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

[Get Marwood & I]

9 hours ago, Malacoda said:

Thanks for checking, Gary.  I think these stragglers are going to be a real slow burn.  

But I have a new question for everyone about this PV+CS question. I looked at the timing and had a real lightbulb moment.  I will return after I've thought it through (and ramped everyone up to almost unbearable levels of tension, obviously.....) 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

[Get Marwood & I]

[Malacoda]

Clearly, I've overplayed my hand with the suspense on this one....

[Get Marwood & I]

31 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

Clearly, I've overplayed my hand with the suspense on this one....

 

[Malacoda]

Back to the possibility of these Marvel 69-71 CS’s being returns.

Part One: The story so far: 

In response to my initial posting, Steve made the point: 
“notice how the later shilling priced UKPVs have 5p on their 15c cousin copies. That implies that they were distributed later than their sequential UKPVs, which makes sense if they were US returns.”
To which I replied: 
“I don't think this is so.  I think the opposite is borne out.  And actually decimalisation gives us a weirdly specific line in the sand.” 
And then I went on to demonstrate (brilliantly) that the CS’s which also had PV’s must have been stamped at the same time as the ones that were only CS’s and therefore they were demonstrably distributed at the same time. That being the cover month.  

Gary then makes the point: 
“I too struggle to see the 5p stamps as being returns, as I postulated earlier -  The first stamp with 5p was Aug 1970, if they were imported post decimalisation that’s 7 or 8 months backlog - that wouldn’t have happened would it? especially if these had already been on sale as UKPVs?
The question remains why do 5p stamps and 1/- UKPVs exist simultaneously.”

And somewhere else, I think Steve makes the point that when decimal PV’s were introduced, there was the whole 8p/6p cokc up with the 52 pagers and then it settled down to 6p normal size.  So why, when the shilling copies were stamped, were they stamped at 5p, which was never the price of Marvel comics in decimal money, it started at 6p?

Got all that?  Right, here’s tonight’s episode…..
 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Malacoda

[Malacoda]

Part Two: Back to the first theory.

 
My refutation of Steve’s point is, of course, brilliant, with only one slight caveat:  it’s bollocks.  My point does demonstrate that they were not distributed later, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t returns.  And Steve’s point about 6p is the answer to Gary’s question. 

Deep breath, everyone. 

Marvel comics were released in the US 3 months ahead of cover date to preserve the shelf life,  so that, with thousands of miles to travel by road & rail, they would arrive with plenty of shelf life left.  But then, a month later, a new batch would be printed and dispatched in the same time frame as the last lot. So however long it took to get a month's comics to the corners of the country, unless multiple months were piling up in the spinners (we know some lingered, but not all), remainders must have all been taken off display long  before the cover date.  And returned.  Unless 3 months comics were continually piled up everywhere. 

(Note: in the Senate hearings, the point was made that vendors had to retain comics for 3 months and could not return them before the cover date had expired, but that is the only place I’ve seen that). 

We know that British editions (US Marvels bound for the UK, be they PV's or CS's) were sold in the UK newsagents as cover dated and we kind of know that they weren't shipped much before this i.e.  they hung around for weeks in the States rather than being shipped over and hung around here.  We know this because later the comics shops would start importing them way ahead of the high street by flying them in.  This would have been pointless if they were all sitting in warehouses in the UK at the docks 2 months early anyway. 

We also know that the Atlantic crossing took 20 days max. 

We also know that the CS’s were all stamped here (meaning both the cents ones of which there were PV’s and the ones of which there weren’t).  

This means there’s a timeframe in which cents issues could be distributed to US newsstands, sit there for a month, be  returned, and be shipped to the UK with that same cover month’s issues in plenty of time to be on shelf at the newsagents. 

But if that’s the case, why did it suddenly start only after the 3rd hiatus?  Assuming this was previously logistically impossible (rather than just nobody thought of it) ….what changed? 

 

1. The size of print runs might have been a factor, but as these were returns, that doesn’t seem logical. 
2. The speed of the print runs would have to have got much faster. 
3. The speed to market (and possibly return FROM market) would have to have got a lot faster.
4. The source (and possible return destination) would have to have got a lot more central (or distribution a LOT faster)
5. The frequency of distribution (and therefore returns) would have to have got a lot higher. 

In other words possibly more comics, definitely produced faster, distributed faster and returns brought back quicker. 
Now ask yourself what changed during the 3rd hiatus such that, when the PV’s came back, it was suddenly possible to include a load of cents returns with the PV’s. 

This has nothing to do with Cadence or Curtis, it’s the flip from Eastern Color Press to World Color. 

After 1955, all of the new investments ECP made, particularly presses and plant, were not for comic book production as they sought to move away from it. By contrast, at the same time, WCP (Sparta) were investing in new web printing technology and creating pool shipping, which made them the cheapest wholesale distributor of comic books and magazines in the industry. WCP had far cheaper distribution, enabling them to send comics out, and presumably get them back in, much quicker.  According to Chuck Rozanski, despite World’s massive technical superiority, it was actually their distribution that gave them a near monopoly. 

Sparta is located a thousand miles west (i.e.  a thousand miles more central) than Waterbury.

WCP did not, it seems, do more print runs. Both ECP & WCP did 2 Marvel print runs / distributions per month in the first and second weeks of the month, but Sparta ran 24 hours per day in 4 shifts and each press could produce 40,000 comic books per hour, so I suspect their production was much faster within those 2 weeks.  
Another issue is quality.  ECP used cheaper paper and processing, causing the famous chipping. Unsold returns to Sparta would have been in much better condition. 
 

[Malacoda]

Part Three:  Conclusion. 

I contend that up to Feb 68, ECP couldn’t print or distribute Marvel comics fast enough, possibly not in great enough quantities, possibly not to great enough quality and definitely could not distribute and take returns fast enough to ship returns with PV’s.  More importantly, I don’t think they wanted to.  They wanted to get entirely away from comic books, not find creative ways of expanding further into it. 

However World Color in Sparta could print more, better, faster, cheaper, send them out quicker and get them back quicker.  
 

• Imagine the pile of PV’s, way head of their cover date, waiting to be sent to the UK, when the trucks full of returns from newsstands OF EXACTLY THE SAME COMICS came back to be pulped. How long would it take you to put 2 and 2 together? 
• So you call the Del Boys at T&P, who, of course are always up for a cheap deal and they can easily stamp the cents copies.  For reasons we don’t understand, the PV’s continue to be printed with shillings long after decimalisation, but T&P change to decimal stamps as soon as they can (possibly because it will give them a longer shelf life, post decimalisation, and they can be re-distributed as seaside specials).  

This answers Gary’s question of why 1/- PV’s and 5p stamps exist simultaneously and it also  answers Steve’s question:  why were the stamps at 5p when the first PV decimal price was 6p? Because these pre-date the decimal PV’s.  They date from when the price of a comic was a shilling which was 5p and they couldn’t mix and match the prices beyond that because a shilling was 5p, but 6d was not 6p. 

The only thing I can’t figure is this:  we know after a certain point that the comics weren’t sent back.  The covers were torn off and only the covers were sent back.   Do we know that was 100%?  Does that alone knacker this theory? 

Note: it occurred to me that World, as the printers, might only have been involved in the outward delivery, however:  (1) this period of PV + CS started when IND were the distributor.  If the change from ECP to WCP was not the catalyst, then why did IND not do this years earlier? (2) This change started after the 3rd hiatus when IND were the distributor, and then carried on, completely unchanged when Curtis took over.  Even cover date month Sept 1969, when half the titles were distributed by IND and half by Curtis, features PV’s and CS’s for both distributors, so they are demonstrably not a part of this.  (3) If comics & magazines were returned to be pulped, they must have been picked up by Sparta’s distribution chain because….where else were they going back to? Madison Avenue?

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Malacoda

[Garystar]

Couple of thoughts;

UK introduced duel and decimal pricing long before decimalisation. The 5p coin was introduced in 1968 so just because a product is marked 5p doesn’t necessarily mean it was first on sale post February 1971.

Do we know that returns were returns from shops? Is it possible that some/most/all returns were from distribution warehouses that didn’t even make it to retail outlets? If this were so it would potentially speed up the journey to UK.

I did postulate a couple of theories to my own question why do 5p stamps and 1/- UKPVs exist simultaneously;

a) demand had grown and there were not enough UKPVs to cover it. 
b) There was a crossover of UK distribution- World Distributors were doing the UKPVs and T&P the stamps. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Morning guys, lots to think about here. 

I'm going to go back to basics, focus on what the comics tell us, and try to summarise my thoughts which are currently all over the place.

For Marvel, the comics tell us that there were UKPVs and T&P stamped cents copies distributed in the UK in the periods we are discussing, with some UKPV gaps.

The UKPVs

• The UKPVs, by definition, were directly solicited and would have had volumes attached, tied up into a contract - someone in the UK, entered into a contract with someone in the US, to have them made
• The UKPVs were printed at the same time, and in the same place as the cents copies, approximately three months in advance of their printed cover dates (as the US arrival dates indicate)
• Collector recollections place them on the racks in the UK around their cover dates, indicating a three month journey from US printer to UK shop
• Early UKPVs had their cover dates removed

I have no issue with the UKPVs taking 3 months to get to the UK myself if you think what was involved:

• The guts are printed en masse
• The UKPV covers are printed at some point in the cover run - first, last, who knows
• The UKPV covers would have been placed somewhere separate to the US 
• They may have been placed on the delivery truck straight away, given the journey ahead. They may not
• There is a drive to the docks
• At the docks, do they arrive as a defined contractual shipment, or are they ballast? Presumably the former - I've never seen confirmation either way
• They may hang around at the docks for a while. We don't know the nature of the contract, i.e. ship immediately - the client has paid for them - or ship when they have time / space / weight constrictions etc
• The boat then travels - we don't know the speed. Or the route. Stop off in Europe first? How did the Charltons covered in Italian shipping stamps get there? Same boat?
• The boat arrives in the UK
• Are they first or last off the boat?
• The comics come off. Does the client come and collect / arrange to have them collected immediately? Or to a frequency? Do they sit in a warehouse for a while?
• Are they held up in customs?
• The comics are collected and taken to a UK distribution warehouse
• They are processed for distribution around the UK - how long does that take?
• They are loaded up and driven to their respective destinations - hubs or direct?
• They are delivered to the shops

I could see all that taking 3 months. So many unknowns, so many opportunities for delay. And the chances are, a wide variation in timings as the years progress / operation is refined. And all based on a "the comics were in the shops at the same time as their cover dates" 60 year old recollection. There is no documentary evidence that I am aware that they were. And a January cover dated book that is in a UK shop on the first of January is available on its cover month. So is one that was put out on the 30th of January. 

The T&P Stamped Copies

The UKPVs were contractual, made to UK order. The (to be) stamped cents copies weren't made to UK order. My understanding, is that the printers overprinted by a huge margin. The 'statements of ownership' tell us that. I still do not have a satisfactory answer to the question "why would a printer routinely print hundreds of thousands of comics every month when sales figures consistently indicated that only half of them would sell"?

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/482435-charlton-print-run-vs-sales-numbers/#comments

Some say it was as cheap to print 200k copies as 100k copies. So what? If the printers had to deal with and pulp the returns, why did they keep placing that burden upon themselves? There must have been some industry / contractual obligation to do that. 

So, back to our stamped copies. Rich - you said:

"Imagine the pile of PV’s, way head of their cover date, waiting to be sent to the UK, when the trucks full of returns from newsstands OF EXACTLY THE SAME COMICS came back to be pulped. How long would it take you to put 2 and 2 together?"

I don't think the UKPVs were waiting at all. They were printed and sent on their way and it took 3 months for them to be in the UK on sale. But I do think that the returns from the US would have had their covers removed - there is evidence that that is the way the sellers got their money back. So those defaced books couldn't be used for the UK market. Much more likely is the possibility that the overprinted cents stock was used.

Think about it:

• Printer prints 600k copies of Amazing Spider-Man every month, even though only 300k sell every month
• All 600k are shipped out and distributed in the US
• Half come back (defaced?)
• Printer has to process / pulp 300k comics

Why would any company create such a gigantically inefficient model and burden itself with the unnecessary operational and logistical problems of printing, transporting, processing and destroying things they knew would never sell? Think of the potential operational savings on offer there. 

I think the UK distributed copies were 5p because they were not contractually requested as the 6p printed versions were. One or more distributors agreed to pay a set price for a set amount of printed UKPVs, and a (possibly) lower price for product that may or may not have done the rounds in the US - either way, with a whiff of 'second hand' about them. "Oh, your books didn't sell? We'll take em for a dime - save you pulping them." Pass on the saving to the UK market (and they're a few months out of date too, when they get here)

If the stamped cents copies were actual US shop returns then it would have taken ages for them to get to the UK shops. My exercise about the DC comics on sale in the UK 'Operation Third Form' kids film showed they were way behind cover date. Which makes sense.

I wonder whether when we say that the UK distributed cents copies were 'unsold US returns' we should be saying 'undistributed US overstock' instead (as Gary is suggesting). Do we have enough evidence either way?

And my last thought - I think the distribution procedures for DC, Marvel, Charlton etc were different. Charlton, with their inhouse cereal box printing press operation, seemed to manage a seamless distribution of comics into the UK from 1959 to 1964 with sequential issues being stamped, then UKPV'd then stamped again with no gaps at all. Marvel looks all over the place by comparison.

We need a summary chart for all this - we need to lock down the dates when we see or think things are happening. Those who can recall an event (e.g. UKPVs were cover dated in line with the calendar) - when specifically, for which publishers and for how long? They might have been for a while, but not in other years. We have made scores of salient observations and assessments in this thread, but I'm losing track of where they all fit on a timeline. 

All good fun.

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

10 hours ago, Malacoda said:

Note: it occurred to me that World, as the printers, might only have been involved in the outward delivery, however:  (1) this period of PV + CS started when IND were the distributor.  If the change from ECP to WCP was not the catalyst, then why did IND not do this years earlier? (2) This change started after the 3rd hiatus when IND were the distributor, and then carried on, completely unchanged when Curtis took over.  Even cover date month Sept 1969, when half the titles were distributed by IND and half by Curtis, features PV’s and CS’s for both distributors, so they are demonstrably not a part of this.  (3) If comics & magazines were returned to be pulped, they must have been picked up by Sparta’s distribution chain because….where else were they going back to? Madison Avenue?

Rich, can you draw a picture showing the journey from beginning to end as you see it, based on these observations / what you have established so far?

Showing which comics (Marvel, DC), dates etc? One column for UKPVs, one for stamped copies?

I think that would really help bring all the information you have researched to life - show us a window of time that we can build further assumptions / speculation around.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Garystar said:

Couple of thoughts;

UK introduced duel and decimal pricing long before decimalisation. The 5p coin was introduced in 1968 so just because a product is marked 5p doesn’t necessarily mean it was first on sale post February 1971.

Good point

1 hour ago, Garystar said:

Do we know that returns were returns from shops? Is it possible that some/most/all returns were from distribution warehouses that didn’t even make it to retail outlets? If this were so it would potentially speed up the journey to UK.

That does seem more likely doesn't it. 

1 hour ago, Garystar said:

I did postulate a couple of theories to my own question why do 5p stamps and 1/- UKPVs exist simultaneously;

a) demand had grown and there were not enough UKPVs to cover it. 
b) There was a crossover of UK distribution- World Distributors were doing the UKPVs and T&P the stamps. 

Not sure if I said at the time, if I were Marvel, and my UK friends wanted more product, I'd want them to increase the formal UKPV contract, not give them my (potentially cheaper) cast offs. 

Legally, if I were World, with a contract to bring UKPVs to the UK, why would I allow someone else to potentially undercut my sales by importing and distributing cents stamped copies? T&P used to proclaim themselves as the 'Sole Distributors' (they forgot Miller) in the early days - why later on would World consider a non-exclusive contract?

[Garystar]

52 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

approximately three months in advance of their printed cover dates (as the US arrival dates indicate)

It’s not just the arrival dates which tell us this - xmas and new year stories always appeared in March dated Marvels. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, Garystar said:

It’s not just the arrival dates which tell us this - xmas and new year stories always appeared in March dated Marvels. 

Good spot Santa 

[Garystar]

1 minute ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Good point

That does seem more likely doesn't it. 

Not sure if I said at the time, if I were Marvel, and my UK friends wanted more product, I'd want them to increase the formal UKPV contract, not give them my (potentially cheaper) cast offs. 

Legally, if I were World, with a contract to bring UKPVs to the UK, why would I allow someone else to potentially undercut my sales by importing and distributing cents stamped copies? T&P used to proclaim themselves as the 'Sole Distributors' (they forgot Miller) in the early days - why later on would World consider a non-exclusive contract?

Agree I don’t think b) is likely but a) possible. If a contract was in place between T&P and Marvel and/or Marvel and printers for 10,000 UKPVs and T&P released they could sell 20,000 then stamps may have been win/win for all concerned. 

[Get Marwood & I]

9 minutes ago, Garystar said:

Agree I don’t think b) is likely but a) possible. If a contract was in place between T&P and Marvel and/or Marvel and printers for 10,000 UKPVs and T&P realised they could sell 20,000 then stamps may have been win/win for all concerned. 

That's the fun part with speculation Gary - everything is possible. So little is provable though, annoyingly.... 

[Get Marwood & I]

11 hours ago, Malacoda said:

 

 My refutation of Steve’s point is, of course, brilliant, with only one slight caveat:  it’s bollocks.  

Hey, it's my job to talk that round here. I've been talking bollocks very successfully for nearly five years here, thank you very much 

Quote

Marvel comics were released in the US 3 months ahead of cover date

That is provable, yes

Quote

to preserve the shelf life,  so that, with thousands of miles to travel by road & rail, they would arrive with plenty of shelf life left.  But then, a month later, a new batch would be printed and dispatched in the same time frame as the last lot. So however long it took to get a month's comics to the corners of the country, unless multiple months were piling up in the spinners (we know some lingered, but not all), remainders must have all been taken off display long  before the cover date.  And returned.  Unless 3 months comics were continually piled up everywhere. 

(Note: in the Senate hearings, the point was made that vendors had to retain comics for 3 months and could not return them before the cover date had expired, but that is the only place I’ve seen that). 

So basically, we don't know how long US copies were retained by US sellers - there's no proof I'm aware of - before being returned for potential onward UK distribution

Quote

We know that British editions (US Marvels bound for the UK, be they PV's or CS's) were sold in the UK newsagents as cover dated

No proof, just recollections, unless I've missed something concrete. And for what period anyway? Always, or just a few specific years?

Quote

and we kind of know that they weren't shipped much before this i.e.  

No proof of this

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they hung around for weeks in the States rather than being shipped over and hung around here.  We know this because later the comics shops would start importing them way ahead of the high street by flying them in.  This would have been pointless if they were all sitting in warehouses in the UK at the docks 2 months early anyway. 

That doesn't make sense to me Rich? If you print a product that has to cross the ocean, you shift it quickly, don't you? Are you suggesting the contract was to have UKPVs printed, stored for a few months, then shipped to the UK? That's silly. And planes are quicker than boats - what am I missing?

Quote

We also know that the Atlantic crossing took 20 days max. 

Do we? Even if we do, we don't know how long everything before or after it took though, do we? The salient point is the end to end timeframe from US production to UK shop appearance. Every operational step along the way is subject to debate

Quote

We also know that the CS’s were all stamped here (meaning both the cents ones of which there were PV’s and the ones of which there weren’t).  

It makes sense that they were, and they almost certainly were, but there is not one scrap of evidence to actually confirm it. No documents, no surviving stamps, no recollections from Flossie the stamper on workplace nostalgia websites. But I'm sure they were. Just stretching the 'what we can prove point' to credulity a bit.

Quote

This means there’s a timeframe in which cents issues could be distributed to US newsstands, sit there for a month, be  returned, and be shipped to the UK with that same cover month’s issues in plenty of time to be on shelf at the newsagents. 

I doubt it. I can see how it would take 3 months for UKPVs to get here, but not unsold US returns - if indeed that is what they were (see Gary's point re more likely they were undistributed US overstock). And did the T&P plotting activity I did not show the stamped Marvels coming later than the DCs, and in consecutive issue batches? How is that explained, the issue bunching?

This is why I'd like a summary journey chart with dates, to ensure I'm not judging an element against an observation made that relates to a different period when things may have been different. 

Did that make sense? I'm not good with pages of text. Give me a summary pic Rich 

 

[Garystar]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Quote

We know that British editions (US Marvels bound for the UK, be they PV's or CS's) were sold in the UK newsagents as cover dated

No proof, just recollections, unless I've missed something concrete. And for what period anyway? Always, or just a few specific years?

Definitely when I started collecting in 1973 Marvel 6p UKPVs were always on sale in UK the month they were cover dated. I never gave it a thought they should be anything other, indeed I could never understand why, for example, FF 133 cover dated April was a New Year’s Eve story. (Outside of timeframe we are discussing I know but is a line in sand).

[Get Marwood & I]

24 minutes ago, Garystar said:

Definitely when I started collecting in 1973 Marvel 6p UKPVs were always on sale in UK the month they were cover dated. I never gave it a thought they should be anything other, indeed I could never understand why, for example, FF 133 cover dated April was a New Year’s Eve story. (Outside of timeframe we are discussing I know but is a line in sand).

That's sort of my point Gary - a valid recollection, but from a later period when things may have been different. 

I think we can get too hung up on it, the timeframe. Comics were printed in the US throughout the month as we know, not all on the same day. So any given January cover dated comic could have been printed in the first, second, third or fourth week of the actual printing month. Some might get on boat A, some the next boat. They may be on sale in the UK at the beginning of Jan, or the end - a month apart but still the 'same month'. So it will never be exact by design.

I'd like to know more about the cents stamped copies. What is your recollection, if any, of those Gary? Did you ever see them in the newsagents? If so, what was the cover date to calendar alignment?

@Albert Tatlock @Mr Thorpe @Kevin.J @nmtg9 - what was your recollection on this point chaps? Probably already stated, but we're on our 88th page now so...

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

9 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I think we can get too hung up on it, the timeframe. Comics were printed in the US throughout the month as we know, not all on the same day. So any given January cover dated comic could have been printed in the first, second, third or fourth week of the actual printing month. Some might get on boat A, some the next boat.

Thinking that through, could that be a reason for the three month production to UK shop window? The printers printed all the January comics over a four week period, and they were all stored until the fourth week so that the UK got the whole lot in one go?

Gary - back to 1973 - did all (for example) January cover dated books arrive at the same time, or was there a weekly staggered delivery? @Garystar