could just as easily have been caused by the price fallen off of the template during production.

 

It's all quite interesting isn't it, and I think the process changed rapidly, but we'll never really know unless we find that bloody Tardis. 

Quote

My Strange Tales 75 also has the ink transfer, quite faint, but I hope it is visible on the attached scan. It showed up OK when I held a mirror to the bottom of the page, it is clearly the imprint from the facing page and not just some random blotches.

I can see it. The fact that only the indicia has transferred rules out the possibility of damp playing a part. 

Notwithstanding Malacoda's summary above, I still might expect an indicia that has not completely dried to leave a mark on the next cover on which it sat in the pile prior to being assembled. If we could find a cover that looked like this...

...with the T&P or LM indicia showing accordingly, that would be cool.

[Get Marwood & I]

19 hours ago, Malacoda said:

If, at the end of your print run, you have to re-set the press to print the UKPV, and then get this last 2-5% of the run out of the way to do the next 20,000 comics, it doesn’t seem a big leap to me to believe that the UKPV’s were more likely to suffer ink separation. 

There's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence to suggest that in the early days, the pence copies were printed first on some if not all occasions. CGC graders themselves have noted 'deeper colour strikes' on early pence copies. So maybe the reverse could be true - a book printed early in the run, with a deeper / stronger ink application, could be the reason why some of it was absorbed by the inferior interior paper on assembly. But then we're back to the hypothesis that the indicia details may have been applied in a second print event so....

[Albert Tatlock]

17 hours ago, Malacoda said:

Good point.  I also thought of something else that might be relevant, but doesn't answer this point:  we know that Eastern were using inferior paper for the covers compared to the paper used by Sparta because of the Marvel chipping. 

I think I have read that the chipping was caused by a blunt guillotine.

[Malacoda]

12 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

I think I have read that the chipping was caused by a blunt guillotine.

Indeed, although a lot of people believe paper quality was a contributing factor, which I find quite compelling.  If all of the damage was done by the blade right there, straight off the press, I think Eastern would have surely changed the blade rather than carry on mashing a blunt blade into tens of thousands of comics. Also, it went on for years, so someone at Marvel or the news vendors themselves would have complained eventually.  It seems more likely to me that the blade caused rough edges, micro tears in the edges which, due to the quality of the paper got worse over time. This would explain (1) why it went on for so long  (2) it wasn't brought to their attention for so long (3) it wasn't picked up as an error before leaving Waterbury and (4) it also makes sense to me that as the comics got handled and read by excited little hands, such a defect would emerge. 

Also based on the scale of the operation, I find it impossible to believe that no one was performing quality checks on either the guillotines or the finished comics.  Eastern was printing over 26 million comics per year in the 50's. God knows what the number was by the 60's. 

[Get Marwood & I]

[Malacoda]

What does that look of weary resignation mean, Mr. Marwood ?   ( BTW, that would be a great gif to end a thread on). 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Malacoda

[Albert Tatlock]

15 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Some of the early Charlton UKPVs certainly give the impression that the prices were added post production:

Do you reckon these were sent over blank as regards price, leaving Miller to apply the finishing touch? They don't seem to have been consistent on whether to charge a tanner or the full whack of 9d.

[Get Marwood & I]

7 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Do you reckon these were sent over blank as regards price, leaving Miller to apply the finishing touch? They don't seem to have been consistent on whether to charge a tanner or the full whack of 9d.

Yes, I've speculated along those lines, given their own production capacity, somewhere in that forgotten Charlton thread of mine. They were actually very consistent with their Charlton price variants, Miller. One of the stronger UK related patterns that I have enjoyed piecing together over recent years. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Morning all 

I'm working through the first four cycles of the DC T&P numbering tables this morning, looking for the missing stamped issues. I'm putting a table together so we can all see which issues are currently absent.

I spotted a new 'first' in doing so, Adventure Comics #266:

Another 'six stamp' to strengthen the Nov 59 potential first UK delivery pot slot:

I'll post the update later today hopefully, along with some analysis of the contents of the UK Price Guide site.

[Get Marwood & I]

45 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I'm putting a table together so we can all see which issues are currently absent.

I've made a start, but it's one of those scenarios that proves difficult to clearly plot, once you get going:

If you study that closely, you'll see what I mean. Lots of issues around dates, stamps and absences such as:

• The earliest cover date we have is October 1959 but we only have two examples - Pat Boone #1 is stamped a 6 but Batman #127 is stamped a 9. And Pat has a dual month indicia
• The dual month vs indicia month is problematic in itself
• The 'on sale date' aspect is perhaps more relevant, but less possible to quantify 

So I'll ponder on it a bit more, I think, as to how best to present it. I really just want to try and prove what issues could exist, within the first four cycles, and then what does exist. 

One thing I've noted, as I've said before, is how unreliable the UK Price Guide site is. Apart from the very confused descriptions - the use of 'pence copies' and 'pence variants' to describe stamped cents copies - there are so many factual errors that you just can't rely on it. For example, for Rex the site says "Non-distributed in the UK":

Wrong, here it is:

For 'A Date With Judy', it says #77 is the first distributed:

Although there are no details in the main section for the relevant issues:

And here we have #73-76 with stamps:

But no #77. Got the number wrong didn't he. 

If we look at some of the romance titles, Duncan says they were distributed but provides no examples. We are expected to take his word for it that 'Girls' Love Stores' are scarce but exist as 'UK pence copies' (aaarrrgghhh)....

....when between us we can only find a single example:

What is the point of a refence site - and one that asks you to pay to join - that is based on no more than a persons recollections? I post actual verifiable data here for free. Every single thing I post about pence copies and what exists I can prove. And Duncan charges £14.99 for his recollections. That is slightly annoying.

But I'm over it!