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The 2nd Print Newsstand Phenom...or "This Shouldn't Exist!!"
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105 posts in this topic

This color stripe observation is an interesting aspect of this discussion.   Can those who have the first and/or second prints identify the color of the stripes on those issues?  Now I'm curious, are they the same color for both the first and second print of a given issue?

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9 minutes ago, Warlord said:

This color stripe observation is an interesting aspect of this discussion.   Can those who have the first and/or second prints identify the color of the stripes on those issues?  Now I'm curious, are they the same color for both the first and second print of a given issue?

The one I'd be interested in -- and the easiest one to look at -- was the Spider-Man #1 Gold. That's a second print, and I don't remember how much longer after the first print did this one appear. 

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3 hours ago, David Buck said:

As a Sidebar here: Color Striping  - The 1979 copy is from a current MCS ebay listing

 

 

 

Color Striping.jpg.JPG

color striping 1979 back cover.jpg

color striping 1979.jpg

Thanks for posting that, David. It shows a 4 week cycle, which was, of course, a suggestion, as publishers handled returns the way they chose, and (perhaps more importantly) regional magazine distributors may have (and probably did) ignore this schedule altogether. From my own experience, newsstand books in the San Francisco Bay Area  in the early 90s showed up 2 weeks after the Direct market copies did, while Bud Plant has stated that newsstand distribution delivery depended on the distributor as well.

Obviously, if books scheduled to go on sale the second week of July didn't actually show up until the fourth week, that schedule gets tossed out the window.

Many newsstands (not just a handful) carried new comics going back more than that, especially stores like Walmart, K-Mart and the like, which had more shelf space. I don't know how soon in their histories the book sellers started selling comics, but they, too, had more shelf space, and could stock comics 2 or 3 deep (and did.) It all depended on space and when the publishers needed the return reports by. 

 

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18 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Thanks for posting that, David. It shows a 4 week cycle

5 week.

Quote

which was, of course, a suggestion, as publishers handled returns the way they chose, and (perhaps more importantly) regional magazine distributors may have (and probably did) ignore this schedule altogether. From my own experience, newsstand books in the San Francisco Bay Area  in the early 90s showed up 2 weeks after the Direct market copies did, while Bud Plant has stated that newsstand distribution delivery depended on the distributor as well.

They may have ignored the schedule, but they didn't ignore the colors.

Quote

 

Obviously, if books scheduled to go on sale the second week of July didn't actually show up until the fourth week, that schedule gets tossed out the window.

 

The calendar was not important and they likely didn't look at it to figure out anything. They got green bar comics in and pulled the green bar comics off. They didn't know or care whether it was a red week or a black week or whatever until they got the books.

Quote

Many newsstands (not just a handful) carried new comics going back more than that, especially stores like Walmart, K-Mart and the like, which had more shelf space. I don't know how soon in their histories the book sellers started selling comics, but they, too, had more shelf space, and could stock comics 2 or 3 deep (and did.) It all depended on space and when the publishers needed the return reports by. 

Again, I'm not sure where you're coming up with this information. I would suspect -- though I never saw them -- that there may have been some newsstands that carried comics more than an issue old, but I'd love to see some proof. And if it did happen, I would wager that it was either a comic shop in operation before the direct market or it was, like you said, a larger business where comics/magazines were a small part of their operation and didn't monitor the racks as one would see at a newsstand. But these would be exceptions rather than the rule.

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3 hours ago, Warlord said:

This color stripe observation is an interesting aspect of this discussion.   Can those who have the first and/or second prints identify the color of the stripes on those issues?  Now I'm curious, are they the same color for both the first and second print of a given issue?

This is what I have at a quick glance:

Superman #50 2nd print newsstand - no stripe

Superman #50 1st - stripe

Batman #491 3rd - no stripe

Batman #492 2nd - pink stripe, same as first 

Batman #492 3rd - no stripe

Batman #492 Platinum - no stripe

Batman #493 2nd - no stripe

Batman #500 2nd - no stripe

Detective #659 2nd - no stripe

Detective #659 3rd - no stripe

Detective #660 3rd - no stripe

Detective #675 Platinum - stripe

New Mutants #100 2nd - no stripe

New Mutants #100 3rd - no stripe

Spiderman #1 2nd (Gold) - stripe

Superman #75 Bagged/Regular - green stripe 

Superman #75 3rd - no stripe

Superman #75 4th - green stripe, same as the 1st printing ( :screwy: )

Superman #75 Platinum - no stripe

I do not have a 1st print Superman #50 at my fingertips, but they're around somewhere. UPDATE: Found, noted above. Adventures #472 and Action #659, both parts of the same story, and came out the week and 2 weeks before Superman #50, both have stripes (as expected.)

I don't own a Batman #457 2nd news, so I can't check. I do own Robin #1 2nds and 3rds, as well as a 2nd news, so if I run across those, I'll check them, too.

I don't own a Spiderman #1 gold UPC, but if I run across some Direct 2nds, I'll check those as well. UPDATE: Spiderman #1 Gold Direct has a black/very dark blue stripe.

And, if I run across the Marvel 2nds, I'll check those as well.

 

Edited by RockMyAmadeus
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4 minutes ago, RCheli said:
36 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Thanks for posting that, David. It shows a 4 week cycle

5 week.

4 week. You are miscounting. 5 colors does not mean 5 week. A book received on the week of May 9 would be returned the week of June the 6th. There are 4 weeks in between, not 5. 

6 minutes ago, RCheli said:

They may have ignored the schedule, but they didn't ignore the colors.

That is speculation. I don't doubt that some didn't ignore the colors. I also don't doubt that some did. There was no regulatory board governing magazine returns.

7 minutes ago, RCheli said:

The calendar was not important and they likely didn't look at it to figure out anything. They got green bar comics in and pulled the green bar comics off. They didn't know or care whether it was a red week or a black week or whatever until they got the books.

If they went by the color codes, which was a suggestion...not a requirement (obviously.) Just because they could go by the stripes, doesn't mean they did.

8 minutes ago, RCheli said:
Quote

Many newsstands (not just a handful) carried new comics going back more than that, especially stores like Walmart, K-Mart and the like, which had more shelf space. I don't know how soon in their histories the book sellers started selling comics, but they, too, had more shelf space, and could stock comics 2 or 3 deep (and did.) It all depended on space and when the publishers needed the return reports by. 

Again, I'm not sure where you're coming up with this information. I would suspect -- though I never saw them -- that there may have been some newsstands that carried comics more than an issue old, but I'd love to see some proof. And if it did happen, I would wager that it was either a comic shop in operation before the direct market or it was, like you said, a larger business where comics/magazines were a small part of their operation and didn't monitor the racks as one would see at a newsstand. But these would be exceptions rather than the rule.

You ought not be quick to dismiss the idea, just because it doesn't match up with your experience/theory. As difficult as it would be to prove that there were places which carried more than just the latest issue...because no one would imagine this conversation taking place nearly 30 years later...that doesn't mean it didn't happen, nor that they were the "exceptions" to the rule. If they were the exceptions...prove that. 

If Walmart...one of the largest retailers in the world during this time frame...carried comics going back a couple of months, then they would represent a sizeable chunk of the newsstand distribution market at this time. Waldenbooks, Borders, Barnes & Noble, all also carried comics at this time...and, in fact, at least in the SF Bay Area in the early 90s, these were the ONLY places you could find comics, as 7-11s had either pared them down to a few titles, or stopped carrying them at all. K-Mart carried them, and apparently JC Penney carried them to a degree. Newsstand street vendors did not functionally exist on the West Coast, as they did on the East, but there were a tiny handful of these vendors in the city centers of SF and Oakland, and they carried comics...but it would be stretching the limits of my memory to recall just how many, and in how much depth.

Again: according to reports, the Spiderman #1 Gold UPC was found at Walmart, especially in the Midwest/South, like Arkansas (where Walmart is headquartered.) It is reasonable circumstantial evidence. 

I might suggest that your experience on the East Coast would be radically different from mine on the West, which would account for the disagreement. It makes sense, because as far as I understand, comics distribution on the East Coast...since that's where comics were published (if not necessarily printed)...was radically different than in other parts of the country, prior to the internet. Comics were everywhere, and easy to obtain, whereas, in other parts of the country, it wasn't so easy. Have you considered that possibility?

There is a member here who, when ASM #361 came out in February of 1992, went around Manhattan, scooping up dozens of copies of the book. That was impossible in the Bay Area, because newsstands would not have carried that many copies to purchase, and they were far too spread out to get to any before everyone else did. A year earlier, I scooped up all the copies...literally at midnight on the day they showed up...of Superman #50 at my local Pak n' Save wholesale grocer. How many did they have? 5 copies. That's it. (I still have them to this day. I really cashed in on THAT opportunity. :eyeroll: )

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2 hours ago, Warlord said:

This color stripe observation is an interesting aspect of this discussion.   Can those who have the first and/or second prints identify the color of the stripes on those issues?  Now I'm curious, are they the same color for both the first and second print of a given issue?

By the way...the absence of the color stripe on later printings, from what I've found so far, indicates that the stripe was removed for reprints and/or special collector's issues (Tec #675 plat notwithstanding), which would make sense: there was no need for them. It is one more piece of evidence....circumstantial, admittedly, but evidence nonetheless...that reprints were never meant for the newsstand, since that stripe was deliberately removed in most cases.

Their deliberate removal indicates a decision by someone, rather than a happenstance. 

Also from a cursory glance, the "Direct only" titles also bore no stripe, which, again, makes sense.

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One more quick note: I went round and round with another member for years about the "on-sale date" of Superman #75. Was it November 18, 1992 (Wednesday), or November 20, 1992 (Friday)?

As it turns out, we were both correct. "New comics day" was different in different parts of the country at the time. On the West Coast at this time, it was on Friday...and, in an interview I did with Bud Plant, he confirmed that, yes, new comics day was on Friday, going back to the very early 70s.

However, "new comics day" elsewhere was on different days, and on the East Coast...again, where the majority of comics were published...that day was, indeed, Wednesday.

And...if you look at official literature from DC, the day Superman #75 came out was November 17th!

These discrepancies need to be understood and accounted for in discussions like this.

 

Edited by RockMyAmadeus
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I've had no luck with the way back machine in finding when I first posted the picture of Batman 457 on the CPG forum - there's about 4 years missing from the relevant thread but my MCS history shows I bought it in June 2006  tor 79c - it'd been incorporated into the batman multiple prints list by 2008 so sometime in the latter half of 2006 or 2007 is likely - if any collector knew about it before then they were keeping quiet about it - below is a link to the STL forum where Jerome Wenker still thought it might be a photoshop fake as late as 2010

image.thumb.png.64a6ec2001fdbaaf3e1d4a268c89b9ea.png

http://web.archive.org/web/20120512220238/http://forum.stlcomics.com/viewtopic.php?t=4723&start=0&sid=af68f1fc9bd63676a1036f05bc62776b

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I've never worked for a distributor or for any outlet that sold newsstand editions, but I've read in various sources (don't remember exactly where, as I first read this years ago, in some publication about comics) that the reason new comics used to have a cover date on them that was three months out was to keep it out there for sales on newsstands for longer, so there was a greater chance of them actually selling. So at the very least *some* outlets must have been checking dates. But if all of them were, there would be no reason to include the stripes. So I assume that various outlets handled returns in different ways.

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26 minutes ago, David Buck said:

I've had no luck with the way back machine in finding when I first posted the picture of Batman 457 on the CPG forum - there's about 4 years missing from the relevant thread but my MCS history shows I bought it in June 2006  tor 79c - it'd been incorporated into the batman multiple prints list by 2008 so sometime in the latter half of 2006 or 2007 is likely - if any collector knew about it before then they were keeping quiet about it - below is a link to the STL forum where Jerome Wenker still thought it might be a photoshop fake as late as 2010

image.thumb.png.64a6ec2001fdbaaf3e1d4a268c89b9ea.png

http://web.archive.org/web/20120512220238/http://forum.stlcomics.com/viewtopic.php?t=4723&start=0&sid=af68f1fc9bd63676a1036f05bc62776b

Did you understand at the time what the Batman #457 was that you had? The first time I saw one...back on this board in 2009...I didn't understand what it was I was looking at.

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9 minutes ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

I've never worked for a distributor or for any outlet that sold newsstand editions, but I've read in various sources (don't remember exactly where, as I first read this years ago, in some publication about comics) that the reason new comics used to have a cover date on them that was three months out was to keep it out there for sales on newsstands for longer, so there was a greater chance of them actually selling. So at the very least *some* outlets must have been checking dates. But if all of them were, there would be no reason to include the stripes. So I assume that various outlets handled returns in different ways.

That's true at the beginning when very few comics were published on a monthly basis. And after a few years, the publishers just kept up with it instead of changing their dating.

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I knew it was unusual but not that it would turn out to be as scarce as it did - I posted about it on CPG because I'd not heard of newsstands going to 2nd printings - I don't think it made much impact to begin with because nobody else had one to confirm it and newsstand collecting wasn't a big thing  - when it got incorporated into the list of Batman multi printings that list didn't bother with listing newsstands at all - so it just appeared as a note alongside the direct second printing.

there is another DC Newsstand 2nd. printing by the way - but it will be dismissed as not a comic or not a  DC by many 

Edited by David Buck
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One thing I'm seeing: Annuals, starting around 1989, don't have stripes. This makes sense.

18 minutes ago, David Buck said:

there is another DC Newsstand 2nd. printing by the way - but it will be dismissed as not a comic or not a  DC by many 

hm

Share away! :)

 

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Tiny Toon Adventures Magazine # 1  - note the change to the text in the yellow circle and the change on the month from Oct. to Nov. 

I don't own a copy so I can't confirm what the Indicia shows  - but note it's very close in time to the batman / Superman issues 

 

 

 

 

 

TTA 1 DIR.jpg

TTA 1NEWS.jpg

TTA1 NEWS 1st.jpg

Edited by David Buck
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1 hour ago, David Buck said:

I've had no luck with the way back machine in finding when I first posted the picture of Batman 457 on the CPG forum - there's about 4 years missing from the relevant thread but my MCS history shows I bought it in June 2006  tor 79c - it'd been incorporated into the batman multiple prints list by 2008 so sometime in the latter half of 2006 or 2007 is likely - if any collector knew about it before then they were keeping quiet about it - below is a link to the STL forum where Jerome Wenker still thought it might be a photoshop fake as late as 2010

image.thumb.png.64a6ec2001fdbaaf3e1d4a268c89b9ea.png

http://web.archive.org/web/20120512220238/http://forum.stlcomics.com/viewtopic.php?t=4723&start=0&sid=af68f1fc9bd63676a1036f05bc62776b

Jerome is amazing. Does anyone know if he's still with us? I would be 85 this year. He hasn't visited here since August of 2016.

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3 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Superman #50 1st - stripe

 

Spiderman #1 2nd (Gold) - stripe

 

Very interesting info, thanks for pulling it together. ^^

Are these two entries supposed to say "no stripe"?  Or are you indicating something else that I'm not following?

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Extending the search a bit just to see if there is a trend in the handling of DC reprints, I did some checking on a small stack of them that were handy.  FWIW, none of these have color stripes except the Superman #75 4th print (as RMA previously noted).

Action #662 2nd, #683 2nd, #685 2nd
Adventures of Superman #496 2nd, #497 2nd, #498 3rd
Batman #500 2nd
Justice League America #70 2nd
Robin #1 3rd
Superman #73 2nd, #74 3rd, #75 2nd, 3rd, 4th (green stripe)
Superman, Man of Steel #17 2nd, #18 4th

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1 minute ago, Warlord said:

Very interesting info, thanks for pulling it together. ^^

Are these two entries supposed to say "no stripe"?  Or are you indicating something else that I'm not following?

No, both of those books have a stripe. The Superman #50 1st should, while the Spiderman #1 Gold 2nd would be an example of a reprint having the stripe. I haven't checked as many Marvels, and I've seen a few reprints with, and a few without. Too little information to conclude anything, I think. There are a ton bunch of reprints from Marvel from this time period, so eventually compiling a list won't be hard.

My thinking is this: having the stripe is the default for all books that are distributed on the newsstand, regardless of whether they are newsstand copies or Direct market copies. Since the vast majority (all...?) Direct copies have the stripe since it was instituted in 1979 or so, even though such a stripe was totally unnecessary for Direct market copies, we can safely assume that it was SOP to print the stripe on all copies.

However...since reprints were not meant for the newsstand market, someone made the decision at some point in the printing process to purposely REMOVE the stripe, at least in most of the cases with DC, which is pretty powerful circumstantial evidence showing that these weren't meant for the newsstand market. Even the stripe on books such as Spiderman #1 Gold and Batman #492 2nd is evidence of this: someone just forgot to take those out, or didn't think it necessary to do so. But in the large majority of the cases (so far), we see the stripe removed from reprints.

Sooo....does this tie into the DCU/ZH/Bullet variants...? Those were never intended for the newsstand, either. Well, I found a handful and saw this:

Green Lantern #47 DCU - no stripe

Green Lantern #50 - stripe

Green Lantern #52 - no stripe

So then, I found an X-Men #303 Pressman...it has a stripe. Pressman X-Men #11? Stripe...same color as the 1st...even though the back cover (and, perhaps, other pages) were changed, and I'm fairly certain X-Men #11 Pressman was printed months after the 1st printing, and certainly wouldn't have ever appeared on any newsstand.

That confirms to me that the stripe is the default, and not having it requires a decision from somebody. And that tells me that, in the instances they are removed, it's because they are not intended for the newsstand distribution system...which means these books, in the normal course of things, would never exist without direction from somebody, either in-house circulation, or special request from an external source.

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