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

[themagicrobot]

So just to confirm regarding this DC No Subsciptions thing. The July 1968 Lois Lane 84 offers subscriptions within the indicia. The August 1968 Lois Lane 85 states No Subscriptions. So, accepting that comics were released months before their cover dates at some point in the summer of that year, if people were looking at an issue a few months old did DC honour a request for a subscription or return people's money? Or did subscriptions account for such a minute amount of the sales that it was neither here nor there.

And, repeating myself again, why continue talking about where second class postage was paid in future issues if the only point of second class postage was regarding (now non-existent) subscriptions???

PS: Every DC comic I've looked through this week dated 1969 and 1970 has No Subscriptions written in the indicia and no sign of the once-familiar adverts offering subscriptions within unless someone with even more ancient old comics in front of them than me can find some that is...... Dunno why it has taken me 50 years to notice this though??

PPS: We need someone with a full run of some DC title to look at the Statement of Ownership thingy for 1969, 1970,1971. How many Subscriptions are listed? Does that figure reduce to zero over those few years?

 

Edited April 14, 2023 by themagicrobot

[OtherEric]

@themagicrobot: I’ve got the required full run of Adventure in the required 68-73 era.  Will try to check this afternoon 

[themagicrobot]

 

@OtherEric That would be fab. This afternoon? This afternoon has been and gone here. It is 8pm UK time. Isn't time travel great. When my uncle regularly flew on Concorde to NY he would arrive there an hour before he had left London.

[OtherEric]

On 4/14/2023 at 12:03 PM, themagicrobot said:

 

@OtherEric That would be fab. This afternoon? This afternoon has been and gone here. It is 8pm UK time. Isn't time travel great. When my uncle regularly flew on Concorde to NY he would arrive there an hour before he had left London.

I’m on the west coast of the US, it was actually still morning (barely) when I typed that

[Malacoda]

On 4/14/2023 at 7:16 PM, themagicrobot said:

Or did subscriptions account for such a minute amount of the sales that it was neither here nor there.

You kind of feel like it's this, don't you?  And also that they just basically didn't give a toss about them. They don't seem to have done anything to promote, encourage or even facilitate subscriptions. 

[Malacoda]

On 4/14/2023 at 7:16 PM, themagicrobot said:

And, repeating myself again, why continue talking about where second class postage was paid in future issues if the only point of second class postage was regarding (now non-existent) subscriptions???

I have a feeling about this.  Stay with me for a moment....

I used to read the stories (prose stories) in the old pre-hero Marvels. Which were rubbish.  I always assumed that either they assumed their readership were very young / not very literate or that they were just space fillers or, most likely, it was cheaper to print a page of writing than a 4 colour illustrated page.  Then I read an interview with Stan where he explained it.  He said that if they printed only comic strips they were classed as a comic book and subject to a particular level of tax, whereas if their publication included X amount of prose, it was classed as a magazine and subject to lower tax.  Hence, any old drivel would do, it was a tax dodge. 

I wonder if, by having subscriptions for the comics, it enabled them to use second class mail for all kinds of things. Maybe that was the point of the Merry Marvel Marching Society.....you could market direct to people at cheap bulk posting rates and technically they had requested it because they were part of the club. 

I can't see why else Marvel DC and all the others bothered to have subscriptions, have all the aggro of maintaining a separate department, delivering loads to the post office or having them collected, opening all those letters, cashing all the two dollar cheques when it was such a tiny part of the business, which they clearly put no effort or marketing behind.  It's incredible that just once in a blue moon you'd get something like one of those Marvel subscription inserts. Why wasn't there a subscription form in every issue of every comic? Instead of virtually none of them. Unless running the subscriptions department was a loss leader for something else and actually, the last thing they wanted was more subscriptions.  I mean, when you consider the burndown, the millions of comics printed that were destined for the pulper the moment they left the presses, you'd think a 100% guaranteed sale on subscription would have been pure gold, especially for DC.  Unless it wasn't worth doing in and of itself, and the real reason for it was something less visible. 

[LowGradeBronze]

And there we have an excellent summary, over your last few posts @Malacoda I have several more hats to hand just in case. (I'm putting the sombrero with corks to the end of the line. Might start with the fedora or the homburg.)

Edited April 14, 2023 by LowGradeBronze

[themagicrobot]

How many Marvel comics found their way to South Africa?

I had a distant relative there who knew all about Spider-Man

Perhaps far less comics got pulped than you think

Perhaps we received more than 10% of the print run in the UK

I have heard tales of whole States in the USA that never ever saw a Charlton comic

All those unsold Charltons probably came to the UK certainly in the 1970s when I saw them everywhere 

 

 

[Albert Tatlock]

I have quizzed Mr Google regarding the Postal Act of 1879, and he has informed me thusly:

The primary purpose of the 1879 Postal Act, or Mail Classification Act, was to create a distinction between second and third class mail. Material deemed second class could be sent at a cheaper rate of two cents per pound. To qualify, a periodical needed to be numbered and printed at least four times a year, printed in a known location, printed without a bound cover and have a legitimate list of subscribers, among other requirements.

The 1879 act was simply meant to clarify and classify what belonged in the four classes of domestic mail. The U.S. Postal Service hoped it would bring additional revenue by limiting second class mail to periodicals. Beyond the cost issues, the act had a more significant effect: By lowering postage for periodicals, circulation in the magazine and newspaper industries exploded, helping spur changes in marketing and communications, as well as society overall. However, second class quickly became the fastest growing mail segment, eclipsing first class, and it soon became a burden on the postal service. To make matters worse the postal service also suspected that much of the mail being sent as second class did not qualify for the rate.

So Lois Lane became a burden not only on the Caped Kryptonian, but also on Uncle Sam's revenue-raising efforts. This at a time when the Viet Cong had decided to wage a war of attrition on the decadent Western Imperialistic publications such as those we have been seduced by.  No wonder the powers-that-be decided to do away with her subscribers.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Albert Tatlock
add 1 word

[Malacoda]

On 4/14/2023 at 9:39 PM, LowGradeBronze said:

And there we have an excellent summary, over your last few posts @Malacoda I have several more hats to hand just in case. (I'm putting the sombrero with corks to the end of the line. Might start with the fedora or the homburg.)

I think we're all going to be munching our millinery before this is over. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Sorry guys, I've been a bit tied up. The last few pages have been quite interesting. I've only scanned them, and sorry if I've missed the point, but I don't think you will find any variants here, that is, copies of the same comic with differing indicias. I'm confident from my own searching down the years that there will be no variant guts for Marvel, as a result of a subscription issue.

I've seen Marvel subscriptions discussed on the boards - just do a search for the words 'Marvel' and 'subscription' and you'll find them, often linked to Whitman / newsstand discussions. Here is just one:

https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/514390-marvel-multi-packs-question/#comment-12592259

The general consensus from what I have read seems to be that subscriptions copies are 'not a thing', volume-wise.

Here are two SoOs from Action Comics (click images to enlarge). They're quite easy to find if you search Mycomicshop (who list SoOs) and then use one of the free read online sites:

Action #398 (Mar 1971):

 

 

Action #410 (Mar 1972):

  

@Malacoda Rich, you should be able to piece together what you're looking for using the above website combinations - no need to own the books - and present some finding based on a larger population result. As I say, I don't think you'll find any variant indicias - they'll likely be the same for news, direct, subscription etc - but you may be able to establish a pattern of legal indicia wording that links to other distribution related matters. Good luck 

Oh, and make sure it's a decent one Richmond, your next update. Rubbish 1,000th posts are not allowed in my pence threads 

[LowGradeBronze]

Hopefully this link sheds some useful light on the DC subscription debate (or is at least of some interest). When he refers to the comics having a number, he means on the subscription ad itself. Action Comics is 1 etc.

https://michaelgcurry.com/2015/07/06/dc-comics-right-in-your-mailbox/

Edited April 15, 2023 by LowGradeBronze

[Malacoda]

On 4/15/2023 at 8:35 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Oh, and make sure it's a decent one Richmond, your next update. Rubbish 1,000th posts are not allowed in my pence threads 

 

I do actually have quite a sizeable one (Mrs) ready to go, but, with your indulgence,  I think I’ll celebrate my 1,000th post with a little reflection. 

In the last 3 years of research, there have been some moments in my adventures which have recurred often enough for me to name them (no doubt you've all experienced the same, you're just not so weird as to actually name them). 

I call one the Kunte Kinte moment – when 2 separate chains of evidence suddenly meet each other coming the other way, you find the fact or event that links them and each corroborates the other.  Obviously, this is named for the Roots moment when, having traced his American family all the way back to 1767, Alex Haley goes to Africa and after listening to endless hours of oral history from the year dot, suddenly arrives back at the very first details that were known about his ancestor.

 

Then there’s pretty much the opposite, which I call the Michael moment – when the complete and utter absence of something itself is indicative of an issue in the narrative (“Logically speaking, this should be X, but if it was, then why is there no trace of it? Something else must have been going on”). I named them for this moment: 

 
But more obliquely, I have jasmine moments (I appreciate that ‘Jasmine Moments’ sounds like the sort of entrepreneurial young lady who wants to be your internet girlfriend, but it’s not). 

When my mum was little, her grandmother always loved the smell of Jasmine because when she was little (we’re back in the 19th century now), she lived in a house where wild jasmine grew directly across the road and the smell was heavenly to her.  Many years later, my mum got interested in genealogy and tracked down as much of the family tree as possible.  The area where her grandmother had lived was completely gone: buildings, roads, street names, absolutely nothing left.  However, using Victorian maps, old photos from the years between the wars, old company records and triangulating by the geography that can’t change (e.g. the river) and the landmarks that still existed, she worked out where she thought the old roads and buildings must have been, where my great-grandmother’s street must have been and thus where her house must have been.  She was convinced she’d got it right, but of course, couldn’t prove it.  As she crossed the street to leave, she suddenly got an overpowering scent of jasmine and when she looked around, across the street, right where it needed to be, climbing up the last remaining Victorian building, was an ancient wild jasmine plant. 

Occasionally, in research I get these moments that don’t prove anything but it’s weirdly joyful when they crop up.  When I track down people involved with T&P or World or in some way connected to the distribution of comics in the 60’s and 70’s, they all have memories to share, but usually they are... of limited use, shall we say.  It’s like Winston Smith talking to the old boy in the pub in 1984. People remember nothing about T&P itself, but they remember the bakery round the corner vividly, nothing about distribution but everything about the lissom young ladies who used to tie the boxes up.

In that regard, I chatted to a guy at one point who only had 3 memories of T&P, one of which was of the chatty, lively girls in dispatch and how they showed him how to tie up the boxes. He particularly remembered that boxes that were prepared for the reps to take out were not, as you’d imagine, sealed down with gaffer tape, duct tape, packing tape or 1960’s equivalent, but tied up with twine using a distinctive special knot which the Ethels had to teach him and he then tied up the boxes. 

Much later, I got chatting to a guy who used to work in his father-in-law’s newsagent in the early 60’s.  One of his jobs was to take all of the outgoing comics out of the rack and pack them up ready for sending back to Leicester. This startled me as I thought the T&P reps themselves came and switched out the racks, but no, he did it.  He did however confirm that it was a T&P rep who came to collect the box of returns and the thing he remembered most distinctly was that boxes of new comics were not sealed down as you’d expect but tied up in a distinctive fashion with a type of white twine.

The joy of this was that the first chap worked there in the summer of 1962 which was the same time that the second guy worked in the newsagents. It proves nothing, but it amazes me that, 61 years later, one of these guys almost certainly tied up the exact boxes which the other one untied at the other end.  And they’re both still with us and both remember the boxes and, quite ridiculously, they very specifically remember the string the boxes were tied with.  Jasmine moment!
 

OK, onto my next 1,000 posts…..
 

 

 

[Malacoda]

On 4/15/2023 at 8:35 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Sorry guys, I've been a bit tied up.

On 4/15/2023 at 8:35 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

The last few pages have been quite interesting. I've only scanned them, and sorry if I've missed the point, but I don't think you will find any variants here, that is, copies of the same comic with differing indicias.

I don't think any of us really thought we'd stumbled onto a new variant, or if so certainly not one that was likely to have all those little quants reprogramming their key issue apps.  It did however occur to me that, given that no one wanted to buy newsstand issues for years, so now they're rare = collectable, if there was some way of proving an issue was a subscription issue, they'd probably be worth a fortune.  

Of course, you could fake them, but how would you simulate that crease down the front? 

.....hey, hang on a sec...... 

 

[Malacoda]

On 4/15/2023 at 8:35 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

The general consensus from what I have read seems to be that subscriptions copies are 'not a thing'.

No, I agree.  I was interested because if the subscription issues had not had the product codes on them (like direct editions originally didn't) it would have proved or at least suggested something very interesting.  As it is, Eric & Kevin have demonstrated they were newsstand copies which is exactly what I expected, but you have to check these things out, don't you? 

That led to an interesting observation from the Robot that DC seem to have ceased to offer subscriptions for (what turned out to be) a period of several years, which was a bit of a surprise and that led to a bit of a jam session about subscriptions.  

Many thanks for the ownership statements.  Once again, I feel like those numbers, whilst systemically inaccurate, cannot possibly be made up because they're so odd. If you were making up numbers to keep the post office quiet would you invent such eyebrow-raising numbers?  If you were trying to reassure the post office that you were not deceitfully exploiting the advantage of cheap mail, would you post numbers so suspiciously low?  Furthermore, whilst the main circulation numbers could be anything, the subscription numbers would have to tally to receipts from the post office of record, charges from Sparta, costs in DC's accounts submitted to the IRS etc.  I have to kind of believe those numbers.  

  

[Malacoda]

On 4/15/2023 at 8:39 AM, LowGradeBronze said:

Hopefully this link sheds some useful light on the DC subscription debate (or is at least of some interest). When he refers to the comics having a number, he means on the subscription ad itself. Action Comics is 1 etc.

https://michaelgcurry.com/2015/07/06/dc-comics-right-in-your-mailbox/

This guy is definitely one of us.  

I wonder if the reason some of them got removed from subscription was just purely low numbers. Maybe the threshold for being worth the aggro of subscriptions was super low, but not zero.  Maybe that's why the new explosion titles never got subs - they never got past a probationary period before they got cancelled.  Or maybe you have to register a title with the post office and apply for 2nd class postage, so nothing is on subscription in the first few months? (Though you'd imagine they'd do that well in advance). 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Malacoda

[Albert Tatlock]

On 4/15/2023 at 5:40 PM, Malacoda said:

He did however confirm that it was a T&P rep who came to collect the box of returns and the thing he remembered most distinctly was that boxes of new comics were not sealed down as you’d expect but tied up in a distinctive fashion with a type of white twine.

I recall that in one of my local newsagents, the newly-arrived batch of comics was not in a box, but in a little stack tied up with string, with grey cardboard top and bottom. The cardboard almost, but not quite protected the mags from being bitten into by the twine or string.

That, however, was a small shop, and the bundle of comics numbered only a few dozen at most.

Maybe larger outlets were deemed worthy of the expense of a box.

[Malacoda]

On 4/15/2023 at 9:16 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I recall that in one of my local newsagents, the newly-arrived batch of comics was not in a box, but in a little stack tied up with string, with grey cardboard top and bottom. The cardboard almost, but not quite protected the mags from being bitten into by the twine or string.

That, however, was a small shop, and the bundle of comics numbered only a few dozen at most.

Maybe larger outlets were deemed worthy of the expense of a box.

Actually, the newsagent guy referred to them as 'parcels' so I think you're right.  

[Malacoda]

From the other end of time, last issue of the Avengers with a 1996 style subscription envelope.  Note the stamp is the same verbiage as the indicia. 

Edited April 16, 2023 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

On 4/15/2023 at 8:35 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Action #410 (Mar 1972):

  

@Malacoda

I have to say, I love this letters page.  

Note that there are two letters from Elmont, NY.   Based on population, the chances of getting one letter from Elmont would 9,160 to 1 against and, out of the 3 letters, two of them are from the same tiny place.  Odds against that? So where is it?  Next door to Flushing, NY.  And what's in Flushing?  DC's offices. 

So who are these guys?  Gerard Triano, whom they address as Gerry, who says in that very letter that he is always writing letters to DC and having them published (he went on to a career in publishing)  - and Bob Rozakis, who, the following year begins a 25 year career at DC on the strength of the fact that he was always writing letters to them.  And they both live next door to the DC office.  Do you get the impression that DC was a bit short of fan mail?  In his letter, Gerry Triano actually bemoans the fact that they keep printing his letters and wants to hear more from....well, anyone else at all, really. 

 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Malacoda