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

[Garystar]

8 hours ago, Malacoda said:

but we know that there are inkstamps and UKPV's for the same issue in other places.  It would be interesting to know what causes this inasmuch as  it might offer some clues to other things. One of them, I believe, marks the changeover point between T&P and World.

I noticed this phenomenon looking at T&P stamps on Marvels and surmised either;

In April 1969 UKPVs restarted (after a year and half gap when only T&P stamps appeared) at 1/- price, however unlike previous periods of UKPVs there is an abundance of stamped copies also. I speculated either;

·       1)  There were reduced numbers of UKPVs which meant T&P needed to fill the gap with stamped cents copies

·         2) Demand had increased to the extent that T&P needed more supply

·        3)  World Distributors had taken over distribution of UKPVs and T&P stamps were in competition? (I can’t find when World Distributors took over from Thorpe and Porter).

From restart of UKPVs in April 1969 for around 6 months 1-9 stamping continues albeit in a ratherrandom way, then all stamps become number 3. For one month, August 1970, the stamp becomes “5p/1/-“ and thereafter all stamps are T&P – ampersand rather than a number. The last stamp I can find is July 1971. From here on in Marvels are either UKPV or they are non-distributed – no more stamps.

From April 1969 onwards I found no instances of MAJOR TITLES (Avengers, Daredevil, Spidey, FF etc) with a T&P stamp which didn’t exist as a UKPV. However lesser titles such as Peter The Little Pest (posted) Kull, Kid Colt do appear as T&P stamps where no UKPV exists. There might be something in this I’ll have a ponder.

Edited April 15, 2021 by Garystar

[Get Marwood & I]

13 hours ago, Malacoda said:

So are we really surprised Timely were the last to realise the UK opportunity in 1959? I’m astonished at how fast they got their act together, considering what their act was at this point. 

Not when you put it like that, no! That's one area I need to brush up on actually, reading the various reference books about the early Marvel days. I'm guessing there's nothing in them specifically about the arrangements made by Timely / Marvel with Miller and T&P?

[Get Marwood & I]

11 hours ago, Malacoda said:

I'm genuinely gobsmacked that you've never seen this.  It is so common that it's literally written into the Overstreet definition of GD. 

I can't remember the last time I read the OPG grading definitions and had forgotten that that reference was even in it 

11 hours ago, Malacoda said:

I'm sure it's a US thing with returns, as with torn off covers and the pic Kevin posted, but I've bought numerous copies like this in the UK. Usually if I buy a box of readers or similarly Yikes-conditioned comics, there will be a couple of these walking wounded in there. 

As I noted last night, I've not seen enough examples of this myself for it to register as a thing in the UK Rich. That doesn't mean it wasn't happening of course, perhaps in a localised way / area - you'd imagine the majority of such books might have been chucked away, so perhaps there just aren't enough examples out there to prove it either way. I wouldn't take an OPG US procedural comment myself as necessarily applying to the UK though.

[Get Marwood & I]

9 hours ago, Malacoda said:

Just to be clear, this may hold true for the sample period, but we know that there are inkstamps and UKPV's for the same issue in other places.  It would be interesting to know what causes this inasmuch as  it might offer some clues to other things. One of them, I believe, marks the changeover point between T&P and World.  But it's not this one.  This is just a random example. 

Yes, my observation was limited to 'the sample period'. I think we've posted quite a few examples of T&P stamped UKPVs either here or in my other threads. That is definitely a thing - lots of possible reasons for it happening I would imagine.

[themagicrobot]

@malacola You may be correct and T&P did do  SOR but there is one thing to bear in mind.

The newsagents filled in a daily/weekly order sheet for the Wholesaler who supplied to bulk of their stock of newspapers/magazines/UK comics. Of course unsold issues were bundled up for SOR collection the next day/week to be replaced with new issues.

Thorpe and Porter operated a very different business model. certainly in the early days. In the 1950s they were selling cheap bundles of US magazines/paperbacks and a few of their own comics to newsagents from the back of estate cars and small vans. Once they could import american comics directly they could now offer the newsagent a larger range of product. But there was no tick sheet for the newsagent to choose what issues were delivered monthly. God knows I tried hard enough with my friendly local newsagent at the time asking if he could deliver Superman and Action every month along with my dad's monthly DIY mag. The newsagent insisted that he received a package of random issues from the rep approximately monthly. He could choose comics and/or Adult fare but didn't know what he'd get until he got it. I visited the spinner rack daily on my way to school and didn't notice for example the few so far unsold June issues suddenly disappering because there had been a fresh delivery of July issues. In fact sometimes "new" comics would appear on the spinner with a date months earlier. My experience of those days was that the majority comics and Adult fare stayed there until sold. The shop turned most of the comic/adult stock around quickly anyway due to the busy trade from my school and local factories. If there was a SOR I don't believe my newsagent stripped the spinner of stock in anticipation of new stock arriving. Perhaps the T&P rep removed a few issues himself to refresh things (especially at the Adult level.)

No doubt by the later 1960s and 1970s there were order sheets to choose specific titles like Mad/Horror/pocket books/Laurel and Hardy/Korak etc.

Edited April 15, 2021 by themagicrobot

[Get Marwood & I]

5 hours ago, Malacoda said:

You know that bit at the start of the Three Musketeers where D'Artagnan arrives and, on his first day in Paris, picks a fight with all of the Musketeers......

1)    On page 12 Albert Tatlock tells us his uncle ran a newsagent: 
“He told me that he sent unsold comics back, and I have been there on  more than one occasion when he was bundling up comics and magazines to be collected.”
2)    SOR has long been the standard practice for newspapers & periodicals in UK newsagents, once they meet the minimum entry level and credit qualifications. 
3)    We know that T&P collected returns on DC because of the Double Doubles. 
4)    We know that T&P were buying comics at a fraction of the retail price. There were obviously a number of other costs involved, but in 1959 the exchange rate was about £1 = $2.81.  We know that IND were exporting comics rather than take the 30% to 50% returns and were selling to T&P below wholesale prices.  In the 70’s Phil Seuling was buying all his stock for the comic shops at up to 60% discounts, and that wasn’t even distressed inventory, so let’s assume that canny Fred Thorpe got his comics at at least 60% discounts on the cover price.  Those 2 facts alone mean Fred was buying comics (in $) for about onepence ha’penny each and they were retailing  for ninepence.  I speculate that he would happily have a done a sale or return deal to secure the one million comics per month he was shifting from 1957 onwards because he was getting them so cheap, he would have been mad not to.  Even if he was taking 50% returns and burning the lot, he’d still be coining it. 
5)    We know that in the 70’s, World Distributors took returns from all of their newsagents & wholesalers, which to me is at least suggestive that T&P did the same. 
6)    We know anecdotally that many 60’s and 70’s comic fans reported finding far more availability generally and specifically availability of back issues at seaside towns during the summer.  We know that Alan Class collected back in all of his returns so that he could re-distribute the following summer.  From 1966, T&P was part of IND, which from 1970 was part of Warner Communications.  Warner operated as 5 brands in the UK:  adult content under GBD (General Book Distributors), Hardback children’s annuals under Brown Watson,  imported US comics (DC, Marvel, Charlton, Dell, Gold Key, Tower, Archie etc) all still used Thorpe & Porter, Williams for titles being co-published with European countries and Top Sellers for everything else.  Dez Skinn worked for Williams: 

“A problem with distributing so many US comics was all the unsold returns piling up. What T&P did, as well as redistribute seaside summer 6d stamped sale copies, was rip off the covers and rebind them into four-issue collections, or Double Double Comics as they were known.”

Note the pre-decimal 6d. I think also somewhere here, people made the point about comics being re-stamped with lower prices. Not sure if relevant to this?

I believe many newsagents did not exercise their option of sale or return (maybe because they were on a good percentage) and kept the comics in the hope of a few more sales, but I think T&P operated on SOR. 

Good post - this is why I was hoping you'd join in - you've spent a lot of time investigating the history of the publishers themselves, looking for answers, while I've tended to use the comics themselves to tell the story. 

I still think the process for unsold copies differed by area / shop, but much of the evidence does indeed point to a SOR model for DC. I think to much credence is placed on the DD's though as they are predominantly DC (just a handful of Marvels) and had a limited life. What about the returns for (the majority of the other) Marvel comics, Charlton, Archie etc? Did the DC returns process exist just for the lifetime of Double Double comics? What about before and after?

And where does Miller fit into the jigsaw? He was importing Marvel (for a bit), Charlton, IW, Harvey on and off throughout the 1960's. Why aren't there 'DD' equivalents for the unsold copies of those?

[Get Marwood & I]

9 minutes ago, themagicrobot said:

@malacola You may be correct and T&P did do  SOR but there is one thing to bear in mind.

Robot, have a read of this post - the '@' tags you're doing aren't working mate:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/314118-the-n00b-guide/?do=findComment&comment=11714832

 

[themagicrobot]

I know. That's the whole idea. I don't do "likes" either or Facebook or Twitter. Sorry.

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, themagicrobot said:

I know. That's the whole idea. I don't do "likes" either or Facebook or Twitter. Sorry.

Fair enough.

[themagicrobot]

Perhaps returns were manageable in the early 1960s. But later they began to pile up and would have made too big a bonfire. Hence the Double Doubles were the perfect solution and which are now selling for up to £79 due to this weird new obsession with "key" issues.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

One thing I've thought about doing is trying to put together a one page map of the history of the books distributed in the UK for the first 5 years from 1959/1960. Just for the sake of crude illustration, something like this:

It would be nice to try and illustrate which publishers books came over (either UKPV or stamped), who distributed / solicited them (Miller, T&P), where they were sold (and whether that was regional or full UK) and what happened to the unsold copies. It could be fleshed out with dates and detail but still be a useful manageable one page summary, I think.

So for Charlton, we know that their books came to the UK in that first 5 year period, we know who distributed them (Miller, T&P, RV) and their respective cover dates, we know in what manner (printed UKPV and stamped cents) and the current anecdotal evidence that I have indicates that they were distributed only in certain regions of the UK. And I see no evidence of a SOR arrangement - no remaindered compendiums, no half price stamps - which indicates that they maybe were sold or binned.

I used to do a lot of process mapping in one of my old jobs, so I'm confident it could at least look snazzy. And I have enough factual evidence in the files to populate something for every publisher for whom UK distribution evidence exists. A job for another day perhaps.

[Malacoda]

6 hours ago, Garystar said:

 (I can’t find when World Distributors took over from Thorpe and Porter).  The last stamp I can find is July 1971. From here on in Marvels are either UKPV or they are non-distributed – no more stamps.

I believe you actually have found it and don’t know it.  I think cover dates June and July 1971 are the handover point.  World had no process for cover stamping.  Comics arrived by container ship to the container port in Felixstowe and were delivered in modular containers, without being offloaded, to the World warehouses, but they were not delivered to the HQ in Lever Road, but rather to the Circulation Dept in the warehouses that were at a separate site. From there, the circulation department checked them off and batched them straight up for delivery.   The scenario envisioned for T&P (the room full of Ethels with their ink stamps dreaming of the day RSI lawsuits would become a thing) were a thing in Leicester, but not in Manchester.. 

The Marvel comics which had been cover stamped for T&P (Captain America, Sgt Fury and Conan) just became non-distributed from July 1971 until they each became a UKPV (Conan for 4 months until Nov 71, Cap for 19 months, Fury for 18).  The comics which already had pence variants were the ones which continued to be distributed which I think is strongly indicative of the change from T&P to World. 

My personal favourite is FF 111 (June 1971) which has both T&P cover stamps and UKPV’s, so you can almost hear the lorries swerving off the A6 and heading for Manchester.  Please see below.   As a bonus for the stamp collectors among us (you know who you are) here's a couple with another triangle stamp. 

Do you have July 71 issues (or later) with ink stamps? I don’t think it disproves my June date unless there’s a load of them .  
 

Edited April 15, 2021 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

5 hours ago, themagicrobot said:

I visited the spinner rack daily on my way to school and didn't notice for example the few so far unsold June issues suddenly disappering because there had been a fresh delivery of July issues. In fact sometimes "new" comics would appear on the spinner with a date months earlier. My experience of those days was that the majority comics and Adult fare stayed there until sold. The shop turned most of the comic/adult stock around quickly anyway due to the busy trade from my school and local factories. If there was a SOR I don't believe my newsagent stripped the spinner of stock in anticipation of new stock arriving. Perhaps the T&P rep removed a few issues himself to refresh things (especially at the Adult level.)

No doubt by the later 1960s and 1970s there were order sheets to choose specific titles like Mad/Horror/pocket books/Laurel and Hardy/Korak etc.

I agree. I think the newsagents had little choice about what they got in the 50's and more later on. I think it's also obvious that if a newsagent did want to keep older comics or mags on the rack, the T&P sales rep was hardly going to say no to letting him keep them.  Even in the 70's, I used to go to the newsstand (an actual news kiosk) at Twickenham station because they used to keep previous months Marvels long after they'd disappeared elsewhere. Also, literally in sight of that kiosk was another favourite newsagent whom I'm sure used to get the World lucky bags or returns and sell them as much as a year on, cunningly re-priced to catch up with horrendous 1970’s inflation.  I bought Astonishing Tales #34 there (cover dated March 1976) off the spinner rack more than a year later, repriced to the then current UK price of 12p.  It’s demonstrably more than a year later because comics only went up to 12p in March 1977. 

[Malacoda]

6 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Good post - this is why I was hoping you'd join in - you've spent a lot of time investigating the history of the publishers themselves, looking for answers, while I've tended to use the comics themselves to tell the story. 

Indeed, we are the Mr. & Mrs. Jack Spratt of comic collecting. Of course, the best approach is both.  To that end, can I pick up another point with everyone. In several places, Sparta is referred to as the printer for DC and Marvel.  This is true for DC, but up to Jan 1968, Marvels were printed by Eastern Color in Waterbury Connecticut.  Funnily enough, if you look at the indicas for Feb 68 onwards,  they’ve made a really clumsy job of replacing the (longer) Eastern address with the (shorter) Sparta address. 

An elephant that sometimes wanders into the room at this point is the idea that Eastern only printed the covers.  I think this originates because of the whole Danny Dupcak / Eastern file copies thing, where those clearly were only covers, probably originating from 1972 when Eastern did sell many of its comic book file copies and cover proofs.  I believe Eastern printed the entire comic. The idea that they printed only the covers and Sparta  printed the interiors is bonkers to me. Sparta is over a thousand miles from Waterbury and Eastern practically invented the comic book and were easily capable of printing the whole thing at a competitive price.  

BTW,  I tend to refer to World Color Press as ‘Sparta’ to avoid confusion with World Distributors in Manchester. 
 

[Garystar]

58 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

Do you have July 71 issues (or later) with ink stamps? I don’t think it disproves my June date unless there’s a load of them .  

Yes, there are several with July 1971 stamps (not my comics images taken on-line);

However when you look at release dates (from MikesAmazingWorld), as opposed to cover dates, the ones with stamps are those released on or previous to 13/4/971. Issues after 13/4/71 eg Avengers 90, Daredevil 78, FF 112, don't appear to have stamped issues so I think your theory holds up albeit with actual release dates rather than cover dates. I have not found any issues after July 1971 with stamps.

When distribution of Marvels became more structured in August 1974 distribution appears to be based strictly on cover date rather than US release dates - all August cover dated issues were on sale in August, September in September ....... from World Distributors or they weren't distributed at all.

[Garystar]

Love seeing the images of FF #111. This was one of the very first comics in my collection and despite having a couple of nice copies in my collection its an issue I can't resist buying again from time to time and then selling donating proceeds to charity. Captain America #123 is another one.

[Malacoda]

31 minutes ago, Garystar said:

However when you look at release dates (from MikesAmazingWorld), as opposed to cover dates, the ones with stamps are those released on or previous to 13/4/971. Issues after 13/4/71 eg Avengers 90, Daredevil 78, FF 112, don't appear to have stamped issues so I think your theory holds up albeit with actual release dates rather than cover dates. I have not found any issues after July 1971 with stamps.

When distribution of Marvels became more structured in August 1974 distribution appears to be based strictly on cover date rather than US release dates - all August cover dated issues were on sale in August, September in September ....... from World Distributors or they weren't distributed at all.

Agree, I think the release dates are the key.  Another thing that you would think would be helpful in navigating the madness is the change to decimalisation.  You would think it indicates something relevant about the timing that the UKPV's which were printed for IM 39, Hulk 141 and ASM 98 were all in shillings, but the stamped copies are in new pence. But it doesn't.  The UKPV's all stayed in old money until the 52 page issues in November 1971 (and then that all went wrong as well...6p / 8p stickers etc).  Those have release dates of August, a full 6 months after decimalisation happened (and 3.5 years after new decimal currency came into circulation, so it wasn't like they didn't have any notice. But then, look at Brexit).  

It's astonishing that Marvel transferred their UK distribution to a company that could only distribute printed pence copies right at the exact moment that the currency changed and they still screwed it up. The one moment that T&P's ability to re-stamp everything manually would have been a Godsend is the precise moment they got shot of them.  Nice one.

Nonetheless, I think we agree July 71 is the last month of T&P and either July or August is the first month of World, probably with some overlap.  Same thing as when Curtis replaced Independent in 1969.  

 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Malacoda said:

The UKPV's all stayed in old money until the 52 page issues in November 1971 (and then that all went wrong as well...6p / 8p stickers etc).  Those have release dates of August, a full 6 months after decimalisation happened (and 3.5 years after new decimal currency came into circulation, so it wasn't like they didn't have any notice. But then, look at Brexit).  

It's astonishing that Marvel transferred their UK distribution to a company that could only distribute printed pence copies right at the exact moment that the currency changed and they still screwed it up. The one moment that T&P's ability to re-stamp everything manually would have been a Godsend is the precise moment they got shot of them.  Nice one.

In respect of the Marvel November 1971 6p stickered copies (with 8p printed prices underneath), whose mistake do you think it was Rich?

 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 4/10/2021 at 5:58 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'm going to watch the film and see if there is anything in it to date it - maybe a newspaper or something 

March-April 1965 indicia dates:

    

....vs July-August Marvels....

[Malacoda]

2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

In respect of the Marvel November 1971 6p stickered copies (with 8p printed prices underneath), who's mistake do you think it was Rich?

 

Are you quite sure you want to do this? 

Right. OK. Let’s start at the very beginning (that’s a very good place to start…).  What actually happened to pricing that month? Everything moved to 52 page giant sized comics that cost 25c in the US.  In the UK: 

 Amazing Adventures,  Conan, FF & Where Monsters Dwell were 6p
ASM, Avengers, DD, Hulk, Subby & Thor were 8p. 
Astonishing Tales, Cap, Iron Man were non-distributed
Xmen had already gone into GS cover stamped reprints, so they’re no help.

So I don’t think there’s a pattern there, I think it was just a massive cokc up. 

I think Marvel screwed it up.  I mean, let’s be honest they screwed the whole 52 page, 25c thing up completely (unless it was actually a ploy to make DC commit financial suicide) and got out of it literally as fast as possible (one issue later).  So how surprised are you that they also cocked up the UK pricing bit?

 
Here’s my guess:  Marvel comics cost 1 shilling and that was 5 new pence, so that would be the new price of a Marvel comic.  However, Marvel’s UK price had been at 1 shilling since 1967.  I suspect this is what retailers call critical price focus (i.e. why you charge 9.99 for something rather than 10.00). A shilling was a firmly set value in people’s minds. A price threshold.   More than a shilling was more than a shilling.  As Hancock said ‘break into half a crown and there’s nothing left’. 
I think Marvel were oblivious to decimalisation and they got paid whatever wholesale price they charged in cents relative to the cents cover price.  They just put whatever 'nonsense' numbers T&P asked for as the price.  The comics were non-returnable so it’s was T&P’s call.  So I imagine the reason that price had stayed at one shilling for so long was because T&P knew that more-than-a-shilling was a barrier to purchase (much like the horror when Marvel wanted to increase the US price from 10c to 12c).  
So I think decimalisation was the prime moment to move the price up from a shilling (5 new pence) to six new pence.  In theory, this was a big increase as an old penny was 1/240th of a pound and a new penny was 1/100th of a pound.  But no one understood the new money or had a feel for it.  No one had any psychological issues around six new pence in the way that they had around a shilling.   So I think T&P would have pushed for the post-decimal price to be 6 new p. 
However, in the interim. (1) Marvel failed entirely to get any of their mess together and carried on printing the old money prices (2) they changed UK distributor (3) T&P were out, so they weren’t going to push for new pricing and they could ink stamp old money into new anyway. ( Not sure why they did 5p stamps, I suspect it was because 5p was a shilling and manually stamping 6p look like chicanery, maybe? ). 

It may also be the case that Marvel had been planning the 52 pagers for a while and didn’t want to confuse the market with multiple price changes. 
So…..for those first months that World took over, I don’t think it mattered that comics were still priced in shillings.  Masses of stuff was still priced in old money and people still thought entirely in old money (my French boss told me in 2014 that he still calculated euros back into francs in his head before it had any meaning to him).  When the euro was introduced and it necessitated some procedure changes here, it came to light that Nat West had never actually changed their systems from pounds, shillings and pence for 30 years.  They just ignored the shillings.  It then came to light again ten years later during a systems failure that they still hadn’t changed it.  And probably still haven’t.  So the idea that newsagents were seeing a shilling and taking 5p doesn’t phase me.  

More interesting is the price itself.  Based on the exchange rate in 1971, the price should have been at least 10p which was actually the price T&P were selling the big X men reprints for (although I don’t know when they started arriving.   Clearly nowhere near the cover dates), and that would have reflected the double sized comics  ( two shillings).  It would have actually been quite neat – twice the old size, twice the old price. But they decided to go with 8p.  And then they printed a bunch at 6p.  

I think that 6p was what was going to be the new agreed post-decimal price. Then they moved to giant size, which would more logically have cost 10p, but I think T&P and/or World told them that UK kids just didn’t get that much pocket money (the Beano cost 4p, MWOM launched the following year at 5p) so they settled on 8p. 
This was fantastically miscommunicated both internally, where 4 titles were printed at 6p and to World Distributors, who I think were expecting 6p as the new agreed post-decimal price and were only 3 months into their new relationship with Marvel, so didn’t realise these things were double sized.  Also, astonishing Tales and Iron Man had both been distributed to the UK – Iron Man since issue 1 – and suddenly disappeared at exactly this point. For AT it was literally this one issue that didn’t come.  I think World made a rational assumption in the absence of any other facts, and put the price to what they expected it to be and what 4 of the titles were at. And then rushed out and bought some stickers. 

But why someone didn’t just make a bloody phone call is beyond me. 

 

Edited April 15, 2021 by Malacoda