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

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:40 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

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.

This is definitely a key point. When Marvel went into the B&W magazines (now having the big stick of Curtis at their disposal) they deliberately swamped the stands with more product than they could sell just to rule the school. They pretty much put Skywald out of business this way. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2022 at 9:01 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

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

OK, one thing to be clear about in my theory is that this is where Marvel and T&P part ways (which it was).  
So the theory is: 
Starting in 1969, Kinney begin to consolidate their recent purchases around Warner’s, which basically shreds T&P as most of their output becomes part of Williams. In early 1971, they announce the closure of the Thurmaston HQ and corporate re-structuring and whatever the 1971 versions of  ‘rightsizing’ ‘vertical integration’ ‘synergy’ ‘sustainability’ and ‘hyperlocality’ were i.e. you’re going to lose your job, Ethel. 
Now, Marvel must surely already want to get out of bed with T&P. To say it’s not the company they got into bed with is quite the understatement.  In fact, it’s basically DC now.  Maybe they began to look around at this point.  World Distributors were already producing their annuals, so it’s unimaginable to me that no conversations were taking place before this.  
Maybe as a result of the dissolution of T&P, or maybe as I theorise, the PV + stamping option was really attractive and the loss of it was the last straw, Marvel move UK distribution over to World Distributors. 
The reason I suspect the shutdown of Thurmaston is key is that the two things happen at the same time.  It may be that there was no interruption to stamping and Marvel just decided that this was the moment to cut ties. 
So….the disappearance of Marvel stamps on the July issues is not directly indicative of a stamping issue at T&P, it’s the moment Marvel moved over to World, who had no capacity for stamping.  
So from that moment, the cessation of stamping at Marvel has no bearing on whatever was happening on the fronts of DC comics.  It may be caused by the same initial cause, but the two part ways and everything Marvel published after 13/4/71 is either PV or ND.

 
We’ll come back to DC when we've all had a good snooze. 
 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/18/2022 at 1:33 AM, Malacoda said:

So….the disappearance of Marvel stamps on the July issues is not directly indicative of a stamping issue at T&P, it’s the moment Marvel moved over to World, who had no capacity for stamping.  

Right, yes I'd missed that. Rich, you've done all the research on the history of T&P commercially, the people and their motivations, and made all the links. It's fascinating stuff, but I feel I'm struggling to add anything of value now. Best that I read and learn from now on, I think, and only chip in if I have something concrete to add that I'm sure about. Which nowadays, isn't that much! 

[Malacoda]

On 6/18/2022 at 8:35 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Right, yes I'd missed that. Rich, you've done all the research on the history of T&P commercially, the people and their motivations, and made all the links. It's fascinating stuff, but I feel I'm struggling to add anything of value now. Best that I read and learn from now on, I think, and only chip in if I have something concrete to add that I'm sure about. Which nowadays, isn't that much! 

No, your knowledge still dwarfs mine.  I could well be wrong.  As you know, my bete noir is the myth that the dock strikes caused the Marvel hiatuses when they demonstrably didn’t, but people have said ‘well, these things happened around the same time, so they must have been connected’.

I may have just created my own private dock strike.

A key thing for me is the way everyone remembers and has written about the difference between Marvel and DC.  It seems a very common recollection that Marvel were more regular, reliable and arrived month by month where DC were far more chaotic.  I think (correct me please) that what you’ve found with bunching and multi-batching confirms this – it’s more DC than Marvel? How do we explain that? Well…

As the Robot points out, the DC returns thing is a potential explanation for the multi-batching.  As he says, if T&P were getting a load from the overprint and then subsequent repeats from the returns, it explains why they turn up in multiple batches, sometimes seemingly months apart.  You don’t even need to believe that the overspill printing played a part.  Returns drifting in from wholesalers over many months alone would explain it.  According to Carmine Infantino, the returns could come in anywhere up to a year and according to Monroe Frohlich, there was no real deadline. If a wholesaler or retailer found a long-forgotten batch, they would still honour the credit.

Conversely, I guess it can explain the bunching as well, if you accept that returns were piled by IND, then multiple months sent together, they were stamped all at the same time by Ethel but then they were drip-fed onto the market in a monthly fashion by T&P.  Messy, though, right?

The problem it then gives us is….why did this happen with Marvel? Their schedule with PV’s was pretty clearly monthly and people remember it that way too.

"Rich, you insufficiently_thoughtful_person, the bunching and multi-batching is clearly only visible on the stamped cents copies, not the PV’s."

OK, but, come on. Are we supposed to believe it’s humming like a well oiled machine while it’s PV’s, then turns into chaos when it’s stamps, then turns back into a well-oiled machine when the PV’s come back?

Steve, can you please confirm:

Is bunching & multi-batching much more prevalent on DC than Marvel?

Where there is bunching & multi-batching on Marvel titles, is it only during the hiatuses?  Or do titles like Cap, Sgt Fury, Marvel Tales, MGC, MSH, Captain Savage & the Surfer which have long runs of stamps also bunch and multi batch?

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/18/2022 at 4:02 PM, Malacoda said:

Steve, can you please confirm:

Is bunching & multi-batching much more prevalent on DC than Marvel?

Where there is bunching & multi-batching on Marvel titles, is it only during the hiatuses?  Or do titles like Cap, Sgt Fury, Marvel Tales, MGC, MSH, Captain Savage & the Surfer which have long runs of stamps also bunch and multi batch?

I did two bits of work on this, and lost one. The other you've seen, and it's limited to a few Marvel titles in the 64/65 hiatus.

It takes ages to find, file and plot multiple examples of stamped comics. I plotted thousands of saved DC examples to prove the 1-9 cycle sequencing for the first four 1-9 stamp cycles. It would just take too long to do that in any detail for the later cycles for Marvel and DC. And it would kill the eyes.

You know me, I love all this, but there are limits. I've got my fingers in scores of research pies so, when I find a result that seems to show enough, I will often draw a line and move on. If you look at these plotted Marvel / DC examples below, from the tables you've seen already in this thread, even in their limited numbers they quickly illustrate the stamp number / issue bunching:

 

I plotted the thousands of DC books to prove the T&P stamp number sequencing because I found that effort to be worth it to finalise that conclusion - the reason for the numbering had been bugging me for years, so to get the answer, and then prove it, was satisfying. I still chuckle when I see my first attempt at seeing whether the numbers were sequential. It was too small, and I foolishly discarded it having proven, so I thought, that there was no sequence. When Albert said there was - having noted it on his original owner DC title runs - I expanded the sample massively, after being sceptical at first, and proved he was right.

But I don't feel the urge to expand the Marvel / DC plotting for later cycles any further than I did in the above exercise (and the now annoyingly lost DC/Marvel/Charlton/Archie work I did). The main reason, is that it doesn't excite me as the number sequencing did and has a less robust possible set of conclusions. What does the bunching prove, anyway? Either the books all arrived in the shops in batches, or the number sequencing was meaningless at this point and any plotting is not a reflection of the real world activity.

Alberts hand kept notes intrigue me much more - for someone to have recorded when they purchased books in the sixties is cool beyond measure. From that we can prove - for the time period at least - shipping times. And the differences between UKPVs and cents arrivals.

Imagine if Albert had actual records for when he bought these, for example:

That might spur me on to plot hundreds more examples, if we had a set of "I purchased these books, then" records, to see how it all matches up ( @Albert Tatlock, any more coming?). To date the books in any one shipment to actual UK availability would be cool, and might help us work back and date the first shipment.

All that aside, the limited exercise I did shows that Marvel and DC were both bunching up in stamp numbers / issues. Whether that translates into bunching in the shops, is another matter though, because the number sequencing is beginning to degrade at this point and I can't be sure what the plotting is actually representing.

[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.

Albert, in my rush last night I missed the point that you didn't always buy from new on the stands. Do you have any examples of stamped DC books where you are sure that you did, that I could look to plot examples of in the sequencing tables, to see if the numbers correspond with the time frames that you purchased them?

Did that makes sense?

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/18/2022 at 4:45 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Do you have any examples of stamped DC books where you are sure that you did, that I could look to plot examples of in the sequencing tables, to see if the numbers correspond with the time frames that you purchased them?

I can find records that pinpoint purchases by date, but there is no guarantee that I still hold the same copy.

I was buying and selling for many years, and thousands passed through my hands, dozens of which would have been of the same issue, even of the stuff that now commands crazy prices, so whenever I got the chance of an upgrade, even marginal, I took it. That is why my original UKPV Marvels have gaps filled with cents interlopers. Had I known, I would have kept them all, then assembled a separate cents collection when those became available, but back then, I paid no attention at all to the currency printed on the cover.

There were very, very few Marvels in circulation here other than UKPVs in the early 1960s.

And of course, if I had a DC with one stamp on the cover, it may subsequently have yielded its place to a slightly better one with a different (or indeed the same) stamp number.

I will upload a few scans of my records later.

[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.

You know, it might actually be that the answer to the DC PV’s is staring us straight in the face, and this unrelated quote from Roy Thomas is the answer.
Carmine Infantino has been quoted as saying that the decision to raise the page count and the price had nothing to do with him (and he was publisher of DC at the time). The decision was taken in a smoke filled room between Paul Wendell (the President of National Periodical Publications), Mark Inglesias (Head of Accounts for Kinney) and Harold Chamberlin  (who was President of IND, although I think IND was gone by 1970 – so Chamberlin was now President of Warner Publishing).

If PV’s was a DC-level project to test the market / system in case there was a problem with stamping the returns in the UK, and the 25c project was a higher level imposition to which Infantino was not party, it’s quite possible that the 2 projects got onto the slate together without ever being discussed in the same room ( I mean it actually seems quite certain from what Infantino says that they never were discussed in the same room), and that it wasn’t until the moment the two projects collided that someone said:

‘wait, are we really experimenting with UK priced editions at the same moment we’re changing everything to 25c, 52 page editions?  If this 25c price point kills the market, we’re going to be left with a ton of returns. Is this really the moment we want to move away from shipping our returns to the UK? The timing of this is nuts!’

At which point, they hastily pulled the plug on the PV’s.  For this to be correct, of course, you’d have to start up printing PV’s of the normal size editions, and then suddenly and unexpectedly stop right at the moment the GS editions start.  
Which is exactly what happened. 
Which is why you get one GS 25c, 7.5p comic (Flash #208) and then it stops.

Could that work as a theory? 

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/18/2022 at 5:19 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I will upload a few scans of my records later.

The earliest ledger I can find, and probably the earliest I still have, goes back only as far as August 1966.

Uploading a few scans, hope they are legible.

It is a bit of a jumble, second-hand, new, all lumped together in the order I bought them.

Most, but not all, were for my collection, but I did, when the opportunity presented itself, snap up older items for resale, or sometimes just to prevent a possible rival from swooping on it. The prices vary, the ones marked as 10d would be the current (or not so current) offerings at the newsagents.

Looking back, I can see that I bought many at full price that were seriously out of date, some shops must have been quicker than others to clear the decks for their new stock.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/18/2022 at 5:58 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

The prices vary, the ones marked as 10d would be the current (or not so current) offerings at the newsagents.

So these two DCs above (Action #350 / Superman #196) seem to fit - both, when I check, have multiples stamped a 3:

So that might date the third stamp of the 13th cycle as the end of August 1967 - but 3 months behind DC cover date.

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/18/2022 at 5:54 PM, Malacoda said:

Could that work as a theory? 

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/18/2022 at 6:22 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

So that might date the third stamp of the 13th cycle as the end of August 1967 - but 3 months behind DC cover date.

I think the DCs were usually 2 or 3 months later than the cover date in getting to our points of sale, and some of them stayed there for weeks or even months, gathering dust until the shopkeeper gave them their marching orders.

My first DC purchases were cover dates December 1960 and January 1961, but I later bought from the same shop a copy of House Of Mystery 96 (March 1960). It may or may not have been a recent arrival.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/18/2022 at 6:39 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I think the DCs were usually 2 or 3 months later than the cover date in getting to our points of sale, and some of them stayed there for weeks or even months, gathering dust until the shopkeeper gave them their marching orders.

Nice that those two matched up, stamp-wise. 

[Kevin.J]

On 6/18/2022 at 5:54 PM, Malacoda said:

Which is why you get one GS 25c, 7.5p comic (Flash #208) and then it stops.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/18/2022 at 5:54 PM, Malacoda said:

'wait, are we really experimenting with UK priced editions at the same moment we’re changing everything to 25c, 52 page editions?  If this 25c price point kills the market, we’re going to be left with a ton of returns. Is this really the moment we want to move away from shipping our returns to the UK? The timing of this is nuts!’

Aren't you again here assuming that unsold cents returns were off the table? This logic only works if UKPVs were intended to replace cents stamped copies, doesn't it? We have stamped examples extant of all DC issues, including the five UKPVs. So again, where is the evidence that there was ever a stamping break? And earlier were you not suggesting that the UKPVs were only solicited to bridge the UK stamping hiatus? Again, this new logic fails if it was always the intention to return to stamped returns, once the relocated T&P operation was up and running. And why not have a mix of stamped and UKPVs as Marvel had for periods?

Either way, it looks like the 7 1/2p stamped GS copies sold OK here, if Kev's Flashes are any indication.

[Malacoda]

On 6/18/2022 at 10:15 PM, Kevin.J said:

Thanks Kevin.  Just in case it wasn't clear, the 'it' that stopped was the UK printed pence variants, but these scans indeed demonstrate that the GS ones were circulated as stamps. 

[Malacoda]

On 6/18/2022 at 10:52 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Aren't you again here assuming that unsold cents returns were off the table? This logic only works if UKPVs were intended to replace cents stamped copies, doesn't it? We have stamped examples extant of all DC issues, including the five UKPVs. So again, where is the evidence that there was ever a stamping break? And earlier were you not suggesting that the UKPVs were only solicited to bridge the UK stamping hiatus? Again, this new logic fails if it was always the intention to return to stamped returns, once the relocated T&P operation was up and running. And why not have a mix of stamped and UKPVs as Marvel had for periods?

Either way, it looks like the 7 1/2p stamped GS copies sold OK here, if Kev's Flashes are any indication.

I think you’ve got married to the idea that the stamping hiatus had to actually happen for this to hold water.  I think it’s irrelevant whether it happened in the end or not, because both Marvel flipping to World and DC printing PVs would have to have been initiated months before the hiatus started and so would T&P’s move to London, so it’s not what happened or didn’t in July that matters, it’s what may have been flagged as a potential future issue earlier in the year.  

This is all fantasy, of course, which indicates, if nothing else, that I really need to get some better fantasies.  (I had a dream about you last night, btw, so that definitely clinches it):    

• Kinney merge IND & DC with Warner’s in 1969 and begin a 2 year program of consolidation.   At some point, they decide to merge all of the headquarters of the various UK publishing organisations under one roof at the Warner HQ in Soho. 
• Sometime in early 1971, they announce the closure of T&P at Thurmaston, but this isn’t going to happen overnight.  People have got be offered redundancy and relocation and given time to make their choices and the various admin processes have got to be migrated as seamlessly as possible to London. So the gap between the announcement of the move and the move being finished is months. 
• Keep in mind that the distribution network stays up & running (we know there weren’t months of missing DC’s) and that the admin, invoicing etc would not have been a significant issue – it’s literally what the offices in Wardour St were for. 

So what actually disappears?  
The operational side of it (because Thurmaston was the HQ but also the main warehouse). 

So what did they not have in Wardour Street? 
Self-important businessmen running the empire from the golf course? 
Nope, sure they had that.  
Improbably sexy stereotypical secretaries in pencil skirts? 
Had that too. At least in my imagination.
A full staff of professional admin people with experience in publishing? 
Yup, that’s literally what it was. 
17,000 square feet of empty space in Wardour St ready to store hundreds of thousands of comics and a team of people ready to ink stamp every one of them?
Errr….no. Not so much.  

I think if T&P sent out any kind of warning of a potential disruption to business activity resulting from the closure of Thurmaston, it would have been this. They perhaps did not imagine Marvel would be too bothered because they were already distributing PV’s for them, but if the only advantage Marvel were getting from T&P was the stamping and they were now going to have ramp up their PV order anyway, then they might as well stop giving money (and sales figures) to their competitors and go elsewhere. Hello, World. 
Maybe DC did begin the PV project and by the time T&P confirmed that, in fact, there would be no disruption to distribution, a few of them had actually made it to the presses? 
I feel like we’ve done this one to death until we get some new facts.  (I appreciate that's fully on me)….but one last question: do you have a rough take on when the numbering system broke down?

Also, before I forget:  Kev's flashes? Really?

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/19/2022 at 1:49 AM, Malacoda said:

I think you’ve got married to the idea that the stamping hiatus had to actually happen for this to hold water.  

It was your bloody theory Rich!

On 6/19/2022 at 1:49 AM, Malacoda said:

I feel like we’ve done this one to death 

Because your bloody theory kept changing!

On 6/19/2022 at 1:49 AM, Malacoda said:

….but one last question: do you have a rough take on when the numbering system broke down?

Asked and answered!

On 6/19/2022 at 1:49 AM, Malacoda said:

Also, before I forget:  Kev's flashes? Really?

Kev? I'd steer clear of him.

Kev's nuts.

[Get Marwood & I]

@Malacoda

Rich, you've probably already found / read this, but it has some great content about the Golds, R&V etc:

Steve Holland might be someone you would want to contact if you haven't already - he has a lot of knowledge of the time and industry. I contacted him to see if he could confirm the RV stamp as being that of Roberts & Vinter - he says it is, but had no smoking gun. The book has the most info about R&V that I've come across to date.

 

[Malacoda]

On 6/19/2022 at 8:31 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

On 6/19/2022 at 1:49 AM, Malacoda said:

I think you’ve got married to the idea that the stamping hiatus had to actually happen for this to hold water.  

It was your bloody theory Rich!

On 6/19/2022 at 1:49 AM, Malacoda said:

I feel like we’ve done this one to death 

Because your bloody theory kept changing!

Hey, I resent that.  The theory has been honed and refined, it has been improved and developed and matured like a fine Burgundy.....

Actually, I said at the start that I thought T&P issued a warning of a possible future event and it was the warning that started the ball rolling, so I haven't totally contradicted myself (I'm as surprised as you). 

But, yes, I am very much making this up as I go along.  My next hiatus theory will be in the form of interpretive dance. I've already bought the leotard.