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

[OtherEric]

On 6/16/2022 at 3:52 PM, Malacoda said:

1)    I am totally spit-balling here, but I think it was a plan that began to be implemented and then was cancelled as soon as it started, like GS Marvels in November. If someone said to you ‘wow, you know it amazes me that whatever Marvel were trying to achieve with the GS issues, they achieved it only ONE month, and then, mission accomplished, went back to regular sized issues’ you would have to tell them ‘no, that is literally the opposite of what went down’.

Actually, Marvel achieved exactly what they wanted to with the giant size issues in one month, mission accomplished.  Although they later got penalized slightly for it. 

At the time, there was a price freeze on certain consumer items in the US.  Marvel was able to raise the prices because they increased the page count at the same time.  They were then able to lower the prices to a lower point almost instantly, but to a higher point than where they had been a couple months before.

DC tried the same trick, but wasn't as blatant about it, and ordered more paper to deal with it.  So they were locked into the bigger format for about a year, during which the cheaper Marvel books finally moved ahead of DC overall in sales, if I recall correctly.

Marvel actually had to reach a settlement with the government over their handling of it, that's why they had the glossy insert in Fantastic Four #128- it was giving back some of the unauthorized profit back to the consumer.

[themagicrobot]

@Malacoda Is it totally completely absolutely definite that all DCs imported by Thorpe and Porter 1959 - 1971 were returns? We have seen from many statement of ownership thingys that always far more comics of each issue/title were printed than were actually required. And despite having these figures to hand they continued to overprint. Surely these factory-fresh issues were ideal to ship out to the UK. Perhaps T & P had an order for x number of all titles from the overprint runs and also another order to take x number of random assorted returns (at a reduced price) as and when they showed up a month or two later. These would be mixed in with the "new" stock so the newsagents might get a batch with a Sgt Bilko 17 when they had already received a Sgt Bilko 17 a month or two earlier?

I think T&P would need to specify x number of Superman etc as just receiving returns would be too random as some titles/particular issues might be more popular in the US and returns might be fewer. They might have ended up with too many Tomahawks and not enough superheroes for their UK customers. T&P adverts in their own Super DC comic (published 1969/1970) indicated that we could expect to see Superman, World's Finest etc available monthly. 

For those 5 1971 comics I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Someone from the US might have visited the T&P warehouse and been amazed seeing Ethel up to her armpits in stamped comics and decided to bring the process into the C20th. Someone else did a cost analysis and found stopping the presses to change one tiny little bit of the cover cost more than employing the Ethels so the planned change was shelved.

Edited June 17, 2022 by themagicrobot

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:14 PM, themagicrobot said:

And despite having these figures to hand they continued to overprint. Surely these factory-fresh issues were ideal to ship out to the UK.

Maybe they overprinted because they simply did not know where the sales were going to be in the future.

They had a rough idea from previous sales figures, but those could vary randomly.

Better to have the outlets overstocked so as to lessen the chance of missing out on sales.

And flooding the racks with DCs helped to crowd out the competition, who would be using similar tactics. Send out less product, and their rivals would be the beneficiaries.

[themagicrobot]

Nothing really to do with this thread but interesting none the less.

http://jimshooter.com/2011/11/comic-book-distribution.html/

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/17/2022 at 8:08 PM, themagicrobot said:

Nothing really to do with this thread but interesting none the less.

http://jimshooter.com/2011/11/comic-book-distribution.html/

I think it is relevant.

The UK's largest newsagent, WH Smith, operate the same procedure.

The take your publication, sell what they can and pay out (eventually), but they do not return the unsold items, so you have to take their word that their figures are accurate.

Many small publishers, though, feel they have little option.

A well-know boxer once said that he was better off dealing with Don King, even though he knew he was getting royally ripped off, than dealing with a more honest, but less effective promoter.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/16/2022 at 6:17 PM, Malacoda said:

I don’t believe it does disprove it.
The PV’s would presumably have been dispatched when printed, right? (so would have been shipped to the UK with the usual shipment of older returns). 
Later, when the US cents returns of those five came back, do you reckon they said:

‘oh, wait a sec, a few of those are titles we’ve already sent previously as PV’s. Better spend a few hours sifting those out of each stack of returns and then bin them all and lose the extra revenue. We don’t want to mess up our superb monthly continuity in the UK’.    

Or do you reckon they said ‘who gives a toss? just send ‘em’.

Their policy towards the UK seems to me to be very much more the ‘Who Gives A Toss?’ approach.  

If something, anything, indicated that these cents copies came over at the same time as the PV’s and were stamped and sent out alongside the PV’s, then you’d definitely have me.  But we know (or pretty much 100% believe) that the DC comics coming over were returns months later, so how does the fact that these 5 came over as cents issues in October or November or whenever and got stamped disprove the possibility that there could have been a stamping hiatus in the late spring / early summer? 

For example, here’s Mr. Miracle #3, cd August, presumably rocked up some months later and got stamped 5p.  Why couldn’t these 5 have done the same?

You might be right, and this might be evidence of it, but I’m not smelling the cordite. 

You've been busy Rich! 

I'm tired after a long day, but wanted to chip in - hope I haven't misconstrued anything, but here goes.

You theorised that the five DC UKPVs existed because T&P couldn't stamp cents copies due to a relocation and were worried about market availability. Your evidence as I understood it was:

• the timing of the relocation (based on your research)
• the absence of July (July/May published) stamped cents Marvels (it seems there are none)
• the absence of July stamped cents DCs

All I pointed out was that there were stamped DCs cover dated July. So if July dated Marvels were affected, why not DC?

For the sake of argument, if we hypothesised that the relocation caused the July cover date stamped cents Marvels to vanish, but they were received at a different time to July DCs, then why is there not another month of DCs absent around the time? I see them for March, April, May, June etc

If the answer is that the July stamped DCs are all late, then why would T&P have worried at all given that bunching was a thing? Why would one months product unavailability bother them if the product was seemingly arriving in such a haphazard manner anyway around that time? And why no late stamped cents July Marvels? Why weren't they received / stamped late, once T&P had stabilised post relocation and hired some stampers?

The books are all stamped 5p with no numbering so we can't establish any 1-9 break through example plotting. If we saw one number missing in the stamp number sequence, that would indicate no arrivals for one shipment, possibly.

I do not doubt the veracity of your relocation assumptions - I'm sure they did, some time in 1971. Nor do I doubt that we appear to have a complete absence of July cover dated stamped Marvel books (I checked briefly, but assume you verified that, and I'm sure we have mentioned it in our off site PMs anyway?). But there is no way to establish whether there was a break in DC deliveries that I can see. And even if there was, there are plenty of reasons to see why that would not trouble T&P one jot if recent history showed the bunching of up to five consecutive issues for some titles when stamp numbers allowed us to speculate along those lines - certainly not enough to panic them into one months UKPVs, Shirley?

So to be clear, I'm not disproving your theory - I'm just challenging the assumptions and offering up alternate theories. As it stands, and unless I've missed something, you can't even prove there was a one month gap in DC stamping at all, let alone whether the forward planning of that possibility was enough to trouble T&P to solicit one lousy month of UKPVs.

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/16/2022 at 8:22 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Re bunching:

I have dusted off the most ancient of my tomes that I can find, with purchases recorded, most are from second-hand sources, as my funds were limited, but I can identify those that were brand new at the time because they cost me 10d each.

I bought new copies quite sparingly, I was prepared to wait until run-of-the-mill stuff turned up on the street markets, etc, a few weeks later.

Some I just had to have as soon as they appeared, though, and FF was top of my list.

June 14th 1967, FF #59 (from my uncle's newsagents)

                           FF # 60 (from another local shop)

June 15th 1967 FF # 61, 62, 63 (my uncle)

July 26th 1967  FF # 56 (a different local shop)

July 28th 1967 FF # 64 (yet another different shop)

August 7th 1967  FF # 57 (a local collector, price not recorded, but almost certainly over face value)

August 30th 1967  FF # 65, 66 (my uncle)

October 31st 1967  FF # 67 (my uncle)

November 29th 1967  FF # 68 (another different shop)

February 2nd 1968   FF # 69 (yet another different)  - this one with the price increase of a shilling.

So there appears to be a good bit of bunching, between mid-June and late August 7 issues plus # 56 and 57, delayed and presumably strangers to T & P, then normal approximately monthly arrivals. 5 of the 7 I found on 2 consecutive days.

I cannot say for sure that the issues between 59 and 64 had not been hanging around unsold for a while, but I think that if I had noticed those issues earlier, I would have bought them earlier.

Cor, I like this Albert.

FF #68 was the last UKPV for a bit, and you bought it in the cover month (November)

FF #69 was a cents only book, cover dated December, and that one you got in February.

A clue to shipping times for UKPVs vs Cents. Can you post some more, along these lines? 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/16/2022 at 11:52 PM, Malacoda said:

1)    I am totally spit-balling here, but I think it was a plan that began to be implemented and then was cancelled as soon as it started, like GS Marvels in November. If someone said to you ‘wow, you know it amazes me that whatever Marvel were trying to achieve with the GS issues, they achieved it only ONE month, and then, mission accomplished, went back to regular sized issues’ you would have to tell them ‘no, that is literally the opposite of what went down’. So, I don’t think they sat down and planned to print 5 issues and no more. I think, exactly as you do, that they were experimenting or that they were ramping something up which then proved unnecessary and was cancelled.  But I think if they happened to be experimenting with PV’s at the exact moment, and only that moment, when Marvel moved to an only-PV distributor, that’s a Hell of a coincidence. And if you then throw in that that happened to be the exact same moment when their UK distributor was shutting down the location where all the stamping was done, well, that’s a level of coincidence that would get you beaten up even in a friendly poker game. 
2)    As you say, if they were trying to prevent their product from being absent from the shelves, why order a measly 5 titles?  They didn’t.  They were only in the PV game for NINE days. I suggest that is too short a time to judge anything from the timeframe or the number of titles produced, except that whatever they were doing, they changed their minds bloody quickly. 
3)    There is actually some logic to this in terms of the points that you raise.  If the purpose of the DC PV’s was, as I propose, to stopgap a temporary problem, which was fixed faster than it was feared it might be, that explains why it was so short. So actually the shortness and the measliness not only support my theory, they also support each other (if it had gone on longer, there would have been more titles).
4)    Let’s look at it the other way for a second.  If you were launching into a new country where many of your titles were already selling, surely you’d print PV’s for everything you were exporting & stamping.  If it wasn’t selling, why were T&P buying it?  If it was selling and they were going over to PV’s, why exclude those titles? Doesn’t make sense.  But if it was a temporary stopgap to keep DC in the market before normal service was resumed…..which titles would you make PV’s of? It would be all the marquee titles, wouldn’t it? All the ones with absolute association to your brand. All the ones you really cared about. If you look at what got a PV in that 9 day period, it is ALL Superman, Supergirl, Batman & Flash. Strange Adventures #231, Forever People #4, House of Secrets #93 and Our Army at War #235 all fall into the same nine day period but aren’t included in the experiment. Why not? 
5)    Maybe the problem is that the warning from T&P was just a ‘might be’.  Marvel were minded to get out of their deal with T&P anyway and this was just the right moment, or the last straw.  DC were never breaking ties with T&P, so they took some initial steps to check the alternative system, but the problem never actually materialised (or was literally a matter of a few days to get up & running and it was gone).
6)    Let’s keep in mind also that from the other side of the Atlantic, there is pretty much nothing else you can do.  If the British problem was discussed at all, it was probably item 34 of a meeting no one wanted to be in and if there was only one thing they could do from there and it cost less than ten thousand bucks, well, why are you bringing this to me? Just do it.  Keep in mind that DC is part of Engulf & Devour by now. 

Actual footage of a board meeting. 

Silent Movie (1976) - Engulf & Devour - YouTube
 

7)    Whatever the experiment was, they clearly cancelled it long before it was over.  Whatever they were trying to check about the viability of doing UK PV’s, in 9 days the comics probably hadn’t even left the warehouse, let alone been shipped to Newark, sailed to Liverpool, been processed at T&P, been distributed around the country, had a month to sell whatever they were going to sell and what returns were coming back come back, sales figures collated and new orders placed by T&P.  So what was it? Well, if it was to address a potential problem that suddenly got solved…. 

8)    If it was an experiment, I keep trying to imagine what else makes sense of this.  Sales to T&P were final, no SOR, so not that.  Could they charge more to T&P for PV’s? Well, probably, but they owned T&P so what’s the endgame? Were T&P pushing for PV’s because it made their lives easier? Hmmmm….pay proper money for new comics fresh off the presses rather than make galactic profits off the super cheap distressed inventory – I think not.  Did they want a taste of the Marvel action – both PV’s and stamped copies?  Well, Marvel were getting out of that game, so it can’t have been that great, and that approach only really makes sense if you’ve got few returns in the US and a thriving fan base in the UK.  If you’ve got a mountain of returns and have done nothing to generate a UK fan base, it makes no sense.  Did T&P want it for some other reason?  They were already resorting to turning DC returns into double doubles, annuals and re-distributing to sell at discounts.  How is a printed pence price going to turn that around? 

Nope. Whatever it was, it seemed like a really good idea in the last week of May and a bad one by the first week of June.

I think it's more likely it was something that might have been needed in the last week of May and was determined to be unnecessary a week later. 

I think the timeframe, the measly 5 titles, the choice of titles, the timing, the fact that whatever the issue was, it was resolved really fast, and that, if it was an experiment, nothing we can see can possibly have been determined by it in 5 issues and 9 days, all sits well with the theory that it was a potential issue caused by the closure of Oadby at that time. 

This is too much detail to read tonight, Rich. I'm not ignoring it - more tomorrow mate.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/17/2022 at 1:31 AM, Albert Tatlock said:

.............but the back of my MM # 2 is about as clear an example you can get of ink transfer.

Love it! They were working quick that day. No time for drying...

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/17/2022 at 1:38 AM, Albert Tatlock said:

Another Action 258 with 8 stamp.

Shhhh! Leave the lot alone - I'm going in at the close 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/17/2022 at 6:03 PM, Malacoda said:

Also, of course, you’re shooting down my theory-based-purely-on-coincidence with another theory-based-purely-on-coincidence, and there’s only room for one fast talking wide boy around here.

Poppycock!

And you leave Albert out of this. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:14 PM, themagicrobot said:

For those 5 1971 comics I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Someone from the US might have visited the T&P warehouse and been amazed seeing Ethel up to her armpits in stamped comics and decided to bring the process into the C20th. Someone else did a cost analysis and found stopping the presses to change one tiny little bit of the cover cost more than employing the Ethels so the planned change was shelved.

Maybe that actually was them trying to get T&P to go UKPV on DC. "Here's a sample of what they look like. The kids love the Marvel ones. Go on, give em a try."

(and we get more money because they're more expensive, heh-heh)

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 9:18 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

This is too much detail to read tonight, Rich. I'm not ignoring it - more tomorrow mate.

Nighty night. xxx

 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 6:27 PM, OtherEric said:

Actually, Marvel achieved exactly what they wanted to with the giant size issues in one month, mission accomplished.  Although they later got penalized slightly for it. 

At the time, there was a price freeze on certain consumer items in the US.  Marvel was able to raise the prices because they increased the page count at the same time.  They were then able to lower the prices to a lower point almost instantly, but to a higher point than where they had been a couple months before.

DC tried the same trick, but wasn't as blatant about it, and ordered more paper to deal with it.  So they were locked into the bigger format for about a year, during which the cheaper Marvel books finally moved ahead of DC overall in sales, if I recall correctly.

Marvel actually had to reach a settlement with the government over their handling of it, that's why they had the glossy insert in Fantastic Four #128- it was giving back some of the unauthorized profit back to the consumer.

This is the stuff. This is fascinating. I've seen this alluded to but never nailed it down.  It sounds like exactly the kind of the response Martin Goodman would have had to the Nixon shock and 11615 (and Goodman was still running the show at this point, he just no longer owned it).

Where it kind of falls over a bit for me is:

1)      It’s often portrayed as a kind of trick that Goodman pulled on DC, but it seems like it was an absolute saving grace .

2)     There was a massive paper shortage and raging inflation in 1971, so the story that DC got somehow tricked into buying a year’s worth of paper and were stuck with it never really adds up.  Publishers were killing each other for paper. Restrooms had security guards to stop people stealing the toilet paper. Having too much paper (at old prices) was like having too much free gold. Marvel’s press release partly attributed the stoppage of the 25c giants to the sudden increase in the price of paper.  That may have been a lie, but it was a lie that no one batted an eye at. If DC had options on (or actual stacks of) paper at the old prices, they would have been making out like bandits. 

3)     There are quite a few exceptions to this: Amazing Adventures, Creatures on the Loose, Lil Kids & Two Gun Kid all moved straight from 15c to 20c without a 25c issue in the middle (maybe majority of the range was good enough?);  Conan & Rawhide Kid had 2 months of 25c issues, not one, which if they were just a loss-making trick to get to a 20c price asap was a pretty weird error on Marvel’s part, and, of course, Marvel had been trying the 25c experiment for years before the Nixon Shock (Fear, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Tales, Marvel’s Greatest Comics, Mighty Marvel Westerns, Monsters on the Prowl, X men for a while, Collector’s Item Classics, Fantasy Masterpieces….these go back to 1965).  If they were suddenly so unprofitable, it seems more likely that it was the paper shortage or similar (although market saturation vs pocket money would surely be an issue too). 

However, none of that actually disproves the theory. 

Do you have any more info on this, Eric?

[OtherEric]

On 6/17/2022 at 3:42 PM, Malacoda said:

This is the stuff. This is fascinating. I've seen this alluded to but never nailed it down.  It sounds like exactly the kind of the response Martin Goodman would have had to the Nixon shock and 11615 (and Goodman was still running the show at this point, he just no longer owned it).

Where it kind of falls over a bit for me is:

1)      It’s often portrayed as a kind of trick that Goodman pulled on DC, but it seems like it was an absolute saving grace .

2)     There was a massive paper shortage and raging inflation in 1971, so the story that DC got somehow tricked into buying a year’s worth of paper and were stuck with it never really adds up.  Publishers were killing each other for paper. Restrooms had security guards to stop people stealing the toilet paper. Having too much paper (at old prices) was like having too much free gold. Marvel’s press release partly attributed the stoppage of the 25c giants to the sudden increase in the price of paper.  That may have been a lie, but it was a lie that no one batted an eye at. If DC had options on (or actual stacks of) paper at the old prices, they would have been making out like bandits. 

3)     There are quite a few exceptions to this: Amazing Adventures, Creatures on the Loose, Lil Kids & Two Gun Kid all moved straight from 15c to 20c without a 25c issue in the middle (maybe majority of the range was good enough?);  Conan & Rawhide Kid had 2 months of 25c issues, not one, which if they were just a loss-making trick to get to a 20c price asap was a pretty weird error on Marvel’s part, and, of course, Marvel had been trying the 25c experiment for years before the Nixon Shock (Fear, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Tales, Marvel’s Greatest Comics, Mighty Marvel Westerns, Monsters on the Prowl, X men for a while, Collector’s Item Classics, Fantasy Masterpieces….these go back to 1965).  If they were suddenly so unprofitable, it seems more likely that it was the paper shortage or similar (although market saturation vs pocket money would surely be an issue too). 

However, none of that actually disproves the theory. 

Do you have any more info on this, Eric?

Some, and I can try to dig into back issues of Alter Ego to see if I can find more references.  That will take me a while, though.

To the extent I understand the paper situation, it wasn't that DC had the paper in hand, it was that they had contracts for the paper for the whole year that caused the problem.  I'm guessing it was a supply chain issue- they couldn't readily divert the paper to somebody else who wanted it for some reason, possibly because comics are a weird size that isn't used that often for other books at this point.

Most if not all the earlier 25c books were partially if not entirely reprint, while the line wide shift was largely new material... and it was around here, if not exactly here, that the change from 68 to 52 pages occurred as well.  Not sure how that impacts the overall story of events, though.

Roy Thomas has said the change back to 36 pages was a surprise to him when it happened, so I'm not sure if it was always planned by Goodman or if he just saw and seized the opportunity, even if I maintain that it was "mission accomplished" I'm less certain that it was the original idea even at the highest levels.

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:14 PM, themagicrobot said:

Is it totally completely absolutely definite that all DCs imported by Thorpe and Porter 1959 - 1971 were returns? We have seen from many statement of ownership thingys that always far more comics of each issue/title were printed than were actually required. And despite having these figures to hand they continued to overprint. Surely these factory-fresh issues were ideal to ship out to the UK. Perhaps T & P had an order for x number of all titles from the overprint runs and also another order to take x number of random assorted returns (at a reduced price) as and when they showed up a month or two later. These would be mixed in with the "new" stock so the newsagents might get a batch with a Sgt Bilko 17 when they had already received a Sgt Bilko 17 a month or two earlier?

It's by absolutely NO means absolutely definite that the DC’s were all returns.  The sheer weight of anecdotal evidence from the time and since means that we tend to accept the words of ones who know.  Not just collectors and comic lovers, but a lot of the guys who created the fanzines back in the day were Mike Lake, Dez Skinn, Rob Barrow, Paul Gravett types.  They knew what they were talking about. And I think it’s true, but what exactly a ‘return’ is is another matter. They are more likely made up of these unaccounted parts of the print run  as you say. They may have been returns from regional or local wholesalers rather than returns from the actual retailers / news vendors.   Certainly, none of the DC’s I ever saw looked like they had spent weeks outdoors hanging out of a rack in Times Square in a New York winter.  And, if to get his credit back, the news vendor had to tear off all or part of the cover and return only that, they’re certainly not those ones.  Apart from anything else, imagine how much easier it was to send a bale of never-been-kissed, neat, original consignment with the batch info on the front comics  (compared the sodden dog eared pile of randos from various months that would have come back from the four corners of the Earth). 
I think some of these have to be returns from the field ( I assume some/many of the returns from local & regional wholesalers would have been returns from their customers).   If they had all been out of the over-print,  surely T&P’s supplies would have been far more orderly, less erratic, chronologically saner and more like Marvel. 

I think it’s the word ‘return’ that is a lot more complex than we give it credit for. 
 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:14 PM, themagicrobot said:

I think T&P would need to specify x number of Superman etc as just treceiving returns would be too random as some titles/particular issues might be more popular in the US and returns might be fewer. They might have ended up with too many Tomahawks and not enough superheroes for their UK customers. T&P adverts in their own Super DC comic (published 1969/1970) indicated that we could expect to see Superman, World's Finest etc available monthly. 

Yes, I agree.  It's like the point I made about the PV's.  Right or wrong, in the comics published in that 9 day period, Superman, Supergirl, Batman & Flash get PV's and Strange Adventures, Forever People, House of Secrets & Our Army at War don't. It's not an accident, is it?

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:14 PM, themagicrobot said:

For those 5 1971 comics I don't think we'll ever know what happened. Someone from the US might have visited the T&P warehouse and been amazed seeing Ethel up to her armpits in stamped comics and decided to bring the process into the C20th. Someone else did a cost analysis and found stopping the presses to change one tiny little bit of the cover cost more than employing the Ethels so the planned change was shelved.

Yes, I definitely think it was a decision that was taken and then speedily reversed. I doubt it had anything to do with being kind to Ethel, though. The key thing is that it's not just a flip of cover design or even of physical stamping practice.  It's a flip from sending returns to sending new product. It's massive. That's why I suspect it was something insuperable. Even for Superman. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/18/2022 at 12:00 AM, OtherEric said:

Some, and I can try to dig into back issues of Alter Ego to see if I can find more references.  That will take me a while, though.

 

[Malacoda]

On 6/18/2022 at 12:00 AM, OtherEric said:

Roy Thomas has said the change back to 36 pages was a surprise to him when it happened, so I'm not sure if it was always planned by Goodman or if he just saw and seized the opportunity, even if I maintain that it was "mission accomplished" I'm less certain that it was the original idea even at the highest levels.

I don't think this puts any kind of dent in your theory. I think the extent to which Goodman kept Stan in the loop was as little as possible and the extent to which he kept Roy in the loop was not at all.