Marvel Multi Packs Question 1 1

[Get Marwood & I]

On 11/22/2022 at 3:52 AM, Skwerl said:

One other little thing that has chewed at my brain for decades... I have newsstand issues that I bought off comic book stores' shelves as late as the mid-1980s that got there via direct distribution. This is a bit outside of the focus of this thread that I've already shamelessly hijacked, but I'm pretty sure that if someone in a warehouse was short on direct inventory but had an excess of newsstand inventory, or vice versa... they probably wouldn't have been fired for sliding a pallet across an invisible line to get through the day. For whatever that's worth.

And then there's the likelihood of simple mistakes. Or are we supposed to believe that no one ever got anything wrong, or made a mistake, in comic production and distribution?

"Whoops, wrong pallet".

It's great to identify the design - what should have happened, all being in order, but there will always be exceptions, to prove the rule, as our MJI in a pence copy showed yesterday!

(This is why I urged you to post in the Whitman / Multipack thread Skwerl - as an 'ask CGC' question, this thread will die and disappear and your contributions on the subject won't be heard / debated)

[Skwerl]

On 11/22/2022 at 1:22 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

(This is why I urged you to post in the Whitman / Multipack thread Skwerl - as an 'ask CGC' question, this thread will die and disappear and your contributions on the subject won't be heard / debated)

Oh, I didn't get that's what you were doing, haha. Whoops.

[Skwerl]

On 11/21/2022 at 11:02 AM, Warlord said:

So that's clearly evidence of something, but you're stretching to use that example to conclude that these versions are direct editions.

I mean, I know they're direct editions. Marvel has said they're direct editions. (I suppose the debate is whether the "big diamonds" are something different than the "smaller diamonds" that Marvel was using by the time they answered the question, but I say they're not.) I'm just using that as evidence that direct editions went out through means other than multipacks. As for reprints going out via subscription, I can only guess when the original recipient signed up, but if it was after the movie came out, issues #1 and #2 would have been 2nd or 3rd printings. Movie came out right after the #2 first printing hit streets.

On 11/21/2022 at 11:02 AM, Warlord said:

I remember buying Star Wars #1 at my LCS.  It was the newsstand version with the UPC.   My retailer told me later that he couldn't sell the multi-pack variants because customers considered them reprints and so he literally threw them away when he found any in back issue collections he purchased. 

Yup, heartbreaking, but I heard of this sort of thing happening awhile back when I was collecting every single variant of the early Star Wars run (partly to confirm some of the things I've claimed here which were theories at the time); First print direct editions of Star Wars #2-4 are really rare, especially in high grade. They were treated as reprints but they weren't. Lots of people just took it for granted that the diamond meant Whitman reprint. For years. Mostly because every reprint of Star Wars issues they ever saw had the big weird diamond box.

What's really interesting (and proves how messy things were), is that your LCS got their hands on newsstands. I can only imagine who would have went around who for that.

On 11/22/2022 at 1:22 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

And then there's the likelihood of simple mistakes. Or are we supposed to believe that no one ever got anything wrong, or made a mistake, in comic production and distribution?

"Whoops, wrong pallet".

It's great to identify the design - what should have happened, all being in order, but there will always be exceptions, to prove the rule, as our MJI in a pence copy showed yesterday!

Yup! There were definitely tons of examples of mistakes which makes it hard to definitively prove some things, such as who got what.

This is a big reason why I try to focus my "argument" on the things that couldn't have been occasionally messed up: That a) there was simply never a third version printed of a Marvel comic for multipacks; If comic stores existed in 1977-1979 (they did of course), and any of them got Marvel comics through a distributor other than Curtis, then they got Marvel comics without the Curtis symbol on them. There was only ever newsstand, and direct edition, and "multipack edition" is a misnomer.  And 2) Whitman didn't print Marvels, they only got their hands on Marvel inventory that was printed not by their parent company Western, who printed the DC and Dell/GK stuff. Which was confirmed by Marvel who literally said they came from the same presses in that Marvel editorial I posted. So "whitman reprint / whitman edition" is a misnomer as well.

[MemorezGuy1]

On 11/22/2022 at 9:51 AM, Skwerl said:

First print direct editions of Star Wars #2-4 are really rare, especially in high grade.

I'm new to this multi-pack conversation, but to be clear... this is what you're referring to, correct?

[Skwerl]

On 3/25/2023 at 2:33 PM, MemorezGuy1 said:

I'm new to this multi-pack conversation, but to be clear... this is what you're referring to, correct?

Yup!! Those are really hard to find!! Great book, hold onto that!!

But yeah, I'm annoyed that CGC calls these "Multi-Pack Editions." Back in the day, we'd all call them Whitmans, casually, because most of the copies we found/had came out of Whitman bags, but we* knew they weren't ONLY found in Whitman bags. Somewhere over the years, that truth was lost and even hardcore/respected collectors (and now CGC) often mislabel them.

What that is is a first print direct variant. When Marvel direct variant print runs were at their lowest, near day one.

Edit: In this case, by "we," I really mean the old heads at my local comic store in Philly who knew their stuff, and my contacts in print/distro. Most collectors I'd meet outside of that world (and since) generally considered all "diamond box" Marvels reprints/"Whitmans," as I alluded to earlier. And when I first saw that going on, that's when I decided to start investigating/researching/collecting them. It seems as time has gone on, the misconception has actually spread faster and wider than the truth. Probably because of the internet.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Skwerl

[MemorezGuy1]

On 5/16/2023 at 1:50 AM, Skwerl said:

Yup!! Those are really hard to find!! Great book, hold onto that!!

Well, I decided to let go of the book, so if anyone is interested, it will be listed in the June 20-27 comic auction on Heritage along with some of my other books here.

[FFB]

On 11/21/2022 at 12:29 PM, Skwerl said:

Both from Marvel Team-Up #108, 1981

 

Ahh!! Okay, fair play! I actually have seen these, these were from 1978. So I'll concede that newsstand editions did occasionally show up in multipacks! Something to point out here: The first one came from Marvel, who would have had newsstand inventory on hand. The one on the right came from Whitman, who only had direct inventory. Whitman bags existed, yes, no one disputes that. But the Marvel comics inside were all published by Marvel, and indistinguishable from the versions that appeared outside of packs.

Some people look at these images and think that the diamond box versions were made specifically for Whitman multipacks since that's what they have while the Marvel ones are "normal." But it was just direct inventory put into the packs. There would have never been any point to printing a third variant of any Marvel issue just to put into multipacks.

Incidentally, just to defend the hill I'm on here a little further: You won't find any other versions of ASM #186 than these two. You won't find a direct version that looks different from the one in the multipack. There was only direct and newsstand, and to call the one on the right a "multipack variant" implies that there was something else on direct racks. There wasn't.

I know this is an old thread, but I'm just seeing it for the first time. 

When I was a kid in the early 1980s, I got virtually all of my comics from "Marvel Multi-Mags" that were on the spinner rack at our local Stater Bros. supermarket.  I am quite certain that the "Marvel Multi-Mags" multipacks were distributed by Curtis Circulation.  Over the course of four or five years, I bought more than a hundred of these multipacks and still have quite a few of those books in my collection.  Every single book in every single pack was a Curtis Circulation "newsstand" copy.

Any other non-Marvel Multi-Mag multipack that I've seen had the early Marvel direct diamond price box.  I've never seen a CC newsstand book in a non-Marvel Multi-Mag multipack. 

Skwerl, a belated thanks for your input on these topics.  You've clearly done your research.

Edited April 17 by FFB