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

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 11:19 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'm not trying to be unkind mate - you did say in our PMs that you prefer robust challenge!

No, this is brilliant. I'm loving this.   I've just got an electrician, a flooring guy and 2 blokes pouring concrete (some of it where it's meant to be) at the mo so slow to respond.  I whacked out the theory last night because I knew I wouldn't have time for the next few days, but failed to consider the ensuing bunfight (which is great). 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 1:50 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Rich, I'm going to hold fire posting until you give me the nod that you've finished answering my posts

That's cool.  The spark keeps killing my internet connection. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 10:51 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

In your Product Identifier / New Container Shipping model, what exactly is different? There would have been a quoted cost associated with the container shipping. Why did the distributor of DC need to have five pence copies printed to establish E2E costs, comparative to their ongoing returns model?

It's not having the price printed on them or even what that price is.  It's that moving from returns to newly printed copies changes everything:  instead of getting a random selection of leftovers, T&P could order what they wanted, the ordering window changes because you're getting them hot off the presses, not 3 to 6 months later, and sometimes in the wrong order, which changes your distribution because suddenly your reps are delivering the next month's comics every month instead of the DC lottery,  the cost of the comics changes, because they're new prints not returns, the container shipping changes the whole schedule of importing, everything about it, the length of journeys,  the tracking, the cost and process of importation, even down to which port they arrive at and how they're transported from it, and completely changes the cost of shipping.  

Exactly everything is different.  

Everybody's dead, Dave. They're all dead. Everybody's dead. Dave. 

But some of that was going to change anyway.  The key thing is they're new prints not returns and the changes that ensue from that. 

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 10:51 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

And who were these people at this stage, that existed to solicit the new DC shipping experiment, but then were not around to establish whether it worked? Why did Marvel go one way (UKPVs only) post PI and DC the other (stamped returns)? If the costs were wildly different, was one of them an idiot?

I'm booking this one for the moment, I'll come back to it.  

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 11:19 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

One other thought, it's clear the the DC UKPVs weren't a market test of pricing, because the stamped copies were already 5p. So they weren't testing a higher price. Charlton did 15c variants for 2 cover months. So there was no time to get the data in, surely, as you noted in your posts above re these DCs.

Right, but I think that supports my contention.  There was no time to get sales results in. It was operational test with implications for the cost base. I think it would have had a big impact on T&P's sales if they had had regular consistent monthly supplies and I think, as they now owned T&P, IND should have cared about that, but I don't think they did for reasons I'll come back to.   It doesn't work as any kind of a commercial experiment, only an operational one. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 11:19 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

There are lots of things that don't make sense in the hobby, and the answers to some of these mysteries might not follow any logical analysis pattern.

Absolutely.  Truth be told, for all we know this could have been an error. Maybe DC mooted the idea of PV's and then cancelled it, but these ones slipped through the net and actually served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. 

[themagicrobot]

My theory is that it was a planned change to send us DCs with pence prices that was aborted at the last moment. 
Perhaps someone authorised it and then someone higher up said “what are we then going to do with our returns? Those mugs in the UK have been giving us good money for old leftovers as well as all those pallets full that never even found their way out of the printers for a decade now. It seems a shame to go back to pulping the returns once more.”

 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

So if they have this defined volume to ship, they would approach the shippers and be quoted a price to ship them under the new model. Or did they ship them blind, and then get invoiced?

Again, what is the unknown that compels them to run the test?

No, there was no blind shipping.  They were loaded into a container in Illinois and didn't see daylight again until Ethel cracked open the crate in Thurmaston.  The price would be for the container, regardless of the contents.  The test is Sparta doing a run for IND/DC. 

And that is a world of unknowns, I believe.  

Sparta were a printers, not a DC warehouse (though the publishers all had offices nearby).  Sparta did first run distribution to the local and regional distributors, wholesalers and in some cases the newsstands.  For Marvel, they shipped directly from Sparta to the UK.  For DC, Sparta shipped all over the US, and then IND rounded up all the unsold copies into the IND warehouse in God-Knows-Where, made them into logical batches (except we know they were a hot mess of bunching and multi-batching) and sent them to Leicester.  Note: at the time Sparta flipped Marvel flipped onto container shipping, IND had not been their distributor for 2 years, so IND had no access to Marvel's shipping/distribution data.  

Old System:

WCP distribute new comics to US wholesalers with cents prices, then IND round up the unsolds, batch them into sales consignments, haul them to the docks and ship them by traditional shipping / break bulk cargo to Liverpool, where they're hauled to Leicester to reprocessed by the Ethels and re-stamped with pence prices. 

New system: 

WCP print PV's and ship them by container directly, at time of printing, straight to Newark where they're shipped to Felixstowe in the same container, which is then driven to Leicester, where they're unpacked with no need for Ethel to re-stamp them and are ready for distribution. 

So there are 9 unknowns (not really unknowns so much as not-been-done-like-this-befores).  Hence the test run.

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/25/2023 at 2:49 PM, Malacoda said:

WCP print PV's and ship them by container directly, at time of printing, straight to Newark where they're shipped to Felixstowe in the same container, which is then driven to Leicester, where they're unpacked with no need for Ethel to re-stamp them and are ready for distribution. 

Sorry to butt in before getting the go ahead, but are you really saying this simple process was an 'unknown' to these distribution specialists, and that the cost couldn't be calculated based on previous design components or by simply asking for a price up to the point of UK arrival?

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:07 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Why wouldn't cents priced copies satisfy that shipping test?

It's not the price - and to be clear I mean it is neither the amount of the price nor whether it's stamped or printed on there.  It's the change to Sparta sending it directly hot off the presses by container.  The 9 unknowns.  I think you're looking at the pence pricing as an end or target in itself. I think the experiment was everything else, but if T&P were getting new DC's off the presses (like they did Marvels), it would make absolutely no sense NOT to get PV's.  They're not the reason, they're just a logical bi-product. 

Look at it this way: if T&P were going to trial new comics rather than returns, why would they not want PV's? 

If they were going to get DC's on the same basis now that they had always had Marvels, that would include PV's. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/25/2023 at 2:22 PM, Malacoda said:

On 10/25/2023 at 11:19 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

One other thought, it's clear the the DC UKPVs weren't a market test of pricing, because the stamped copies were already 5p. So they weren't testing a higher price. Charlton did 15c variants for 2 cover months. So there was no time to get the data in, surely, as you noted in your posts above re these DCs.

Right, but I think that supports my contention. 

I know it does, that's why I said it. I was agreeing with you on that point but also noting how odd actions could be. 

[Albert Tatlock]

Let us single out just one of the comics under discussion, say JO # 139.

Under the old system, some, possibly a known quantity, possibly an unknown quantity, would have arrived at T & P nearly 6 months after US readers had had the privilege of discovering what was depicted between its covers.

Under the new system, a known quantity would have arrived seemingly 3 months in advance of its companions, the returns from US outlets.

So Fred and his gang would have no further need of fresh supplies of that issue.

Would it have been cost-effective to ask for JO # 139 (cents version) to be weeded out of future return cargoes? Probably not.

Did Fred factor in the late arriving cents returns when placing his UKPV order?

Who will help by posting the minutes of the board meetings at T & P?

Maybe these matters were discussed there at even greater length than we have here.

Or then again, maybe not.

 

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/25/2023 at 2:58 PM, Malacoda said:

Look at it this way: if T&P were going to trial new comics rather than returns, why would they not want PV's? 

Trial what!? T&P had been importing (Marvel) new comics for years at this point. What are they trialling!? 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:21 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Is it hiding in there, and I'm not seeing it?

Only that I think the explanation has to address a lot of questions and this one does, unfortunately without the proof we'd all like to see.  For some things, you get a smoking gun. For others you can only work with the absence of one.  I think the exact simultaneity of the product codes on both Marvel and DC, the change of Marvel's UK distributor and DC's flirtation with PV's are more likely to share a common cause than to be unrelated events. I think that the fact that the DC PV's were NOT returns is a key factor that needs to be addressed.  I think 'why did they briefly do a small run of PV's?' is not the question so much as part of the answer to a different question.   

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:30 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I feel like you (Rich) are saying that some people, who had DC cents returns shipped to the UK for ten years, being the same (original, at least) people who solicited and distributed Marvel UKPVs in the UK for ten years

They kind of weren't, which I think is a factor. This is the thing we parked.  

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/25/2023 at 3:14 PM, Malacoda said:

I think 'why did they briefly do a small run of PV's?' is not the question so much as part of the answer to a different question.

Is that scraping noise the sound of goal posts moving, Rich?

I'll shut up now, until you've signalled the finish of the fight back 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:30 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

All they had to do was ship existing returns to identify the shipping cost and process under the new shipping container model.

You say 'all they had to do' like a 3 month process of gathering up tens of thousands of returns in hundreds of trucks across 10 million square kilometres of country is easier than just leaving the printing press on for an extra 15 minutes.  In our minds, these DC PV's are a big deal because they're a cool little mystery, but in terms of a Sparta print run, they are absolutely nothing. 

Keep in mind also that it's not the same place (as far as we know).  Wherever DC batched up the returns, it wasn't Sparta.  If it was, for example, the premises in Queens (which would be logical for the docks), that would be a thousand miles from Sparta.  So sending a batch of returns by container from wherever returns returned to would not give you the same answer as from Sparta.  

However your point is completely valid: you could just ask my friend Mr. McLean 'how much to haul a million comics from A to B?'  

However again, my point is equally valid. Actually printing the comics was 15 minutes work. 

But you do raise a fascinating question:  if we take the approach that the reason for the DC PV's has to be a question that is absolutely not more easily answered by any other method, then what the Hell was it?  I mean, I still think my theory holds because I don't believe what they did was much of a stretch, but if we set ourselves the task of thinking of a reason that could not be satisfied by any other means, what on Earth would that be? 

(Again, I think we're in the business of imposing order on chaos here.  If you ask an Ops Director a question, he comes up with an operational solution).   

If cost were the only issue, I think you'd have a valid objection here, but I think it was a massive change to the Ops process that was being dry-runned and the most efficacious way to check that would be to suck it and see.  Think for a moment how Marvel tested the direct market.  They didn't use focus groups and theory, they published Dazzler and Kazar as direct-only comics and waited to see what would happen. (Admittedly, if you publish Dazzler and Kazar and then wait to see what happens, you'd better get comfy). 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:33 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Rich has put a lot of work into this, and I'm jumping all over it. I know he loves that though. I don't need to sugar coat things with him, as I do others.

You do love it, don't you Rich? 

Remember - he may still be right. I find my comprehension skills diminishing with age, so all I might be doing is missing the point spectacularly and therefore unfairly dropping a turd on all his great work.

I do love it.  

If you hadn't dropped a turd on my last theory, I wouldn't have had to come up with this one.  I did point out right at the start that you kicked the carp out of that one, so I was basically grabbing my ankles on this one too.  Also, I did call it DC PV 2:  Electric Boogaloo. Clue in the name.  But I think there's a lot of good info in there and I think doing this (hoisting a theory) is exactly how we move forward.  Plus it's fun to get into it. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 12:49 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

A great deal of thought and effort has gone into this, obviously, but I still cannot grasp why T & P would have believed that soliciting UKPVs at that point would have been advantageous

I think it would have been advantageous for list of reasons I posted a few feet back (I think, getting a bit punchy now and I lost a couple of posts when the power went off).  However, I don't know if  T&P originated this, I think Sparta going over to container shipping is the key and I don't think T&P did solicit UKPV's in the sense that that was the point of the exercise.  I think that Sparta changing over to containers opened up the possibility that first run supply with container shipping was now viable and, as long as that was happening, it would have made no sense NOT to change to PV's.  

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/25/2023 at 3:46 PM, Malacoda said:

You say 'all they had to do' like a 3 month process of gathering up tens of thousands of returns in hundreds of trucks across 10 million square kilometres of country is easier than just leaving the printing press on for an extra 15 minutes. 

But they were already doing that, Rich, with the DC returns, for ten years. It's 'all they had been doing' since 1960.

On 10/25/2023 at 3:46 PM, Malacoda said:

In our minds, these DC PV's are a big deal because they're a cool little mystery, but in terms of a Sparta print run, they are absolutely nothing. 

If leaving the printing press on for an extra 15 minutes to produce UKPVs represents 'absolutely nothing' by comparison then why didn't they do that in the 1960s as they did for Marvel.  

On 10/25/2023 at 3:46 PM, Malacoda said:

Keep in mind also that it's not the same place (as far as we know).  Wherever DC batched up the returns, it wasn't Sparta.  If it was, for example, the premises in Queens (which would be logical for the docks), that would be a thousand miles from Sparta.  So sending a batch of returns by container from wherever returns returned to would not give you the same answer as from Sparta.  

However your point is completely valid: you could just ask my friend Mr. McLean 'how much to haul a million comics from A to B?'  

However again, my point is equally valid. Actually printing the comics was 15 minutes work. 

But you do raise a fascinating question:  if we take the approach that the reason for the DC PV's has to be a question that is absolutely not more easily answered by any other method, then what the Hell was it?  I mean, I still think my theory holds because I don't believe what they did was much of a stretch, but if we set ourselves the task of thinking of a reason that could not be satisfied by any other means, what on Earth would that be? 

But Rich, the point I'm trying to get across to you, unsuccessfully, is that I'm not sure what your theory actually is because it doesn't make sense to me as the reason why the DC UKPVs exist? I agree with all your coincidence observations, but I can't feel them, collectively, as being the trigger that made some one say "Pluck out five DC titles and run me off a pallet load of 5p copies. I want to test this new shipping container process". Which, incidentally, then ends immediately. 

Who was 'testing' the new system against the Marvels, then? What was the nature of the test for them, that led them to stop the stamped returns? The Marvel crowd adopt the new shipping container system and decide to dispense with returns / go UKPV only. The DC crowd test it and revert to the opposite of the Marvel crowd. All the data from that DC test flies back to them and they do what? What could it tell them other than cost and time? And why wouldn't they already know those things, if not only approximately, based on their previous exploits? And who won the FA Cup in 1979?

On 10/25/2023 at 3:46 PM, Malacoda said:

(Again, I think we're in the business of imposing order on chaos here.  If you ask an Ops Director a question, he comes up with an operational solution).   

We?

On 10/25/2023 at 3:46 PM, Malacoda said:

If cost were the only issue, I think you'd have a valid objection here, but I think it was a massive change to the Ops process that was being dry-runned and the most efficacious way to check that would be to suck it and see.  Think for a moment how Marvel tested the direct market.  They didn't use focus groups and theory, they published Dazzler and Kazar as direct-only comics and waited to see what would happen. (Admittedly, if you publish Dazzler and Kazar and then wait to see what happens, you'd better get comfy). 

Printer, to van, to port, over sea, to port, to distributor is a massive change? It sounds very much like what T&P were doing for Marvel from 1960 up until....