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

[Get Marwood & I]

On 3/1/2024 at 11:25 PM, OtherEric said:

Quick question:  has anybody heard from @Get Marwood & I recently?  I haven't seen them online in quite a while, and I'm hoping all is well.

 

[OtherEric]

On 3/4/2024 at 3:16 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

Welcome back!

[Get Marwood & I]

With everything going on, I managed to miss the final bidding on this nice romance lot below. I was mainly after the lovely Miller stamped Romantic Love. Annoying, because I made the seller an offer when it was first listed and which was higher than the final winning bid. As the old saying goes, the first offer you receive is often the best. There you go. 

[Malacoda]

Welcome back @Get Marwood & I  Now, about this rather beautifully positioned stamp....

What is this?  It's an Alan, so it's already got a UK price on it.  This doesn't reflect any kind of sale price or discount.  Alan famously insisted that all his comics be returned so he could sell them to me again at West Wittering the next summer, so maybe it's something to do with that, but I can hardly imagine newsagents stamping the returns. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Maybe it stands for 'remove shirt'. Plastoid seems to think so. Either that or it went to Serbia on holiday. It definitely signifies one of those two. Or something else. 

[themagicrobot]

RS has always stood for Rallye Sport to me. If my brother had kept his 1979 Ford Escort Mk11 RS2000 until today he could now sell it and have enough money to buy an AF15. 

 

I am in the process of selling a 1967 Triumph Herald. With the proceeds I will be able to buy either this Gold Key comic or this Marvel comic (but not both).

[Malacoda]

On 3/8/2024 at 9:02 AM, themagicrobot said:

RS has always stood for Rallye Sport to me. If my brother had kept his 1979 Ford Escort Mk11 RS2000 until today he could now sell it and have enough money to buy an AF15. 

In the early 90's, when Ford re-launched the RS2000, my company got the only two in the country in advance and almost immediately one of them was stolen from one of our less switched-on sales reps.  It being basically the only RS 2000 on the road, the police clocked it immediately and gave chase, but couldn't catch it.  The marketing dept at Ford took the rest of the day off.  

This is the ad from the time.  I always thought it was a bit on the nose for a UK ad, until the end.  

 

[Malacoda]

Hey @OtherEric  this still won't answer your question about the first specifically UK content that was re-printed in the US, but.....

In Switzerland, Rodolphe Topffler comics were sustained sequential narratives featured cartooning, panel borders and were the first literature to tell stories by sequences of interdependent art and prose.  The very first American comic-style book was The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, printed in NY in 1842, translated from Topffler's original in 1837.  This precedes Ally Sloper by nearly half a century.  So whatever the first UK material was, this was definitely the first European material as they were the earliest European comics (in the sense that we use the term). 

[themagicrobot]

If Rodolphe Töpffer comics are scarce, then Romeo (1957 - 1974) can't be far behind. Girls in that time period had weekly comics delivered just like boys did but they never ever saved their comics. The girl next door used to pass me her issues of Lady Penelope (and I still have a handful to this day) as I liked the Monkees and Bewitched strips. But she wasn't interested in my Smash!

Romeos are as rare as Rocking Horse droppings. It seems that Romeo, right from its earliest days, featured reprints of Millie the Model strips (and possibly other similar US material). I can't think of any other D.C. Thompson comic reprinting any other Marvel (or DC/Dell etc for that matter) material in their numerous publications. After the demise of Miller, surely they missed a trick. In some alternate universe the Hulk could have featured alongside the Bash Street Kids in the Beano.

[Albert Tatlock]

Here are a few Harveys, brought to these shores by Miller.

A couple of the stamps are not too clear, but they are there if you look.

The Audrey one is unstamped, but must be an import, firstly because it has a 6d second-hand seller applied scrawl, and secondly because Susan Smith of Boscombe, then aged 11 (she would now be 75, hope she is still in fine fettle), has filled in the coupon on the back cover.

Susan, if you can spare a moment, please log into this chat board and tell us why you decided to purchase this particular item, with its cover date of July 1960, when you could, for the same amount of your pocket money, have come into possession of the Brave and Bold # 30 depicted just beneath.

Was it because of the unsightly T & P applied 9d blodge on the cover, did that spoil it for you?

Or maybe you were getting as much T & P product as you wanted from your Auntie Ethel, smuggled out of the stamping shed in her corsets.

Do chip in, please, Susan (don't mind if we call you Sue, I hope?), we are dying to know.

 

Edited March 16 by Albert Tatlock

[Malacoda]

On 3/15/2024 at 4:35 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

The Audrey one is unstamped, but must be an import, firstly because it has a 6d second-hand seller applied scrawl, and secondly because Susan Smith of Boscombe, then aged 11 (she would now be 75, hope she is still in fine fettle), has filled in the coupon on the back cover.

I like the fact that she has eagerly filled it in and then (presumably) learnt that she'd have to send it to Pennsylvania and probably was ineligible for the offer anyway.  That must have been a sad little moment. 

[Jason9910]

I just picked up this Tec 411 with a T&P stamp. I'd never seen them before. This thread has been extremely informational and I love this pick up

[themagicrobot]

It appears to be accepted wisdom that the first Romance comic was Simon and Kirby's Young Romance. When Prize moved away from comics in 1963 it must still have been popular enough for DC to continue with it until 1975. I like this cover, despite it failing to display a T&P ink stamp. One could have been tattooed to her shoulder or his helmet. But why is the guy's father insulting his son's pillion passenger by calling her a "Greasy Bike Bum" ?? She seems alright to me.

Now, DC may no longer be publishing Young Romance after 1975 but surely they kept hold of the trademark. They must have done as there was a Young Romance one-shot not too long ago with Superman embracing Wonder Woman. So why did Marvel UK use the Young Romance title in 1980?? And is it the same girl on these two comics. It looks like it to me. Or did most women look like that and constantly shed tears in the odd world of Romance comics.

[Albert Tatlock]

On 3/16/2024 at 6:39 PM, themagicrobot said:

It appears to be accepted wisdom that the first Romance comic was Simon and Kirby's Young Romance. When Prize moved away from comics in 1963 it must still have been popular enough for DC to continue with it until 1975. I like this cover, despite it failing to display a T&P ink stamp. One could have been tattooed to her shoulder or his helmet. But why is the guy's father insulting his son's pillion passenger by calling her a "Greasy Bike Bum" ?? She seems alright to me.

Now, DC may no longer be publishing Young Romance after 1975 but surely they kept hold of the trademark. They must have done as there was a Young Romance one-shot not too long ago with Superman embracing Wonder Woman. So why did Marvel UK use the Young Romance title in 1980?? And is it the same girl on these two comics. It looks like it to me. Or did most women look like that and constantly shed tears in the odd world of Romance comics.

Strange that the father objects to the neatly turned-out young man , but not to the Iron Cross that his putative son-in law was awarded, possibly for services to a foe of Uncle Sam.

 

Edited March 16 by Albert Tatlock
add 1 line

[Albert Tatlock]

On 3/16/2024 at 2:28 PM, Malacoda said:

I like the fact that she has eagerly filled it in and then (presumably) learnt that she'd have to send it to Pennsylvania and probably was ineligible for the offer anyway.  That must have been a sad little moment. 

......and the ad refers to coins from 'strange, far-away lands', one of which is listed underneath.

England!

Possibly Susan felt insulted and decided not to swell the coffers of such a bunch of xenophobes.

What could be simpler than the coinage of England at the time?

12 pennies = 1 shilling

2 and a half shillings = half a crown

20 shillings = 1 quid

Not to mention the farthings, ha'pennies, tanners and bobs.

And the abbreviation for penny, quite logically, is d.

 

[Malacoda]

On 3/16/2024 at 6:39 PM, themagicrobot said:

So why did Marvel UK use the Young Romance title in 1980?? And is it the same girl on these two comics. It looks like it to me. Or did most women look like that and constantly shed tears in the odd world of Romance comics.

Do you think she looks the same?  The first lady blatantly has hair by Vince Colletta, while the second lady is so Romita it practically looks like Flash Thompson kissing Gwen Stacy (if Flash had Harry Osborn's hair). 

Dez Skinn instigated the Marvel Digests including these Young Romances which reprinted old romance stories from the 50's and 60's.  This one, despite the title,  is actually not a reprint of an issue of DC or Prize's Young Romance, but Marvel's My Love #3 (with less piano).   That still doesn't answer the question of how they got away with it, but as there were only 14 issues, I imagine it was gone before anyone noticed.  Probably wasn't worth a 13 year Captain Marvel style lawsuit. 

 

 

 

[Malacoda]

On 3/16/2024 at 9:58 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Strange that the father objects to the neatly turned-out young man , but not to the Iron Cross that his putative son-in law was awarded, possibly for services to a foe of Uncle Sam.

You'll be relieved to hear, the cover was drawn by Ric Estrada, who eventually brought his bad-boy motorcycle skills to the right side of the law. 

 

 

(In the kind of twist you can't make up, Erik Estrada in later life actually did become a cop, sometimes on a motorbike). 

Edited March 17 by Malacoda

[themagicrobot]

On 3/16/2024 at 11:09 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

......and the ad refers to coins from 'strange, far-away lands', one of which is listed underneath.

England!

Possibly Susan felt insulted and decided not to swell the coffers of such a bunch of xenophobes.

What could be simpler than the coinage of England at the time?

12 pennies = 1 shilling

2 and a half shillings = half a crown

20 shillings = 1 quid

Not to mention the farthings, ha'pennies, tanners and bobs.

And the abbreviation for penny, quite logically, is d.

 

I still have a recurring nightmare of arriving at my friendly neighbourhood newsagents on a saturday morning clutching my just-received Half-Crown pocket money and discovering it was no longer sufficient to purchase three brand new tantalising DCs.

PS: I've been trying to work out what this price stamp says. I guess it says 7p same price as ours at the time ?? but don't forget the ½ p vat !! It appears bewilderingly complicated with various rates charged but I believe that currently Vat is 23% in Éire but magazines and comics benefit from a "second reduced" rate of 9%.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 3/15/2024 at 4:35 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

A couple of the stamps are not too clear, but they are there if you look.

 

Always nice to see some Millered Harveys 

I've got one of those too, Albert, and the stamp is just as unclear...

  

 

This one below is a bit more seeable, and yellowy agreeable:

[Get Marwood & I]

A new earliest for Girls' Romances, snaffled for the files from the line that is never off: