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

[themagicrobot]

How many comics can you physically fit onto a spinner rack? That is a very good question. Mr Google says a spinner had 44 pockets and could hold 220 comics. Someone else says 250 comics.

Seaside spinners often had comics top to bottom but there were often Alan Class comics mixed in with the others.

I got my DCs in the 1960s from a shop half a mile away. It was opposite a Colliery. The top half of the spinner contained soft porn and Mad magazines so there was only room for 100 comics. What I don’t know is how often the spinner was replenished. I’m sure that was done more often than monthly as the little shop was always incredibly busy. From 1965 to 1970 I visited at least 3 times a week and got unbroken runs of Action, Superman etc but never ever saw a Marvel comic there.

In fact none of the newsagents in my town had any new Marvels in the 1960s yet secondhand ones were reasonably common on the two market stalls that appeared every Friday and Saturday. I had to cycle 2 miles to the next town to get my new Fantastic Fours. School friends that collected Marvels would tell tales of only finding them at shops when visiting relatives miles away.

Something changed in the early 1970s and suddenly Marvels were more plentiful than DCs and also Charlton’s began to appear in quantity too.

[Malacoda]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:19 PM, themagicrobot said:

How many comics can you physically fit onto a spinner rack? That is a very good question. Mr Google says a spinner had 44 pockets and could hold 220 comics. Someone else says 250 comics.

Interesting.  Probably depended how determined you were to ram them in there or how many pages they had. 

[Malacoda]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:19 PM, themagicrobot said:

The top half of the spinner contained soft porn and Mad magazines so there was only room for 100 comics

These are, of course, the T&P staples, so it kind of feels like your spinner was getting re-stocked by the T&P rep himself rather than the newsagent.  

I remember when one of my newsagents changed the spinner from comics to soft porn and she practically chased me out of the shop when I came in and, naturally, went straight to the spinner rack ("There's nothing for you there!!!").  As it had always been full of Marvel comics previously, I suspect the T&P rep had been round and threatened to remove it unless it carried T&P product only.   

[Malacoda]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:19 PM, themagicrobot said:

In fact none of the newsagents in my town had any new Marvels in the 1960s yet secondhand ones were reasonably common on the two market stalls that appeared every Friday and Saturday. I had to cycle 2 miles to the next town to get my new Fantastic Fours. School friends that collected Marvels would tell tales of only finding them at shops when visiting relatives miles away.

Something changed in the early 1970s and suddenly Marvels were more plentiful than DCs and also Charlton’s began to appear in quantity too.

These sort of anecdotes are solid gold. I've long believed that if we could collect hundreds of these anecdotes from all over the country, we'd have a consistent picture of what was going on.  I might try it. 

Obviously, the something that changed in the early 70's was that distribution changed from T&P to World.  Whereas T&P delivered comics by individual reps going to Thurmaston to pick up their comics, books and other products and then visiting individual newsagents themselves, World distributed Marvel comics via Surridge Dawson, John Menzies and the national magazine distributors and their infrastructure of local wholesalers, so it was no longer a case of T&P reps favouring newsagents near schools or whichever ones sold the most comics relative to the least amount of schlepping for him.  When the newsagent cranked up the metal shutter in the morning, the Marvel comics were bundled in with Playboy, Exchange & Mart and the Pig Breeder's Gazette.  

[Malacoda]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:19 PM, themagicrobot said:

Something changed in the early 1970s and suddenly Marvels were more plentiful than DCs and also Charlton’s began to appear in quantity too.

World also had Archie for a time, so they were probably more plentiful, but like me you were probably oblivious to comics you didn't care about? 

[themagicrobot]

I don't want to bore the six visitors to this thread (even more than I usually do) by repeating myself. But I'll repeat myself. In the Midlands I never saw ANY new Archies, Harveys or Charltons in the mid 1960s. I'm not saying there were none, but like Albert, I roamed quite a wide region to visit markets and second hand bookshops and all the newsagents in between and noticed what was out there even if I couldn't afford to buy it all. The first new Charlton I saw was in 1967 when I purchased Blue Beetle No 1. I still have it. I ought to check if it wears a T&P stamp or not. The local barbers shop had a large stack of Harveys to read while waiting. How he acquired them I don't know. His son was at school with me and he said they weren't his. I never saw any of those odd comics for sale new until the early 1970s. I suspect as Charltons and Harveys were L Miller's (and perhaps for a while Charltons were Golds or nobodies) that distribution was concentrated down south. Gold Key and Dells were more  likely to be found in Department stores, Toy Shops or Woolworths than newsagents.

Edited March 31 by themagicrobot

[themagicrobot]

On 3/31/2024 at 4:51 PM, Malacoda said:

I'm not clear what you mean by 40 counties?  There's multiple ways to count the counties, but however you do it there's a lot more that 40.  This, of course, just reinforces your point.  

I didn't look at a map or have a calculator to hand so if you want more precision there were actually 42 counties in England in 1966. And the average monthly figures for an X-Men comic was 255,000 so I wasn't that far out. I wasn't including Scotland or Northern Ireland but in 1966 Wales had 13 counties. Perhaps they should be included. So we have your 6% of 255,000 making 15300. Divided across 55 counties, assuming all four corners of England and Wales received equal shares and the figure comes to 278. So take Nottinghamshire and work out how many different towns in that county. According to the 6% figure a place the size of Mansfield would have received 8 copies of an X-Men 20 for example. Mansfield would have received 300 copies of The Beano EACH WEEK by comparison. There are a lot of newsagents in Mansfield, although not all would be serviced by a T&P rep. Does 8 issues of X-Men for a whole town seem feasible?  Or was distribution of Marvel Comics not evenly spread over the country? In the 1960s I bought loads of Marvel comics in Devon and Cornwall so they almost made it to Lands End. 

[Albert Tatlock]

On 3/31/2024 at 9:54 AM, themagicrobot said:

Gotta love some of the eBay sellers across the pond. He claims that issue of Fantastic 71 is rare because the CGC haven't encapsulated any compared to the original Marvel comics.

Even if you had a 9.0 or above of mags such as these, the cost of having it processed by CGC would far exceed the likely sale price.

Maybe they are undervalued at the moment, but 200 quid plus is sheer fantasy.

[Redshade]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:34 PM, Malacoda said:

These are, of course, the T&P staples, so it kind of feels like your spinner was getting re-stocked by the T&P rep himself rather than the newsagent.  

  

I've told this story before in other sites but here goes. In the 60s (I was born in 1955) along with the daily paper and my mother's various magazines I had my Beano and Dandy (and later Victor and Hotspur) delivered by the paper boy. I had to walk to the newsagents to purchase American comics. I remember asking the newsagent (Mr Hartley was a patient man) why I couldn't order and have delivered my favourite Superman and Batman comics. He told me that he himself couldn't order specific US comics and that he had to take whatever they sent him. This was in the old West Riding.
There were other outlets where one could get hold of mainly second hand comics such as Market stalls, Church Fetes and School Bring and Buy Sales.
And of course we used to swap comics in the school playground. Primary school that was, one learned not to mention soppy comics when one started at secondary school.

[Kevin.J]

On 4/1/2024 at 2:14 PM, Redshade said:

I had my Beano and Dandy (and later Victor and Hotspur) delivered by the paper boy.

I was a paperboy who couldnt afford comics, so someone got their comics a day late as I read them overnight and delivered them the next day, there I have admitted it 

Okay, okay, I read Jackie, Bunty & Mandy too 

[Malacoda]

On 4/1/2024 at 2:36 PM, Kevin.J said:

Okay, okay, I read Jackie, Bunty & Mandy too 

I wondered why my Bunty was always late. 

[Malacoda]

On 4/1/2024 at 9:26 AM, themagicrobot said:

I didn't look at a map or have a calculator to hand so if you want more precision there were actually 42 counties in England in 1966. And the average monthly figures for an X-Men comic was 255,000 so I wasn't that far out. I wasn't including Scotland or Northern Ireland but in 1966 Wales had 13 counties. Perhaps they should be included. So we have your 6% of 255,000 making 15300. Divided across 55 counties, assuming all four corners of England and Wales received equal shares and the figure comes to 278. So take Nottinghamshire and work out how many different towns in that county. According to the 6% figure a place the size of Mansfield would have received 8 copies of an X-Men 20 for example. Mansfield would have received 300 copies of The Beano EACH WEEK by comparison. There are a lot of newsagents in Mansfield, although not all would be serviced by a T&P rep. Does 8 issues of X-Men for a whole town seem feasible?  Or was distribution of Marvel Comics not evenly spread over the country? In the 1960s I bought loads of Marvel comics in Devon and Cornwall so they almost made it to Lands End. 

The 255k sales for 1966 is copies sold in the US.  If we take Avengers as a rough comparator for Xmen, it had av. 270k copies sold against 424k copies printed. So assuming Xmen was selling worse than Avengers ( I assume so as it was cancelled), it must have had a comparable number printed.  6% of 424k would be 25,440.   I think we definitely want to exclude Scotland & NI because T&P seem to have been very poorly represented there (or not at all).  I think we definitely want to include Wales as they were very strongly present.  So 25440 / 55 would be 463 copies per county. Much higher, but still, as you say, tiny numbers. Particularly compared to the numbers of newsagents, railway kiosks, stationers, etc. 

That said, I think, exactly as you say, it was incredibly unevenly distributed across the country.  I think the reason you got loads in Devon & Cornwall was the strong representation in Plymouth, although, depending on how they carved the territory up, there was another rep in Bristol who might have done Frome, Weston Super Mare, Bridgwater, Barnstaple and the more northerly parts of the West Country.  If the comics sold well in holiday destinations, I could easily believe the Plymouth rep went all the way down the coast to Penzance.  

Like yourself, I always make comparisons to the UK comics, because they're our touchstones but when you actually consider the numbers, any comparison falls over immediately.   In the 1950's, the Beano was SELLING 2 million copies per week in a population of 50m.  That's 5.77 copies per month per head of population.  

If we compare to those Avengers stats from 1966, assuming 63.7% sell through and a population of 157.8m, Marvel would have needed to have printed 43 million copies of each issue of the Avengers to have achieved the same monthly market penetration.   It's clearly not a meaningful comparison, but it certainly makes you realise why, when the Martspress deal fell over, Stan double down and was so determined to create a UK arm rather than just export the US comics. 

[Malacoda]

On 4/1/2024 at 2:14 PM, Redshade said:

I had to walk to the newsagents to purchase American comics. I remember asking the newsagent (Mr Hartley was a patient man) why I couldn't order and have delivered my favourite Superman and Batman comics. He told me that he himself couldn't order specific US comics and that he had to take whatever they sent him.

Do you remember Marvels being in short/non-existent supply?  Do you also remember the DC's being haphazard, or did you pop down every four weeks or so and find the next issue waiting each month? 

[themagicrobot]

My Grandmother was one of ten children who all grew to adulthood living in the same county. My father was very family-orientated and we visited all these great-aunts and great-uncles and their own families too regularly through the 1960s. This enabled me to reach newsagents a dizzy fifteen or twenty miles away. There always appeared to be a newsagents within walking distance of everyone's houses in those days! Many relatives lived in terraced houses just off the High Street. For every shop with Marvel comics there would be five that stocked only DCs. DCs were very regular and I seldom missed an issue of a title I was collecting. 

Most Sundays we went to my Grandparents for lunch. My Grandfather gave me some money and I would run up the road to the General Store/Post Office/Newsagents and their well-stocked spinner rack. It was there in 1966 that I purchased Showcase 59 and immediately decided to start collecting the series. It was a long wait between issues and I bought many many other comics in between but it was more often than not that I would get my latest Showcase from that very same shop right up to issue No 93 in 1970. I never missed a single issue.

PS: I now seem to have misplaced Showcase 66. What's the betting I can no longer pick up a back issue from a market stall for 6d and I'll have to pay £££s to fill the gap.

[Redshade]

On 4/2/2024 at 4:30 AM, Malacoda said:

Do you remember Marvels being in short/non-existent supply?  Do you also remember the DC's being haphazard, or did you pop down every four weeks or so and find the next issue waiting each month? 

It's too far in the past now for me to remember specifics but I would say that DC (and Gold Key and various funny animal titles) were far more prevalent in my neck of the woods than were Marvel. Perhaps the Marvel comics were snapped up first by the early birds. They were part of my childhood reading though so perhaps scarcity is a false memory and Marvels were better sourced in the second-hand market. Although I do recall that earlier on in my childhood I found Marvel comics boring because it was "all just fighting every time", and no matter how cheesy DC comics were from an adult perspective I liked them because they had a proper story with a beginning, a middle and an ending all contained within the same comic.
I remember that I got some decent runs put together although there was always the occasional missing issue for whatever reason. 

[Malacoda]

On 4/2/2024 at 12:32 PM, Redshade said:

Although I do recall that earlier on in my childhood I found Marvel comics boring because it was "all just fighting every time", and no matter how cheesy DC comics were from an adult perspective I liked them because they had a proper story with a beginning, a middle and an ending all contained within the same comic.

Yes, I had a very similar experience.  When I was little I thought Marvel & DC were ridiculous.  A proper comic was exactly that.  It featured a Dennis the Menace / Minnie the Minx / Roger the Dodger / Beryl the Peril type character (always a child or adolescent) who would launch into some sort of scheme or naughtiness, things would go well to start with, then they would overreach themselves or there would be an ironic twist and it would all come acropper, usually resulting in a spanking or loss of pocket money and ending with a terrible "now that's what I call a sticky situation" type pun. 

Super Hero comics seemed ridiculous to me because they purported to tell a proper, grown up story, like you'd find in a book, in the form of a cartoon, which was ridiculous in itself, but then on top of that, the characters would all be running around in costumes like a birthday party, but that was somehow supposed to be taken seriously. 

When I graduated from the Beano / Beezer etc, I went straight to Warlord / Victor / Hotspur type comics.  I remember collecting Warlord from issue 1, which was September 1974 when I was 8.  My first MWOM was #138, but I didn't acquire it until I was 9. I still remember feeling like super heroes were a step back from the gritty, starkly-illustrated, depicting-real-events war comics. 

 

[Malacoda]

On 4/2/2024 at 9:34 AM, themagicrobot said:

There always appeared to be a newsagents within walking distance of everyone's houses in those days!

Whereabouts were you?  I was in West London, so yes there at least half a dozen newsagents in walking distance.  That, of course, didn't help with the tracking down of back issues, which required miles of bike riding to neighbouring towns. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Sorry I haven't been around much boys. Mag's Mum and Dad both died within ten days of each other so there's been lots to do. I'm helping CGC Mike with the grading contest sign up lists, and that's about all I have time for at the mo, but I'll be back at some point to resume the pence ramblings. It's actually quite nice to know that my old threads now have enough pence-participants to carry on without me! Cheers boys 

[Malacoda]

On 4/2/2024 at 3:10 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Sorry I haven't been around much boys. Mag's Mum and Dad both died within ten days of each other so there's been lots to do. I'm helping CGC Mike with the grading contest sign up lists, and that's about all I have time for at the mo, but I'll be back at some point to resume the pence ramblings. It's actually quite nice to know that my old threads now have enough pence-participants to carry on without me! Cheers boys 

Hi Steve, so sorry to hear that and I know you're not out of the woods yet.  We'll all be here debating vital issues of the day (the day in question being some time in 1971) when you're back.  In the meantime, here's a virtual hug from the group. 

 

[themagicrobot]

@Get Marwood & I Sorry to hear that. Had a similar situation last year. "Lots to do" was an understatement.

 

Edited April 13 by themagicrobot