The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982) 16 16

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/29/2024 at 7:11 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Sun fade. The reds go first.....

Need to check downstairs, then.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/29/2024 at 7:16 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Need to check downstairs, then.

 

On 6/25/2024 at 8:20 PM, Yorick said:

The curtains match the drapes. 

 

[baggsey]

On 6/15/2024 at 3:16 AM, themagicrobot said:

I always found it interesting that the Atlas comics stopped (1960) at pretty much the same time that T&P began importing DCs. Was it a co-incidence or connected? Did K. G. Murray's licence to produce Superman/Batman fare in the UK expire/was brought to an end as National wanted to use the UK as a dumping ground for their surplus. The K. G. Murray Supermans etc continued in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.  

 

I've been doing a deep dive on all of the pulps that Atlas published in the period starting in 1921, and in a number of instances Atlas picked up publishing reprints of American pulps the following month to when T&P dropped reprinting. For example, in 1952 T&P were publishing Popular's "Detective Tales" pulp for UK consumption. They decided to stop, and Atlas picked up the reprints immediately from T&P. Similarly in 1953 T&P were publishing Popular's "Star Western" pulp reprints, but decided to stop publication, and Atlas picked it up. On the face of it, it looks like there was some history of co-ordination between T&P and Atlas.

I suspect that Atlas had to stop distributing the K G Murray Superman and Batman comics due to copyright infringement likelihood. Back in Feb 1947  Atlas had been served an injunction to withdraw from sale all copies of 'The First Lady Chatterley’ (the first draft of the final book Lady Chatterley's Love) imported from Australia, because they were in breech of UK publisher William Heinemann Ltd's copyright. Before that, back in 1938, they had been found guilty of libel for an article in an issue of Boxing magazine, even though they were only the UK distributor of the issue, not the publisher, so even if they were purely a distributor of K.G. Murray's comics, perhaps they felt they could be liable for prosecution in a copyright infringement case.

[themagicrobot]

@baggsey Have you found any info to back up your belief that K G Murray's material infringed copyright in the UK? It seems unlikely to me when the comics were on sale for a decade and the Annuals were published for twenty years. It seems far more likely in my opinion that a new agreement with DC was created by T&P when they had the option of importing the original comics to the UK. This was potentially worth much more money, and solved many of the problems of what to do with over-printing and returns than just continuing to allow K G Murray to reprint a limited amount of material for a mere four titles in the UK. This quote from the AusReprints site is odd. I assume by "UK editions of Superman and Batman" they mean the lone Super DC comic published in 1967/1968?? I think "until that time" really ought to say “until 1959/1960”.

At some time in the mid 1960s (variously reported from 1965 to 1966), DC's distribution arm IND bought Thorpe & Porter and the company began publishing UK editions of Superman and Batman. Until that time, K.G. Murray had exclusive rights to Superman and Batman reprints, in association with its UK distributor Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. Ltd.

https://ausreprints.net/article/53/p1

 

 

Edited July 4 by themagicrobot

[baggsey]

On 7/4/2024 at 2:38 AM, themagicrobot said:

@baggsey Have you found any info to back up your belief that K G Murray's material infringed copyright in the UK?

@themagicrobot No - I have yet to investigate the business relationship between K G Murray and Atlas. I may have caused some confusion in the previous post. I don't believe that the material necessarily involved copyright infringement in the UK, although K G Murray were presumably licensed only to produce comics for the Australian market. The issue is likely to relate to distribution rights.

The example I posted previously that Atlas were served an injunction in Feb 1947 to withdraw all  Australian imported copies of 'The First Lady Chatterley' in breech of William Heinemann Ltd's sole right to distribute in the UK may have some bearing on the cessation of distribution of the Batman, Superman, Superadventure comics Atlas had distributed in the 1950s, once T&P obtained DC distribution rights for the UK. But its a guess at the moment.

[Malacoda]

On 7/4/2024 at 1:55 AM, baggsey said:

I've been doing a deep dive on all of the pulps that Atlas published in the period starting in 1921

[Malacoda]

On 7/4/2024 at 1:55 AM, baggsey said:

For example, in 1952 T&P were publishing Popular's "Detective Tales" pulp for UK consumption. They decided to stop, and Atlas picked up the reprints immediately from T&P. Similarly in 1953 T&P were publishing Popular's "Star Western" pulp reprints, but decided to stop publication, and Atlas picked it up. On the face of it, it looks like there was some history of co-ordination between T&P and Atlas.

It may have been more unintentional than that. There was an Obscene Publications Act in 1951 (pretty much completely replaced in 1955 and 1959) that caused a very ham-fisted crackdown on a lot of pulps and publications that were lumped in with porn.  T&P had been experiencing their novels and pulps confiscated by the ton, while at the same time their Bible Illustrated comics, which had morphed into the equally unimpeachable Classics Illustrated, were being held up as just the sort of thing publishers should be putting out.  And, far from being pulled off the shelves before any cash got near the till, they were going to multiple re-prints. So T&P flipped into comic production ( ....just in time for the 1955 meltdown). 

I think Atlas were perhaps more monogamous with the format with which they were synonymous, where T&P would never hesitate to change spots in mid-stream if there was more profit elsewhere.  I suspect that having come up through the retail trade, Fred had his finger on the pulse more than most. 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 7/5/2024 at 4:46 PM, Malacoda said:

T&P would never hesitate to change spots in mid-stream

Never mix your metaphors, that is a shark-infested minefield.

[baggsey]

On 7/5/2024 at 10:46 AM, Malacoda said:

I think Atlas were perhaps more monogamous with the format with which they were synonymous, where T&P would never hesitate to change spots in mid-stream if there was more profit elsewhere.  I suspect that having come up through the retail trade, Fred had his finger on the pulse more than most. 

I think that Fred Thorpe (b 1913) had a lot in common with Atlas Publishing founder Walter Stephen Dexter (1868-1945), who also started as a newsagent employer around 1901 in Lambeth before branching very successfully into multiple London newsagent shops and the wholesale newsagency business around 1910.

Of course, Fred Thorp was a generation - almost two generations - younger than Dexter.

Dexter got involved with the Waste Materials trade (recovery of paper and rags) at the same time that he set up Atlas Publishing & Distributing in 1915. Dexter was an incredible entrepreneur who grew his business on the back of reprinting pulps from 1916 onwards. He actually incorporated a sister company Atlas Publishing Co in New York for the purposes of making business easier with the New York based pulp publishers.

In addition he developed a chain of London bookshops - Dexter's Bookshops - from 1929 which survived until 1970.

Dexter was a regular semi-annual traveler to New York from 1925 until the start of the second world war, negotiating pulp reprint contracts and making deals with freight forwarders. Dexter died in 1945, and the business was taken over by his son Walter James Dexter as publisher. The son Walter James had previously worked in insurance, and had lived in China at one point - possibly Australia. From available evidence so far, son Walter James never went to New York to build new relationships for pulp reprints, nor negotiate for reprint rights on US comics. It was Walter James Dexter who set up the distribution of K.G.Murray's DC comic reprints.

However , 1948 marks the point when Fred Thorpe started taking annual business trips to New York (2 suitcases and 1 briefcase), first by steamship and then by BOAC, Pan-Am and TWA. I can find no evidence (so far) of any post-1956 US immigration records for him in New York. A look at the pulps that Thorpe & Porter reprinted in the UK show they cover a period of 1946-mid 1950s.

 

[Redshade]

On 7/5/2024 at 5:57 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Never mix your metaphors, that is a shark-infested minefield.

Tom Sharpe was good at mixing metaphors.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 7/5/2024 at 7:23 PM, Redshade said:

Tom Sharpe was good at mixing metaphors

And anagrams!

[themagicrobot]

With all this talk of Atlas Pulps, I had a look at this one. As we know, there were restrictions on bringing American periodicals (and comics) into the UK post-war that lasted until 1959. But this didn't appear to apply to "foreign" magazines that were "Learned, Scientific or Technical". So here in 1950 Atlas offered to supply UK readers with subscriptions to a considerable number of US titles. I wonder if they just placed the orders and the magazines arrived directly by International Mail or if they were the middle men who received the books from the US in bulk and forwarded them on to UK addresses? 

 

  

[Albert Tatlock]

On 7/6/2024 at 10:12 AM, themagicrobot said:

With all this talk of Atlas Pulps, I had a look at this one. As we know, there were restrictions on bringing American periodicals (and comics) into the UK post-war that lasted until 1959. But this didn't appear to apply to "foreign" magazines that were "Learned, Scientific or Technical". So here in 1950 Atlas offered to supply UK readers with subscriptions to a considerable number of US titles. I wonder if they just placed the orders and the magazines arrived directly by International Mail or if they were the middle men who received the books from the US in bulk and forwarded them on to UK addresses? 

 

  

Here is an example of a highly scientific and technical publication that would have qualified for an exemption from the restriction.

And there are many similar which would have been invaluable for their detailed and technically accurate advice from highly qualified, if totally fictitious, scientific experts on how to fight off alien invasions of Earth .

Edited Saturday at 02:34 PM by Albert Tatlock
add 1 line

[baggsey]

On 7/6/2024 at 4:12 AM, themagicrobot said:

With all this talk of Atlas Pulps, I had a look at this one. As we know, there were restrictions on bringing American periodicals (and comics) into the UK post-war that lasted until 1959. But this didn't appear to apply to "foreign" magazines that were "Learned, Scientific or Technical". So here in 1950 Atlas offered to supply UK readers with subscriptions to a considerable number of US titles. I wonder if they just placed the orders and the magazines arrived directly by International Mail or if they were the middle men who received the books from the US in bulk and forwarded them on to UK addresses? 

  

  

That is very interesting. Looking at titles available on the list, 'Air Trails' was a Street & Smith publication which had been originally a pulp fiction magazine which went through a number of name changes before reverting to its original name as a hobby magazine. Walter James Dexter negotiated a deal with Street & Smith after the War to reprint many of their pulps in the UK, and perhaps this distribution deal was part of the same negotiations. I'm waiting on getting sight to all the S&S correspondence with Atlas in the post-war period to get the facts.

I don't know of Atlas Publishing & Distributing had their own distribution network, or perhaps tapped into Thorpe & Porter's? Certainly in the 1930s they had a warehouse in one of the arches at 70 Goding Street,Vauxhall and lost all their stock in a fire in 1937.

Certainly this is the period with Atlas Publishing started to negotiate with KG Murray to distribute DC reprints in the UK.  Atlas first collaborated with K G Murray in 1946 with a reciprocal deal for KG Murray to distribute Atlas's pulp reprint of The Lone Eagle in Australia, and Atlas started distribution of K G Murray's "Australian Cavalcade" in the UK.

Is anyone aware of a definitive list of the Australian DC reprints, with publication dates?

I'm conscious that the discussion around this is veering away from UK comic Price Variant territory (sorry @Get Marwood & I ), so perhaps I need to set up another discussion thread, unless there is one already more suited to it?  

[themagicrobot]

This image from 1951 first appeared on the "Down the Tubes" blog a few years ago and has re-appeared in a couple of threads here recently. It is applicable to this thread in particular though as it shows that "american comics" were circulating in the UK to a limited extent in the 1950s despite being "prohibited". Most newsagents in the country had to make do with Radio Fun, The Dandy and the Beano. But there were "grey" imports that found their way to some retailers.

 

You can just about see this Dale Evans DC cover dated Nov/Dec 1950 hanging from a string. In fact when I first started buying DCs in 1964 some newsagents still used the "clothes line" and "pegs" system of displaying their magazines.

https://downthetubes.net/snapshots-in-comics-time-a-bethnal-green-newsagent-1951/ 

[OtherEric]

On 7/7/2024 at 9:24 AM, themagicrobot said:

This image from 1951 first appeared on the "Down the Tubes" blog a few years ago and has re-appeared in a couple of threads here recently. It is applicable to this thread in particular though as it shows that "american comics" were circulating in the UK to a limited extent in the 1950s despite being "prohibited". Most newsagents in the country had to make do with Radio Fun, The Dandy and the Beano. But there were "grey" imports that found their way to some retailers.

 

You can just about see this Dale Evans DC cover dated Nov/Dec 1950 hanging from a string. In fact when I first started buying DCs in 1964 some newsagents still used the "clothes line" and "pegs" system of displaying their magazines.

https://downthetubes.net/snapshots-in-comics-time-a-bethnal-green-newsagent-1951/ 

You can also pick out Crime Patrol #12.  My copy is missing a page and a half, sadly.  But it's still fun to have:

 

[themagicrobot]

And the fact that (even in small numbers) ECs were actually available to be purchased in the High Street in the UK  (along with a handful of Arnold/Miller/T&P black and white reprint titles) helped the cause of our 1955 "Child and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act which mirrored your earlier 1954 Comics Code.

[Redshade]

On 7/6/2024 at 7:25 PM, baggsey said:

 

Is anyone aware of a definitive list of the Australian DC reprints, with publication dates?

 

You'll know of this site? 
ausreprints.net/publisher

Edited Sunday at 06:26 PM by Redshade

[baggsey]

On 7/7/2024 at 11:24 AM, themagicrobot said:

This image from 1951 first appeared on the "Down the Tubes" blog a few years ago and has re-appeared in a couple of threads here recently. It is applicable to this thread in particular though as it shows that "american comics" were circulating in the UK to a limited extent in the 1950s despite being "prohibited". Most newsagents in the country had to make do with Radio Fun, The Dandy and the Beano. But there were "grey" imports that found their way to some retailers.

 

You can just about see this Dale Evans DC cover dated Nov/Dec 1950 hanging from a string. In fact when I first started buying DCs in 1964 some newsagents still used the "clothes line" and "pegs" system of displaying their magazines.

https://downthetubes.net/snapshots-in-comics-time-a-bethnal-green-newsagent-1951/ 

Fascinating stuff - thanks!   I wonder if those comics were priced as ND (Non-Distrubuted) ? :-)

 

[baggsey]

On 7/7/2024 at 11:24 AM, themagicrobot said:

 

You can just about see this Dale Evans DC cover dated Nov/Dec 1950 hanging from a string. In fact when I first started buying DCs in 1964 some newsagents still used the "clothes line" and "pegs" system of displaying their magazines.

https://downthetubes.net/snapshots-in-comics-time-a-bethnal-green-newsagent-1951/ 

Ah, the clothesline and peg system....my first memory of American comics in England was seeing a Jimmy Olson DC comic hanging way out of reach of my hands in September 1965 in a newsagent in Highland Rd, Southsea. I can place the date as Sept 11th 1965, as it was the day that the first issue of Ranger appeared (assuming it was on sale a week ahead of cover date), which my Dad bought me.