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

[LowGradeBronze]

Maybe DC just weren't keen to have a B&W magazine line. They certainly let Marvel have the market. It's yet another example of just how fertile and prolific Jolly Jack was, and this early 1970s period exemplifies that. Perhaps he had free rein at DC given his track record. DC were at least a decade behind Marvel in the late 60s. Kirby modernised them and then some! 

Just look at the average late 60s DC and it was stuffy and dull in its editorial tone, the artists were pretty boring and it felt as though nothing had changed since the 1950s. (OK they had Neal Adams on Deadman.) By contrast, Marvel in the late 60s was bursting with new titles, great new artists and those are the books in demand now. 

To get Kirby onboard was a shot in the arm for DC, helped them catch up....a bit.

https://www.cbr.com/jack-kirby-spirit-world-cancellation/

 

Edited July 21, 2023 by LowGradeBronze

[themagicrobot]

I like Kirby's art in the 1960s and in those two magazines but was underwhelmed by much of his DC work. By the time of Kamandi he was just going through the motions and relying on his assistants.

This weeks mystery. JLA 152 and 153 were both "Giant" 60 cent issues. Why did Thorpe and Porter charge more for 152 than 153 ?? 

 

[Malacoda]

On 7/21/2023 at 7:13 PM, themagicrobot said:

This weeks mystery. JLA 152 and 153 were both "Giant" 60 cent issues. Why did Thorpe and Porter charge more for 152 than 153 ?? 

I suspect there are 2 parts to the answer:  T&P didn't really exist any more.  The warehouse in Thurmaston had been subsumed under the GBD brand, then GBD had been sold off by Warner's to Wyndham's who were having a big restructure at the time and curiously deleted their own brand and put everything under the WH Allen brand.   Allen's owned GBD for such a short space of time, I suspect it was a tax write off or an asset strip. It must have been a weird mix of company cultures while it existed. Within a year (I think), Allen's sold it to Moore Harness, which is a much more logical fit. I originally assumed MH took over distributing DC when Allen/GBD shut down because every source (including Steve Chibnall and Wikipedia) says they shut it down, but in fact they sold it to Moore Harness, including the distribution rights.   There was therefore a lot of chaos in Thurmaston in 78.  

The other reason is probably because they had just gone over to PV's and were caught out by suddenly having to stamp giant size issues. It's fun to speculate that the 2 different prices were decided by 2 different managements, but I think the flip to PV's was driven by the MH takeover.   

 

[Malacoda]

Nice rare one on the bay at the moment.  Rare stamp that is, the first TOS of the first hiatus. 

 

[Malacoda]

On 7/21/2023 at 5:59 PM, LowGradeBronze said:

Maybe DC just weren't keen to have a B&W magazine line.

On 7/16/2023 at 6:36 PM, themagicrobot said:

You would have thought that DC would want a share of the growing black and white magazine market.

Not sure why those quotes are in reverse order. 

Maybe Marvel's dominance of the magazine lines was more to do with history & company culture.  Marvel was part of Magazine Management, and was always part of magazine publishing, sharing the same offices, printers and often the same talent.  DC was (and I'm happy to be corrected here), always a comic book company, and though they did westerns, detective and funnies as well as super hero fare, they weren't part of a magazine publishing empire.  

[Get Marwood & I]

 

On 7/24/2023 at 4:15 PM, Malacoda said:

Not sure why those quotes are in reverse order. 

They're quoted in the order you select them Rich, not the date order

On 7/24/2023 at 3:52 PM, Malacoda said:

Nice rare one on the bay at the moment.  Rare stamp that is, the first TOS of the first hiatus. 

Nice. The copy I used to populate my Hiatus #1 Stamp table was a 5 too.

Nice Hiatus #4 relevant page here from a Fantasy Domain fanzine that I lost and then won on the Bore. Note that 6% figure:

[Malacoda]

On 7/24/2023 at 4:28 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Nice Hiatus #4 relevant page here from a Fantasy Domain fanzine that I lost and then won on the Bore. Note that 6% figure:

These things are like gold dust, aren't they? Thanks for posting. I think I've heard that 6% figure bandied about somewhere, but only in one place.  Usually, the number quoted is between 2% and 5%.  Of course, it's probably ridiculous to look for a single percentage. The print run of Avengers, for example, was up to 450k in the late 60's, down to the 340-370k mark in the 70's, back up to 440k in the early 80's and then in freefall from the late 80's, being down to 126k by the end of volume one.  So whatever the number was, I doubt it was a consistent percentage as the number of which it was a percentage was so variable. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/24/2023 at 6:26 PM, Malacoda said:

These things are like gold dust, aren't they?

I managed to nab #1 to 7 off ebay in the week. I bid twenty quid, expecting them to go much higher, lost, then got a second chance offer. Quite good for twenty quid I thought. Lots to read. Some of them aren't online so I'm hoping for more snippets  

[Malacoda]

By the way, the most interesting thing in that article for me is that they knew as early as November 73 that the monthlies were going to stop due to the paper strike (purportedly).  It actually says that the numbers will drop to 6 in March and then possibly cease altogether, which is exactly what happened ( Thor, Cap, DD, Subby, Where Monsters Dwell and Tomb of Dracula were the 6 and as predicted, Avengers stopped that month never to return until the weekly was cancelled).  They should have put these boys on Watergate. 

[Malacoda]

On 7/24/2023 at 6:32 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I managed to nab #1 to 7 off ebay in the week. I bid twenty quid, expecting them to go much higher, lost, then got a second chance offer. Quite good for twenty quid I thought. Lots to read. Some of them aren't online so I'm hoping for more snippets

Nice.  Thanks also for posting the actual page. It's always nice to see the artefact itself. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/24/2023 at 6:26 PM, Malacoda said:

I think I've heard that 6% figure bandied about somewhere, but only in one place.  Usually, the number quoted is between 2% and 5%.  Of course, it's probably ridiculous to look for a single percentage.

There are no specific records that I'm aware of but anything from  2 to 10% would be a reasonable estimation in my view. Most UKPVs are freely available so it doesn't really matter. Some are rarer than hens teeth though, and not always the obvious early ones. And it likely differed by publisher. Grade is a thing of course, too. The only thing that really matters is what is actually out there. It may have been 10% back in the day but if they all went in the bin......

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/24/2023 at 6:36 PM, Malacoda said:

By the way, the most interesting thing in that article for me is that they knew as early as November 73 that the monthlies were going to stop due to the paper strike (purportedly).  It actually says that the numbers will drop to 6 in March and then possibly cease altogether, which is exactly what happened ( Thor, Cap, DD, Subby, Where Monsters Dwell and Tomb of Dracula were the 6 and as predicted, Avengers stopped that month never to return until the weekly was cancelled).  They should have put these boys on Watergate. 

Yes, I noticed that too.

You'll like this Rich 

[Malacoda]

On 7/24/2023 at 7:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

You'll like this Rich 

Indeed I do. When is this dated, please?  It's hard to tell if this person has no idea that the DC's are returns and the Marvels are straight off the press or if they know that and have done the maths. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/24/2023 at 7:11 PM, Malacoda said:

Indeed I do. When is this dated, please?  It's hard to tell if this person has no idea that the DC's are returns and the Marvels are straight off the press or if they know that and have done the maths. 

July 72

[themagicrobot]

Quote

These things are like gold dust, aren't they? Thanks for posting. I think I've heard that 6% figure bandied about somewhere, but only in one place.  Usually, the number quoted is between 2% and 5%.

It is bound to be a (small) percentage of the total that were printed but I doubt we will ever know unless someone finds old Thorpe and Porter paperwork in an attic. Surely T&P would have specified either a precise x number of each of the individual titles (more of some, less of others) or x number of comics with a particular month on the cover. And as once upon a time 50% of comics  printed were returned unsold does that mean for some titles the UK had 12% arriving here compared to the 100% of sold issues in the States. And some of those returns might have belatedly ended up here increasing our percentage. Marvels and DCs from the 1960s seem to have survived in greater numbers here in the UK  than our own Beanos and Lions with their newsprint covers. They often ended up along with yesterdays newspapers being used to light coal fires way back when I lived in a house with no central heating.

PS: Have recently unearthed a couple of Fantasy Unlimited fanzines from 1975 which I plan to read tomorrow in the sunshine (if it ever stops raining). 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/24/2023 at 7:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Yes, I noticed that too.

You'll like this Rich 

Well, no one asked the obvious question so here it is:

 

Did anyone take that offer up, I wonder?

It's weird reading these historic fanzines in a way. Fifty years old, and heralding 'new' things that are old hat to us now. One issue teases F.O.O.M. but doesn't say what it stands for. Another, the Reflections Spidey record.

If only....

 

 

 

 

[themagicrobot]

In Fantasy Unlimited 25 April 1975 in the letters page someone writes:-

"Why are Thorpe and Porter distributing more recent DCs than they used to, with cover dates current instead of 3 months behind?"

Alan replies:-

"They now receive "run-ons", copies especially printed for the UK instead of unsold issues". 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/24/2023 at 7:22 PM, themagicrobot said:

It is bound to be a (small) percentage of the total that were printed but I doubt we will ever know unless someone finds old Thorpe and Porter paperwork in an attic. Surely T&P would have specified either a precise x number of each of the individual titles (more of some, less of others) or x number of comics with a particular month on the cover. And as once upon a time 50% of comics  printed were returned unsold does that mean for some titles the UK had 12% arriving here compared to the 100% of sold issues in the States. And some of those returns might have belatedly ended up here increasing our percentage. Marvels and DCs from the 1960s seem to have survived in greater numbers here in the UK  than our own Beanos and Lions with their newsprint covers. They often ended up along with yesterdays newspapers being used to light coal fires way back when I lived in a house with no central heating.

PS: Have recently unearthed a couple of Fantasy Unlimited fanzines from 1975 which I plan to read tomorrow in the sunshine (if it ever stops raining). 

One issue of FD notes that ASM has sales of 290K in the US, and Spider-Man Comics Weekly had sales of 250K. If UK comic collectors read ASM in the same volume, we'd need considerably more than 2-6% of the print run, wouldn't we.

On 7/24/2023 at 7:29 PM, themagicrobot said:

In Fantasy Unlimited 25 April 1975 in the letters page someone writes:-

"Why are Thorpe and Porter distributing more recent DCs than they used to, with cover dates current instead of 3 months behind?"

Alan replies:-

"They now receive "run-ons", copies especially printed for the UK instead of unsold issues". 

Little snippet gold mines aren't they, these fanzines 

[themagicrobot]

Off topic but here's a nice colour cover to break up the text. Amazing Spider-Man No 181 and No 33 are my two favouites of that title. I like the altered cover for our No 300.

 

[LowGradeBronze]

On 7/24/2023 at 4:28 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

They're quoted in the order you select them Rich, not the date order

Nice. The copy I used to populate my Hiatus #1 Stamp table was a 5 too.

Nice Hiatus #4 relevant page here from a Fantasy Domain fanzine that I lost and then won on the Bore. Note that 6% figure:

I'm glad you went off topic just then Robot! Now, if you collected together in a big box all the comics from the hiatuses (or whatever the plural of hiatus is,) then strained yourself picking it up, would you get a hiatus-hiatus-hernia?