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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Saturday 26 April 2014

I Saw Double Double Comics / 我看见双人大床漫画

It was on15th February 1971, known as Decimal Day, the United Kingdom and Ireland decimalised their currencies.

This is important for certain UK comic collectors for trying to date their undated comics -as Alan Class pointed out in his CBO interview, dates were never printed on his books for a commercial reason. So, any marked 1/- (one shilling) were pre-1971, when the cover price became 5p (yes, as people realise now, we got screwed financially with the change over.

Which brings us to the Double Double Comics of Thorpe & Porter (the distributor behind the famous "T&P" on old UK comics).

In those crazy old days, unsold copies of US comics were returned to the distributor. UK comics were eventually returned to the publisher.  However, as most US comics of that period were arriving on these shores as "ballast" Thorpe & Porter could not return the unsold copies.

What to do??

Thorpe and Porter had an idea.  Rip the original covers off the comics (what a criminal act -I still cry!) so certain legal and financial aspects were gotten rid of -especially a newsagent asking why the bloody hell he was being sent the comics that never sold in the first place?  So, covers ripped off, T&P put together two comics to make a double.  Then realised if they put four 32 pagers (complete with ad pages) together they would have 128 pages and it would be a "double-double comic" -that little quip helped name the books. 


But there were not equal returns (obviously) of the hit-and-miss titles mix. Therefore, even though some covers looked the same they did not all have the same content. For instance, the above is Action Double Double Comics no.4  which, amongst others included Action Comics 361 of March, 1968 and -still my favourite comic- The Brave And The Bold 75 of "Dec-Jan" 1967 featuring Batman and the Spectre!

And below is Action Double Double Comics no. 4...! Containing treats like Action Comics 358 of January, 1968 and The Brave And The Bold 73 of Aug-Sept, 1967 featuring Aquaman and the Atom.

So, until I accidentally knocked one copy off the rack onto the floor and saw it contained different comics (VERY confusing to a kid) I had no idea.


There was a Jimmy Olsen Double Double Comic and...well, look at the covers below. There should be a "Cover has nothing to do with contents" notice somewhere.  There was even the occasional Marvel Comic in some -Daredevil and -my memory is a bit foggy but I think a Fantastic Four?


 Most of mine were lost but let me tell you they were worth buying. A comic might cost you 1/- (5p) but for just under the cost of two comics you got four -come on:a no-brainer!

Later the cover price rose to 2/- 6d and at that I said no. I could buy a big packet of Plasticine and a couple comics for that "half-a-crown" as we used to call 2/- 6d --the "d" symbol for a penny came from the Roman "denarius" by the way.




There was another problem if that sort of thing bugged you.  Some covers had no issue number -as in the examples below.  Did that matter if two copies of an issue no. 4 with the same cover had two sets of different strips in?

You tell me.

One thing -be very aware that some dealers will try to get very high prices from you if you want to buy one of these.  I can tell you that a comic collector I knew spent £10 + £2.00 postage and handling to get the individual issues collected in one of these T&P books.  £12.00.  Two dealers had wanted £20+ for that particular T&P collection.



British comics has allways had ingenius people finding ways of re-selling old titles in the Silver Age: Alan Class simply never dated his books so they were allways "new" -T&P, in 1970,  ripped covers off comics and re-packaged their returns.

Gotta love the comic industry!

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这是on15th 1971年2月,被称为十进制日,在英国和爱尔兰decimalised本国货币。 这是肯定的英国漫画收藏家重要的努力迄今为止,它们凡是不注日期的漫画-阿伦类指出,在他的国会预算办公室接受采访时,日期从未被印在他的书的商业理由。因此,任何标有1 / - (一个先令)进行预1971年,当时 ​​的标价成为5P(是的,因为人们认识到现在,我们得到了与在改变拧经济。



这给我们带来索普和波特(仅次于著名的“T&P”的英国老漫画总代理)的双人大床漫画。 在那些疯狂的老日子,美国漫画售出副本被退还给经销商。英国漫画最终被返回给发布者。然而,由于那个时期的大多数美国漫画分别在这些海岸“压舱石”索普和波特到达无法返回未售出的拷贝。 怎么办?





索普和波特有一个想法。瑞普原来的覆盖掉漫画(什么是犯罪行为,我还是哭了!),所以某些法律和财务方面都摆脱了,尤其是一个报摊问为什么该死,他被送到了摆在首位从来没有卖漫画?因此,盖掀掉,T&P放在一起二的漫画,使双。然后意识到如果他们把4个32寻呼机(完整的广告页面)一起,他们将有128页,这将是一个“两双漫画”,那个小讽刺帮助命名的书籍。 
但也有不打了小姐冠军组合的回报率相等(显然)。因此,即使有些封面看起来都一样,他们没有都具有相同的内容。举例来说,上面的是行动双人大床漫画四号其中,其中包括包括行动漫画三361,1968和 - 还是我最喜欢的漫画,勇敢和“月 - 日”1967年特色蝙蝠侠和幽灵大胆75 !
以下是动作双人大床漫画没有。4 ...!像含一月动作漫画358,1968年和勇敢而八月至九月,1967年73粗体对待特色的Aquaman和原子。
所以,直到我不小心打翻一份现成的在地板上,看到它包含了不同的漫画(非常混乱,一个孩子),我不知道。
有一个吉米·奥利森双人大床漫画和......好吧,看看下面的盖子。应该有一个“封面无关的内容是”通知地方。甚至还有偶尔的奇迹漫画在一些 - 冒失鬼并且,我的记忆有点云里雾里,但我认为一个神奇四侠?


 最雷的是失去了,但让我告诉你,他们是值得购买的。一本漫画可能会花费你1 / - (5P),但略低于两个漫画的成本你得到了四来吧:一个没有脑子!

后来盖价格上涨到2 / - 6D和我说没有。我可以买橡皮泥的大包和一对夫妇的漫画为“半个皇冠”,因为我们习惯叫2 / - 6D - 在“D”符号一分钱来自罗马“银钱”的方式。


还有另外一个问题,如果诸如此类的事情烦扰你。有些盖均无发行数量,如下面的例子。的确,如果一个问题的两个副本没有此事。4使用相同的盖有两套不同的条带在? 你告诉我。 有一件事,是非常清楚,一些经销商会尝试,如果你想购买其中的一个从你获得非常高的价格。我可以告诉你,一个漫画收藏家,我知道花了10英镑+2.00英镑邮资和处理,以获得在收集这些T&P一本书的个别问题。12.00英镑。二级经销商本来想20英镑+该特定T&P集合。


英国的漫画已经八方通过各种天才的人发现再卖老产品在白银时代的方式:艾伦类根本就不曾刊发了他的书,因此他们八方通“新” - T&P,1970年,撕开涵盖了漫画和重新包装他们的回报。 爱得相声界!

7 comments:

  1. Some nice issues turned up between the covers of these Double Double Comics. However, the indicia on the splash page of each individual comic usually said something along the lines of not being sold in a mutilated condition or without its cover, so was T&P breaking the law, I wonder? H'mm.

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  2. ooh. Tricky one but I think T&P were safe. They were not buying from Marvel or DC -these books were ballast so "waste"/junk. I recall the artist/writer John Byrne (Tutti Fruiti/Your Cheating Heart -NOT the comics JB) talking to Robbie Coltrane about how they'd go to the Scottish beaches were they lived and picked up old US comics that were just dumped in the sea -ballast. I also think that the legal notice covered US law not as it would now, international law. The only legal publisher of Marvel comics in the UK was Alan Class -in his b&w reprints. Remember -comics has allways been a dodgy business. Craftily, you could say that the individual issues were NOT mutilated or sold without their covers -this was a COLLECTION of several books.

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    1. A collection of several books - but without their covers. A tricky one indeed. Also, I wonder if Marvel or DC would've minded their titles being mixed with those of their rivals? One for the lawyers I think.

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  3. Thorpe and Porter were the official distributor for DC comics from 1959 right through to the 1980s when they had undergone a few name changes (eg (General Book Distributors). I think some of the comics were returns from US newsstand going by the condition of them and some of them were brand new copies. The binding together of unsold copies was a practice used for copies that had been returned from newsagents in the UK as unsold. Some DC comics had a UK price printed in them and were from the same print run as cent priced copies but most were given a price stamp by hand. Thorpe and Porter were also the official distributors for Marvel comics until about 1971 and a number of other companies including Charlton. The T and P traveller used to reserve some copies for me of comics that were hard to get at a local newsagent. If you were lucky enough to live near a lot of their outlets as I was then you got lots of goodies and every months parcel (usually last Friday of a month) hD lots of gems in it. They also distributed western and Science Fiction paperbacks! men's magazines, raunchy magazines for women American puzzle magazines, Kung Fu magazines, detective magazines, etc etc. These were usually displayed on squeaky spinner racks with the comics on the lower levels of the stand.
    T and P were eventually taken over by DC and then by Warner Communications. They had several publishing imprints including Top Sellers who published the UK editions of Mad and a very successful UK Tarzan comic. While many people date their interest in American comics to UK Marvel, another contingent of fans owe their interest to the sterling work of this distributing company who brought many of the wonders of US magazine culture to the UK's backstreet independent newsagents.

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  4. Hi. Yep I got a 100 pages, full colour Tex Willer paperback fot a Shilling thanks to T&P. The Top Seller Tarzans were my favourites! Ahh, Tarzan and the Lost City. T&P DID get a lot of us into comics well before Power Comics! Thanks for the comment...need to make sure the original English version is still here!!

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