Stan, Jack, and Steve - The 1960's (1964) The Slow Build 5 5

[Steven Valdez]

On 3/18/2024 at 9:43 PM, Prince Namor said:

It was. Spider-man had a very popular cartoon series (the exceptional 1967-68 series) that ran through... I think 1971 and then made it's rounds on after school kids TV reruns (which is where I first saw it). 

But yeah, when Superman got a movie made in 1978, no one was like "How can that be? Spider-man is so much more popular!). No one in the mainstream cared about the sales of Marvel Comics. Superman was the much better known hero because he had a 30 year head start and had been in TV and cartoons throughout his time. 

And even in comics for 1978, Superman's title still wasn't far off Marvel's best, Spider-man in terms of sales 223,222 to 258,156. Much of the 'Marvel changed the course of comic history' is hyperbole... what we actually see in the real world of what happened is much different.  

The Spider-Man and FF cartoons were on here in the 60s, but not many adults seemed to watch cartoons back then. They only took note of live-action shows.

Adam West Batman was huge here,  like everywhere else... and in the very early '70s we had George Reeves Superman reruns for those who weren't around yet in the '50s. So that ensured Batman and Superman were household names.

The 'mainstream' only seems to have become aware of Marvel when the Hulk live-action series began in the late '70s. Those lame Spider-Man shows were around then too, as theatrical releases.

Edited March 18 by Steven Valdez

[Prince Namor]

On 3/18/2024 at 10:51 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Chuck Rozanski freely admits his Mile High II collection (of MILLIONS of books) consisted of the fruits of affidavit 'return' fraud. The co-owner of National Comics up to 1967, Irwin Donenfeld, also knew full-well that it was going on and is on the record as acknowledging it.

We can see proof of it. I've posted it here. It was talked about even at the time. 

It doesn't matter. Marvel Zombie's have been programmed to ignore facts and stick to their programming no matter what.

Here the enormously respected Joe Brancatelli, talks about the market in an article from 1979 (you may have seen his editorial's in the Warren Magazine's of the day)... Joe Brancatelli spoke about affidavit fraud and stolen artwork decades before anyone else would, because the rest of the hobby was too busy making money off of it to give it any traction. They didn't want it talked about.

In the same way we today see people finding ways to bust open CGC slabs and switch the comics inside, people were finding unethical and illegal ways to make money off of comics back in the 70's as well.

[Prince Namor]

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg70.html

Here, Chuck Rozanski explains how it worked:

ROZANSKI: " To explain, affidavit returns are comics which were originally sent to certain very powerful newsstand distributors on what is known as a "sale or return" basis. These comics were ostensibly put out for sale by these distributors, didn't sell within the allotted 30-day sales period, and were then pulled back off the newsstand and replaced by new issues. As a part of the contract that the publishers make with the newsstand distributors, all unsold newsstand issues were then supposed to be destroyed. In fact, most distributors are required to "strip" the covers (or the top third of the covers) off all unsold issues, and mail them to the publishers as proof of destruction.

Where this system went totally wrong was when certain very large distributors were able to make arrangements to simply send in notarized affidavits of destruction, rather than actual stripped covers. Books that were then supposedly destroyed were simply shipped out with a willing trash hauler, who then sold them into the secondary market, and split the money with the distributor. Joe Brancatelli wrote a wonderful expose of this practice in his short-lived INSIDE COMICS newspaper, back in about 1980. If I remember the details of Joe's story correctly, the FBI investigated the entire newsstand distribution system at that time, and there were indictments of certain players. It was strongly implied that the FBI believed that this entire process was all being run by elements of organized crime.

Soon after I read Brancatelli's circa 1980 article, I happened to meet with the VP of Marketing for a major comics publisher. One group of items I had kept from my 1978 purchase of Richard Alf's mail order comics business was a stack of carton labels that Alf had torn off of some unopened boxes of bulk books that he had purchased from a certain East Coast wholesale back issue comics supplier. This bulk dealer was so brazen about selling affidavit returns that he never even bothered to remove the original distributor shipping labels off of the unopened cartons of mint comics that he was dumping into the back issue market. Alf felt sure that these labels would be of great interest to the publishers.

When I showed my friend the comics executive the labels, he blanched, and asked me to immediately destroy them. He then told me a very complex story about having set up a "sting" at the Sparta printing plant the year before, where he had a plate change made in just the copies of books going to the distributor who's name and address were on the labels Alf had saved. He kept the information on the plate change completely secret, limited to only a couple of top Spartan Printing executives, and the pressmen. Soon after the books were released, he told me that he had a couple of big guys in suits visit him in his office. They placed copies of the specially marked books that had been shipped to the alledged affidavit returns distributor on his desk, and explained to him that they knew exactly how these books came to be different from the rest of the print run, and why he did it. They then suggested, very politely, that he never try such a marking process ever again. I have no doubt in my mind that this powerful publishing executive was terrified of ever crossing these very dangerous people ever again. He was warning me off of revealing my information not only to protect me, but also to protect himself.

In looking at the comics in the warehouse, I couldn't help but notice that the issues stopped at about 1979, right about the time of the FBI probe. When I asked, the seller told me that his father had made arrangements to pick up large quantities of comics every week from a certain very large East Coast newsstand distributor (who shall remain nameless...), and that this arrangement had been in place for decades. Given that there were quite substantial stacks of single issues in the deal, and that other boxes were completely full of issues that were mixed up, but that all came out in the same month, it seemed highly likely to me that these books were the fruits of some sort of affidavit return arrangement. Even more disturbing, I saw many instances where there were entire unopened case lots of certain issues of comics, where the distributor obviously never even put the books out for sale. I eventually discovered that the highest number of a single issue in the warehouse was 14,000 copies of one 12 cent cover price Marvel comic."

[Prince Namor]

On 3/18/2024 at 6:02 PM, Steven Valdez said:

The Spider-Man and FF cartoons were on here in the 60s, but not many adults seemed to watch cartoons back then. They only took note of live-action shows.

Adam West Batman was huge here,  like everywhere else... and in the very early '70s we had George Reeves Superman reruns for those who weren't around yet in the '50s. So that ensured Batman and Superman were household names.

The 'mainstream' only seems to have become aware of Marvel when the Hulk live-action series began in the late '70s. Those lame Spider-Man shows were around then too, as theatrical releases.

Yeah, I can see that. Superman's live action George Reeves show had 104 episodes that ran from 1952-1958 on Network Television (with huge ratings) and then in syndication for decades (it was on when I was a kid in the 70's). Batman the same way... ran on Network Television, 3 years, 120 episodes, huge ratings... By 1978 they were 2 of the most popular Super Heroes... a Batman TV Show from 1966-68, a Superman run of Box Office Movies from 1978-1987 and then a Batman run of movies from 1989 to 1997, kicked off by the biggest selling Super Heroes Comic of the 80's (Dark Knight Returns at over One Million Copies) and... wait, I thought Stan Lee and Marvel Comics saved the Hobby?

[Steven Valdez]

On 3/18/2024 at 10:10 PM, Prince Namor said:

We can see proof of it. I've posted it here. It was talked about even at the time. 

It doesn't matter. Marvel Zombie's have been programmed to ignore facts and stick to their programming no matter what.

Here the enormously respected Joe Brancatelli, talks about the market in an article from 1979 (you may have seen his editorial's in the Warren Magazine's of the day)... Joe Brancatelli spoke about affidavit fraud and stolen artwork decades before anyone else would, because the rest of the hobby was too busy making money off of it to give it any traction. They didn't want it talked about.

In the same way we today see people finding ways to bust open CGC slabs and switch the comics inside, people were finding unethical and illegal ways to make money off of comics back in the 70's as well.

It's weird that so many people are in denial this happened... they're probably the same guys who deny the Moon landings and think the Earth is flat. Then again, a lot of major dealers got their inventories started by being involved in this fraud, so it might be no wonder they want it hushed up.

Edited March 18 by Steven Valdez

[Zonker]

There is plenty of evidence for affidavit fraud (MH2 being the existence-proof).  Where it gets more speculative is the suggestion that Adams / Kirby / Barry Smith books were disproportionally targeted by the practice, and if so, whether that made the difference between commercial success versus premature cancellation (or near-cancellation, in the case of Conan). Personally, I believe it is credible that such a thing happened.  When I got into collecting in the mid-1970s, collecting the "good artists" work (interiors, not covers) was much more of a thing than it is now.  And, if Roy Thomas is to be believed, Conan the Barbarian only really became commercially successful about the time when Gil Kane was filling in for Barry Smith.  It makes sense that if you were hoarding recent issues to sell at marked-up prices, you would focus on those issues then likely to be in demand by those fanatics willing to pay more than cover price for a comic book.  

[Hepcat]

On 3/15/2024 at 4:24 PM, Prince Namor said:

In the spread sheet below, you can see how a couple lies from Lee are exposed... a) that comics were dead in 1960... far from it as Dell, Archie and especially DC were still selling big numbers (NOT WW2 numbers, but still bigger than we'd see for another 30 years).... b) that Marvel rose on it's own in the mid-60's... again untrue, as the whole comic publishing business rose during those middle years, and then EXPLODED after the Batman TV show brought even more awareness to the books.... and c) that Marvel became more successful in the 70's.... what???

 

On 3/15/2024 at 4:33 PM, Prince Namor said:

You also had the 1967 Spider-man Cartoon (considered one of the best they ever made) which ran from September 1967 until June 1970 and the 1967-68 Fantastic Four Cartoon.

 

These were the two books that were Marvel's most successful comics and obviously benefitted from the Saturday Morning Cartoon exposure....  

 

Okay! You make a lot of good points regarding how/why Marvel achieved growing sales in the 1960's, but this all still occurred while Stan Lee was the Editor-in-Chief. That's where the buck stopped. He was the ringmaster. Without Stan Lee to hold it all together, the comic production efforts at Marvel descended into near shambles in the 1970's (which was still a cut or two above the complete shambles at the creator owned Image Comics in the 1990's of course).

Edited March 18 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

On 3/18/2024 at 8:41 AM, Steven Valdez said:

It's weird that so many people are in denial this happened... they're probably the same guys who deny the Moon landings and think the Earth is flat. Then again, a lot of major dealers got their inventories started by being involved in this fraud, so it might be no wonder they want it hushed up.

You have it backward. It's the conspiracy theorists (like those who deny the Moon landing, believe that 9-11 was an inside job with U.S. government involvement and think that comic titles were cancelled because of some unfair vendetta as opposed to poor sales) who argue that there have been cover-ups.

The reason comic titles were cancelled in the 1960's and 1970's is that they weren't selling enough. And falling off the back of a truck or being stolen somehow in no way constitutes being sold.

I suspect that Jack Kirby's New Gods and Forever People titles were partially or even largely victim to DC's marketing blunder of raising the price of their comics to 25 cents.

 

Edited March 18 by Hepcat

[Zonker]

On 3/18/2024 at 12:31 PM, Hepcat said:

 

The reason comic titles were cancelled in the 1960's and 1970's is that they weren't selling enough. And falling off the back of a truck or being stolen somehow in no way constitutes being sold.

 

But the problem we are pointing out is what the publishers could count as "selling enough" was a bogus number (at least as the people who were at DC at the time have been telling the story):

 

Over at DC, the editors apparently have no idea what’s really selling. D ick Giordano tells this story:

 

   Quote

CBA: How did you know if your books were selling?

D ick: In those days we didn't have sales figures given to us as we did in later years. Every editor had a cork board with their Books' cover proofs pinned up. Sometime during the night, Carmine or somebody would turn over the cover and write a figure down for that particular title. It wasn't number but a percentage, but we weren't given the print run numbers so we never knew how many we sold. I didn't pay too much attention to the numbers because I had no way of comparing them to anything that made sense to me.

 

- Irwin Donnenfeld told Bob Beerbohm in an article published in Comic Book Artist #6:

   Quote

Up until I left in 1968… I spent time with all the wholesalers, and I knew every one of them. My father knew all their fathers… so everywhere around the country, I had an ‘in’ …during my tenure, I maintained a large roving field force who were our reps in all the major markets. These reps made reports every week which went right to me. In the really large markets, we had a man or two who worked inside each wholesaler building, all the time. Based on this feedback, I determined what our print runs should be on every book…While I was at DC, I had control over everything. After I left, Carmine couldn’t do what I did. He wasn’t an owner privy to the levels of information I was able to access. He simply did not know the people I had grown up with in the wholesale market.

 

- In that same issue, Neal Adams says to Beerbohm:

   Quote

Nobody knew what the hell was going on after Irwin Donnenfeld left in ’68, what was selling, why it was selling, how it was doing, what the sales really were, they had no idea—and books got cancelled, reputations got hurt, people got hurt…

 

[Hepcat]

Maybe so. Hopefully though you're not buying into the conspiracy theory that the first wave of Jack Kirby titles were cancelled because of jealousy or some sort of grudge Carmine Infantino harboured against Jack Kirby. Certain Kirby fan boys have actually advanced this theory and for that reason they dislike Infantino.

[Prince Namor]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:13 PM, Hepcat said:

Okay! You make a lot of good points regarding how/why Marvel achieved growing sales in the 1960's, but this all still occurred while Stan Lee was the Editor-in-Chief. That's where the buck stopped. He was the ringmaster. Without Stan Lee to hold it all together, the comic production efforts at Marvel descended into near shambles in the 1970's (which was of course still a couple of cuts better than the complete shambles at the creator owned Image Comics in the 1990's of course).

No one is denying Stan promoted the line in a way that made young boys swoon.

But the line started falling apart while he was still there, as shown in the numbers. By 1968, he was only in the office 2-3 days a week (as verified by both Roy Thomas and Stan himself).

Sol Brodsky leaving in mid-1970 made a much bigger impact than people realize, because it was Sol who made the assignments, who scheduled and handled all production, who got people paid, etc., who really was the actual 'ringmaster', and once he left, THAT is when the running of the business started to get disorganized. 

Without Kirby and Romita to write the stories, and without Brodsky to actually run things, Marvel's line of comics not only was no longer 'the House of Ideas' in anything other than name, but also a disorganized mess. Deadlines became an issue, and the numbers went down. 

Stan's part of it as the mouthpiece was still there and at THAT he remained successful... continually telling everyone how great everything was, despite the proof being anything but. 

[Zonker]

On 3/18/2024 at 2:34 PM, Hepcat said:

Maybe so. Hopefully though you're not buying into the conspiracy theory that the first wave of Jack Kirby titles were cancelled because of jealousy or some sort of grudge Carmine Infantino harboured against Jack Kirby. Certain Kirby fan boys have actually advanced this theory and for that reason they dislike Infantino.

Yeah, that would not be credible.  Infantino went out of his way personally to court Kirby to come over to DC.  It was in Infantino's interest for Kirby's books to succeed, and in doing so, demonstrate Infantino's executive-level business acumen.    

[Prince Namor]

On 3/19/2024 at 1:47 AM, Zonker said:

Yeah, that would not be credible.  Infantino went out of his way personally to court Kirby to come over to DC.  It was in Infantino's interest for Kirby's books to succeed, and in doing so, demonstrate Infantino's executive-level business acumen.    

When Kirby went to DC and was immediately paid as a 'superstar', OF COURSE it would ruffle the feathers of long time writers and artists there who DIDN'T get special treatment. It WASN'T Carmine who felt slighted - he simply had to deal with the complaining of some of the staff. (Kirby would face the same nonsense from Marvel staffers when he returned there later - hack writers like Bill Mantlo and Steve Engelhardt and Houseroy, criticizing him and putting him down - if that had been Lee they were talking about, Marvel Zombie's heads would've exploded).

When Paul Levitz was working on his book 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, DC gave him access to their numbers, and according to him, the New Gods books were mid-level in numbers. There were other books that should've been canceled long before New Gods. It would've been nice if he'd revealed the actual numbers, but he didn't. 

The only Kirby book we DO have numbers for during that time, is Jimmy Olsen and Kirby's Jimmy Olsen outsold Lee's Fantastic Four AND Thor in 1970 and 1971.

Kirby had made Jimmy Olsen a monthly book and made it a better seller than FF and Thor. After he left it was canceled a year later (actually the numbering would become 'Superman Family').

 

Bottom Line is... NO ONE was doing what Kirby did in creating the epic he was creating. It is SPECTACULAR in it's storytelling and creativity. Those who call it a failure, don't know a damn thing about comics. 

[Dr. Haydn]

On 3/18/2024 at 1:39 PM, Prince Namor said:

No one is denying Stan promoted the line in a way that made young boys swoon.

But the line started falling apart while he was still there, as shown in the numbers. By 1968, he was only in the office 2-3 days a week (as verified by both Roy Thomas and Stan himself).

Sol Brodsky leaving in mid-1970 made a much bigger impact than people realize, because it was Sol who made the assignments, who scheduled and handled all production, who got people paid, etc., who really was the actual 'ringmaster', and once he left, THAT is when the running of the business started to get disorganized. 

Without Kirby and Romita to write the stories, and without Brodsky to actually run things, Marvel's line of comics not only was no longer 'the House of Ideas' in anything other than name, but also a disorganized mess. Deadlines became an issue, and the numbers went down. 

Stan's part of it as the mouthpiece was still there and at THAT he remained successful... continually telling everyone how great everything was, despite the proof being anything but. 

I get the feeling that Stan Lee was becoming disinterested in the whole superhero phenomenon by the late 1960s. At the end of 1967, he was only doing the equivalent of five books a month (FF, Spider-man, Thor, Daredevil, and the half-book Captain America and Hulk features), farming out the remaining books to Roy Thomas and others (including Archie Goodwin, Gary Friedrich, Raymond Marais, and Jim Lawrence).

His workload increased in 1968 with the expansion of the line but dropped back to five books by late 1969--all done with experienced artists who could carry the bulk of the plotting labor.

Despite the public statements to the contrary, Lee wanted out. No doubt losing Kirby to DC accelerated the process.

 

Edited March 19 by Dr. Haydn
removed Brodsky reference

[Steven Valdez]

On 3/19/2024 at 1:28 AM, Zonker said:

There is plenty of evidence for affidavit fraud (MH2 being the existence-proof).  Where it gets more speculative is the suggestion that Adams / Kirby / Barry Smith books were disproportionally targeted by the practice, and if so, whether that made the difference between commercial success versus premature cancellation (or near-cancellation, in the case of Conan). Personally, I believe it is credible that such a thing happened.  When I got into collecting in the mid-1970s, collecting the "good artists" work (interiors, not covers) was much more of a thing than it is now.  And, if Roy Thomas is to be believed, Conan the Barbarian only really became commercially successful about the time when Gil Kane was filling in for Barry Smith.  It makes sense that if you were hoarding recent issues to sell at marked-up prices, you would focus on those issues then likely to be in demand by those fanatics willing to pay more than cover price for a comic book.  

Bob Beerbohm via Facebook: 

'The perceived sales DC NPP Independent News was receiving was the sold numbers were actually going down. Neal Adams' GL/GA was one of the most heavily "hit" by affidavit returns fraud on that "honor" system mandated by the larger ID gigs around the country in order they would handle ANY comic books.'

 

 

[Steven Valdez]

On 3/19/2024 at 1:28 AM, Zonker said:

Where it gets more speculative is the suggestion that Adams / Kirby / Barry Smith books were disproportionally targeted by the practice, and if so, whether that made the difference between commercial success versus premature cancellation (or near-cancellation, in the case of Conan). Personally, I believe it is credible that such a thing happened.  When I got into collecting in the mid-1970s, collecting the "good artists" work (interiors, not covers) was much more of a thing than it is now.  And, if Roy Thomas is to be believed, Conan the Barbarian only really became commercially successful about the time when Gil Kane was filling in for Barry Smith.  It makes sense that if you were hoarding recent issues to sell at marked-up prices, you would focus on those issues then likely to be in demand by those fanatics willing to pay more than cover price for a comic book.  

It's not speculative.

"One person I know acquired over 25,000 copies of Conan #1 when it came out. By early 1973 I was giving him $600 for a sealed case of 300 copies and selling them for $5 a pop." His price per case doubled to $1,200 in 1974."

Bob Beerbohm, Comic Book Artist #6 (Feb 1999), Twomorrows.

[Dr. Haydn]

On 3/18/2024 at 6:36 PM, Steven Valdez said:

It's not speculative.

"One person I know acquired over 25,000 copies of Conan #1 when it came out. By early 1973 I was giving him $600 for a sealed case of 300 copies and selling them for $5 a pop." His price per case doubled to $1,200 in 1974."

Bob Beerbohm, Comic Book Artist #6 (Feb 1999), Twomorrows.

Two things:

1. Bob Beerbohm was there.

2. His story hasn't changed in over 50 years.

That makes his recollections hard to ignore.

[Steven Valdez]

On 3/19/2024 at 10:45 AM, Dr. Haydn said:

Two things:

1. Bob Beerbohm was there.

2. His story hasn't changed in over 50 years.

That makes his recollections hard to ignore.

Right. And that Conan #1 hoarder was just one of the people who were rorting the system.

Edited March 18 by Steven Valdez

[Steven Valdez]

On 3/19/2024 at 11:54 AM, Hepcat said:

 What it most certainly was not was a "sale".

Yes. Again, that's the entire point. Because of that, it appeared to the bean counters that the affected books were not selling (in fact they were being stolen prior to distribution instead of being legitimately made available for sale to the public) and consequently some of them were cancelled.

Edited March 19 by Steven Valdez

[Hepcat]

On 3/18/2024 at 9:02 PM, Steven Valdez said:

Yes. Again, that's the entire point. Because of that, it appeared to the bean counters that the affected books were not selling (in fact they were being stolen prior to distribution instead of being legitimately made available for sale to the public) and consequently some of them were cancelled.

For whatever reason you seem to believe that the bean counters were wrong. But they were correct. The affected books of which you're speaking were not selling. This may well have been because they were being stolen. But it's irrelevant in any case. DC and Marvel weren't getting enough sales to generate adequate revenues from those titles so they were cancelled. It's just that simple. There's no reason to posit any conspiracies.

Or are you suggesting that DC and Marvel should have continued to publish those books just to avoid tarnishing the reputations of the creators with then and future fan boys? Well that would have been inane. Companies simply don't operate that way.

Edited March 19 by Hepcat