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

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

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?

I'm struggling to follow that. Obviously Marvel never exported returns and never would have, I think.  Re DC, it would tell them cost and time of new product straight out of Sparta vs cost and time for the returns system.  It would also operationally test the system at both ends. I think it's probable that the first container lorry that ever arrived at Thurmaston had a mix of returns these 5 issues. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

And who won the FA Cup in 1979?

Fulchester Rovers. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

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....

Well, you could also say 'selling comics through comic shops rather than news vendors is basically the same thing' but it really wasn't.  Malcolm McLean was described by Forbes 'as one of the few men who changed the world' because of containerisation.  Printer to van to port over sea to port to distributor is not the massive change.  Printer into container which drives straight to the port and into the ocean without being unloaded, sails the ocean arriving in half the time, still does not need to be unloaded, goes door to door, is fully trackable all the way, is so secure that all your stuff doesn't get nicked and it all costs a fraction of what it used to cost is the massive change.  

But I grant you, if he was de-materialising the comics in Sparta and re-forming them in Leicester in a Star Trek stylie, that would be a significantly larger change.

and before you ask, no, I couldn't find one of Nightcrawler. 😒

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:05 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

What shipping model did the ongoing post 1971 DC stamped returns go through? If the new container one, then the only cost change is the difference in the old shipping method (port to port) vs the new. 

Well, this is a really good question, and eventually it must have gone over to container shipping because everything did.  However, my point was that WCP went over to containers (and very early) which created the question.  Also, it wouldn't be the only cost change: if they went over to the new system it would newly printed comics, all coming from Sparta, all in one shipment and sent by container, as opposed to returns being gathered up and trucked from all over the country. That repatriation cost and the costs involved in sorting out the returns into batches of each title would also be avoided. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:42 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

What are the salient differences between those two models from the UK worker's perspective?

I think that's the wrong question. I'm pretty sure DC and IND and WCP and probably even T&P didn't really give a stuff what happened to Ethel as long as it maximised their profits. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:42 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Why muddy the waters with printed UKPVs, if you are simply negotiating a price for a new model and showing the client how it will work?

Because, along with reduced shipping charges, faster more regular supply and lovely new shiny comics, the PV's would be the other selling point that would seduce T&P into giving up their beloved returns. If you're trying to sell someone into something, you don't leave out a big obvious benefit. 

Also, repeating myself I know, but printing the PV's was really not like going to Mordor.  In the time we've just spent (since last night)  discussing the issue of Sparta printing PV's, they would have printed a million PV's.  I mean literally 960,000 and counting. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:51 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Rich, you've done marvellously well with all this and you know how highly I rate what you do, your attention to detail and your ability to delve into the mechanics of the situation on the ground which I have never gone near. But I am unconvinced, my friend, on this one. I'm not saying it's wrong, or ill-founded, I'm just not feeling it.

No, that's cool.  Sometimes there's a smoking gun. Once, I asked Mark Evanier a question and he began with 'Ah, I asked Sol Brodsky that very question. Here's the answer...'  I mean.....

But this is just a theory. I don't think we're ever going to get to the bottom of this one, but it's a fantastic mental work out for your comics brain, ain't it? 

Edited October 25, 2023 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:51 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

And I think you can present it clearer, and in a more concise manner.

You mean you want to me to do the whole thing again with only 80% of the detail? 

 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:51 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'm in awe of you though, Richmond, if that wasn't clear to anyone else reading

Don't be.  There are other issues around this I didn't even get into. To @themagicrobot 's point, I suspect this might have been a management up.  A lack of communication.  Imagine this for a moment:  WCP's big selling point was pool shipping, right?  So whereas other printers did their jobs and passed on their delivery costs, WCP had a huge advantage of scale.  Instead of delivering this magazine to these outlets and those journals to these outlets, WCP printed so much that they just delivered everything together. So instead of delivering titles individually, they would deliver hundreds of thousands of issues of thousands of different publications by dozens of different publishers to every city all on the same lorries.  This meant that every publisher paid a fraction of the overall delivery charge.  Now, they never had Marvel until 1968, but when they got Marvel it was all new comics being loaded up, and they had had DC since 1955, so the obvious thing to do was  put them all together and distribute DC and Marvel together, which I am 100% sure they did for US distribution (it was kind of the point of using Sparta). 

However, they could never do it for the UK orders because Marvel sent new stuff via Sparta, and DC sent zillions of comics to the UK but they were all returns. This is pretty annoying as Marvel and DC have the same UK distributor, so if you could land the DC order, you could just add it to the existing Marvel order.  Especially now you've got container shipping.    

Imagine you're boss of Sparta.  If you could pitch DC an idea which would make them send their UK distributor (whom they own) new comics instead of these bloody returns, then (a) you get a massive new print order (b) it's very low cost (because you've already created all the plates for the US copies) and (c) it's also reducing your delivery costs on Marvel because everything goes in the same container. 

So maybe you pitch DC the PV / new comics / container idea.   Maybe they're thinking it over and agree to a trial.  Now you just have to complete containerisation. 

Unfortunately, what you don't know at this point is that as soon as you go containerised, Marvel are going to use that very thing to change UK distributor.  

 So the trial goes ahead, but actually you stop pushing it because the big advantage to you, the pool shipping, has sailed away. 

That's just one scenario. I'm sure we can all think of a dozen scenarios where this trial got onto the schedule for some reason and ended up being pulled immediately. 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/25/2023 at 9:46 PM, Malacoda said:

But this is just a theory. I don't think we're ever going to get to the bottom of this one, but it's a fantastic mental work out for your comics brain, ain't it? 

Like..........yeah...

On 10/25/2023 at 9:52 PM, Malacoda said:

You mean you want to me to do the whole thing again with only 80% of the detail? 

Could you do 8? 

You know me Richmond, I like a good, simple summing up graphic, one that sticks in the mind. 

Good fun was had today, kicking this around. I gave it my best shot, reading it all cold (you've been living it for 6 months) and you know what you'd have got if I hadn't, don't you.

Your theory is now on the record!

Night mate. 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:55 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

We're trending, boys!

Narrowly beating the marijuana thread

I think it's brilliant that a discussion about 5 comics and container shipping 50 years ago has out-trended marijuana.  But having said, they probably just got so close to their subject that they couldn't type any more. 

Also, there's probably quite a lot of Doc Strange and Silver Surfer fans in there.  

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 10:18 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Night mate. 

Thank you for everything today.  That must have been quite draining.  

(This probably isn't the moment to pitch Unified Stamp Theory, right?) 

 

[Malacoda]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

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".

Because you're thinking about it back to front.  Imagine this for a moment: you change over to containers. You want to test the system by sending a test batch of new print DC's to T&P in the UK in the same way that you do with Marvel. What price are you going to put on your UK export comics?  Cents or pence.    

[Malacoda]

That last one was a leftover that came up when I clicked reply.  

On a (you'll be pleased to hear) unrelated topic, I just wanted to capture this note someone on sochal meeja made about T&P copies of MAD being re-circulated in Woolworths in Kettering  (that's Kettering-Decidely-Not-On-Sea, but very near Leicester). 

" A key recollection of Woolies is them selling old, classic British MAD Magazines in the 60s for a shilling each (presumably remaindered by Thorpe and Porter)."

[themagicrobot]

Is he positive that the remaindered MADs were definitely 2/- UK ones at half price originally published by T&P rather than US ones?

I recall Woolworths selling Cracked magazines in the mid 1960s and as I’ve mentioned before at various times they sold DCs, Dells and King comics at 6d each. Woolworths would have had their own US connections to get things directly I would have assumed rather than go through T&P but of course anything is possible.

[Malacoda]

On 10/26/2023 at 2:42 PM, themagicrobot said:

Is he positive that the remaindered MADs were definitely 2/- UK ones at half price originally published by T&P rather than US ones?

Not sure but the fact that he specifies that they were British variants and knows they were distributed by T&P makes me think he's not a civilian. 

On 10/26/2023 at 2:42 PM, themagicrobot said:

I recall Woolworths selling Cracked magazines in the mid 1960s and as I’ve mentioned before at various times they sold DCs, Dells and King comics at 6d each

The DC's definitely sound like recirculated T&P's, I assume the Dells and Kings were too. Can you recall if they were stamps or PV's?  (Obviously the reduced 6d was a stamp or a sticker, but the original price?).  

On 10/26/2023 at 2:42 PM, themagicrobot said:

Woolworths would have had their own US connections to get things directly I would have assumed rather than go through T&P but of course anything is possible.

Not sure if I understand what you mean. Obviously all the papers and magazines and UK comics and books on sale in Woolies would have been from UK distributors. I can't imagine Woolworths striking separate deals in the US with King & Dell & IND & Charlton etc and then exporting the comics to the UK to supply their stores.  I think they'd just go to T&P like everyone else.   

[LowGradeBronze]

Just one question at this point: If DC had continued with the UKPV experiment beyond those 5 issues, what would have happened to the mountain of DC returns? If the answer is "a big loss on DC's balance sheet" maybe that persuaded them to maintain the returns model and let the Brits carry on stamping away. 

Malacoda's already stated that Marvel's sell through was far greater and no mountain needed to be shifted.

Edited October 26, 2023 by LowGradeBronze

[themagicrobot]

 No comment

Edited October 27, 2023 by themagicrobot

[themagicrobot]

Nuff said

Edited October 27, 2023 by themagicrobot

[Get Marwood & I]

Once again, not much I can do today. I've been stuck with a heavy cold for over a week now.

Here's a few books that I spotted on the Bay, whilst aimlessly scouring this morning.

A nine changed to a ten...

...a ten changed to a nine...

...a six versus a nine...

...and two five pee Marvel romance titles, which you don't often see, stamped five pee, by Tee and Pee.

 

Yippee.