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

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/6/2022 at 2:45 PM, Malacoda said:

That's clearly a discount stamp from a 2nd hand dealer. 

I like his stamp style 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/6/2022 at 2:00 PM, Malacoda said:

This page (126) is now a fantastic go-to for a streamlined history of your meticulous research. 

Repaired that for you. 

....and I still haven't posted my 100 post Charlton distribution opus yet. Can the world take it! 

[Malacoda]

On 6/6/2022 at 2:45 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Why would you want / need to know? From the point you've taken them in, checked them to paperwork, and sorted them in preparation for distribution, why would you need to refer to them - the stamp numbers - again?

Can you think of a reason?

Yes. 

But you have to think back to front. 

When I've assimilated everything here, I'll get back to writing the post that caused to me ask all this in the first place.  It won't have definitive answers, but it might put some new leaves on your tree of knowledge.  

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/6/2022 at 2:50 PM, Malacoda said:

Yes. 

But you have to think back to front. 

When I've assimilated everything here, I'll get back to writing the post that caused to me ask all this in the first place.  It won't have definitive answers, but it might put some new leaves on your tree of knowledge.  

 Hurry up.

The boys can't wait....

[Malacoda]

On 6/6/2022 at 9:41 AM, themagicrobot said:

Alan Class has said that he unloaded mountains of old returned issues onto Seaside resorts in the 1960s and 1970s but I've no reason to believe T & P had a similar policy. I think they still sold the same stock to Seaside resort newsagents but perhaps those shops turned the comics round quicker (at least in the Summer) and would restock the spinners more often than once a month. I certainly would purchase an excessive number of comics on holiday (being armed with extra funds). 

This might well be right, but given what we know about T&P re-selling the returns with discount stamps on, stripping the covers off to produce double doubles and annuals and so forth, it perhaps seems more likely that if there was an established seasonal market in seaside / holiday towns and T&P were sitting staring at a stack of returns, why would they not send them to the seaside? And if you could punt out your distressed inventory rather than your new stock, why would you squander the new stock? 

Exactly as you say, it was a perfect market: bored kids with more money than usual, parents desperate to keep the kids entertained in rainy caravan parks. Why would they not exploit that very obvious market?  

So many people (Alan Moore included I believe) have these memories of finding their first comics, or a special or old or unusual comics at seaside & holiday towns - why would that be?  If we lived in a world where kids never had comics in the normal run of things then they suddenly went on holiday and were bought a comic for the first time, then I can see how they would have a false equivalency.....they would associate comics with the seaside. But the Beano shifted 2 million copies per week in the 1950's.  The first issue of MWOM sold 500,000 copies in a single week in 1972.  Comics were a very normal part of everyday childhood, so the fact that so many people have got a memorable seaside story, I think, indicates there was special or unusual supply at the seaside / holiday town.

This might be wrong. It might just be more pocket money = more normal supply, as you say.  But if everyone knew what Alan Class was doing, why was only Alan Class doing it? In industrial towns, factories used to close for 'wakes weeks' or 'trades fortnights' where the pretty much the entire town used to go on their holidays  and holiday towns used to advertise the massive holiday markets, particularly including kids.  Holiday camps, donkey rides, candy floss, helter skelters - it was all targeted at kids / families.  In fact, it was called a bucket-and-spade holiday.   If T&P were ignoring this, they would have to have been ignoring it on purpose. 

A rare photo of Ethel on her holidays.....

 

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/6/2022 at 5:29 PM, Malacoda said:

A rare photo of Ethel on her holidays.....

 

That is Ethel's much sought-after younger sister. Ethel is below.

[themagicrobot]

Talking of/remembering holidays, in 1974 I had a working holiday at Butlins for 4 months. With a captive audience the newsagents there did an astounding amount of business and magazines and even Marvel comics were replenished daily (don't ask me how). There were other shops, one of which had new/old stock of books records and magazines. There was a stack of maybe two dozen of this new/old SkyWald magazine and hundreds of those odd Monster mags from Charlton and the like. 

In fact when September arrived and it was time to leave I had to abandon all clothes as the suitcase was full to bursting with comics and one LP. It was a struggle to get home via buses and trains. What was the LP you ask?

Edited June 6, 2022 by themagicrobot

[Get Marwood & I]

Make your mind up....

[Get Marwood & I]

Have you read this Rich?

There's a nice T&P write up in it which touches on some of our recent discussion points. 

 

1993

 @Malacoda

[Malacoda]

On 6/7/2022 at 8:55 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Have you read this Rich?

There's a nice T&P write up in it which touches on some of our recent discussion points. 

 

1993

 @Malacoda

Yes, absolutely.  Also contacted him, though he was not up for a protracted discussion.  

His stuff is pretty much all accurate, although there are some omissions or statements that lead one to some false conclusions. 

But yes, it's far and away the best first source of data about Fred and co.  

[Malacoda]

On 6/7/2022 at 8:55 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Have you read this Rich?

There's a nice T&P write up in it which touches on some of our recent discussion points. 

 

1993

 @Malacoda

Also, because Steve Chibnall interviewed Dennis Juba, not Fred himself (though Fred was still alive at that point, so a bit of a shame), it gives quite a round and unvarnished tale about the porn and so forth, which is quite essential to understanding the company.  Info about Fred's post T&P life mostly comes from Ulverscroft and it's, well, let's just say if you were a charity looking for donations, you would certainly want to mythologise your founder, wouldn't you? 

[Malacoda]

On 6/7/2022 at 12:22 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Make your mind up....

That might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

In the summer of 1964, there was a balance of payments crisis.  There was an election looming – whichever party won, it was going to have to address the balance of payments crisis and the two options were an import tax to make imported goods more expensive (and home produced goods relatively cheaper) or devalue the currency, which was the Doomsday option. 

The previous election had been on 8^th October 1959, so 7^th October 1964 was theoretically the last possible date, but the Tories were running on fumes and did not want to announce. 

It was obvious to everyone that there would be an election in September and at some point thereafter, maybe as soon as October, imports from the US would get more expensive.

A September / early Oct election and an almost immediate import tax increase would mean price increases from November.  This would be an issue for T&P who had their PV’s printed 3 months in advance.  So in July,  T&P asked Marvel to stop printing PV’s and just send cents copies, which they did.  The last PV’s being Thor 109 and TTA 61 on August 4^th. 

T&P then held off as long as they could. They carried on stamping these cents issues at the then-current price of 9d, waiting to find out how much the new price would need to be.  But as August went on, it became clear that Alec Douglas Home was going to draw it out as much as possible (in fact, the election was eventually scheduled for October 15^th, which was technically illegal).

The way the import taxes worked was that they applied to imports from the date they were ‘entered for warehousing’ not put on sale to the public, so this was a time bomb for T&P.  If they waited for the election and the new taxes to kick in, they would have at least one month’s comics, maybe 2, liable for an unknown tax increase but even if it was only a penny a comic, that would be (in today’s terms) a £60k hit for each month.

At some point in August, they made the decision and sent Ethel a new bunch of stamps.

Now, to my mind, the printing & importation still followed the order in which the titles were created.  So I would have expected Strange Tales, JIM, TOS, FF and ASM (in that order)  to all be at 9d, and then the new stamps at 10d to kick in, i.e. Sgt Fury, Avengers and X men (in that order) to be 10d. Which as far as I knew, is exactly what happened.

But what do we have here?  A copy of ASM which was stamped at 9d and then re-stamped at 10d.  If it was going to be any of them, it would be ASM.

I mean, I can’t prove it.  It may just be one that fell off Ethel’s desk and got scooped up a week later, but if it’s not, then it’s the exact moment that Dennis walked up to Ethel’s desk and ‘stop stamping, love, there’s new prices’ to which she replied ‘well, what about these ones I’m in the middle of?’ and he said ‘best do em again, love’.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/8/2022 at 3:24 AM, Malacoda said:

That might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

In the summer of 1964, there was a balance of payments crisis.  There was an election looming – whichever party won, it was going to have to address the balance of payments crisis and the two options were an import tax to make imported goods more expensive (and home produced goods relatively cheaper) or devalue the currency, which was the Doomsday option. 

The previous election had been on 8^th October 1959, so 7^th October 1964 was theoretically the last possible date, but the Tories were running on fumes and did not want to announce. 

It was obvious to everyone that there would be an election in September and at some point thereafter, maybe as soon as October, imports from the US would get more expensive.

A September / early Oct election and an almost immediate import tax increase would mean price increases from November.  This would be an issue for T&P who had their PV’s printed 3 months in advance.  So in July,  T&P asked Marvel to stop printing PV’s and just send cents copies, which they did.  The last PV’s being Thor 109 and TTA 61 on August 4^th. 

T&P then held off as long as they could. They carried on stamping these cents issues at the then-current price of 9d, waiting to find out how much the new price would need to be.  But as August went on, it became clear that Alec Douglas Home was going to draw it out as much as possible (in fact, the election was eventually scheduled for October 15^th, which was technically illegal).

The way the import taxes worked was that they applied to imports from the date they were ‘entered for warehousing’ not put on sale to the public, so this was a time bomb for T&P.  If they waited for the election and the new taxes to kick in, they would have at least one month’s comics, maybe 2, liable for an unknown tax increase but even if it was only a penny a comic, that would be (in today’s terms) a £60k hit for each month.

At some point in August, they made the decision and sent Ethel a new bunch of stamps.

Now, to my mind, the printing & importation still followed the order in which the titles were created.  So I would have expected Strange Tales, JIM, TOS, FF and ASM (in that order)  to all be at 9d, and then the new stamps at 10d to kick in, i.e. Sgt Fury, Avengers and X men (in that order) to be 10d. Which as far as I knew, is exactly what happened.

But what do we have here?  A copy of ASM which was stamped at 9d and then re-stamped at 10d.  If it was going to be any of them, it would be ASM.

I mean, I can’t prove it.  It may just be one that fell off Ethel’s desk and got scooped up a week later, but if it’s not, then it’s the exact moment that Dennis walked up to Ethel’s desk and ‘stop stamping, love, there’s new prices’ to which she replied ‘well, what about these ones I’m in the middle of?’ and he said ‘best do em again, love’.

Nicely done Rich, I knew that would get you going. It's cool when it all fits, isn't it.

Do you think Ethel liked being called love? "I'm not your love, ya cheeky bugger" I can hear her saying, suppressing her actual delight. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/7/2022 at 11:09 PM, Malacoda said:

Also, because Steve Chibnall interviewed Dennis Juba, not Fred himself (though Fred was still alive at that point, so a bit of a shame), it gives quite a round and unvarnished tale about the porn and so forth, which is quite essential to understanding the company.  Info about Fred's post T&P life mostly comes from Ulverscroft and it's, well, let's just say if you were a charity looking for donations, you would certainly want to mythologise your founder, wouldn't you? 

There's some juicy stuff in the Miller history too. And Gold's. All at it, they were, the lucky beggars 

[Malacoda]

On 6/8/2022 at 8:24 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Nicely done Rich, I knew that would get you going. It's cool when it all fits, isn't it.

I keep waiting for something to kick over that 1964 theory, but nothing has.  One thing is that when the tax increase finally came, it MIGHT actually have excluded comics (it exempted books and newspapers, but not magazines, so I assume comics were non-exempt.....it's extremely detailed about the content, format and even the weight of the exemptions, so I assume if comics were exempt, it would say so). 

That said, I think it's irrelevant because T&P had no reason to think the increase would exempt comics and the increase was put in months before the details were published, so they would have to assume the worst and act well in advance. And, of course, having established 10d as the new price for several months, unless sales crashed, there was no way they were going to reduce the price.  Before, I naively stated that the reason they kept the stamping going on so long was because the import tax was supposed to be temporary.  It was supposed to be repealed at some point but never was, so when T&P introduced temporary measures it dragged on for 11 months.  That might be right, but of course, far more likely is that they were just waiting to see what the cost-benefit impact of a 1d increase was on sales.  

Either way, worst case scenario, the import tax meant they had to act to prevent significant losses, best case scenario, they had a gold plated excuse for a price increase.  I think it's definitely the cause of the first hiatus. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Changing the subject for a second, I bought a copy of Startling Stories on eBay the other week as it had a cover stamp that fits in with some of my Miller research elsewhere. It turned up today, the wrong copy, without the stamp. Drrrr

Anyway, it turns out that the wrong copy has the most fantastic stamp of its own which, while of no use to my Miller probings, is notable for the strength with which it was applied:

 

You wouldn't mess with whoever was responsible for that, would you 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/8/2022 at 1:23 PM, Malacoda said:

Either way, worst case scenario, the import tax meant they had to act to prevent significant losses, best case scenario, they had a gold plated excuse for a price increase.  I think it's definitely the cause of the first hiatus. 

I still say it was aliens, Rich. I've been reading about them in that erroneous Startling Stories. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/8/2022 at 1:26 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Changing the subject for a second, I bought a copy of Startling Stories on eBay the other week as it had a cover stamp that fits in with some of my Miller research elsewhere. It turned up today, the wrong copy, without the stamp. Drrrr

Anyway, it turns out that the wrong copy has the most fantastic stamp of its own which, while of no use to my Miller probings, is notable for the strength with which it was applied:

 

You wouldn't mess with whoever was responsible for that, would you 

 

 

Steve, what is that roundy stamp over the triangle? 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/8/2022 at 1:37 PM, Malacoda said:

 

Steve, what is that roundy stamp over the triangle? 

Just that, Rich. A roundy stamp of black, obliterating the original shilling price underneath. 

The impression is still visible on page 30 

1952

[Malacoda]

On 6/8/2022 at 1:39 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Just that, Rich. A roundy stamp of black, obliterating the original shilling price underneath. 

The impression is still visible on page 30 

1952

There's some proper anger management going into that stamping, isn't there?