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

[themagicrobot]

Hmm. Probably not. Think I'd rather read a Lois Lane comic.

[Malacoda]

On 4/4/2022 at 2:03 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

By the way, Rich - have you come across many photos of Fred Thorpe? This seems to be him:

  

I haven't found one of Porter yet 

Only a few. That one with the van was added to the Ulverscroft website recently, I think.  Corker.  My first assumption was that it was the borrowed van he first started up with in 1946, but he ran a mobile library service before the war (when he was a painter & decorator), so it might well be from that. 

[Malacoda]

On 4/4/2022 at 2:03 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I haven't found one of Porter yet 

Not sure you ever will.  Porters were a builder's merchants who diversified into newsagents (possibly just because they were the freeholders of some of the properties from which they ran their business and therefore had some leaseholds to commercial properties?).  One of their leaseholders was a Mr. Collis who was a newsagent in Coventry and thereby met Fred who was a newsagent in Leicester.  Imagine the conversation where Mr. Collis casually mentioned to Fred that his shareholders were looking to diversify into the news business. Cha-ching.  I would guess being a builder's merchants was a pretty cash rich business in 1946 (what with one or two buildings needing a spot of work after the recent hostilities). 

[Malacoda]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:14 PM, themagicrobot said:

Fred Thorpe (and the Porter Builders merchants) probably had little or no involvement with the company named after them from 1959 and may never have seen the DC etc comics with the little 9d stamps (although Fred may well have employed Ethel and the others that did the stampering). Mr Thorpe's second career was inventing and distributing proper literature in the form of large print books.

 

Porters were completely gone from the company long before 1959, so they definitely never met Ethel.  I always think it's amazing that they got out because they didn't want their name sullied by the soft porn for which Fred was always being raided, yet the company remained T&P probably until long after Porters itself was wound up. Fred, I believe, was very much involved in the business from 1959 to 1962.  Classics Illustrated had been their biggest sellers throughout the 50's….and having started as Bible Classics, were refreshingly free from the threat of incineration as indecent literature or being seized as adolescent-warping, juvenile-delinquency-causing, Post Wertham horror pulps, as defined by the Not In Front Of The Children Act of 1955. So when Fred needed some deep pockets and an American base of operations to start importing US comics as soon as the ban lifted in 1959, Gilberton’s were a pretty logical first call as the publishers of his top sellers. 
Unfortunately for Fred (or maybe not, depending on the size of the handshake), Gilberton’s sales were drying up in the US, but the market in Europe was still pretty good, so Bill Kanter de-camped to the UK. In the mid 50's, when CI was at its height, he had been on a buying spree of Northern European distributors, so moving the publication of CI to the UK and using T&P as base camp seemed logical as business died off in the States.   I think he significantly over extended himself, and failed to see that the drop off in sales in the US was precursor to the drop off in Europe.  I think that’s why T&P went suddenly and surprisingly bankrupt in July 1966.  Bill Kanter had relocated the company from Oadby (after a fire) to newer, bigger premises in Thurmaston at the same time that he was running these companies in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden & West Germany. I think his love affair with Classics Illustrated (he was a huge proponent of it and it was he who struck the deal with our friends, Curtis Circulation, who got it distributed nationally in the US) may have blinded him to some obvious business logic. Seemingly, the reason for buying these distributors was to own bases from which the translations of the originals into the national languages could be overseen, which seems absolutely bonkers to me.  It may not be that the costs of the companies in Europe hit the bottom line of T&P directly, but when IND bought out T&P, it included all of these European companies, so they seem to have been owned as part of T&P. not Gilbertons (which was sold off separately the following year). 
I think you can see a pretty strong trajectory upwards to 1962 which I associate with Fred, and a pretty fast decline downwards as soon as he left, so I think he had a lot to do with the importation of US comics, primarily via IND and I think he was definitely the first one at the T&P Christmas Dinner Dance to whisk Ethel onto the floor in the Gentleman's Excuse Me.  (No innuendo required). 
 

 

[ThothAmon]

Few of potential interest. 
 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 4/20/2022 at 4:39 PM, ThothAmon said:

Few of potential interest. 
 

Nice 

Are they in a bound volume of some sort? A peculiar mix, if so.

Send it to me now 

[ThothAmon]

[Get Marwood & I]

I purchased a King pence upgrade the other day and the seller sent me this wonderful letter with it after we had chatted using the eBay messaging system:

 

Love it 

 

Spoiler

"Though not from Silver Acre"! 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

I'm hoping to get these two journal entries posted soon 

[rakehell]

On 4/20/2022 at 5:13 PM, ThothAmon said:

That's just odd. I used to work for Stateside Comics PLC, many, many moons ago. Can't imagine why anyone would spend the money to bind such a random assortment of mid to low grade comics in such a nice outer cover. Maybe someone was taking a class in bookbinding & it was a workshop project. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/11/2022 at 9:59 AM, rakehell said:

That's just odd. I used to work for Stateside Comics PLC, many, many moons ago. Can't imagine why anyone would spend the money to bind such a random assortment of mid to low grade comics in such a nice outer cover. Maybe someone was taking a class in bookbinding & it was a workshop project. 

It's volume 4, too. Three more out there at least then?

[rakehell]

On 5/11/2022 at 11:33 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

It's volume 4, too. Three more out there at least then?

Who's to say. They might have started at 4 just to be enigmatic. It makes as much sense as binding all that chuff together.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/11/2022 at 1:17 PM, rakehell said:

Who's to say. They might have started at 4 just to be enigmatic. It makes as much sense as binding all that chuff together.

Chuff... 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/11/2022 at 1:17 PM, rakehell said:

It makes as much sense as binding all that chuff together.

I'm so bored today, Daphers. It's bucketing down and I can't be arsed to write up the Miller post. Or rebag and scan the Kings. 

I must be bored because I've just posted 'Grand Ballbags Database' as a response to a ThruppenyConanBoyle post.

Help me. 

[rakehell]

On 5/11/2022 at 1:23 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'm so bored today, Daphers. It's bucketing down and I can't be arsed to write up the Miller post. Or rebag and scan the Kings. 

I must be bored because I've just posted 'Grand Ballbags Database' as a response to a ThruppenyConanBoyle post.

Help me. 

You're on your own, Velma. I've got contractors to wrangle, giant holes to not fall into, lost items to magic out of thin air and a building to watch being demolished. And that's before messing about with comic books. Which is before dinner. Which is what I'm counting the bloody seconds to. 

Watch a couple of episodes of Archer. If that doesn't relieve the boredom, you're beyond my expertise. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/11/2022 at 1:51 PM, rakehell said:

You're on your own, Velma. I've got contractors to wrangle, giant holes to not fall into, lost items to magic out of thin air and a building to watch being demolished. And that's before messing about with comic books. Which is before dinner. Which is what I'm counting the bloody seconds to. 

Watch a couple of episodes of Archer. If that doesn't relieve the boredom, you're beyond my expertise. 

Good luck with all that. I've decided on another Streamline journal entry instead. 'For Mother's Sake', it's called.

This is my life. 

[rakehell]

On 5/11/2022 at 2:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

This is my life. 

Stick a couple of episodes of Archer in it. You'll thank me for it later. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/11/2022 at 2:38 PM, rakehell said:

Stick a couple of episodes of Archer in it. You'll thank me for it later. 

Alright, alright I will. But quite what the everyday stories of farmers and country folk will do for me, I do not know. 

[rakehell]

On 5/11/2022 at 2:40 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

But quite what the everyday stories of farmers and country folk will do for me, I do not know. 

Silly Velma! 

[TupennyConan]

On 5/11/2022 at 8:23 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

ThruppenyConanBoyle