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

[Albert Tatlock]

On 5/30/2022 at 9:25 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

so the missing issues are either absent because they don't exist

There may be a few stragglers that came in late from US retail outlets, so it is possible that there are a very small number of the missing Octobers, and even theoretically pre-October 1959 examples.

Whoever was sending unsold returns to the docks for onward shipment to T & P would have been oblivious to how out of date they were.

Remember the 1958 Charltons. They had been cooling their heels somewhere until T & P whistled for them, or until Charlton cynically dumped them on those hayseed Limeys (take your pick).

But I would not hold my breath. Even if one or two slipped through it would not have been part of the plan, and it may never have happened anyway.

Rummage away, though. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/30/2022 at 10:37 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 5/30/2022 at 10:37 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

There may be a few stragglers that came in late from US retail outlets, so it is possible that there are a very small number of the missing Octobers, and even theoretically pre-October 1959 examples.

Can we match up the 'on sale' dates (Stateside) to the ones that are/are not found with T & P stamps?

If there is a clear cutoff line, before which there are none to be found and after which a few, or even several are to be found, it would indicate that the first couple of batches at least did not contain unsold US returns, and were made up of the 'leftover/unaccounted' portion of the print run that had never made it to retail outlets.

So are there any 1959 cover dated DCs with US arrival dates? If so, are the stamp numbers in line with the rest of the Oct-Dec numbers, or do they bear stamp numbers indicative of late arrivals?

Who will undertake this onerous research, with its associated risk of eye strain?

When I get time, I will see if any of my stamped 1959s have US arrival graffiti.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/1/2022 at 8:48 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Can we match up the 'on sale' dates (Stateside) to the ones that are/are not found with T & P stamps?

If there is a clear cutoff line, before which there are none to be found and after which a few, or even several are to be found, it would indicate that the first couple of batches at least did not contain unsold US returns, and were made up of the 'leftover/unaccounted' portion of the print run that had never made it to retail outlets.

So are there any 1959 cover dated DCs with US arrival dates? If so, are the stamp numbers in line with the rest of the Oct-Dec numbers, or do they bear stamp numbers indicative of late arrivals?

Who will undertake this onerous research, with its associated risk of eye strain?

When I get time, I will see if any of my stamped 1959s have US arrival graffiti.

I've considered this, but I think the process wasn't stable or consistent enough to lend itself to the identification of meaningful production cut off points as being the reason for certain books existing and others not. The stamped DC books are returns, and as we see, they straddle stamp numbers and don't all turn up in the same numbered shipments. That makes sense, as its unlikely that every outlet across the US would undertake returns at the same time. Add to that the fact that arrival dates are hard to find anyway, and often differ significantly across the same issue where multiples can be found.

My research in other areas has shown that arrival / on sale dates can help to prove things in certain senarios, but I don't think this is one of them.

And remember, we don't even know or agree on whether that first 6 stamped shipment was indeed the first, or a late second cycle.

[Get Marwood & I]

That said, a quick glance for two October issues and we see:

• Batman #127 (October 1959 cover date) - T&P stamp exists
• Wonder Woman #109 (October 1959 cover date) - no T&P stamped copy yet (#110 is the first known)

Batman #127:

• August 25th US 'on sale date'
• Actual arrival stamps August 25th and 27th (spot on!)

 

Wonder Woman #109:

• August 11th US 'on sale date'
• Actual arrival stamp August 11th (spot on again!)

 

So in this instance the October Wonder Woman #109 pre-dates the October Batman #127 by two production weeks. On the face of it, this could be an indication as to why one exists as a T&P stamped copy and one doesn't. It supports Albert's speculation and goes against my reservation.

Given all the parameters, I'd want to see many more examples for these two and for the other October 1959 cover dated books before drawing anything other than a superficial conclusion. 

Fun though, isn't it. 

P.S.

The two books below are both T&P '9' stamps, we presume from the first cycle / shipment. 

• Batman #127 (October) - 25th August US on sale date
• Wonder Woman #110 (November) - 22nd September US on sale date

A month apart in production, and yet both seemingly arrive in the UK in the same shipment. 

There's a WW#110 with an 8 stamp too - earlier, or later...... 

P.P.S. The missing October '59 Action Comics #257 has an 'on sale date' of 27th August - just two days after our present Batman #127. Ditto Adventure Comics #265.

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

 

[Get Marwood & I]

I forgot Pat Boone #1 in that table - the Sep/Oct issue has an on sale date of July the 2nd - and it's a T&P stamped book. 

Albeit possibly a second cycle 6 one.

[OtherEric]

On 6/1/2022 at 2:35 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I forgot Pat Boone #1 in that table - the Sep/Oct issue has an on sale date of July the 2nd - and it's a T&P stamped book. 

Albeit possibly a second cycle 6 one.

Well, every bit of data is a boon(e) towards trying to figure the distribution out.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/1/2022 at 10:54 PM, OtherEric said:

Well, every bit of data is a boon(e) towards trying to figure the distribution out.

Boom Boone!

And those bi-monthly books would presumably sit on US shelves longer than the monthly titles, throwing another spanner in the sequence...

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/1/2022 at 9:06 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

The stamped DC books are returns

Not necessarily.

More speculation.

It is late 1959/early 1960 and T & P have jumped through various hoops to (legally at last) get their paws on the real deal US comics.

They are understandably in a rush to get the ball rolling.

Do they:

A) wait for DC to set up a system to gather in unsold returns from across the then 49 states

or 

B) tell DC to just send whatever is languishing in the warehouse?

My money is on (B).

If that is correct then the first one or two shipments will not include items with US arrival dates.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/1/2022 at 10:35 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I forgot Pat Boone #1 in that table -

And good luck to Pat in blowing out your 88 candles today.

Any chance of signing my Lois Lane 9 cover, Pat? I'll pop it in the post.

[APDallas]

Bought this many years ago. I actually got it cheap because of the stamp. It seemed this was considered a defect back in the day.

[Yorick]

On 6/3/2022 at 5:50 AM, APDallas said:

Bought this many years ago. I actually got it cheap because of the stamp. It seemed this was considered a defect back in the day.

I like that the villain on the left made his mask out of a pair of Robin's shorts.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/3/2022 at 7:21 PM, Yorick said:

I like that the villain on the left made his mask out of a pair of Robin's shorts.

Washed, hopefully 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/3/2022 at 7:55 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Washed, hopefully

There are vending machines in Tokyo that cater for just such a clientele, or so the story goes.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Albert Tatlock
add 1 word

[Malacoda]

On 6/1/2022 at 9:33 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

The two books below are both T&P '9' stamps, we presume from the first cycle / shipment. 

• Batman #127 (October) - 25th August US on sale date
• Wonder Woman #110 (November) - 22nd September US on sale date

A month apart in production, and yet both seemingly arrive in the UK in the same shipment. 

Aha.  An excuse opportunity to get on one of my hobby horses without technically hi-jacking the thread.   Hold my beer…..

Primarily talking about Marvel here…

Those of us in our 50's remember that in the 70’s comics were on the newsagents shelves in discreet cover months which were always the month we were in.  It was not exact, the April cd comics didn’t get put out on April 1^st and taken away on the 30^th, and they didn’t all change in the same shops on the same day, but broadly speaking, you bought your April cd issues of whichever Marvels you collected  in April and waited a month for the May ones, and, sure enough, a month later, the April leftovers were replaced by the new May issues.

Many of us remember it  like that, and, I think no one remembers it differently??

(Obviously, we all have stories about finding a 3 year old gem unaccountably still in a newsagent's rack, but I mean generally). 

Now, we know that the comics were not distributed like that in the US.  They were printed and went on sale at 4 points in the month for each cover date.  We can debate the exact accuracy of sources like Mike’s, but unless the information is 100% wrong it seems there are 3 or 4 sets of release dates for each comic e.g. 

Kid Colt 166, Hulk 159, DD 95 & Iron Man 54 all had on sale dates of 3/10/72

Thor 207, Cap 157, ASM 116, Avengers 107 & Subby 57 all had on sale dates of 10/10/72

Rawhide Kid 107, Amazing Adventures 16, Conan 22 & Marvel Feature all had on sale dates of 17/10/72

FF 130, Sgt. Fury 106, Captain Marvel 24, Creatures on the Loose 21 and Kull 6 all had on sale dates of 24/10/72.

So these comics would have appeared on US newsstands at those weekly intervals throughout the month of October 1972.

But they all had cover dates of Jan 1973, so the export / UKPV issues would have appeared on the shelves of UK newsagents all together at the same time in Jan 1973. Note: all together, at the same time and in the month they were cover dated.

This raises the point that the UK orders must have been collated together at some point in time & space. Obviously, they were put to one side and collated at some point in the month at WCP in Sparta (they were pence issues, so they could only be piled up until they were ready to go) and I imagine there was only one sailing per month. This leaves two possibilities:  either WCP piled up 4 weeks’ worth of UKPV’s and waited until the last week of the month when a complete cover month of UKPV’s had been assembled and then dispatched them in the last days of the month such that a complete cover date month rocked up in the UK with a neat bow on it (this seems unlikely to me, given the scale at which Sparta were working and how inconsequential the pence order for Marvel was, even to Marvel, let alone Sparta).  More likely, when the container lorry offloaded at the Circulation Dept at World, it had 2 cover date months together and they separated out the cover dates and prepared each month’s orders to go out. Distribution of comics at World was part of the News Division, so they handled a mix of daily, weekly and monthly publications anyway and putting half a batch aside for future delivery was what they did all day long. 

In the 1960’s, Marvel comics were being distributed (along with all the other major US comic publishers) by T&P arriving on conventional ships, but in the 1970’s, Marvel comics were being distributed by World Distributors and arriving in container ships, so distribution patterns & practices for Marvel in the 70’s may be different to DC and others (World also distributed Archie and Gold Key at a certain time).  However, given that IND were sending palettes of random, returned whichever-month DC’s alongside palettes of bespoke-printed UKPV’s for Marvel, it surely can only be that a group of warehousemen in Fred Kite style brown coats in Oadby were offloading and sorting out the Marvels by cover date and, in some fashion, sorting out the DC’s.

This is a key point I will be coming back to because, in the great mystery of T&P ink stamps we have (we = maybe just me) treated the question of what the ink stamps were (i.e. what do the numbers denote) as being largely the same question as what are they for? Which it’s not, necessarily.  Even having figured out the pattern and the batching (to the great extent that Marwood has) it doesn’t inherently answer the question of why they batched them up like that and why they needed to actually stamp each comic rather than, for example,  just put them in secure bundles with a batch number on the bundle.  The newsagents would seem to be the key to that, but maybe not as directly as we think. 

But, before we get to that, let’s go back a bit:

1)      Does everyone who was collecting in the 70’s remember it like that? Marvel comics arrived on the shelves in discrete months and DC was more chaotic?

2)     to Albert and others who were collecting in the 60’s….was it also like that?  Do you remember comics coming in the month they were dated or was it more split / mixed? 

 I appreciate we’ve touched on this before, and apologies for asking people to repeat themselves but this thread is 2435 posts long now and also people may have thoughts other than the ones posted.  

This isn't just repetition, I am going somewhere with this, I promise. 

And just to whet your appetite, what got me thinking about this was this question: 

T&P stamped US comics with UK price stamps that bore a numbering system which appears to have sequentiality & purpose. 

Even at the start of the ban being lifted (before Marvel existed as such), T&P were distributing 1 million comics per month.  

Assuming, for argument's sake, it takes 3 seconds to inkstamp a comic (bearing in mind that you can't just pile the wet ones up, you have to fan them out and let them dry), that would be a full time job for 5 Ethels.  There may be factors we know not of, but it was clearly a beast of a job. 

However, on the UKPV's, obviously there was no need for the price stamp, but there was no stamp at all.  Clearly whatever the purpose of this stamp was for T&P, the price was essential, but the numbering system was just a nice-to-have because it was omitted from the UKPV's, which means that most of the time, T&P's distribution system for all Marvel comics operated without it.  Similarly, World used no visible stamping or system, so they didn't need it either.  

So....what was it for, that it was a nice to have, but not essential and.... (here it comes).....why was it a nice-to-have for T&P but completely unnecessary for World?

Ta. 

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by Malacoda

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:08 PM, Malacoda said:

So....what was it for, that it was a nice to have, but not essential and.... (here it comes).....why was it a nice-to-have for T&P but completely unnecessary for World?

Ta. 

It's a good question, Rich.

But before I speculate on it, never apologise - even in jest - for posting this stuff. It's not hijacking, or repetition. It's a frankly stunning level of analysis that you bring, and it is right at home in this thread, as far as I am concerned. Post more of it, if anything, more often (remember when we first got talking, and I told you you'd be an expert one day if you kept up the level of analysis and questioning you started out with? Well you've surpassed anything I've done by a country mile in this area. For goodness sake, write a book and stop wasting your talent in this online ephemeral graveyard).

What I like to do, and have always done with comic research, is gather the evidence first. I often say, "let the comics tell the story" because they quite often do. Here, the comics tell part of the story, clearly. They tell us that DC's arrived from cover dates October 1959, more or less consistently, with 9d T&P cover stamps that bear a clear 1-9 sequential recurring numbering pattern. I've plotted tables that show that the pattern more or less followed a monthly cycle. And I've plotted tables that appear to show like for like dated Marvels appearing to be numbered at a different interval to DC. And I've plotted Charlton stamped copies, of which I now have a very clear and consistent picture on, and which add a different dimension again to the mix.

But once you get past that set of physical data, everything else is total speculation. 

It's not that hard to take an educated punt at how a DC comic, produced in the USA, could physically arrive in the UK and be stamped and distributed. But we don't know really, do we, how it happened and how consistent it was procedurally across the piece and at different stages following those early first arrivals. And for different publishers.  

So I for one, am looking forward to seeing what you have unearthed, Rich. Maybe the 1-9 system was something to do with invoicing. The UKPVs must have been ordered to a defined contractual volume, with records and payment based upon them. Being returns, with volumes dependant on US sales success, the DC books would need to be counted. Maybe T&P counted all the numbers and invoiced DC against that figure. They stamped a monthly delivery with a number from 1-9 and then counted them. Something like that, maybe.

 

[Malacoda]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:37 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

It's a good question, Rich.

But before I speculate on it, never apologise - even in jest - for posting this stuff. It's not hijacking, or repetition. It's a frankly stunning level of analysis that you bring, and it is right at home in this thread, as far as I am concerned. Post more of it, if anything, more often

Don't worry, I jest, I jest.  I'm actually going to post something about UK Marvel soon that will be completely irrelevant, but I will be surprised if it's not of interest to readers of this thread. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:59 PM, Malacoda said:

Don't worry, I jest, I jest.  I'm actually going to post something about UK Marvel soon that will be completely irrelevant, but I will be surprised if it's not of interest to readers of this thread. 

Both of them!

[Malacoda]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:37 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

What I like to do, and have always done with comic research, is gather the evidence first. I often say, "let the comics tell the story" because they quite often do. Here, the comics tell part of the story, clearly.

Obviously, it's hard to argue with this, but what I've found is that unless you've actually got some questions to ask the comics, they can't tell you the story. And the comics themselves don't always prompt the questions to which they are the answers ( I mean sometimes you look at a cover and go 'wtf? when did that start?' but often you have to get the question from somewhere before you even look at the comics).  Maybe you & I are the Mr & Mrs Jack Spratt of comic analysis.

When people have responded to the above, I'm going to post something which occurred to me and I realised the 3rd hiatus would be the point at which it would have been exposed. When I checked, I found exactly what I expected, but I was still none the wiser.  Can't wait to see what the Brains Trust makes of this one.  

BTW, do you support my contention?  You're a fellow Southerner, so I assume your memory of when/how the comics arrived and changed over each month is the same as mine?  You don't remember, for example, split months where half the titles on the newsagent's shelf were Jan and half were Feb?  It was always a particular cover month and then it changed, en masse, to the next cover month.