Coming Soon: Fox Giants

[JVJ (RIP)]

They do both seem to have roots in the same murky depths, don't they, DM?

Any luck in finding me a fiche to play with?

(|:{>

[DocWertham]

Thanks, Eric, for doing research on this book, and for pointing out that it has two SOTI references, meaning that it might be the actual book that Dr. Wertham was citing in Seduction of the Innocent.  I'll post that information at the Seduction of the Innocent website soon.  When looking at whether this might be the actual book cited by Wertham, the fact that Wertham cited its contents twice is a good case in the "for" column.  The counterargument to that could be that there are no other known Giant books that Wertham definitely cited (Giant Comics Edition #4 may or may not have been a book Wertham was citing.)  Since Wertham's entire line of reasoning focused on the assertion that comics are bad for children, it would stand to reason that he was focusing on comics that were primarily marketed to and available to kids.  I suspect that the giants with a 25-cent price tag would have been marketed differently, to a more adult audience, but that's pure conjecture on my part.  Does anybody out there have any knowledge of how these books were sold?  Do any 25-cent books show up in the photos of old newsstands, such as the ones at Ten Cent Dreams?  We may never know precisely which books Wertham was citing, but it's fun to try to play detective and figure it out.

On the subject of returns vs. remainders, I recall reading at some point Bill Gaines' account of final days of the EC crime and horror books.  I think it was in an old Comics Journal.  If memory serves, Gaines said that distributors refusing to handle certain books would return books to him in unopened bundles.  Does that shed any light on how books might have gotten back to Fox or St. John for repackaging?  Were there some distributors who would take whole-copy returns, while others accepted just partial-cover returns? 

[JVJ (RIP)]

I think Gaines point (and complaint), DW,
was that the distributor was not even sending the bundles out to the newsstands for them to return. Newsstand returns were (supposedly) just the titles stripped from the books. It's very possible that Fox had a deal whereby he arranged to take back the actual books, but that seems rather awkward and difficult to accomplish in practice.

My guess is that Fox's distributor sent his books out in waves, retaining a portion of them for rebinding. It was probably some shady bookkeeping maneuver that allowed him to both write off the extra copies as a loss AND to resell them in the giants. I, too, am just guessing here.

St. John, on the other hand, always struck me as pretty above board, but he seems to have been the other major player in the repackaging game. Maybe, as you suggest, there were distributors who preferred (or at least could deal with) whole book returns.

And I don't for one minute believe that Wertham cared one whit whether a book was "intended" for kids or not. He had an axe to grind and a crusade to run and any ammunition from any source was used. Price probably never entered into his equations.

Good question about the Fox Giant distribution system. Wish I knew the answer.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[OtherEric]

I wish I could tell you more than I already have, Doc.  If you think of any questions I could answer by looking at my copy I'm happy to try and figure it out, but with the scan posted there probably isn't much at all I could add.  If we can find somebody else with a copy of the book to verify the same four issues are included that would be helpful; at least I've shown that there's an early appearance of one SOTI story in the book.

I do wonder about the distribution of the giants; I don't recall seeing ads for them in the comics themselves. 

[Poztron]

I seem to recall seeing (decades ago in my youth) a few copies of pulp magazine "giants" which were 3 or 4 copies of, say, SF pulps bound together with a new cover. This was probably in the '60s (when I saw them) so the pulp giants were already 20 or 25 years old themselves. Considering that many comics publishers were also pulp publishers (and in some cases also paperback publishers), it is hardly surprising that such schemes would be tried out and keep making the rounds if there was a buck to be made.

In the more recent past, one could find plastic-bags with 2 or 3 men's mags in them, on sale at a discount in convenience stores. More of the same I assume. Probably pulled together and resold by shady mag distributors who counted them as "unsold" in their "affidavit returns" to publishers. (I worked in magazine publishing until about 10 years ago and can assure you that mostly what a publisher now gets from distributors is a signed piece of paper that alleges that they only sold 2000 out of 5000 copies (or whatever) after retailer returns and "we swear this is so" so it must be, right?) Such practices obviously open up the possibilities for reuse of whole copies, covers and all. However, much of that is becoming rather moot as newsstand print publishing falters its way toward oblivion.

The next phase (purchasing mags or comics as e-publications for the Kindle, iPad, etc.) will make things even less provable for publishers. One no longer knows that there are, say, 5000 physical copies out there somewhere. Now it is just digital files that are duplicated and sent wirelessly. And who knows if Amazon's sales figures (or mainstream publishers' bean counters) are being accurate or not. It's all digital blips that may or may not be correctly recorded.

Hmm. Sorry for the digression.

[OtherEric]

I've seen at least one issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly that's 3 coverless pulps bound together.  This one, in particular, is quite definitely legit; it has three sequential issues and a new cover that accurately reflects the three issues inside.

A quick glance at is shows that it's 2 1/2 inches thick and has "Skeleton Men of Jupiter" by Edgar Rice Burroughs inside.  It's a neat item to have.

[Bob Hughes]

Some publishers did take whole copy returns.  Goodman used to ship his returns over to Europe as ballast and sell them in England.

I've also heard (can't remember where) that Gold Key would take returns from the East Coast and redistribute them to the west coast.  (One of the reasons Gold Key books didn't have dates on the covers).

[John C]

My disorganized chiming in:

Poztron, those bagged books are still around.  Last month, I was at a local outlet mall, and there were Marvel-and-DC three-packs at one of the toy store outlets.  I don't remember what the books were, but I was shocked that something strayed from under the Diamond thumb.

Also, when talking about digital sales, I think it was last year or so that Apple was busted for not paying independent musicians their royalties.  So there's precedent already, and not just for the shady fly-by-night companies.

DocWertham, I think the real key to figuring out what Fred really held in his hands, rather than market (since demographics is a more modern concept), would be the date of his research (if known) and how obvious each issue is.  He, likely, neither knew nor cared about the rebinding practices.  Maybe someone more academic than I am could say for sure, but my impression is that your bibliography contains the book you FOUND information in, not the earliest place it COULD be found.

Jim and Darkmark, the Golden Age-ish backstory on the Fox franchise is actually weirder than we might imagine.  The flagship station, WNYW, was previously the flagship station (of two, to be fair, but that's still a network!) of the DuMont Television Network.

I'll let you go look that up yourselves, because I can't do it justice right now.  However, just like Fox pioneered a lot of ideas that "infected" modern television, DuMont had more than a small hand in designing the pre-Fox landscape with a budget that would mortify even the creators of web content, today...

[OtherEric]

I know a lot of the discount comic packs I see are clearly dealers dumping inventory, rather than a publisher having anything to do with it. That may not be the only source, though.

Both Almanac of Crime and Women Outlaws- the two possible sources of the Cattle Kate story- had Fox Feature Syndicate in the indica, which was in the SOTI bibliographical note.  So no help there, but not a bad idea; since not all Fox books are copyright Fox.

I've always thought DuMont was rather highly regarded as far as those things go.  Quite possibly because most of their shows no longer exist and the memory cheats, but there you go.

[paw broon]

Can't tell you anything re. Fox Giants but, as stuff being sent to Britain (not England), was mentioned, we used to find in wee local newsagents in the 60's re- bound copies of DC comics.  Thickish volumes with the same cover being used around different contents. Before 1959 the only way to find original American comics was if you lived close to an American base.  And because we had the Commonwealth, there were shops which had Australian comics which had been shipped in as ballast.
In Italy, you still find plastic wrapped bundles of mixed old Italian comics in newsagents. And in Spain up 'till recently wrapped bags were on the shelves.  Don't know how legitimate all that stuff was but you've started me thinking.  You probably didn't need all that but there you are, anyway.  Took me back a bit, remembering that excitement of pitching up at a shop and finding something odd or different to spend pocket money on.

[Yoc]

Thanks for the post paw boon.
Sure sounds like a 'mystery surprise' was found in every issue over there.
I've see one Alan Class scan that had a real mash-up of different publishers, all in wonderful b&w where you could really get to see the artwork shine.

[paw broon]

Those Alan Class reprints always attracted controversy and no-one could ever figure out how he did it, collecting stories from so many publishers.  I'm sure nowadays, and after what has been written above, we can now hazzard a guess at it.  Within the last few months, City Cente Comics in Glasgow had a box of Alan Class comics going really cheap and I did yield to temptation and bought a few.  Inside there were Fly, Jaguar, ACG and pre superhero Marvel stories. All, as you note, in glorious B&W.
 

[Yoc]

Sounds like a fun collection!

[OtherEric]

And I got another one of the Fox Giants; All Great Jungle Adventures.  This one, unfortunately, doesn't have any issues we still need.

But even with a torn and loose front cover and missing back cover, $35 for coverless copies of All-Top #16, Jo-Jo #18, Rulah #17 (1st issue) and Phantom Lady #23 is a VERY worthwhile addition to my own collection!

[Yoc]

Very NICE!
I'm sure unless it's truly beat to hell we'll manage to get some upgrades on the scans of those books we've already got here.

Nice buy!