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

[Get Marwood & I]

16 hours ago, Malacoda said:

Clearly, I've overplayed my hand with the suspense on this one....

Rich, lots to read when you're back - I just want to say how much I love what you're doing, and appreciate all the research and thoughts you're sharing. It takes time to do all this, and we sometimes forget the well dones. So well done mate 

I'm off as usual on Friday, so if you do reply later, I'll be back at the weekend.....

[Garystar]

Yes in 1973 and onwards a months worth came at once, ALL January cover dated comics arrived in January irrespective of release dates. 

[Get Marwood & I]

27 minutes ago, Garystar said:

Yes in 1973 and onwards a months worth came at once, ALL January cover dated comics arrived in January irrespective of release dates. 

...which implies that they were stored somewhere, doesn't it, if they were printed over a period of a month in the US 

[themagicrobot]

I used to keep a note of what comics I bought and when back in the day. Wish I'd kept that book now as it would have been useful for this thread. What I can say with confidence is that when I visited my local newsagents daily in the 1960s "new" DCs appearing on the spinner always had months-old dates. By the 1970s the months were pretty well in synch. 

I do recall coming home from College for Easter 1975 and buying this Superboy/Legion 207 (cover dated March 1975 but March/April inside) at the station and reading it on the train. Easter Sunday was March 30th that year.

PS: And it seems quite a reasonable assumption that all those printed/not distributed comics as per the Statementof Ownership were ideal candidates to be sold onwards to the UK (and other countries too ?!?) Once they had figures of how many copies of a title were selling surely they would amend future production figures? The fact that they didn't showed they had a use for those extra copies.

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by themagicrobot

[Get Marwood & I]

1 minute ago, themagicrobot said:

PS: And it seems quite a reasonable assumption that all those printed/not distributed comics as per the Statementof Ownership were ideal candidates to be sold onwards to the UK (and other countries too ?!?) Once they had figures of how many copies of a title were selling surely they would amend future production figures? The fact that they didn't showed they had a use for those extra copies.

I've never seen a satisfactory explanation for overprinting to that scale, have you?

Trouble is, as ever, if the overprinted copies were what was sent here, and not the unsold US shop returns, then we wouldn't see stamped copies with US arrival dates in the UK - and we do. 

There's always a fly isn't there... 

P.S. Superboy #207 any good was it? And what was the colossal mistake?

[themagicrobot]

Can't recall the plot as I haven't read it since. The reason I remember the comic so specifically is that I was a big fan of Mike Grell artwork then and spent some of the holidays trying to copy his style for a (ultimately aborted) Fanzine that I and two friends were working on. The next year Motorbikes and Cars took up my spare cash and comics (apart from Warrens) began to take a back seat.

[Get Marwood & I]

Just back from the usual Friday jaunt, expecting a flood of posts, and there's nothing doing. 

@Malacoda Rich, you watching football or drawing some charts for us? 

 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 1:55 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Rich, lots to read when you're back - I just want to say how much I love what you're doing, and appreciate all the research and thoughts you're sharing. It takes time to do all this, and we sometimes forget the well dones. So well done mate 

I'm off as usual on Friday, so if you do reply later, I'll be back at the weekend.....

Thanks. I'm still nowhere on the scale of your years of research & achievement but it's fun taking a swing at it.  Also, I have noticed that it makes for a far better dialogue to state wild conjecture with ill-advised certainty and have you guys knee-cap me.  That last page was pure gold. Right, better see if I can salvage anything from the tatters of that last one....

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 8:18 AM, Garystar said:

Couple of thoughts;

UK introduced duel and decimal pricing long before decimalisation. The 5p coin was introduced in 1968 so just because a product is marked 5p doesn’t necessarily mean it was first on sale post February 1971.

Indeed.  It's very interesting that T&P had a dual 1/- and 5p stamp created, but only used it for one month, and then went over to decimal stamps 5 months ahead of the decimal deadline.  You'd think it would have been a great advantage to have both prices on things in late '70 early '71. And they had it. So why didn't they use it?  

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 8:18 AM, Garystar said:

Do we know that returns were returns from shops? Is it possible that some/most/all returns were from distribution warehouses that didn’t even make it to retail outlets? If this were so it would potentially speed up the journey to UK.

This question of where (and it must have been multiple points) a return was returned from is key.  There were presumably loads that never got distributed from Sparta, some that stopped at regional distribution centres, some that stopped at local wholesalers, and maybe some that made it to the newsvendors that never actually made it onto to newsstand (with limited display space, and potential bad weather,  you'd only put one of each one out, I assume).  I need to do more research on this. 

[Garystar]

It proves nothing but I can only add whenever I found T&P Marvels (they were several years old by then) they were always as new condition - they didn’t look like they’d travelled back and forth across America and sat in a USA spinner for weeks. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:17 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

• The guts are printed en masse
• The UKPV covers are printed at some point in the cover run - first, last, who knows
• The UKPV covers would have been placed somewhere separate to the US 

Each press at Sparta was capable of printing 32 page comics at a rate of 11 per second.  The covers were printed by a separate process in huge runs together (actually different publishers printed together.....imagine!).  I agree the UKPV's were clearly a completely separate run but Sparta were capable of printing a month's worth of Marvel comics (2.6m) in 3 days and nights (and they ran day and night) on one press.  Again, I need to see all this in more & verified detail, but I think asking whether the PV covers were printed first or last is like asking if they were printed in the morning or the afternoon. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:17 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

• The comics come off. Does the client come and collect / arrange to have them collected immediately? Or to a frequency? Do they sit in a warehouse for a while?

The whole point of containerisation is a door-to-door system without unloading in warehouses, so they would sit on the docks for a period of time as the containers were craned out of the cargo hull, but then they'd be taken straight onwards without being unloaded. I don't know if they had fully gone onto containerisation by this point.  The ballast thing suggests not to me.  As you say, a lot of unknowns here. 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Malacoda said:

Thanks. I'm still nowhere on the scale of your years of research & achievement but it's fun taking a swing at it.  Also, I have noticed that it makes for a far better dialogue to state wild conjecture with ill-advised certainty and have you guys knee-cap me.  That last page was pure gold. Right, better see if I can salvage anything from the tatters of that last one....

This is how we get to the truth Rich - smashing each others wild conjecture to bits 

Seriously, you're leading the field with the who did what, when research. 

58 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

Indeed.  It's very interesting that T&P had a dual 1/- and 5p stamp created, but only used it for one month, and then went over to decimal stamps 5 months ahead of the decimal deadline.  You'd think it would have been a great advantage to have both prices on things in late '70 early '71. And they had it. So why didn't they use it?  

Same reason it took them years to twig dual printed pricing when Charlton had been at it for years? Stupidity. 

3 minutes ago, Garystar said:

It proves nothing but I can only add whenever I found T&P Marvels (they were several years old by then) they were always as new condition - they didn’t look like they’d travelled back and forth across America and sat in a USA spinner for weeks. 

It's good info though, supportive of the conclusion the books weren't second hand, if that's where we end up.

1 minute ago, Malacoda said:

Each press at Sparta was capable of printing 32 page comics at a rate of 11 per second.  The covers were printed by a separate process in huge runs together (actually different publishers printed together.....imagine!).  I agree the UKPV's were clearly a completely separate run but Sparta were capable of printing a month's worth of Marvel comics (2.6m) in 3 days and nights (and they ran day and night) on one press.  Again, I need to see all this in more & verified detail, but I think asking whether the PV covers were printed first or last is like asking if they were printed in the morning or the afternoon. 

Indeed. It's never bothered me personally, and I've always thought the order likely changed. All part of the same run at the end of the day. Some get hung up on it though.

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:17 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

• They are loaded up and driven to their respective destinations - hubs or direct?

In both cases, I'm sure they were driven to the warehouses in Leicester and Manchester respectively.  I know that from World (Pemberton's)  they were sent to the Circulation Dept which was its own warehouse directly in the container lorries where they were checked against the manifest, batched up and dispatched.  I think we know the same is true of T&P (unless every newsagent in the country had his own set of T&P stamps).  

From there they were sent to local wholesalers who in turn distributed them with other publications to the newsagents. 

On the US side, part of WCP's strength with the pool shipping was that because they printed just about everything and sent it all out en masse, it made life really easy for the local wholesalers half of whose job was done for them. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:17 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

The T&P Stamped Copies

The UKPVs were contractual, made to UK order. The (to be) stamped cents copies weren't made to UK order. My understanding, is that the printers overprinted by a huge margin. The 'statements of ownership' tell us that. I still do not have a satisfactory answer to the question "why would a printer routinely print hundreds of thousands of comics every month when sales figures consistently indicated that only half of them would sell"?

 

The statements of ownership present their own box of delights.  I wouldn’t get too hung up on the specific numbers, especially for Charlton. Didn’t Giordano specifically say they just made them up?  Either they're nonsense (in which case, surely it's a bit iffy supplying nonsense circulation data to the post office when then you have to reconcile it to the IRS?) or else they're broadly correct, in which case, as you say, what the Hell were they doing printing & shipping hundreds of thousands comics that they knew (by that point) were never going to sell? However, if you look at, for example ASM for the late 60's, the sales figures are 62% - 67% which is kind of consistent with numbers we've heard elsewhere. So maybe, at least for Marvel, they were true?

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:17 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I don't think the UKPVs were waiting at all. They were printed and sent on their way and it took 3 months for them to be in the UK on sale. But I do think that the returns from the US would have had their covers removed - there is evidence that that is the way the sellers got their money back. So those defaced books couldn't be used for the UK market. Much more likely is the possibility that the overprinted cents stock was used.

I agree. I think I'm using Returns in the Statement of Ownership sense, i.e anything that wasn't sold, which doesn't necessarily mean it spent 2 months soaked in the snow at Mort's News Stand in Poughkeepsie before it was squelched back to Sparta.  Also, the Statements of Ownership define returns as 'copies not distributed' which is quite a telling phrase, isn't it?  Have you ever noticed how, when wholesalers turn up a whole box of Spider Woman #1 or whatever, it's always called a 'warehouse find'. I think that's exactly what it is. 

Also, to Gary's point, if these were actually returns from newsstands there is no way that so many of them would be in the condition they seem to have arrived in. Some these are still in beautiful condition now and really do not look like they spent a month being mauled on a spinner rack in the US before spending another month of sticky fingers here in the UK. 

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

I agree. I think I'm using Returns in the Statement of Ownership sense, i.e anything that wasn't sold, which doesn't necessarily mean it spent 2 months soaked in the snow at Mort's News Stand in Poughkeepsie before it was squelched back to Sparta.  Also, the Statements of Ownership define returns as 'copies not distributed' which is quite a telling phrase, isn't it?  Have you ever noticed how, when wholesalers turn up a whole box of Spider Woman #1 or whatever, it's always called a 'warehouse find'. I think that's exactly what it is. 

Also, to Gary's point, if these were actually returns from newsstands there is no way that so many of them would be in the condition they seem to have arrived in. Some these are still in beautiful condition now and really do not look like they spent a month being mauled on a spinner rack in the US before spending another month of sticky fingers here in the UK. 

Why do we see so many stamped cents copies with US shop arrival dates then? That indicates that shop returns were involved, if only in part. 

[Malacoda]

4 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Why do we see so many stamped cents copies with US shop arrival dates then? That indicates that shop returns were involved, if only in part. 

But are they US shop (i.e. retailers) stamps, or are regional or local wholesalers? 

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, Malacoda said:

But are they US shop (i.e. retailers) stamps, or are regional or local wholesalers? 

Dunno. Shops I would've thought. The date is meaningless otherwise, isn't it? And why send stock to a local wholesaler if he isn't going to send them to his shops to try and sell? Does he send them back, unused, for you to then sell to the UK?