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

[Malacoda]

4 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Good theories Rich. The answer might not necessarily have to relate to anything specific though - maybe they just stopped, had a break, and then started again.

No, come on.  In their 62 year history of successfully selling sterling priced comics in the UK, they just decided to have a break for a bit and then started again? That doesn't add up, does it?  I agree some properly bonkers decisions have been made, and I do believe that the hiatus started for a specific reason (price increase) but carried on for all that time for some different reason, but there must have been some actual reason for it.  Even if it was just because Marvel took their eye off the ball, or because there were teething trouble at Sparta,  why wasn't T&P pressing for a resumption?  They can't both have just decided to take a break for no reason at the same time.  It seems more likely to me that there was either (a) a specific operational problem or (b) some kind of issue - which can only have been money - between T&P and Marvel.

I wonder if maybe IND had something to do with it. We know they had an active policy of suppressing Marvel. They had just lost their ability to do that in the US thanks to Curtis, but still controlled Marvel's distribution in the UK. 

The other thing, perhaps supporting your theory, is that if the PV's somehow did fall between the cracks, no one at Sparta would have been raising it, would they? If Marvel had still been with Eastern, then they would have been asking 'when are we going back to printing the UK priced ones? How many do you want this month?' but Sparta took over at a point where there were no UKPV's, so it wasn't like that was a change to the print run. 

[Albert Tatlock]

1 minute ago, Get Marwood & I said:

.making things, to wipe yer arse..

So if you use one of Franny's bog rolls, it might have been FF 1 or AF 15 in a previous incarnation.

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, Albert Tatlock said:

So if you use one of Franny's bog rolls, it might have been FF 1 or AF 15 in a previous incarnation.

Hopefully with the staples removed. I wouldn't want a rusty silver age staple messing with me grapes Albert 

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

No, come on.  In their 62 year history of successfully selling sterling priced comics in the UK, they just decided to have a break for a bit and then started again? That doesn't add up, does it?  I agree some properly bonkers decisions have been made, and I do believe that the hiatus started for a specific reason (price increase) but carried on for all that time for some different reason, but there must have been some actual reason for it.  Even if it was just because Marvel took their eye off the ball, or because there were teething trouble at Sparta,  why wasn't T&P pressing for a resumption?  They can't both have just decided to take a break for no reason at the same time.  It seems more likely to me that there was either (a) a specific operational problem or (b) some kind of issue - which can only have been money - between T&P and Marvel.

I wonder if maybe IND had something to do with it. We know they had an active policy of suppressing Marvel. They had just lost their ability to do that in the US thanks to Curtis, but still controlled Marvel's distribution in the UK. 

The other thing, perhaps supporting your theory, is that if the PV's somehow did fall between the cracks, no one at Sparta would have been raising it, would they? If Marvel had still been with Eastern, then they would have been asking 'when are we going back to printing the UK priced ones? How many do you want this month?' but Sparta took over at a point where there were no UKPV's, so it wasn't like that was a change to the print run. 

Wouldn't it be a laugh after all this speculation if I was right, and we unearthed an old transcript. "Dave in accounts forgot to do the UKPVs and no one noticed for 17 months".

 

[Albert Tatlock]

20 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

And what happened to the US sellers getting their refunds by way of defacing the comics?

This goes back a long way (1940s example attached), but I have no information on when it ceased. Anyone know?

[Get Marwood & I]

6 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

This goes back a long way (1940s example attached), but I have no information on when it ceased. Anyone know?

Quite a while based on examples like these:

From the listing:

"Top half of first 3 pages are completely cut. Came from a lot of the best remainder copies I had ever seen. That’s when they would cut off the top half of the cover so the book could not be sold"

[Malacoda]

21 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

It is. He's referring to the mid-Seventies there I take it?

Yes, Skywald ceased publication in 1974 and officially wound up in 1975.  Sol Brodsky went back to Marvel quite a bit before this, I think. John Verpoorten was now doing his old job (Production Manager) so Stan convinced Galton he needed a 'Vice President of Operations' which was basically whatever Stan said it was. I believe part of this roving remit was actually Marvel UK and that Tony Isabella and later Scott Edelman reported into him.  I think Stan just loved Sol Brodsky. When Goodman canned everyone except Stan, it was Brodsky who pretty much saved the company. I also think that, 20 years later, with Al Landau behind the wheel, Stan needed trusted allies keeping an eye. 

[Malacoda]

32 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Wouldn't it be a laugh after all this speculation if I was right, and we unearthed an old transcript. "Dave in accounts forgot to do the UKPVs and no one noticed for 17 months".

I fully acknowledge that this could be the case.

In 1971, ELO launched their first album using the band name as the album name: it was called 'Electric Light Orchestra'. The manager of the US office didn't get that the album name simply was the band's name.  He told his secretary to call the London office and get the name of the album.  When he came back from lunch, she had left a note on his desk saying 'No Answer'.  To this day, that album is titled 'No Answer' in the US & Canada and other countries.

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

I fully acknowledge that this could be the case.

In 1971, ELO launched their first album using the band name as the album name: it was called 'Electric Light Orchestra'. The manager of the US office didn't get that the album name simply was the band's name.  He told his secretary to call the London office and get the name of the album.  When he came back from lunch, she had left a note on his desk saying 'No Answer'.  To this day, that album is titled 'No Answer' in the US & Canada and other countries.

Could've been worse I suppose. An album called "It's Electric Light Orchestra, You Silly Cow" would've been cool. 

[Malacoda]

1 hour ago, Malacoda said:

Yes, Skywald ceased publication in 1974 and officially wound up in 1975.  Sol Brodsky went back to Marvel quite a bit before this, I think. John Verpoorten was now doing his old job (Production Manager) so Stan convinced Galton he needed a 'Vice President of Operations' which was basically whatever Stan said it was. I believe part of this roving remit was actually Marvel UK and that Tony Isabella and later Scott Edelman reported into him.  I think Stan just loved Sol Brodsky. When Goodman canned everyone except Stan, it was Brodsky who pretty much saved the company. I also think that, 20 years later, with Al Landau behind the wheel, Stan needed trusted allies keeping an eye. 

By the by, the Skywald magazines rocked up here with no cover stamps, PV's stickers, nothing. They mostly have UK prices written by hand in pen, though some do have those orange stickers we associate with Gold. 

[Malacoda]

6 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

A few other thoughts Rich - we're talking about kids comics. I know business is business, but would two companies ever play hardball for 17 months about the price of kids comics?

Well, if they were publishers and distributers of kid's comics, yes. Of course. They would have employees whose job it was literally to do exactly that. It's like asking if McDonalds and their meat suppliers ever play hardball over the price of beef. Bear in mind that T&P have just gone bankrupt at this point and just been bought out by their supplier and chief creditor. There is no way they weren't looking for every penny. 

For Marvel comics, kids comics is literally what they did.  Magazine Management and the other imprints did their thing, but Marvel was the jewel in the crown (as soon as Perfect took over, the first thing they did was subsume Magazine Management and the rest of Goodman’s labyrinth under Marvel Comics, rather than the other way round, as it had been). 

For T&P, it can hardly be understated. Fred Thorpe (and others) had made a small fortune out of the import ban, but unlike Millers and the others, he was poised to make a large fortune when it ended.  At the start of the fifties, T&P had turnover of half a million pounds, primarily in the late 40’s from digest-sized semi-pornographic novels and reprints of US pulp magazines.  From 52 onwards, they shifted to comic books (along with men’s magazines).   After the ban lifted in 59, within a couple of years, they had turnover of about £450k just from the comic books.  That was literally 90% of the entire company turnover in the 50’s, and they weren’t publishing any of it, just distributing.  And buying them at less than wholesale prices. 

Yet, from that base, they still managed to go bankrupt within 5 years.  They were shifting 12m comics per year in 60/61 (all publishers), but Marvel were tiny at this point.  By 1967, Marvel were printing about 40m comics per year.  If T&P were getting 5% of the print run, that’s 2m comics. Which is £100k in 1967.  Or in today’s money about £1.9m. 

“Kid’s comics”? Pshaw! The Devil, you say!
 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

14 minutes ago, Malacoda said:

It's like asking if McDonalds and their meat suppliers ever play hardball over the price of beef.

"So, Ronald, you want the beef, eh? Fifty baht!"

"Aint paying that"

"Oh, I think you will..."

"Aint gonna"

 

Fast forward 17 burger free months..

 

"35 baht! Final offer"

"We'll take it"

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 11:02 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

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?

Let’s do the plane thing first. Originally airmail accounted for 85% of air travel and passengers were only 15%.  Freight accounted for 0.2%. And it wasn’t comics.  After the war (and the Berlin Airlift) air freight ramped up very slowly (and expensively) and only accounted for a minuscule proportion of freight until 1970’s.  Boeing launched the wide-bellied 747 in 1968, and the first cargo flight was in April 1972,  but the start of commercial air freight (FedEx & DHL) doesn’t begin until 1973.  Air Freight as we know it didn’t really start until the 90’s. We know that both Titan and Neptune were importing comics by air freight in the late 1980’s / early 90’s (for sale to the direct market)  but as Titan didn’t exist until 1978, we know that comics were all arriving by sea until the 80’s.  I mean, we know that anyway, right? Ballast, dock strikes etc. 

[Malacoda]

2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

"So, Ronald, you want the beef, eh? Fifty baht!"

"Aint paying that"

"Oh, I think you will..."

"Aint gonna"

 

Fast forward 17 burger free months..

 

"35 baht! Final offer"

"We'll take it"

Yup, that's pretty much it. It doesn't make much sense to me as I reckon Sparta could have knocked off the PV's really cheaply, but T&P was in the hands of....well, no one called Thorpe or Porter by this point.  All of the book imprints & pulp magazines were gone, I think it's pretty much comics and porn at this point. 

I wonder if the CS+PV was part of the eventual deal that was struck ('we'll do your PV's but the whole point of this deal for us was to alleviate the returns, so take some of those too')  or  maybe it was the other way round.  Maybe after 17 months of dispute about the PV's, the CS's were a good bargaining chip for T&P.....'this is the most we'll pay for PV's and we're not bothered if we have to stamp 'em, so take it or leave it'. 

More likely, it was pure Del Boy. 'Oi can you shift some of these?'

[Malacoda]

On 6/17/2021 at 9:17 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

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. 

This is a great piece of work and a great list of operational issues. I will get into this in some more detail, but I think you’ve got a problem with this operational list. Unless you’re saying that we’ve all remembered wrongly and that when comics came in relative to the cover date changed out of all recognition, this doesn’t work. 
If you believe that comics were printed 3 months in advance in the States, but were imported into the UK and warehoused until the cover date, you have no problem. 
If you believe the 3 month delay was caused by operational issues, how do you explain that the massive operational efficiencies in this period had no impact on the 3 month time frame?  Examples:
At Eastern, Marvel comics were printed in 2 batches in the first and second weeks of the month. At WCP they were printed weekly.  So there’s up to 2 weeks of time savings there. 

I don't know how fast upon completion ECP loaded up the vans (they were a more old fashioned operation), but Sparta cleared the floor every 24 hours. 
Prior to containerisation, stevedores could take up to 5 days to load and unload a cargo ship, so you have a saving of up to 10 days there.  
Prior to 1972, there were no motorways in the UK. The 70 MPH limit was introduced experimentally in 1967, on certain roads, but remained 20 mph or 30 mph in built up or restricted areas, so the creation of motorways massively changed the speed of delivery of goods. 

You get the idea. If these operational issues were the source of the 3 month delay, it would have to massively and consistently decrease all the time, not stay at 3 months even while the causes of it being 3 months changed out of all recognition. 
 

[Get Marwood & I]

It wasn't a list of operational issues as such, more a list of the sort of things off the top of my head that had to happen for comics to get here, and which might account for the apparent trip time. My comment about the beginning and end of a month still being that same month keeps getting ignored. I wasn't old enough to recall cover date to calendar date alignment for the period. Others are saying it was aligned for the Marvel UKPVs. We can say when the comics were made by way of the US arrival dates. So they took two or three months to get here depending on the first / thirty first of January example scenario I outlined, if there was date parity. I don't know why it took as long as it did. No one does. But it seems it did. For a time. And it may have involved books being sat on, somewhere, to achieve that cover to calendar date alignment. Or it may not. 

[Albert Tatlock]

12 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

And it may have involved books being sat on

Storing stuff and holding stuff back adds extra expense. It costs money to hire warehousing space, so the incentive would be to keep the cargo moving as quickly as possible.

Look at all the tumbling dominoes following the Suez Canal incident recently. There are still wholesalers here waiting for goods they paid for months ago.

Whether the delay with the comics was at the US or UK end is still an unanswered question. If the books were reaching UK distributors sooner, they should have passed them on sooner, and the US/UK cover date/sale date gap should have shrunk.

[Get Marwood & I]

11 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

If the books were reaching UK distributors sooner, they should have passed them on sooner, and the US/UK cover date/sale date gap should have shrunk.

What if they made a conscious decision to wait for the cover dates to align with the UK calendar though? Lots of evidence of that being a consideration in the industry - the removal of the UKPV cover months in the sixties and the extension of the Australian Price Variant printed cover months by three months are just two. Maybe it was a consideration in the period we are discussing, and could help explain the reason why probable operational improvements did not seem to result in quicker production to on sale time frames. 

Or maybe they did manage to shave a month off of the delivery window over time, and books that used to go on sale after 3 months travelling at the end of a given month went on sale after only two months travelling at the beginning of the month. Either way, the same month, hence Gary's recollection that UKPVs of the time were on sale in the months of their cover date. 

And storing stuff does indeed add extra expense. But so does overprinting it. Something being inefficient rarely seemed to be a barrier to it actually happening if any of our speculations here hold water.

[Get Marwood & I]

This recollection here from another thread caught my eye this morning:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/71986-fantastic-four-collecting-thread/?do=findComment&comment=11849524

 

[Malacoda]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

This recollection here from another thread caught my eye this morning:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/71986-fantastic-four-collecting-thread/?do=findComment&comment=11849524

 

Hah.  I was in the middle of the writing you a note last night that makes exactly this point, but I wanted to check the release dates of a full month's worth of titles in the 70's.  (And,  much more importantly, I just wanted to go to bed). 

This is what I was writing:

OK, unless we're disputing what I think all of us remember (that US comics arrived here as cover dated) there is a 2 or 3 month gap between the US release date and the cover date when they must have been stacked up somewhere, either in the US or here.  Unless you’re proposing that the trail of possible delay points you highlighted took exactly the 3 months for every month’s comics, which seems too neat, but clearly, some of that 2-3 month gap was consumed by transit.  

Here's where I disagree with you. We know that the comics were printed 3 months in advance to suit US shelf life.  I don’t believe they would have based the entire production schedule around the 2% - 5% of comics of UK bound comics.  Yet they went on sale here as cover dated. So was it just a complete coincidence that the length of time it took them to get here was exactly the grace period between the release date and the cover date? Isn’t it more likely that there was no coincidence and the comics were simply warehoused until the appropriate date?

Another variance we haven't touched on yet, and this might be a place where memory isn't good enough, is that I believe cover dated comics arrived in the shops all together in the cover date month. We didn't get some from one month and others from the next/previous month. However, that is how they were released in the States, so the idea that they were put on a boat hot off the presses and came straight here doesn't square with anything I remember.  

 Had that been the case, you would have gone into the newsagents on for example:

 

• The first day of the month and all the comics would have been from the previous month. 
• Then in the first week of the month, Daredevil, Where Monster’s Dwell and Western Gunfighters would have been replaced by this month’s issues but everything else would still be last month. 
•  Then a week later you would find that that month’s Thor, Captain America & Sub Mariner would have rocked up, replacing last months, so now we’ve got 6 of this month’s titles mixed with everything else being last months. 
•  Then a week later, Avengers, Captain Marvel, Amazing Adventures, Conan & Marvel Spotlight would arrive, replacing last month’s issues, so now most of the issues at the newsagents are this month’s but still a few of last months.   
• The following week Fantastic Four, Kazar, Marvel Team Up, Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night would rock up and for one single week, we would have all of this month’s titles together.  Then the following week we would start all over again. 

I am absolutely sure this did not happen.  I’m sure they arrived all together.  One thing I particularly do remember is that the kiosk at Twickenham Station, near me, always had last month’s comics about a week later than other places, so if I needed another week’s pocket money to save up for a comic, that was always the last-chance saloon.  As I kid, I imagined this was just some quirk of the bloke who ran the kiosk. Now I realise it was more likely because, being a railway kiosk, he had a different local wholesaler to the newsagents. 

However, even his new titles all rocked up together.  I did not monitor this so I could be wrong, but I’m sure they all arrived together. Which means they were definitely stacked somewhere, probably, in my opinion, both in the US for a time and here for different periods of time for different reasons.  
 

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Malacoda