UK & US Market

<BODY TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#800040" BACKGROUND="../MARVELHEADS.JPG"> <P ALIGN="CENTER"></P> <TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="20%" VALIGN="TOP" ALIGN="CENTER"><B><FONT COLOR="#0000A0" FACE="Arial">BIG TEL'S WEB PAGE</FONT></B></TD> <TD WIDTH="80%" VALIGN="TOP" ALIGN="CENTER"> <P><FONT SIZE="-1"><A HREF="../index.html" TARGET="_top">Home</A>     <A HREF="../intro1.htm" TARGET="_top">Intro</A>     <A HREF="../promos/Promo1.htm" TARGET="_top">Promos/Giveaways</A>     <A HREF="../variants/Variants1.htm" TARGET="_top">Variants</A>     <A HREF="market1.htm" TARGET="_top">UK & US Markets</A>     <A HREF="../dealing/Dealing1.htm" TARGET="_top">Dealing on the Net</A>     <A HREF="../wants/Wants1.htm" TARGET="_top">My Comic Wants</A>     <A HREF="../Links1.htm" TARGET="_top">Links</A></FONT></P> </TD> </TR> </TABLE>  <CENTER><IFRAME SRC="http://leader.linkexchange.com/7/X1081400/showiframe?" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="60" MARGINWIDTH="0" MARGINHEIGHT="0" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" FRAMEBORDER="0" SCROLLING="no"><A HREF="http://leader.linkexchange.com/7/X1081400/clickle" TARGET="_top"><IMG WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="60" BORDER="0" ISMAP="ISMAP" ALT="" SRC="http://leader.linkexchange.com/7/X1081400/showle?"></A></IFRAME><BR> <A HREF="http://leader.linkexchange.com/7/X1081400/clicklogo" TARGET="_top"><IMG SRC="http://leader.linkexchange.com/7/X1081400/showlogo?" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="16" BORDER="0" ISMAP="ISMAP" ALT=""></A><BR> </CENTER>  <H1 ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT COLOR="#FF0000">THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN MARKET</FONT></H1> <H2 ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT COLOR="#800040">A COMPARISON</FONT></H2> <TABLE WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="10%"></TD> <TD VALIGN="TOP" WIDTH="75%"> <P><IMG SRC="ff1small.jpg" ALT="Fantastic Four #1" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="299" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="5"> <B><FONT SIZE="+3">I</FONT></B>t is often said, more so here on the British side of the Atlantic than on the American, that the British comics scene, market and latterly industry is a mirror-image of America only on a smaller scale. As a certain Asgardian might quoth "I say thee nay!" or at least 1 hope to show throughout the course of this article that our green and sceptr'd isle has its own unique historical traditions, distribution patterns and consequently collecting habits. Where once it might have been thought that the British and American markets were gradually converging, the gap between the two markets is in the process of ever-widening in terms of speculative interest, pricing resistance and ultimately marketplace structure as I also hope to show.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">O</FONT></B>ne of the most fundamental differences between the U.K. and U.S. markets is that of comics history and traditions. In Great Britain we did not have a "Golden Age" (apart from the historical one of Queen Elizabeth 1, Shakespeare and Raleigh, Drake and the Armada). The Golden Age of American comics (1938-1945) is almost completely unknown to and even ignored by many U.K. collectors. It is it completely unknown to the general population who have their own memories of the comics they read as children back in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact Great Britain only just caught on to the next phase of American comic development, the Silver Age, after it had been well underway. As is generally regarded, Showcase #4 cover-dated September/October 1956 ushered in the Silver Age of American comics wherein Golden Age heroes were updated for a new generation of readers and super-heroes with super-powers became once more the dominant genre. It may not be widely known to American collectors and dealers but American comic books were not officially distributed in Great Britain until as late as the first couple of months of 1960 (issues cover-dated November 1959), mostly DCs with some Atlas, Archies, Charltons, Harveys and ACGs. There was some limited distribution of romance, war and funny animal titles from late 1957, presumably as market-testers, the most popular of those being Charlton war titles catering to a market stimulated in part by the pocket sized War Picture Library and Battle Picture library by Fleetway, publisher of today's 2000 AD comic.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">W</FONT></B>hile the transatlantic time-lag between actual distribution of American comics is more than twenty years, happily the same cannot be said for the establishment of a back-issue market. It may have begun in the United States before it did in the U.K. but thanks to certain pioneering individuals, the basis for markets that could at least be compared was established. There were isolated collectors up and down the U.K. who began to correspond and to trade comics with each other in the early 1960s as had begun in the States in the late 1950s. The establishment of fanzines were only a few years apart if one compares Jerry Bails' Alter Ego #1 in 1960 and in the U.K. Frank Dobson's Fantasy Advertiser #1 and Dez Skinn's interestingly-named Derinn Comicollector #1 in 1965. Comic book conventions seemed to have started at around the same time with Phil Seuling's New York convention in 1968 and Phil Clark's convention in Birmingham in the same year. When Bob Overstreet started his Comic Book Price Guide in 1970, British collector and dealer Alan Austin produced his first price guide in 1975, researched at source from his own massive collection and painstakingly typed out by hand with addenda at the back for titles he missed out along the way - no luxuries like a computer or word processor here! Alan's book represents an important pedigree of U.K. price guides that the current UK Comic Book Price Guide is directly descended from. As such, the general pattern seemed to be that events in the awareness of the collectibility of back issues that happened in the States were mirrored over in the U.K. after some increasingly short time delay, but the advantage in America was the much broader range and age of back issues available. By the mid 1960s, these isolated British collectors had five or six years' worth of distributed American comics to consider: their U.S. counterparts had more than twenty five. The beauty for collectors of American comics in the U.K. was that sets were entirely possible to put together, at least of Marvel comics. A DC comics fan was faced with the prospect of some very high numbers with the first distributed issues of Action Comics at #258 and Detective Comics at #272 for example. British comics were equally daunting with 52 issues a year rather than twelve and generally being larger in size and even then being available in a wide variety of sizes, there were (and still are!) inevitable storage problems. It is no wonder that the collecting of American comics in general and some especially caught on so well in the U.K., presaged by the black and white album and comic reprints throughout the 1940s and 1950s. </P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">B</FONT></B>ack-issue collecting of American comics had the perfect platform in the 1950s. In October 1951 the first Superman Annual from Atlas Publishing appeared. This collected the first six Australian issues that had appeared from July to December 1950 published by K.G. Murray for distribution by Atlas. The reprints from National Periodical Publications were black and white only and took their content from issues of late 1940s Superman, Action and World's Finest Comics. The cover was taken from the famous origin issue of Superman #53. Batman, Superboy and SuperAdventure Annuals followed along with monthly comics of the same titles. One hundred page reprint comics also appeared such as All Favourites, Hundred Comics and Superman Supacomics. By the end of the 1950s, there were not many National Periodical/DC comics characters that British youngsters had not seen. More importantly it got regular buyers into the habit of the monthly comic book so that when the originals arrived at the newsagents at the beginning of 1960, now they could read the adventures of familiar characters in full colour. Not surprisingly these British and Australian reprints are fast becoming very sought after for their unusual reprints and many original covers. Interestingly the process was reversed in the 1960s for Marvel comics as the colour originals were reprinted in black and white form by Alan Class titles like Astounding Stories and Secrets of the Unknown and Odhams Press titles like Pow! and Smash!</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>he second fundamental difference is the weekly format established from the very beginning by British comics and the monthly magazine format favoured in America. One obvious reason must be the relative sizes of the countries. For America to base a comic distribution service on a weekly basis would have meant an extremely sophisticated distribution network in those early days. And on a more basic economic level, a shelf-life of a month (or more) was more attractive than a week, given the number of days it would take to get comics out to the furthest parts of the country by road. It is interesting to consider that though the British invented the very word itself when it first appeared in dictionaries in the 1780s as "comick" meaning satirical broadsheet paper with amusing stories and caricature illustrations, aimed at an adult audience and it was the British who developed the comic for a younger audience in the 1890s with Comic Cuts and the like, it was the Americans who took the genre and made it their own in the late 1920s when a month's worth of Sunday Funnies could be collected together and bound with cardboard covers. And there the American comic stayed and flourished right through the Thirties, Forties and Fifties while the British tradition carried on as it had done, almost unchanged during the same period.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">U</FONT></B>p until official distribution at the beginning of 1960, the staple diet of every school-boy (not discounting publications like June, Girl and Schoolfriend for the school-girl market) were weekly comics like The Dandy (first issue 14th December 1937 and still going today) or The Beano (first issue 3oth July 1938 and likewise still going strong) which are even today still very much in the tradition of the finite one page jolly jape story. There were very few continuing dramatic stories with developing characters in this type of comic from the 1930s to the 1950s though the 1960s saw the rise and (some British collectors would argue) peak of this phenomenon, possibly owing to American influence. The other alternative was the generic term "Boys Papers" like The Rover or The Wizard, mostly text stories with illustrations dealing with stories based on school dormitory antics and castaways on desert islands, war hero exploits or tales of the athletes and other sportsmen. The outstanding exception to all this was The Eagle comic (first issue dated 14th April 1950) featuring Dan Dare Pilot of the Future as drawn in full colour by Frank Hampson. With its rocket ships and ray guns, futuristic cityscapes and the dreaded Mekon as principle foe, the Den Dare strip freely borrowed from the American tradition of dashing heroes and outer space exploits though his firm square-set jaw and very British exclamations ("Cheerio!" and "Great Heavens!") planted him solidly in the British Royal Air Force world and vocabulary of the Second World War. Not a super power or a flapping cape to be seen. The brightly-costumed hero was relegated to decidedly second-raters like Electroman and Masterman though the one major exception to this was Marvelman, produced by Mick Anglo and Roy Parker from their tiny studio in Gower Street in London from 1954 to 1963 though the character, it could be argued, was an obvious derivative of Fawcett's Captain Marvel. </P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">I</FONT></B>t was against this background that the American monthly comic book appeared, first in dribs and drabs and then in official distribution.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>heir full colour glossy covers and colour interiors were a sharp contrast to the duller newsprint quality of virtually all British weeklies, most of which were black and white interiors or at best occasional spot colour.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">D</FONT></B>istribution of American comics, even when it was official, was patchy at first and very often the sea-side towns of Brighton and Bournemouth, Blackpool and Southend had ample supplies for holidaying youngsters with extra pocket money to spend, supplies that tended to get no further inland. Distribution to Scotland, however, has always been somewhat better from the start and as DCs seemed to be in the greatest supply, the marked fondness for mainstay characters like Superman and Batman still survives today in those areas.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">W</FONT></B>hile it was mentioned earlier that no Golden Age comics were distributed in Great Britain on an official scale, it is certain that some found their way over with visiting friends or relatives from the U.S. and indeed many thousands of comics came with the arrival of G.I.s stationed in Britain during the War. Areas where there are U.S.A.F bases such as Norwich in the county of Norfolk north-east of London are generally good for turning up older, pre-distribution issues as these have been gradually disseminated throughout the county since the War. A copy of Action Comics #1 with an old sixpence stamp on it has been known to have been found. It is highly unlikely that there is anything vaguely approaching a treasure trove of Golden Age comics to be found in this country, certainly not on the pedigree scale of some of the American finds such as The Edgar Church Collection. The dream of finding a box of Detective 27s in an old lady's attic will have to remain, as Charles Dickens would be wont to say, "...charming food for contemplation".</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">A</FONT></B> number of early (pre-distribution) Batman and Detective Comics have been known with Popular Book Centre Stamps on the front cover for example. These PBC shops were more prevalent in the late 1940s and 1950s though the chain still survives today. The mainstay of their stock was cheap paperbacks and pornographic magazines and thus the inclusion of American comics associated them with literature that was liable to corrupt, a stigma attached to the American comic for a very long time. This attitude was not helped by the appearance in unusually large quantities of EC comics in the early 1950s, the first occasion of anything like mass-exposure to the American comic. Though short-lived in Britain, these comics were quickly banned, leading to the Children and Young Person (Harmful Publications) Act of 1955 and found themselves consigned to the same pornographic shelves in adult corner bookshops. The Popular Book Centre stamp is usually a very large diamond shape in the middle of the cover with the re-sale price, usually threepence or sixpence (these coins are no longer in circulation and then would have been worth about 4 cents and 7 cents respectively) scrawled in biro or felt tip pen in the box provided. These Popular Bookshop Centre-stamped copies were the scourge of those early collectors in Britain in the 1960s. Great for reading value but not so great for those interested in high grade copies.</P> <TABLE ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="MIDDLE" COLS="1"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="180" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD WIDTH="180" ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="stamp.jpg" ALT="Pence Stamp" WIDTH="100" HEIGHT="103" ALIGN="MIDDLE"></TD> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD WIDTH="180" ALIGN="CENTER"> <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE="-1"><B><FONT SIZE="-1">A PENCE STAMP IN DETAIL</FONT></B></FONT><BR> <FONT SIZE="-1"><I>A fairly typical example although there were many variations.</I></FONT></FONT></P></TD> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD WIDTH="180" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>he first American comic books to be distributed usually had the English price of ninepence stamped anywhere on the front cover. This stamp was done in ink and could often be in a neat circle on an unobtrusive part of the cover. More infuriatingly, it could be very heavy, even smudged and right on the face of a leading character or right in the middle of a clear expanse of cover so as to be all the more obvious. Occasionally the iriking would be so heavy as to bleed through to the inside front cover.</P> <P> <B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>he very early Marvels more sensibly had the English price printed where the cents price would have been, ninepence from 1961 to mid 1964, tenpence from 1965 to 1967 and one shilling until decimalization in 1971 when it became six new pence or "6p". This gradually rose up to 15p until the practice of dual-pricing in the early 1980s. More confusing still, the "sell-by" month was removed for these exported copies as by the time they arrived on the British newsstands, it was already the actual month (and sometimes later) that was printed inside the comic. Nervous distributors felt that it would give a very limited shelf-life to a publication if the cover month was left on. Classic examples of this would be a Fantastic Four #1 with the "NOV" missing from a British-priced pence copy or the "AUG" missing from a British-priced Amazing Fantasy #15. Interestingly, the earliest distributed westerns, romance and war titles had the U.S. indicia removed inside and in its place had emblazoned "Exclusively distributed in the U.K. by Thorpe and Porter".</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>his has lead to the question of cents copies versus pence copies for collectors in the U.K. Many collectors feel that as American comics they should have the original American price while others, content in their nostalgia, prefer the pence pricing as that is what they remember as children. The debate still continues as a matter of personal choice but for those who wish to invest their money in higher grade copies, particularly of key issues, sometimes only cents will do. For lower grade ordinary issues with no key significance, the cents/pence distinction becomes negligible. In a sense the pence copies are much rarer than cents copies as only a small fraction of the entire print run (2%?), usually at the end when the black cover plates were changed, were set aside for foreign distribution. Some would claim that this meant lesser clarity of printing quality as the inks became faded and the plates would start to show wear and as such a non-cents copy is necessarily of inferior production quality. Recent ideas have suggested that at the beginning of official distribution in early 1960, the pence-priced copies were produced first as there was a set number ordered by cautious British wholesalers, unsure as how these new-fangled American comics would sell against the British weeklies which were cheaper. (The Dandy and The Beano were 2 old/pre-decimalization pence at the time or just under 3 cents as opposed to 10 cents cover price for American comics to give some price perspective.) It is possible therefore that mid Silver Age DCs and the very first Marvel comics are of a better quality of printing than the American cents-priced copies. The actual process of printing renders these ideas doubtful as it would mean restarting the printing presses after an initial short run-time.</P> <TABLE ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="MIDDLE"> <TR BORDERCOLOR="#000000" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#000000"> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD WIDTH="405" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> <TR BORDERCOLOR="#000000" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#000000"> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER"></TD> <TD WIDTH="405" ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="spidey1cent.jpg" ALT="Amazing Spider-Man 1 cents" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="300"><IMG SRC="spidey1.jpg" ALT="Amazing Spider-Man 1 pence" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="298"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="15"></TD> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="405"> <P><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#000080"><B>AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1</B><BR> <I>Cents copy of Amazing Spider-Man #1, compared to a Pence copy on the right. Note that the covers are identical apart from the "9d" in place of the "12¢" and the cover month of "MAR" missing under the number 1.</I></FONT></P></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="15" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="405" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">E</FONT></B>ither way, in this current age of collecting cover variants, American collectors and dealers may care to consider the possibilities of The British Cover Variant Edition of, say, an Amazing Spiderman #1 or a Superman Annual #1. They are certainly much rarer and the early Marvels do have these interesting printing variations. Most collectors in the U.K. cannot understand why most Americans consider these pence copies as inferior reprints. They were printed on the same day, in the same place, on the same paper using the same original artwork. When the finite resource of very high grade cent copies key issues runs out, if it hasn't done so already, where else can collectors turn in order to buy unrestored high grades? Surely the condition of the comic is more important? There is an argument for the attraction and genuine rarity value of a Near Mint unrestored pence copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 in the marketplace if only Fine and Very Fine cents copies are otherwise available. More and more pence-priced copies of Silver Age Marvels seem to be appearing on American dealers' mail order lists and are priced at about 75% of a similar grade cents copy. It would be interesting to find out how well they sell. It is still a remarkable fact of luck or foresight that a key issue survives in perfect condition whether it be a cents or pence copy, perhaps more so for "British copies' as there were far fewer pence copies produced in the first piece.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">E</FONT></B>ven today in Great Britain there is necessarily a greater supply of pence copies of Silver Age/1960s material in spite of the increasing amounts of cents copies brought over by British dealers visiting American conventions in recent years. It will be some time, if ever, before there are equal amounts of cents and pence copies of Silver Age books in the U.K.</P> <TABLE ALIGN="LEFT" VALIGN="MIDDLE"> <TR BORDERCOLOR="#000000" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#000000"> <TD WIDTH="200" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD WIDTH="15" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> <TR BORDERCOLOR="#000000" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#000000"> <TD WIDTH="200" ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="tta62.jpg" ALT="Tales to Astonish #62" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="300"></TD> <TD WIDTH="15"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="200"> <P><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#000080"><B>TALES TO ASTONISH #62</B><BR> <I>An Example of a comic made scarce in the UK by a quirk of distribution at the time.</I></FONT></P></TD> <TD WIDTH="15"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD WIDTH="15" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">D</FONT></B>istribution throughout the 1960s and 1970s was handled by a company called Thorpe and Porter and the T & P stamp or later on the white sticker with the T & P in the symbol of an indian tent (or teepee - get it?) became what most British collectors fondly remember. While gaining in frequency and reliability, occasionally hiccups in distribution occurred. A national dock strike at the beginning of 1965 meant that for at least two (and possibly three) months Marvels in particular only came over in very limited quantities as most were turned away to be delivered to other parts of the Commonwealth, mostly South Africa and Australia. Issues across all the Marvel titles starting with cover-date Oct 1964 (in one instance Sept 1964, that of Two-Gun Kid #71) and ending with cover-date Jan 1965 are in generally short supply with cover date Dec 1964 being what seems to be the height of the dock strike as most of those issues are traditionally rare. As the dock strike gradually lessened so the issue numbers became very scarce or scarce and issues cover-dated Feb and Mar 1965 are increasingly found to be less common than otherwise thought. Issues of note affected by this dock strike in the U.K. market are: <B><FONT>Amazing Spider-Man #18, #19</FONT></B> and to a lesser extent <B><FONT>#20</FONT></B>; <FONT><B>Avengers #9-11</B> </FONT>and to a lesser extent <B><FONT>#12</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Daredevil #4, #5</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Fantastic Four #32, #33</FONT></B> and to a lesser extent <B><FONT>#34</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Journey into Mystery #109-112</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Kid Colt, Outlaw #119, #120</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Rawhide Kid #43</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Sgt. Fury #11-13</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Strange Tales #126, #127</FONT></B> and to a lesser extent <B><FONT>#128</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Tales of Suspense #58-60</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Tales to Astonish #60-63</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>Two-Gun Kid #71-73</FONT></B>; <B><FONT>X-Men #8, #9</FONT></B>. DCs of the same cover-dates do not seem to be as unusually rare or scarce.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>here is another peculiarity to Marvel comics in the U.K. market. As the majority of issues in the 1960s and early 1970s were shipped by sea, very often bundles of them got water-stained and at worst completely water-soaked. Though sea-shipping still continues today, there must have been an unusually high proportion of un-seaworthy vessels in the early 1970s as Marvels in particular suffer from this severe fault. Amazing Spider-Mans from #105 to #110 and later on from #120-129 and Iron Mans from #42 to 44 are notoriously regular sufferers when they surface in indigenous collections. One wonders how many hundreds even thousands of copies have been rendered completely uncollectible in this way.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>he early 70's saw another change in distribution for Marvels. In Oct 1972, Marvel UK launched the Mighty World of Marvel, a weekly title featuring the Hulk, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. This was in the same format as other UK comics, printed on low quality newsprint, with newsprint covers. Most of the interior pages were black and white, with some spalshes of colour here and there. In Feb 1973, a second comic was launched, titled Spider-Man Comics Weekly, which featured Spider-Man (continued from MWOM) and Thor. Daredevil replaced the Spider-Man strip in MWOM, but only lasted about a dozen issues. A third comic was launched in Sep 1973, titled The Avengers, which naturally featured the Avengers, along with Dr. Strange. Iron Man began to appear in Spider-Man Comics Weekly from #50. All these strips were reprints from the original American comics. Many other titles were launched in the following years, but these three were the catalyst that stopped official distribution in the UK for some months. </P> <TABLE ALIGN="RIGHT" VALIGN="MIDDLE"> <TR BORDERCOLOR="#000000" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#000000"> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD WIDTH="200" ALIGN="CENTER" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> <TR BORDERCOLOR="#000000" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#000000" BORDERCOLORDARK="#000000"> <TD WIDTH="15" ALIGN="CENTER"></TD> <TD WIDTH="200" ALIGN="CENTER"><IMG SRC="gr10small.jpg" ALT="Ghost Rider 10" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="305"></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="15"></TD> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="200"> <P><FONT SIZE="-1" COLOR="#000080"><B>GHOST RIDER #10</B><BR> <I>An Example of one of the 70's Marvels distributed in the UK with the slightly different masthead.</I></FONT></P></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="15" HEIGHT="15"></TD> <TD ALIGN="CENTER" WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="15"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> <P> <B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>o ensure that the British public bought the British-produced Marvel weeklies, official distribution of all American Marvels ceased for about four or five months. The only way to pick up these issues was from the very few speciality comic shops that had appeared mainly in and around London, and who were ordering them direct from the U.S. as advance imports. The price of these imports were about 2½ times the normal price of the comic, which made them quite expensive at the time. The first non-distributed issues were Amazing Spider-Man #121, Fantastic Four #144, Thor #222, Iron Man #67, etc. After about 5 months, distribution started again, but only for a limited amount of titles, approximately 15 per month. The titles would vary from month to month, with sometimes one issue in a run not being distributed, which was very frustrating for the collector who bought his comics from the newsstand. However, The Amazing Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and the Avengers remained non-distributed for a couple of years, so they would not be in competetion with the three UK weekly issues. The official distributed issues at this time, as well as having the UK pence price on the covers, also had a slight change in the Marvel masthead. All the American cents issues had "MARVEL COMICS GROUP" on the masthead at the top of every cover, whereas the UK-distributed pence issues had "MARVEL ALL-COLOUR COMICS".</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">I</FONT></B>t is perhaps the history and establishment of Price Guides that cause the markets in the U.K. and U.S. to differ most significantly. One of the most important books about comics ever written appeared in 1970. Two hundred and twenty eight pages long with a handful of adverts at the back, typed out rather than type-set, a few mistakes like Batman #46 being the famous origin cover and story rather than #47 and with what were then ground-breaking prices like Action Comics #1 at $300 in Mint, Detective #27 at $275 and Showcase #4 at $12! The first Comic Book Price Guide by Bob Overstreet had a 1,000 print run, an innocuous white cover and sold for $5. The first edition sold out and a second print run of 800 with a blue cover soon followed. The book did two very important things: it immediately established a market value for American comics the moment that prices were seen in black and white and thereby sowed the seed for speculative interest in the buying and selling of comics. It also, and perhaps more importantly, established a pricing structure centred around the three grades of Good, Fine and Mint. The ratios between the three were roughly 1 to 1.5 to 2 (a little different to some of today's ratios of 1 to 3 to 15!). The concept of the condition being the major factor of value was now set in stone. In 1982, Bob Overstreet with Jon Warren brought out a Price Update as a supplement to the Comic Book Price Guide #12 and the structure of the American market was complete. Dealers and collectors alike could look forward to a regular price increase in most cases (decreases some of the time) and report on the constant shifting state of the back issue industry. In the years that have followed, some would argue that such a system leads to a healthy and sustainable growth in the market year on year while others would make accusations of unnecessary hype and ever spiralling multiples of Guide. Either way, it is clear that the structure of the American market is more sophisticated in certain areas.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">T</FONT></B>wenty six years later, the Overstreet Guide is still going strong when other American guides have come and gone. While values are set and shown to evolve every year for the American market, it is becoming increasingly clear that those same prices cannot be applied issue for issue to the British market. Different traditions. Different distribution patterns. Different character popularity. Different size of collector interest. Different general awareness. And different attitude to realistic levels of prices.</P> <P><B><FONT SIZE="+3">W</FONT></B>hen Alan Austin produced his first British Price Guide in 1975, the current Overstreet Guide of the time was number 4 with number 5 just about to come out. Interesting examples of price comparison would be X-Men #1 priced at $10 in Mint and Fantastic Four #1 priced at $70. Alan adopted more or less the same ratio splits as Overstreet between Good, Fine and Mint (which would seem logical at the time) and his pricing seems very consistent. He priced X-Men #1 at £3.50 (when $10 converted at the then exchange rate of 2.40 would have been £4.16) and Fantastic Four #1 at £25 ($70 converted at 2.40 being £29.16). It would not be surprising in the least if Alan had completely ignored the Overstreet price and came up with those values independently. He just knew the market rate for comics like that in this country.</P><HR> <P><FONT SIZE="-3" COLOR="#008000"><I>Sourced in part from the Comic Book Price Guide 1997/1998 by Duncan McAlpine</I></FONT></P></TD> <TD WIDTH="15%"></TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY>