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

[Albert Tatlock]

On 5/17/2024 at 9:34 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Still got em, Albert?

Those were his spares.

I only bought them so I could sell them.

He gave up collecting in about 1972. He got good prices (over a quid each for some of them, would you believe?).

I bought what was left, mostly non Marvel and DC..

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/17/2024 at 9:55 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

Those were his spares.

I only bought them so I could sell them.

He gave up collecting in about 1972. He got good prices (over a quid each for some of them, would you believe?).

I bought what was left, mostly non Marvel and DC..

Oh, for a TARDIS.....

[Malacoda]

On 5/17/2024 at 9:55 PM, Albert Tatlock said:

He got good prices (over a quid each for some of them, would you believe?).

Sweet Jesus. When I first read that list I thought 'that's got to be SMCW' and then realised we were in 1968. 

[Malacoda]

On 5/17/2024 at 3:20 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

if you're sources are right about the cover date being the US pull date

Personally, I think I'm going with that.  There are just too many sources that confirm it as a pull date.  Obviously, there are plenty of things which are 'common knowledge' which we have debunked (some on this very thread), but this is not just a fact relating to a single incident or date, it's a standard practice across the US used by every publisher for decades.  I feel like it would be weird if so many people had the same wrong idea, and also you'd be able to find people in the know shouting them down.  

From some of the ones I've found in the last 2 days (though there are many more): 

Comixfan on Reddit just appears to be a fan.

The publication or cover date, which is typically 2 months after the release date, was to inform retailers when they needed to remove any unsold copies of a book from their shelves so as to make space for new issues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Marvel/comments/ktartm/dumb_question_about_marvel_cover_dates/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_title&embed_host_url=https://boards.cgccomics.com/index.php

The guys on tapatalk appear to be low level insiders: 

Most periodicals (not just comics) have a cover date that is later than the actual on-sale date.  In many cases, the cover date of a magazine can be viewed as the "expiry date" where that copy can be removed from the newsstand and the retailer can start the process of returns/obtaining credit for unsold copies. 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/marvelmasterworksfansite/marvel-silver-age-comics-publication-date-newsstan-t25985.html

Sequential Crush I'm not sure about: 

Well, these two comics both went on sale (or were technically "published") in August of 1966. The other dates (which are listed on the cover and indicia) refer to the date by which the comic was to be pulled off the newsstand in the event that any issues went unsold.

https://www.sequentialcrush.com/blog/2013/01/understanding-comic-book-cover-dates

The Straight Dope had a 45 year history of debunking incorrect information. 

What you see on newsmagazine covers, at least, is not the publication date but what is sometimes called the “off-sales” date — that is, the date on which dealers are supposed to pull the magazine from the stands

https://www.straightdope.com/21341944/why-are-magazines-dated-ahead-of-the-time-they-actually-appear

The DC fandom is from the moderator, not a rando.  (Or a fando).

While we might typically call the date on the cover of a comic the "cover date", the correct term is "pull date". The reason it's called the "pull date" is because the date on the cover is actually the date that retailers are supposed to remove the book from their shelves to make way for new issues.

 

https://dc.fandom.com/f/p/2951064579997697606#:~:text=While%20we%20might%20typically%20call,make%20way%20for%20new%20issues.

The Superman homepage I would assume is some kind of industry-connected source. It looks really expensive for a fanboy blog

Most long-time comic book collectors will understand that the cover date isn’t the release date, but rather an indicator for when the comic book should be removed from comic book store shelves.

https://www.supermanhomepage.com/what-happened-to-comic-book-cover-dates/

BUT LET'S MOVE UP A GEAR: 

Chris Eckert is a comic store manager (Manager at 826NYC and the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company....this is actually a youth writing organisation that seems to specialise in comics).  

The actual "cover date" would serve as an expiration date.

Another interesting one comes out of the court case between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane. After this, Fordham University School of Law laid out a draft paper full of comic book definitions which they proposed for use in future comic book litigation: 

Cover Date Comic books are generally cover dated, but that date is different from the publication date. The major companies publish their comics approximately three months prior to the cover date. This is a tradition left over from an older distribution system, where comic books would be removed from the shelves when the cover date expired

Comic Book Citation Format (fordham.edu)

This might put it potentially at the end of the month rather than the beginning, but I guess it's probable that in reality you'd take them down on whatever day in the cover month that the next load of comics showed up from the publisher / distributor. 

This is Brian Cronin, who I usually find to be pretty authoritative:

As you may or may not know, magazines and other periodicals use a system that's basically equivalent to a "Sell by" date. They list the date that the magazine should be taken off the shelves and then have the excess copies returned to the distributor for credit. This way, news stands can easily tell when it is time to change the stock. The general rule of thumb is three months lead time. So a magazine release in June will have a September cover date, so that when September comes, the news stand knows that they should pull that magazine off of the rack.

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-comics-cover-dates-1989-november-december/

I can keep throwing these out...

But I think unless we find an authoritative source that says otherwise, I'd be inclined to work with this. 

[Malacoda]

On 5/17/2024 at 3:20 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

One other observation, @Malacoda, if you're sources are right about the cover date being the US pull date, then any DCs destined for the UK under the didn't sell T&P stamp arrangement wouldn't be on the UK shelves until well past their cover date. That assumes the unsolds from the shelf were included, of course. I can't recall where we got with all that now without digging around the thread.

Re point 1 (any DCs destined for the UK under the didn't sell T&P stamp arrangement wouldn't be on the UK shelves until well past their cover date)...is that true? Gathered up and sent back to IND on the first (2nd, 3rd?) of the month, sorted into a mixed shipment for T&P (couple of days), trucked to Newark, shipped to Liverpool (9 days), a few days to unload it (break bulk system), trucked to T&P - their guy used to go to the docks to supervise personally - back to Ethel, couple of days of stamping and batching up in order of priority for the reps, and then the reps turn up in their T&P vans and load up the boxes.  You could quite easily have a comic here in its cover month, but definitely by the next month.  The chaos we know about in the spinners definitely fits into this time frame.  I mean really, if they were boxing up random selections of multiple months returns, then almost any time frame fits. 

Re point 2, yes, I think we concluded that the returns were probably unsold / never distributed copies from wholesalers that never made it to the streets or a combination of those and actual returns from retailers. In the eras when the retailers were ripping off covers or bits of covers, the returns would definitely have to have been the undistributed copies from the wholesalers. 

 

[Malacoda]

On 5/17/2024 at 2:49 PM, Garystar said:

I’m not so sure, there are more examples but these are two I can think of off top of head;

Daredevil #108 cover dated March 74 is a Christmas story, FF  #133 cover dated April 1973 is New Year story. I find it hard to believe in states a Christmas story would still be on shelves in March and a New Year story in April. 

I disagree about the timing.  I assume we agree that releasing it onto shelves in time for Christmas is the key issue for sales, less so how long it stays there afterwards.  DD 108 was released on November 20th, bang on time for Xmas.  I have more of a problem with FF 133 which wasn't released until Jan 23rd and completely missed NY, so I agree it's kind of ridiculous it was still around in April, but more ridiculous that it didn't come out in December.  

The thing I've never got is how the 3 month window works with monthly produced comics.  However you slice it, it seems like you'd have 3 issues of every comic in every spinner all the time unless, as you're perhaps suggesting, they got rounded up as the new issue appeared, but if the whole point of putting on a cover date 3 months hence is to prolong the shelf life, but then you collect the returns back in after a month (2 months before the cover date), then there is no point in forward dating the comics by any more than 1 month. 

[Malacoda]

One little mystery that might be cleared up is how the on sale date was the same everywhere given the 10m sq km of the US.  As @Albert Tatlock  noted, on FF 6 there is a massive disparity between the point where the comic is assembled  (March 14th 1962) and the on sale date of June 12th, with a cover date of Sept. 

Later, in Marvel Age, Marvel themselves actually present these discrepancies in time stated as shipping dates: 

e.g.  The Thing #10 has a shipping date of 6th December and an on sale of 27th December (cover date April).  

[Garystar]

On 5/17/2024 at 11:53 PM, Malacoda said:

Personally, I think I'm going with that.  There are just too many sources that confirm it as a pull date.  Obviously, there are plenty of things which are 'common knowledge' which we have debunked (some on this very thread), but this is not just a fact relating to a single incident or date, it's a standard practice across the US used by every publisher for decades.  I feel like it would be weird if so many people had the same wrong idea, and also you'd be able to find people in the know shouting them down.  

Thanks for this whole post, very informative. When I started collecting, mid 70s in UK, Marvels were always on sale during their cover month and would disappear from shelves when the next months batch arrived. I remember buying and reading DD #108 in March (just before everything went ND for a few months). I had just assumed that similarly in USA comics would be pulled after a month (albeit in advance of cover date). 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/18/2024 at 7:54 AM, Garystar said:

On 5/17/2024 at 11:53 PM, Malacoda said:

Personally, I think I'm going with that.  There are just too many sources that confirm it as a pull date.  Obviously, there are plenty of things which are 'common knowledge' which we have debunked (some on this very thread), but this is not just a fact relating to a single incident or date, it's a standard practice across the US used by every publisher for decades.  I feel like it would be weird if so many people had the same wrong idea, and also you'd be able to find people in the know shouting them down.  

Thanks for this whole post, very informative. When I started collecting, mid 70s in UK, Marvels were always on sale during their cover month and would disappear from shelves when the next months batch arrived. I remember buying and reading DD #108 in March (just before everything went ND for a few months). I had just assumed that similarly in USA comics would be pulled after a month (albeit in advance of cover date).

+1, thanks Rich. 

I think Gary makes a good point - we have our own UK history in mind, so it feels a little alien to think of books on the shelves for 3 months in the US, or seeing three consecutive (unsold) copies. 

[OtherEric]

On 5/17/2024 at 5:55 PM, Malacoda said:

The thing I've never got is how the 3 month window works with monthly produced comics.  However you slice it, it seems like you'd have 3 issues of every comic in every spinner all the time unless, as you're perhaps suggesting, they got rounded up as the new issue appeared, but if the whole point of putting on a cover date 3 months hence is to prolong the shelf life, but then you collect the returns back in after a month (2 months before the cover date), then there is no point in forward dating the comics by any more than 1 month. 

There are at least a couple possible reasons.  One is to make your comics look newer, by having a further forward cover date.  Another is to hopefully confuse sellers who don't pay that much attention, so they don't pull until the printed month.  And at some point, it just became traditional.  I vaguely recall a bullpen bulletins using the traditional excuse, and if the direct market was the primary source of sales at that point it's even believable.

DC ultimately added a couple months in between 1988 and 1989 to bring the cover dates closer to reality.  I suspect it was also finally done at that point to make Detective Comics #600 line up as the 50th anniversary of the 1st Batman issue.

[Garystar]

I've lost track but have we seen this one before as a T&P, if so can't have been very often. Duncan has it as ND.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, Garystar said:

I've lost track but have we seen this one before as a T&P, if so can't have been very often. Duncan has it as ND.

Not overly common, no, but another one here:

Both 5's I think.

[Malacoda]

On 5/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, Garystar said:

I've lost track but have we seen this one before as a T&P, if so can't have been very often. Duncan has it as ND.

 

On 5/18/2024 at 11:10 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Not overly common, no, but another one here:

Whoa, dudes!  This is super chuffing rare.  Up there with Conan #1, Nick Fury #13, Cap #117, Silver Surfer #10 and Doc Strange #179 as so rare that it pretty much must have been ND and the once-in-a-lifetime copy you see was almost certainly a johnny-come-lately.  

According to Duncan, this is straight up ND:  "This was the first issue of this title to be Non Distributed in the UK at the time (ND). It was a one-off anomaly. Always an impossible one to find in the 70s I remember as there were so few specialist comic shops."  However, intriguingly, both Alan Austin and Paul Gravett listed it as 'rare' rather than ND, which always made me think that it turned up either in vanishingly low numbers and/or late.  I have just lost a bet with myself as I bet that if this did turn up it would be an oblong or other weird stamp.  One thing I think we can say is that this was effectively ND for some reason, by which I mean that there is no likelihood that in November 1968, a perfectly normal quantity of FF #80 turned up and was distributed as normal by T&P, but all the FF readers & collectors spontaneously decided not to buy it that month and the few who did binned it immediately.  It was clearly not on the spinner racks. 

I do have a pet theory about this one if anyone would like to hear it?  (I can be more needy and passive aggressive on request  )

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/18/2024 at 2:14 PM, Malacoda said:

I do have a pet theory about this one if anyone would like to hear it?  (I can be more needy and passive aggressive on request  )

Oh, go on then 

[Malacoda]

On 5/18/2024 at 2:59 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Oh, go on then 

Well, as you've absolutely insisted on dragging it out of me, I'll do it, but it will take a little while as it's just notes at the mo. 

Just as a teaser:  You are the King of PV's, but have you ever noticed that the one year in the Silver Age when Marvel annuals actually have PV's is 1965....during the first hiatus.  The only year that they produced PV's was at the first moment in time that PV's were not being produced at all.  Odd, no?  What's your take on that?  

 

[Malacoda]

On 5/18/2024 at 7:54 AM, Garystar said:

Thanks for this whole post, very informative. When I started collecting, mid 70s in UK, Marvels were always on sale during their cover month and would disappear from shelves when the next months batch arrived. I remember buying and reading DD #108 in March (just before everything went ND for a few months). I had just assumed that similarly in USA comics would be pulled after a month (albeit in advance of cover date). 

Yes, this is exactly what I remember.  For years, me and my comic collecting chums were baffled by the US.  We knew that comics came out there before we got them  here, but how was that possible as we always got them in the cover dated month?  My friend Nick called Dark They Were 'The Future Shop' because you could buy comics ahead of date there, so they were clearly produced way ahead of time, but how were they distributed ahead of the cover date?  Then in 1980, my friend Lee went to Miami on holiday and came back and told us 'nope, they're just out in the shops months ahead'. 

[Malacoda]

On 5/18/2024 at 8:02 AM, OtherEric said:

There are at least a couple possible reasons.  One is to make your comics look newer, by having a further forward cover date.  Another is to hopefully confuse sellers who don't pay that much attention, so they don't pull until the printed month.  And at some point, it just became traditional.  I vaguely recall a bullpen bulletins using the traditional excuse, and if the direct market was the primary source of sales at that point it's even believable.

DC ultimately added a couple months in between 1988 and 1989 to bring the cover dates closer to reality.  I suspect it was also finally done at that point to make Detective Comics #600 line up as the 50th anniversary of the 1st Batman issue.

Thanks Eric. What do you actually remember from personal experience? When you went down to your local vendor (news kiosk? bookstore? 7/11?), were there multiple months of different titles sitting side by side in the racks?  

[OtherEric]

On 5/18/2024 at 9:48 AM, Malacoda said:

Thanks Eric. What do you actually remember from personal experience? When you went down to your local vendor (news kiosk? bookstore? 7/11?), were there multiple months of different titles sitting side by side in the racks?  

My memories aren't going to be great, because from 1979 to 1983 my family lived in Germany as my dad was working for Boeing on the NATO AWACS program.  I know I actually noticed the issues were dated way ahead of time before we moved, and asking my parents about it.  The best they could do was the "look newer" excuse.  But most of my comics in that era were from Whitman three packs, and the only ones I still have are my Star Wars issues, which I never bought a new issue off the stands until very near the end of the run.  We got 4-18 from the Whitman bags, and I got a subscription starting with issue #21.  I actually stopped collecting for a couple years when I got back from Germany, so the first issue I bought off the stands was #104, at which point I had recently discovered comic book stores. 

The trick that worked for quite a while was hitting the newsstands if you missed a book at the LCS, that Star Wars #104 was already relegated to the back issue bins but I could find it at the 7/11.  More generally, most stores would not have multiple issues out at the same time, not even the comic shops.  But there was at least one exception, YNOT Magazines, which was the only store I know that got books both Direct Market and Newsstand distribution, in a weird combination I never did figure out.  They would keep books on the shelves for ages, even newsstand copies.  (They're long gone, but my current LCS is actually in the same strip mall they were in.)  It's also worth noting that the change-out of books was always very haphazard: while most stores would never deliberately keep multiple months on sale, you could almost always find one or two issues that had been missed when they pulled old books.

Oh, one other note that seems at least worth mentioning:  The newsstand books were roughly 2 1/2 to 3 weeks behind the direct market.  So if a book got hot in a hurry, everybody would rush to the newsstand a week later to see if they could snag it.  One of my only attempts at flipping a book... and I think I got $15 or so for the issues I found... was the Death of Robin phone-in event.  I know I got at least two or three extras by hitting the newsstand once word was out the book was hot.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 5/18/2024 at 5:28 PM, Malacoda said:

Well, as you've absolutely insisted on dragging it out of me, I'll do it, but it will take a little while as it's just notes at the mo. 

Just as a teaser:  You are the King of PV's, but have you ever noticed that the one year in the Silver Age when Marvel annuals actually have PV's is 1965....during the first hiatus.  The only year that they produced PV's was at the first moment in time that PV's were not being produced at all.  Odd, no?  What's your take on that?  

I'm intrigued, Richmond 

I haven't looked at my Marvel UKPV spreadsheet for about 150 years (I sent you a copy, didn't I, years back?), but I see that I plotted the annuals as follows:

Those placements probably need revisiting as I put that spreadsheet together long before I started to use actual arrival dates as guidance. Some of my subsequent Charlton work has been really successful in that area, so I feel now like revisiting these.

Anyway, ASM is as follows on my sheet:

I probably chose June 1965 based on Mike's site data, as the comic itself is just dated '1965':

Looking at actual arrival dates, I find 3 x June's as follows:

So June is looking good as an on sale date.

Thing is, I should have plotted the book on my sheet as September, three months later, using the now safely proven 3 month rule. If I do that, it should sit next to ASM #28:

And lo and behold...

So ASM annual #2 moves out of the hiatus window and into UKPV production territory.

Do I need to do the other four annuals, or have you already done it (although I see that they already sit in the UKPV production window even before any arrival date / 3 month rule movements forward)?

All that aside, is the point you are making less about the timing and more about the fact that annuals were only done the once?

[Get Marwood & I]

Only five Marvel annual UKPVs.... only five DC early UKPVs....