Marvel UK Price Variants 16 16

[sfcityduck]

8 hours ago, rakehell said:

They all have cents indicias. All of the foreign books I own have either a foreign indicia or no indicia at all.

The interior pages of the pence variants are identical to the US distributed copies because they came from the same pile at the printers. The only difference to the book as a whole is the price point on the cover.

 

I get and agree with Marwood that the terminology is not that big a deal and certainly does not detract from the great information that he shares on this thread about these UK comics.

But, after reading rakehell's commient, now I'm really confused.  I thought that Marwood was saying that the the UK books had different indicias (e.g. he says after rakehell's post that "There are seven different Thorpe & Porter indicia scenarios, cents copies with T&P details" and also has said that there were other UK publishers than T&P).  

By the way, didn't Thorpe & Porter also publish the UK Classics Illustrated?  I've never heard those called "variants".

Plus, didn't Marwood also point out significant cover and interior differences with the UK editions omitting a 16 page catalogue of some sort?

I get that they were printed at the same time, but they were printed for a different market.  They are not a variant of a U.S. edition intended to be sold in the U.S. such as a 35 cent test price variant or variant cover of a U.S. edition.

They are comics that were never intended to be sold in the U.S. at all. So they are not a variant of a U.S. edition.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by sfcityduck

[Get Marwood & I]

17 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

I get and agree with Marwood that the terminology is not that big a deal and certainly does not detract from the great information that he shares on this thread about these UK comics.

But, after reading rakehell's commient, now I'm really confused.  I thought that Marwood was saying that the the UK books had different indicias (e.g. he says after rakehell's post that "There are seven different Thorpe & Porter indicia scenarios, cents copies with T&P details" and also has said that there were other UK publishers than T&P).  

By the way, didn't Thorpe & Porter also publish the UK Classics Illustrated?  I've never heard those called "variants".

Plus, didn't Marwood also point out significant cover and interior differences with the UK editions omitting a 16 page catalogue of some sort?

I get that they were printed at the same time, but they were printed for a different market.  They are not a variant of a U.S. edition intended to be sold in the U.S. such as a 35 cent test price variant or variant cover of a U.S. edition.

They are comics that were never intended to be sold in the U.S. at all. So they are not a variant of a U.S. edition.

Yikes, let me clear up a few things here.

Below is a pence priced copy of ASM #1. As we've already said, it was made in the US, same location, printing press etc, and it was then shipped to the UK on a boat to be distributed in the UK by a UK company called Thorpe & Porter based at the time in Leicester.

It has three differences to the cents copy:

1. The price
2. No cover month
3. The indicia page has additional Thorpe & Porter wording 

It is much scarcer than the cents copy, with production numbers generally accepted (although never definitively proven) to be in the region of 5-10% of the cents numbers.

It is a variant in my view because it varies in appearance from it's cents cousin in the three ways I mentioned. It came from the same Mother. It is a first printing. Where it was intended to be shipped is not, in my view, relevant, but I accept that you and others may hold a different view on that. 

The cover / indicia differences between pence and cents copies varies from the first ever pence variant (Archie #108 in March 1960) right up to the final single UK priced copies in 1982. Sometimes the price is the only difference, but there are many other differences, all captured in my threads here on the boards.

The salient point is that the pence books I have covered for the seven known US publishers are first printings and not reprints / repackaged books. So they are by definition variants, because they vary in content / appearance from their US twins. So as not to confuse them with other variants out there, I call them what they are - pence priced variants. 

I call 35 cent variants '35 cent variants' because they are variants priced at 35 cents. I call Canadian Price Variants 'Canadian Priced Variants' because I can't call them by their currency as it is the same as the US - dollars and cents. So 'Canadian' is the next most logical descriptor. Ditto Australian Priced Variants. I call the 1999/2000 price variants summarised in one of my threads 'US Newsstand Price Variants' to distinguish them from the more widely known 30/35 cents variants. 

I have no issue with what you or others want to call them. As long as the reader understands that the books are first printings, on an equal historical footing with their US counterparts, I'm fine. My mission here is not to 'pimp the books' as some have suggested or over inflate their importance. It's simply to catalogue what exists and to explore all the minutiae that goes with them. I enjoy it and others seem to too, albeit it in limited numbers which is understandable on a US website. 

I just love the books, and I want to share that love, and all that I have discovered, with you guys here on the CGC boards using the excellent software which allows me to do so many things so easily. 

 

[sfcityduck]

Great explanation of what the two books are.  I understand that there are differences in the indicia, covers and sometimes content.  

For me, though, your explanation is defining the difference between a foreign first edition and a U.S. first edition.  The term "variant," to me, is a specific term discussing a variant printing of the same edition (e.g. a U.S. variant is a U.S. edition with some changes).  Your label makes a UK edition appear to be part of a U.S. edition, when it clearly is not.

I get that you don't want pence books being described as "reprints," but using the term "variant" is not the most effective way to do that.  After all, comic collectors often use the term "variant" to describe a reprint (e.g. the "Nov." copies of MC 1 and "on sale now" copies of Superman 1).  

I also get that you want to emphasise that UK editions have lower prints runs than U.S. editions.  That has nothing to do with the proper use of the term "variant."  After all, because of population differences, almost all foreign editions have lower print runs than U.S. editions.  

I think the Classics collectors have got this right.  If its a T&P comic published for the UK market it is a foreign edition, which may or may not be a reprint, not a "variant" on a U.S. edition.

The books you are describing are UK first editions issued in tandem with U.S. first editions, which are not reprints and are also not variant U.S. editions.  

[Get Marwood & I]

17 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

Great explanation of what the two books are.  I understand that there are differences in the indicia, covers and sometimes content.  

Ta 

17 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

For me, though, your explanation is defining the difference between a foreign first edition and a U.S. first edition.  The term "variant," to me, is a specific term discussing a variant printing of the same edition (e.g. a U.S. variant is a U.S. edition with some changes).  Your label makes a UK edition appear to be part of a U.S. edition, when it clearly is not.

That's not how I define 'variant' so I'm happy to agree to disagree 

17 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

I get that you don't want pence books being described as "reprints," but using the term "variant" is not the most effective way to do that.  After all, comic collectors often use the term "variant" to describe a reprint (e.g. the "Nov." copies of MC 1 and "on sale now" copies of Superman 1).  

Yes, it's a term that is often abused. Below is one Google induced definition. In my view, the pence copy is the 'thing that differs' from the cents copy which is the 'same thing' / the 'standard':

 

17 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

I also get that you want to emphasise that UK editions have lower prints runs than U.S. editions.  That has nothing to do with the proper use of the term "variant."  After all, because of population differences, almost all foreign editions have lower print runs than U.S. editions.  

Yes, sorry, print runs have nothing to do with the definition I agree - I just added it as a further pence info snippet, not to back up the terminology discussion. 

17 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

I think the Classics collectors have got this right.  If its a T&P comic published for the UK market it is a foreign edition, which may or may not be a reprint, not a "variant" on a U.S. edition.

The books you are describing are UK first editions issued in tandem with U.S. first editions, which are not reprints and are also not variant U.S. editions.  

To be clear, T&P didn't publish, they distributed the pence copies that Marvel published and had printed. 

I quite enjoyed that challenge SFCD - as I said above, I'm happy to agree to disagree on terminology. If I went back to drawing board I would still settle on 'Marvel Pence Priced Variants' as a description for these books. But I do understand where you are coming from.

Cheers, Steve 

[Aman619]

I’m on board calling these variants because having been printed at the same time here in the states, then shipped overseas just to be distributed elsewhere, they are like cousins, closely related kin of each other.  As opposed to having been printed separately and some time later on IN BRITAIN as was what we suspected before Maywood examined these books more closely.

However, I’m unclear how they are “First printings” until we know the printing scenario. "First printings" would mean to me that the printing press never stopped to replace the plates and run off the rest of the print run.  Are we confident this was the case? To me, any time the presses have to be stopped to replace and print out a second version, that second batch is a second printing.

having said that, it’s gets tricky.  I know printing but aren’t 100% sure how the comics business actually processed their books.  So here are ideas that would explain how either the US or the UK versions covers might be first printings, or in fact second printings.  Covers were always printed separately and on different presses than the web printed newsprint interiors. After both were printed, other machines folded, collated and stapled and trimmed the covers onto the interiors.  If the newsprint interiors are exactly identical down to the last detail it suggests ALL US and Thorpe etc copes were printed non stop in one sitting. So far so good.  The covers though may have required two printing sessions.  Either the larger print order of US covers were run off first, and afterward presses stopped and new UK plates loaded and a second press run produced the UK versions (or in the reverse order, UK first).  Or, since the covers were printed on larger sheets 4-up (meaning 4 different covers on each sheet) they COULD have created a sheet with 3 US versions and 1 UK version and printed them all in one pass.  If this were the case that’s means they are all first printings with neither having been printed first or second. Because the collating machine would have stapled and trimmed etc all at the same time, and they just separated the bundles afterward. (digression:  but here again, Im not sure of each step in the process. In order for all the Thorpe covers to be collated together, they'd have to have been trimmed out of the 4-up cover sheets and separated into their OWN PILE first, apart from the US covers ... but I don't think they did that because films of these comics collators fed in the unfolded newsprint interior which were folded into signatures of 16 pages and the 4-up covers trimmed down as well ALL AT SAME TIME IN SAME MACHINE.  or were they?  At some point they needed to be able to have separate bundles of EACH different comic! So steps needed to be taken to make that happen, same here with different covers variants.. 

So -- did England really need that many copies? That would mean Britain's circulation was 1/3 as that of the entire US?  Sounds too high.  I’d think that England only need 10% as many, and if closer to that % Marvel and Thorpe would not have gone this way because it’s too wasteful. They’d end up with maybe 3 times as many unnecessary UK covers as they kept the presses churning out the much higher print run of US covers they needed.  What I’m saying is that IF England only needs 10% of the US total, they would have opted for stopping the presses and swapping plates to print the other covers to save money.   And in my mind, that’s a second printing. 

Edited April 11, 2019 by Aman619
fixed typos, added thoughts and a long digression

[rakehell]

First, sfcityduck, thanks for keeping it going.

Second, nitpicking alert!

15 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

I thought that Marwood was saying that the the UK books had different indicias (e.g. he says after rakehell's post that "There are seven different Thorpe & Porter indicia scenarios, cents copies with T&P details" and also has said that there were other UK publishers than T&P).  

The important thing to note about the indicias of these books, whether or not they have a T&P or L. Miller blurb, is that they all indicate the sale price in US currency, not UK currency. For pence priced variants, there exists no indicia which states, "sale price 9d per issue." This is how they vary from their siblings with 10c on the cover. This is also why I'm not comfortable calling them "UK editions" (more on this below). Again, that's me picking nits.

Also, when considering these comics, Thorpe & Porter were a distributor, not a publisher. The Classics Illustrated editions you refer to were printed in the UK after the US editions were released. In this case, Thorpe & Porter acted as publisher and distributor.

15 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

They are not a variant of a U.S. edition intended to be sold in the U.S. such as a 35 cent test price variant or variant cover of a U.S. edition.

These books are part of the same edition, because they were all printed in the same run. Only the covers differ, requiring a pause in printing to change the price point.

This:

This:

And this:

all came off the same press at the same time, differing only in price point. They are all "first edition" copies of Star Wars #2. The same process resulted in the change from 30c to 35c to 12p, though not necessarily in that order.

On reflection, I guess what I'm saying is that these are all variants within an edition.

13 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

Your label makes a UK edition appear to be part of a U.S. edition, when it clearly is not.

The UK edition of Star Wars #2 looks like this:

printed and published in the UK six months after the first edition by Marvel UK, a subsidiary of Marvel Comics.

Again, I know I'm nitpicking. But we all know that this hobby is filled to the rafters with folk who focus a little too closely on the small stuff.

Welcome to our rabbit hole. It's a cozy place to hang out if you don't mind Coco Puffs all over the place.

Edited April 11, 2019 by rakehell
further thought

[FlyingDonut]

On 4/9/2019 at 9:29 PM, sfcityduck said:

Lots of U.S. comics are printed in other countries, notably Canada, for U.S. publishers.  That doesn't make them U.S. variants of Canadian or Chinese, etc., comics.

Why should a comic printed in the U.S. for a UK publisher become a variant of a U.S. comic?

Your logic is, at best, flawed.

[FoggyNelson]

I love that Easter Island Journey to mystery cover above ‼️‼️👍💚🆒

[Get Marwood & I]

11 hours ago, Aman619 said:

I’m on board calling these variants because having been printed at the same time here in the states, then shipped overseas just to be distributed elsewhere, they are like cousins, closely related kin of each other.  

Hooray, a convert, thanks 

11 hours ago, Aman619 said:

As opposed to having been printed separately and some time later on IN BRITAIN as was what we suspected before Maywood examined these books more closely.

Whowood? Not just me. Others have been banging the drum, long before I started boring everyone clarifying 

11 hours ago, Aman619 said:

However, I’m unclear how they are “First printings” until we know the printing scenario. "First printings" would mean to me that the printing press never stopped to replace the plates and run off the rest of the print run.  Are we confident this was the case? To me, any time the presses have to be stopped to replace and print out a second version, that second batch is a second printing.

I don't see it that way at all Aman. That's quite an odd idea to me. There will be many scenarios under which the presses could stop, pence books included or otherwise. The presses break down. Run out of paper / ink. Run out of time maybe even. If I'm the guy in charge, and the job sheet says run off 100K of book A. Whether I run off all 100K in one go, or staggered throughout the day, that's the one overall printing. 

If you're logic held true, three of the four known Rawhide Kid #17 10c font / price variations would by definition be second, third and fourth printings. That's silly Aman, surely?

11 hours ago, Aman619 said:

having said that, it’s gets tricky.  I know printing but aren’t 100% sure how the comics business actually processed their books.  So here are ideas that would explain how either the US or the UK versions covers might be first printings, or in fact second printings.  Covers were always printed separately and on different presses than the web printed newsprint interiors.

That's a good point - it's only the covers that differ. All the interior pages are the same for pence and cents copies. So, notwithstanding your point above, the interiors are all first printings. 

11 hours ago, Aman619 said:

After both were printed, other machines folded, collated and stapled and trimmed the covers onto the interiors.  If the newsprint interiors are exactly identical down to the last detail it suggests ALL US and Thorpe etc copes were printed non stop in one sitting. So far so good.  The covers though may have required two printing sessions.  Either the larger print order of US covers were run off first, and afterward presses stopped and new UK plates loaded and a second press run produced the UK versions (or in the reverse order, UK first).  Or, since the covers were printed on larger sheets 4-up (meaning 4 different covers on each sheet) they COULD have created a sheet with 3 US versions and 1 UK version and printed them all in one pass.  If this were the case that’s means they are all first printings with neither having been printed first or second. Because the collating machine would have stapled and trimmed etc all at the same time, and they just separated the bundles afterward. (digression:  but here again, Im not sure of each step in the process. In order for all the Thorpe covers to be collated together, they'd have to have been trimmed out of the 4-up cover sheets and separated into their OWN PILE first, apart from the US covers ... but I don't think they did that because films of these comics collators fed in the unfolded newsprint interior which were folded into signatures of 16 pages and the 4-up covers trimmed down as well ALL AT SAME TIME IN SAME MACHINE.  or were they?  At some point they needed to be able to have separate bundles of EACH different comic! So steps needed to be taken to make that happen, same here with different covers variants.. 

We don't know how it was done, and we may never know. But I can't see why they would print 4 covers on a sheet, one of which being a pence, and then have to hand sort them later. That would be spectacularly inefficient operationally (I know, I know)

11 hours ago, Aman619 said:

So -- did England really need that many copies? That would mean Britain's circulation was 1/3 as that of the entire US?  Sounds too high.  I’d think that England only need 10% as many, and if closer to that % Marvel and Thorpe would not have gone this way because it’s too wasteful. They’d end up with maybe 3 times as many unnecessary UK covers as they kept the presses churning out the much higher print run of US covers they needed.  What I’m saying is that IF England only needs 10% of the US total, they would have opted for stopping the presses and swapping plates to print the other covers to save money.   And in my mind, that’s a second printing. 

Yes, a further reason to discount the 'four covers page page / one is a pence copy' scenario - that would make the end pence product 25% of the production volume and we know - anecdotally - that it was between 5 and 10%

So, my summary / position is that the pence books were printed separately to the cents but as part of one whole printing job (Barry, print me 90K of these and 10k of these). Being one whole printing job, both copies are therefore first printings. They are printings from the first - and only in most cases - production run. To call whichever priced book was produced at the end of the run a 'second printing' is a leap too far in my view and would be totally at odds with what I believe to be the common understanding of a 'second printing', that is, a book produced after the original production event due to a specific market need.

What say thou now Aman (and what's your name by the way, I feel silly calling people Aman and SFC Duck in these discussions)? 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, FoggyNelson said:

I love that Easter Island Journey to mystery cover above ‼️‼️👍💚🆒

"Why, thank you very much Mr Fognel" 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 4/11/2019 at 9:16 AM, rakehell said:

Welcome to our rabbit hole. It's a cozy place to hang out if you don't mind Coco Puffs all over the place.

I keep telling you Dave, bring Honey Nut Loops or you're off the gig mate 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Get Marwood & I
😃

[Redshade]

9 hours ago, rakehell said:

First, sfcityduck, thanks for keeping it going.

Second, nitpicking alert!

The important thing to note about the indicias of these books, whether or not they have a T&P or L. Miller blurb, is that they all indicate the sale price in US currency, not UK currency. For pence priced variants, there exists no indicia which states, "sale price 9d per issue." This is how they vary from their siblings with 10c on the cover. This is also why I'm not comfortable calling them "UK editions" (more on this below). Again, that's me picking nits.

Also, when considering these comics, Thorpe & Porter were a distributor, not a publisher. The Classics Illustrated editions you refer to were printed in the UK after the US editions were released. In this case, Thorpe & Porter acted as publisher and distributor.

These books are part of the same edition, because they were all printed in the same run. Only the covers differ, requiring a pause in printing to change the price point.

This:

This:

And this:

all came off the same press at the same time, differing only in price point. They are all "first edition" copies of Star Wars #2. The same process resulted in the change from 30c to 35c to 12p, though not necessarily in that order.

On reflection, I guess what I'm saying is that these are all variants within an edition.

The UK edition of Star Wars #2 looks like this:

printed and published in the UK six months after the first edition by Marvel UK, a subsidiary of Marvel Comics.

Again, I know I'm nitpicking. But we all know that this hobby is filled to the rafters with folk who focus a little too closely on the small stuff.

Welcome to our rabbit hole. It's a cozy place to hang out if you don't mind Coco Puffs all over the place.

An excellent post rakehell and one which admirably describes the difference between a US published pence copy variant and the later UK reprints. All of the first three Star Wars variants that you show, the 30c, 35c and the 12p are on the Grand Comics Database side by side in the US section. The 10p Star Wars Weekly was a UK publication and is, quite rightly, featured in the foreign section of the GCD.

[Redshade]

3 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I keep telling you Stephen, bring Honey Nut Loops or you're off the gig mate 

I'm a diabetic so have to stay away from sugar confections. Its a boring Muesli for me I'm afraid although I do get the fry-up on weekends.

[Get Marwood & I]

5 minutes ago, Redshade said:

3 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I keep telling you Stephen, bring Honey Nut Loops or you're off the gig mate 

I'm a diabetic so have to stay away from sugar confections. Its a boring Muesli for me I'm afraid although I do get the fry-up on weekends.

I've called @rakehell Stephen when he's Robert haven't I Stephen 

[Redshade]

2 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I've called @rakehell Stephen when he's Robert haven't I Stephen 

I did wonder about that.

[Aman619]

6 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Hooray, a convert, thanks 

Whowood? Not just me. Others have been banging the drum, long before I started boring everyone clarifying 

I don't see it that way at all Aman. That's quite an odd idea to me. There will be many scenarios under which the presses could stop, pence books included or otherwise. The presses break down. Run out of paper / ink. Run out of time maybe even. If I'm the guy in charge, and the job sheet says run off 100K of book A. Whether I run off all 100K in one go, or staggered throughout the day, that's the one overall printing. 

If you're logic held true, three of the four known Rawhide Kid #17 10c font / price variations would by definition be second, third and fourth printings. That's silly Aman, surely?

That's a good point - it's only the covers that differ. All the interior pages are the same for pence and cents copies. So, notwithstanding your point above, the interiors are all first printings. 

We don't know how it was done, and we may never know. But I can't see why they would print 4 covers on a sheet, one of which being a pence, and then have to hand sort them later. That would be spectacularly inefficient operationally (I know, I know)

Yes, a further reason to discount the 'four covers page page / one is a pence copy' scenario - that would make the end pence product 25% of the production volume and we know - anecdotally - that it was between 5 and 10%

So, my summary / position is that the pence books were printed separately to the cents but as part of one whole printing job (Barry, print me 90K of these and 10k of these). Being one whole printing job, both copies are therefore first printings. They are printings from the first - and only in most cases - production run. To call whichever priced book was produced at the end of the run a 'second printing' is a leap too far in my view and would be totally at odds with what I believe to be the common understanding of a 'second printing', that is, a book produced after the original production event due to a specific market need.

What say thou now Aman (and what's your name by the way, I feel silly calling people Aman and SFC Duck in these discussions)? 

I see your point about Rawhide Kid cover changes. Somehow that makes sense even though Id just argued that they be 2nd printings. But you included a lot of press mishaps that force a shutdown of the press run, but NONE are the same as an intentional stoppage to now print "SOMETHING ELSE".  SO its the intent Im speaking to and not just that a delay happened in the printing. In the larger sense though all variant printed same day/time, same place etc could then all be first printings. happy?

As for the 4 up, I was winging on memory.  The sheets had at least 6 covers as a google search reminded me.  With 6 covers on a page, only 16% would have been for overseas etc -- a more reasonable % of the total run. still a bit high though.

I can think of various ways to separate the different covers into bundles... all relatively light technology plus manual labor. I just don't know what they did when so I can only point out the potential problem. However, they most definitely ganged up multiple books on one press sheet of glossy paper. Much more economical to print large sheets and cut them down and collate than single press runs on small paper (11x17 is all a comic cover needs! and that a ridiculously small a tediously slow method to bang out 1000s of comics.)  We have seen some comics with the wrong covers that came out at same time, which is indicative of the ganged up cover sheets, and that however they sorted them (before or after)  mixups did occur from time to time.

[rakehell]

12 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I've called @rakehell Stephen when he's Robert haven't I Stephen 

Yes, you have, Herbert.

[rakehell]

12 hours ago, Redshade said:

All of the first three Star Wars variants that you show, the 30c, 35c and the 12p are on the Grand Comics Database side by side in the US section. The 10p Star Wars Weekly was a UK publication and is, quite rightly, featured in the foreign section of the GCD.

Cheers, Redshade.

That's where I peeled the images from, though I think I'm justified as the 12p variant is actually my scan.

[rakehell]

16 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I keep telling you Stephen, bring Honey Nut Loops or you're off the gig mate 

 

12 hours ago, Redshade said:

I'm a diabetic so have to stay away from sugar confections. Its a boring Muesli for me I'm afraid although I do get the fry-up on weekends.

Never mind your Honey Nut Loops & your silly Muesli...

Rabbit hole...Coco Puffs...

Wait a minute... That's not chocolate...

[Get Marwood & I]

9 hours ago, Aman619 said:

SO its the intent Im speaking to and not just that a delay happened in the printing. In the larger sense though all variant printed same day/time, same place etc could then all be first printings. happy?

I'm always happy me Aman. Except weekdays. And weekends. I do enjoy these debates. It's nice when people chip in and I always like your take on things drawn from your printing experience, hence the flag.  

I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure how it all happened, what was deliberate, what was an oversight. So many quirks around this time. 

And I'm not massively fussed what is called what. There are facts, and there are opinions. My focus has always been on the fact, the fact of what does exist. Hence the exhaustive summaries. But I also enjoy the speculation, even when I'm proven wrong (see JIM 64 & 65!).

Until definitive facts arrive, I'm sticking with the first printing concept I've outlined and the descriptors. 

All good fun, as I always say