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

[themagicrobot]

Gold distributed some MF Enterprises comics. So did T&P.

And these were the days when over the Atlantic some honest retailers were dutifully defacing the front covers of unsold comics so others could happily resell them later.

Myron's myriad magazine publications continued for years after he abandoned his comics. Many of his bonkers magazines were one-shots and I had never heard of "Gasm" magazine until a few minutes ago. There were m oreGasms than one. At least five. And some found their way to the UK going by the "price gun" prices. 

 

[Albert Tatlock]

Will we ever know the circuitous route taken by this item to our shores, where some entrepreneur who probably bought it second hand tried to sell it on at the outrageous pre-decimal price of 9d.

His clientele must have protested 'But I can get a new one for that price!'.

[Malacoda]

On 3/20/2023 at 7:07 PM, themagicrobot said:

Gold distributed some MF Enterprises comics. So did T&P.

That is quite the archive you've got there. Most impressive. Thanks for posting them. 

You have to say, only Myron Fass would have done this...

Carl Burgos: I fancy resurrecting Captain Marvel. 

Myron: Sure, why not?

Carl: Well, it did lead to an unbelievably expensive 12 year lawsuit and $400,000 out of court settlement that caused Fawcett to get out of comics altogether. 

Myron: Ah, what the Hell.....

[Malacoda]

On 3/20/2023 at 9:48 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

His clientele must have protested 'But I can get a new one for that price!'.

And, of course, it can't have been a makeweight chucked in with a T&P batch because they would have stamped it. My money is on a PX copy re-sold on a market stall.  If only those exhausted pages could talk. 

[OtherEric]

On 3/20/2023 at 12:07 PM, themagicrobot said:

 

 

Myron's myriad magazine publications continued for years after he abandoned his comics. Many of his bonkers magazines were one-shots and I had never heard of "Gasm" magazine until a few minutes ago. There were m oreGasms than one. At least five. And some found their way to the UK going by the "price gun" prices. 

 

 

One of these years I need to track down a copy of Gasm #4, assuming I can overcome the shame of buying such a seedy looking title.  I believe it contains J. O'Barr's (creator of The Crow) first comic book work.

[OtherEric]

On 3/21/2023 at 9:47 AM, Malacoda said:

That is quite the archive you've got there. Most impressive. Thanks for posting them. 

You have to say, only Myron Fass would have done this...

Carl Burgos: I fancy resurrecting Captain Marvel. 

Myron: Sure, why not?

Carl: Well, it did lead to an unbelievably expensive 12 year lawsuit and $400,000 out of court settlement that caused Fawcett to get out of comics altogether. 

Myron: Ah, what the Hell.....

It was actually showing Myron the clever opportunist.  Fawcett had let the trademark on the name lapse, so it was legitimately up for grabs.  Pity the actual comic was such a disaster.  Roy Thomas has said he vaguely recalls being told Marvel actually paid off Fass to get the name.

[Malacoda]

On 3/21/2023 at 5:07 PM, OtherEric said:

It was actually showing Myron the clever opportunist.  Fawcett had let the trademark on the name lapse, so it was legitimately up for grabs.  Pity the actual comic was such a disaster.  Roy Thomas has said he vaguely recalls being told Marvel actually paid off Fass to get the name.

Indeed, you're right. Even by Myron's standards this was an amazing piece of opportunism. Though Fawcett technically still owned the name Captain Marvel, they were bound by the 1953 settlement never to use it, which meant they were on a hiding to nothing in compelling Fass to desist ( I suspect if the android Captain Marvel had been a success they'd have sued for a slice of the pie, but as it folded in 5 issues, there was no pie to slice).  I guess DC couldn't sue him either because they had sued Fawcett on the basis of the similarity of appearance and storylines to Superman, and the Fass/Burgos CM was not like Superman.  So the case ended with Fawcett still owning the name, but unable to use it.  DC could have used it, but did not own it.  This clearly left the door open to Myron, who figured neither one of them had enough skin in the game to take it back to court (especially after round one had lasted 12 years).

According to Tucker Reed (the Slugfest book), Fass then sued Marvel the following year (as you say) when they launched Mar-Vell and settled out of court for $4,500, which I guess if Fawcett's copyright had lapsed, Fass was the legitimate owner.  Where this gets more weird is that when Bill Black launched a fanzine version of Captain Marvel in 1969 and then, in an abundance of caution, destroyed the whole print run, it was because he feared litigation from Fawcett, not Marvel or Fass or DC.    Then when DC actually licensed Captain Marvel from Fawcett in 1972, they found themselves unable to use the name because Marvel took legal action against them.  That means, by my count, there was a Captain Marvel lawsuit of one kind or another in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. 

It's interesting that Roy Thomas only vaguely recalls the Marvel / Fass thing, because he left Marvel in 81 on a specific promise from DC that he could write Shazam and the JSA.  However, when you read about how little they actually got told, it's not surprising. 

[OtherEric]

On 3/21/2023 at 10:54 AM, Malacoda said:

Indeed, you're right. Even by Myron's standards this was an amazing piece of opportunism. Though Fawcett technically still owned the name Captain Marvel, they were bound by the 1953 settlement never to use it, which meant they were on a hiding to nothing in compelling Fass to desist ( I suspect if the android Captain Marvel had been a success they'd have sued for a slice of the pie, but as it folded in 5 issues, there was no pie to slice).  I guess DC couldn't sue him either because they had sued Fawcett on the basis of the similarity of appearance and storylines to Superman, and the Fass/Burgos CM was not like Superman.  So the case ended with Fawcett still owning the name, but unable to use it.  DC could have used it, but did not own it.  This clearly left the door open to Myron, who figured neither one of them had enough skin in the game to take it back to court (especially after round one had lasted 12 years).

According to Tucker Reed (the Slugfest book), Fass then sued Marvel the following year (as you say) when they launched Mar-Vell and settled out of court for $4,500, which I guess if Fawcett's copyright had lapsed, Fass was the legitimate owner.  Where this gets more weird is that when Bill Black launched a fanzine version of Captain Marvel in 1969 and then, in an abundance of caution, destroyed the whole print run, it was because he feared litigation from Fawcett, not Marvel or Fass or DC.    Then when DC actually licensed Captain Marvel from Fawcett in 1972, they found themselves unable to use the name because Marvel took legal action against them.  That means, by my count, there was a Captain Marvel lawsuit of one kind or another in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. 

It's interesting that Roy Thomas only vaguely recalls the Marvel / Fass thing, because he left Marvel in 81 on a specific promise from DC that he could write Shazam and the JSA.  However, when you read about how little they actually got told, it's not surprising. 

I’m pretty sure Fawcett didn’t own the name at the point Fass put out his version, though.  You can’t copyright ideas, only the execution of ideas.  So the character name falls under trademark, not copyright.  And unlike copyright, trademarks can lapse if you don’t continue to use them in trade… which Fawcett couldn’t do with Captain Marvel at that point.

Just don’t ask me exactly why the name is uncopywritable, though.  I know it is, but the line between an idea and an execution of an idea has always been fuzzy around the edges for me.

[Malacoda]

On 3/21/2023 at 6:21 PM, OtherEric said:

I’m pretty sure Fawcett didn’t own the name at the point Fass put out his version, though.  You can’t copyright ideas, only the execution of ideas.  So the character name falls under trademark, not copyright.  And unlike copyright, trademarks can lapse if you don’t continue to use them in trade… which Fawcett couldn’t do with Captain Marvel at that point.

Just don’t ask me exactly why the name is uncopywritable, though.  I know it is, but the line between an idea and an execution of an idea has always been fuzzy around the edges for me.

I agree, it's pretty fuzzy.  It's probably more clear in industry, but less clear in a creative field.  So for instance, the Avengers logo and the name of the Avengers as identifying a super hero team would be a trademark, but the backstories, powers, costumes, identities of those characters as 'the Avengers' is copyright. 

 

and this probably explains how you can copyright a specific publisher's version of characters who are clearly in the public domain like Thor & Hercules. 

With Captain Marvel, Marvel clearly had no idea where they were going with him.  He started out as a Kree military officer, then you get that whole Walter Lawson secret life thing, then the Zo thing which is quickly reversed, then the nega-bands/Rick Jones era where he's basically turned into a super hero (with Roy Thomas recreating the Billy Batson/CM relationship), and then he takes centre stage in Starlin's space opera, then he's all over the place, then killed off in Marvel's first graphic novel, then Monica Rambeau takes the name, followed by 3 others and finally it comes home when Ms. Marvel becomes Captain Marvel.  During his original run, Captain Marvel is cancelled so many times and issues were so spaced out that 62 issues were spread over 11 years, with him making a quick guest appearance somewhere whenever the gap got too long.  It's really obvious that that character was kept in print to protect the trademark.   

By the way, I should say I absolutely love the first 33 issues of Captain Marvel.  It really is a hot mess. 

[themagicrobot]

If you think the Captain Marvel story is complicated.....there are whole books written about Miracleman. When they changed his name from Marvel no one asked us about the Thorpe and Porter comics. They didn't even check the backissues of FF comics.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 3/21/2023 at 4:58 PM, Malacoda said:

only those exhausted pages could talk. 

The 9d looks like crayon, in which case it could easily be made to disappear as though it had never been there, even by the most ham-fisted amateur restorer, and the mag could then pose as a straightforward cents copy never previously hawked around in Blighty.

But of course we would know better.

[Malacoda]

On 3/16/2023 at 6:36 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

And here is one that did not sell for the full price of a shilling, as shown by the stamp.

Only one thing to do, then, send it out again, with a sticker, at the reduced price of, er, a shilling.

I assume this re-stamping (20c to 20c) was US to Canadian, 

[OtherEric]

On 3/21/2023 at 7:11 PM, Malacoda said:

I assume this re-stamping (20c to 20c) was US to Canadian, 

Or a used bookstore stamping everything 20c, even if it already was

[Malacoda]

On 3/22/2023 at 2:14 AM, OtherEric said:

Or a used bookstore stamping everything 20c, even if it already was

True. Could be anything.  (I just wanted an excuse to post it because I don't think anyone has ever posted Chili on here because it was never distributed to the UK and I can't imagine, apart from the most OCD completist, anyone in the UK has a Chili collection). 

[baggsey]

As a Brit who sold all of his T&P-stamped comics back in 1984, the manager of my local comic shop here in the wilds of northern Illinois spotted these two comics recently as having T&P stamps on them, and put them aside for me, thus proving that my ramblings to him about UK pricing variants had not fallen on deaf ears.

Other than illustrating the "Coals to Newcastle" principle of two comics that made a trans-Atlantic round-trip back to the state of their printing, I do think they have rather neat stamps.

Superboy #127 is a 10d T&P "7" stamp ; Lois Lane #107 is a mere 5p 

[baggsey]

Has anyone ever seen a copy of Batman #180 (Cover May 1966) in the UK with a T&P stamp? I cannot find one on UK eBay.  According to Alan Austin, it was "scarce" in the UK due to a 1966 dock strike. The copy I eventually bought from Alan for £1 back in 1975 had no T&P stamp, but was rather crinkled due to encountering some water.

The photo you see below was taken in 1975 of my actual purchase - no T&P stamp on display.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 3/22/2023 at 4:47 PM, pompeylad said:

Has anyone ever seen a copy of Batman #180 (Cover May 1966) in the UK with a T&P stamp?

 

[baggsey]

On 3/22/2023 at 12:08 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

Excellent!

[Garystar]

On 3/22/2023 at 2:22 AM, Malacoda said:

True. Could be anything.  (I just wanted an excuse to post it because I don't think anyone has ever posted Chili on here because it was never distributed to the UK and I can't imagine, apart from the most OCD completist, anyone in the UK has a Chili collection). 

C’mon, you were expecting it weren’t you, we’re all OCD here. 

Not a UKPV or T&P to be seen, although I do have one cents double cover (cue Keneth Williams)

[Malacoda]

On 3/23/2023 at 7:42 AM, Garystar said:

C’mon, you were expecting it weren’t you, we’re all OCD here. 

Indeed. Although I prefer to call it CDO so the letters are in alphabetic order. 

Seriously, dude, the entire set including the Queen Size special?  Do you ever get that moment when you look at your house and it's just more white boxes than a Pink Floyd concert and you think 'Jesus, what have I done?'  (Asking for a friend).