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

[Malacoda]

On 6/27/2022 at 11:57 PM, Kevin.J said:

 

 

 

 

 

I feel Mr. Space Alien has made a fairly elementary mistake in keeping his secret from the earthlings.  

 

[Yorick]

On 6/27/2022 at 11:00 AM, themagicrobot said:

slow-moving (ie: cr ap) titles

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 6/28/2022 at 2:12 AM, Yorick said:

 

Arnold, son of Len  (sounds like a line from Gladiator)

Here's #24, not on the GEECEEDEE:

 

Lots of T&P ads, but no cover TeePee.

Were Jenson T&P's neighbours?

This from Wiki re the Arnold/T&P connection:

Relationship with Thorpe & Porter

In the period 1951 to 1953, the British distributor/publisher Thorpe & Porter (T & P) acquired a number of ABC's reprint titles, including Justice Traps the Guilty, Young Brides, Young Eagle, and Young Love. (When T & P acquired Justice Traps the Guilty, it continued the numbering of the ABC version; with the other titles, T & P restarted the numbering at #1.)

In 1953, Thorpe & Porter seems to have acquired the Arnold Book Company as a separate line; Arnold Book Company appears as an imprint on the T & P titles Justice Traps the Guilty, Kid Colt, Outlaw, Young Brides, and Young Romance from that point until 1958. (T & P later published a second volume of 13 issues of Justice Traps the Guilty.)

[themagicrobot]

Thorpe and Porter produced these and also a similar book about Queen Elizabeth II in the first half of the 1950s

 

[Malacoda]

What's the earliest decimal sticker anyone has seen on a comic? (by sticker I mean typically stuck over an old money stamp). 

Obviously, the sticker could have been stuck on any time, but when they're neatly placed over the T&P stamp, I tend to assume it was Ethel rather than a 2nd hand dealer (who, judging from some of the pricing I've seen, favoured a paintbrush and a bucket of tar).  

This must be a contender. There were no 5p's until April 1968 and DC didn't go decimal until 1970, but this was printed in September 1966

Edited July 1, 2022 by Malacoda

[Albert Tatlock]

Currently on ebay, 5 consecutive earliest Batman T & P stamped imports, nos. 127, 128, 129. 130 and 131.

The stamps are, respectively, 9, 8, 1, 9 and 1.

So no wonder people were flummoxed when trying to fit runs like this into a sequential pattern.

At least 3 of these, and possibly all of them, must have been late arrivals.

Batman 132 is also listed, but with an illegible stamp.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 6/27/2022 at 7:00 PM, themagicrobot said:

Oddly there were four more Flash comics reprinted by Thorpe and Porter (starting again at number one). They may have been published in 1962/1963

Number 2 of the 2nd series has this ad inside the back cover.

Ticket To Ride was not released until 1965, so that is the earliest date possible for the comic, and there were 2 later issues, so maybe No 4 is as late as 1966.

[Malacoda]

On 7/1/2022 at 4:33 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Currently on ebay, 5 consecutive earliest Batman T & P stamped imports, nos. 127, 128, 129. 130 and 131.

The stamps are, respectively, 9, 8, 1, 9 and 1.

So no wonder people were flummoxed when trying to fit runs like this into a sequential pattern.

At least 3 of these, and possibly all of them, must have been late arrivals.

Batman 132 is also listed, but with an illegible stamp.

Very cool spot, Albert.  

Obviously, I imagine the first few boatloads that rocked up were a total jumble sale. The earliest of these potentially even predate the lifting of the ban. 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 7/2/2022 at 2:03 AM, Malacoda said:

The earliest of these potentially even predate the lifting of the ban. 

Indeed. They could have been shipped before the deadline and arrived just in time to be welcomed to our sceptred isle.

[Kevin.J]

My Batman 127-130 have no stamps #131 has a 5 stamp

[Malacoda]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:31 PM, Kevin.J said:

My Batman 127-130 have no stamps #131 has a 5 stamp

Whoa.  Hold the phone.  So....this is 1959.  There are no comic shops, marts etc, it's all newsagents/high street. The first ones were distributed with just cents prices on? No stickers, nothing? I assume the newsagents wrote the price on in pen? 

[Malacoda]

On 7/2/2022 at 12:10 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Indeed. They could have been shipped before the deadline and arrived just in time to be welcomed to our sceptred isle.

Possible, but more likely they were just returns stacked up waiting for the pulper when Fred suddenly called Jack and said 'the Balance of Payments crisis is over. Send me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to make me a bundle. Send me whatever you've got.'

[Kevin.J]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:50 PM, Malacoda said:

Whoa.  Hold the phone.  So....this is 1959.  There are no comic shops, marts etc, it's all newsagents/high street. The first ones were distributed with just cents prices on? No stickers, nothing? I assume the newsagents wrote the price on in pen? 

in 1959, I was just a wicked thought in my Dads brain, my 127-130 are cents copies, no stamps, my 131 is a cents with a 5 stamp, I was just following up on what Albert said as my copies were nothing like the ones he mentioned, soz if I caused some confusion.

 

[Malacoda]

On 7/2/2022 at 3:17 PM, Kevin.J said:

in 1959, I was just a wicked thought in my Dads brain, my 127-130 are cents copies, no stamps, my 131 is a cents with a 5 stamp, I was just following up on what Albert said as my copies were nothing like the ones he mentioned, soz if I caused some confusion.

 

No, no, my fault.  From the context of the conversation, I took it that they were original purchases.  You could, and did, obviously, buy them much later from a dealer, mart, ebay, wherever, so they could simply be US cents copies that were sold in the States and came over later. I jumped to conclusions.  

[Albert Tatlock]

On 7/2/2022 at 2:28 PM, Malacoda said:

Possible, but more likely they were just returns stacked up waiting for the pulper when Fred suddenly called Jack and said 'the Balance of Payments crisis is over. Send me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to make me a bundle. Send me whatever you've got.'

I think, because the stamps are (mostly, at least) out of sequence, it is more probable that they are late returns from US retailers, straggling in over a period of months.

If they had been sent in one shipment from DC's stack of uncirculated copies, they would have been stamped on arrival with the same number.

[Malacoda]

On 7/2/2022 at 3:45 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

I think, because the stamps are (mostly, at least) out of sequence, it is more probable that they are late returns from US retailers, straggling in over a period of months.

If they had been sent in one shipment from DC's stack of uncirculated copies, they would have been stamped on arrival with the same number.

Hey Albert - before I waste a lot of time,  please tell me.  When you say they're mostly out of sequence, you mean in the early months, right? 

I was thinking that if I mapped a reasonable sample of the DC stamped comics from the mid sixties, by stamp number, by number of copies on sale in the UK over X period of time, and then analysed it against US release dates, a pattern might emerge.  Sure, there would be a ton of chaos, but if DC were printing & distributing comics, which were spending a roughly uniform amount of time in US spinner racks before being gathered back up and a (relatively small) proportion of them being shipped to the UK, that a pretty strong correlation would emerge between the stamps on most of the comics and the US release dates.  It would be very chaotic and you'd be looking for an overall pattern rather than a hard and fast correlation, but they would all have been through the same process together in a reasonably defined time frame.  Obviously, due to the different print schedules, cover dates will be all over the place, but release dates might yield something. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/4/2022 at 2:17 AM, Malacoda said:

Hey Albert - before I waste a lot of time,  please tell me.  When you say they're mostly out of sequence, you mean in the early months, right? 

I was thinking that if I mapped a reasonable sample of the DC stamped comics from the mid sixties, by stamp number, by number of copies on sale in the UK over X period of time, and then analysed it against US release dates, a pattern might emerge.  Sure, there would be a ton of chaos, but if DC were printing & distributing comics, which were spending a roughly uniform amount of time in US spinner racks before being gathered back up and a (relatively small) proportion of them being shipped to the UK, that a pretty strong correlation would emerge between the stamps on most of the comics and the US release dates.  It would be very chaotic and you'd be looking for an overall pattern rather than a hard and fast correlation, but they would all have been through the same process together in a reasonably defined time frame.  Obviously, due to the different print schedules, cover dates will be all over the place, but release dates might yield something. 

I'd be interested to see the results of this. Thinking logically, the exercise I did, plotting stamp numbers by cover dates, has already broadly answered the one salient question that started the whole "what do the stamp numbers mean" journey - cover date to stamp number sequentiality. We know of course that comics were physically produced throughout the month, not all at the same time. So a book with, for example, a May cover date, may (heh heh) have been printed and distributed weeks after a different title with the same cover month. But production dates will still be sequential. So if sequentiality has already been proven, via the study of stamp numbers vs sequential cover dates, what more could plotting 'on sale' dates from Mikes Comic Newsstand prove other than continued, albeit it marginally more finessed sequentiality?

Did that make sense?

And there are so many influencing / diluting factors in the mix - dual cover months, question marks over the recorded on sale dates (vs actual dates on the books themselves), the possible mix of books that were actual returns vs stored excess copies that never went to shops, US distribution travel distance variations etc.

You better get plotting Rich, and reveal where your instinct is taking you. I've used actual release dates to good effect in some of my comic research - I'll be interested to see if they can add any more meat to the bones here 

[Get Marwood & I]

I took the six stamp of the fourth cycle, which has a mix of predominantly Oct/Nov 1961 cover dates...

...and replaced the cover dates with the 'on sale' dates from Mike's Comic Newsstand:

Date sorted, the on sale dates range from the 5th of July to the 3rd of October.

A single stamp example, with all the usual caveats, but is anything jumping out at anyone?

 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 7/4/2022 at 2:17 AM, Malacoda said:

Hey Albert - before I waste a lot of time,  please tell me.  When you say they're mostly out of sequence, you mean in the early months, right? 

Yes, the numbers settled down later, will post a few examples soon.

Why should DC have left large quantities of stock undistributed in their warehouse? They would have wanted the vast majority, at least, to reach the retailer, even though they knew that a large percentage would be returned.

And of course DC would need to know the sales figures for each title, so they could find out which were hot and which were not.

What other way would there be of getting this information, other than by counting the returns? There was no electronic POS scanning in those days, which now tallies up sales in real time.

Remember how Julius Schwartz was taken off Mystery In Space to rescue the ailing Batman titles. DC knew that the Caped Crusader's sales were down, either by physically counting the returns, or trusting the retailer to do so accurately.

The Batman titles headed for the broad sunlit uplands, and MIS went into a downward spiral, so the beancounters work was justified.

All in all, I think that most of what we received was unsold returns. DC had more than enough to supply the much smaller UK market from its unsold stock. What happened to the remainder, I have no idea, but it would have been a bad business decision not to at least try to get the product onto the shelves.

 

 

[Malacoda]

On 7/4/2022 at 9:18 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'd be interested to see the results of this. Thinking logically, the exercise I did, plotting stamp numbers by cover dates, has already broadly answered the one salient question that started the whole "what do the stamp numbers mean" journey - cover date to stamp number sequentiality.

What got me thinking was this: your beautifully-detailed tables are laid out by stamp number and then you account for the chaos by saying e.g.  ‘majority Feb/Mar cover dates’. 

So it’s a stamp-centric approach which gives us that perspective i.e. it shows the stamp numbers in a clearly defined way and the fuzziness is all in the dates. 
What if we added the opposite perspective?  Went cover date / release date centric and then captured each (in some cases, multiple) stamp(s) for each issue? i.e.  we showed the issue numbers/dates in clearly defined way and the fuzziness in the stamp numbers.  (And what if the fuzziness then started to look clearer?)

What would the two approaches laid together show us? 

Then, what if we went next-level? 

Your tables are quite DC-centric (logically as the system is DC by design and Marvel by accident). However, Marvel is a lot more clear-cut and logical.  It’s difficult with a DC sample to infer much about the stamping system / import process because, well, garbage in, garbage out, whereas Marvel’s more streamlined operation offers a clearer picture.   I think Marvel is the Rosetta Stone by which you can decode what was going on at T&P and then look at the more-chaotic DC process through that lens. 

Another point is: to what extent does the stamping/admin process control the import process and to what extent is it merely a reflection of it? 

At one point, you said that the stamping system began to break down around 64/65 which made wonder…..did it?  Or did the system stay the same and just reflect the greater chaos that was turning up in the crates from Newark?  How would one tell?

Handily for the us, the Rosetta Stone works because 64/65 is the period where Marvel was on hiatus, so if you want to know if the stamping system was breaking down in 64/65, you can look at (organised) Marvel rather than (chaotic) DC.  

More to come.