Digital Comic Museum
General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: OtherEric on June 22, 2010, 02:17:08 AM
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I already mentioned this several months ago back on GAC, but I've got several Fox Giants to scan and post, and they're next on my pile once I get through the 100 Page Wyatt Earp from Charlton. I just wanted to preview and discuss the first of the giants, it will hopefully start getting posted next week, if not even late this week. (The individual books will be going up as individual books, as well as the giant as a whole.)
I'm starting with the 1948 issue of Almanac of Crime. I actually took apart my copy to scan it easier and to check something. This issue is not assembled from remaindered books; in fact none of the component issues have been stapled in the normal fashion. There are only the big staples through the whole book. I suspect the contents are identical in all copies; not just because it's not remainders but because I've seen several sources mention the Phantom Lady issue, and at least a couple specify it as #19. (Unlike the other three issues, I will not be posting the PL 19 as a separate issue; we've got a better copy on the way. I WILL be scanning it new since I know there's an effort to put together a "best unedited" copy from the various off-register scans we have.)
In addition to the PL 19, this issue starts with a 16 page signature that's not taken from any other single issue. It reprints Cattle Kate from Women Outlaws #1, this story was used in Seduction of the Innocent. It then has Kiss of Death Kate, reprinted from Western True Crime #15 (#1), and a one-page story from Women Outlaws #1 again.
The four books in this one are Jo-Jo 20, Western Thrillers 2, Phantom Lady 19, and Famous Crimes 3. The Famous Crimes #3 also is mentioned in SOTI. Since two SOTI issues/ stories show up I wonder if this was the book Wertham actually saw, rather than the two separate issues. Other than the PL none of them have been scanned that I know of.
Anyway, that's coming very soon now. I think I've actually turned up some new information about this particular book above, although it may have been previously discovered. It's always neat to figure out new things about old comics, though!
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Very interesting info there Eric.
Now if these annuals aren't remainder books one has to wonder what the reasoning behind them is.
-Yoc
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Most of the Fox Giants are remaindered books, Yoc. It's just the 1948 Almanac of Crime that isn't that I know of. I think it's one of the first- if not THE first- Fox Giant. So I suspect in this case it was put out as a test of the format, to see if it was worth the effort to deal with the remaindered or leftover books instead of just trashing them. That's a pure guess, though.
The other two Giants I have are remaindered books, or at the very least a) there's alternate documented contents, and b) the component books have been stapled normally in addition to the staples through the whole thing.
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Just realized something else about the book: While the contents were apparently always intended for the book rather than remainders, as explained above, it's fairly clear that the sub-books were still printed separately, apparently with the normal runs of the book. Two ways to tell that: 1) Ad pages repeat. I can't imagine Fox NOT selling those separately if he was printing them as a separate run. 2) The paper is slightly different from issue to issue. The browning at the bottom varies from issue to issue, and each seems to have its own level of brittleness. The new material section at the front was moderate, the Jo-Jo was pretty bad, and the Western Thrillers is pretty supple, all things considered. (There are other slight differences I can't quite define but that are clear to me when I'm holding & looking at the book in person.)
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Just a reality check on terminology. Is "remaindered" the right term to describe these component comics? In book publishing, remaindered books are books that have been sold off cheaply by a publisher (or perhaps distributor) to clear inventory. I suspect that these giant comics were either composed of "returns" (i.e., copies returned unsold by distributors) or perhaps copies that never made it to distributors or newsstands in the first place.
There was definitely a sleazy grey-market of comics (Charltons in particular) that had been claimed by distributors as unsold (and had had their cover logos/mastheads torn off and sent back as "proof" of unsold copies) that were then sent out to Ma & Pa groceries (or wherever) for sale again at some discount. If Fox was able to get "whole copy returns" (without the masthead torn off) from distributors, they could have been the components for these Giants. If that was the case, it would have been Fox trying to gain some value from them instead of letting crooked distributors resell them. (I did wonder whether some of the IW "reprints" of Fox comics were actually a reselling of old Fox printed contents with new covers attached. Perhaps Fox's use of inside front covers as the first page of stories was an attempt to foil the grey market by assuring that if a masthead was torn off it would also tear off part of the splash panel on the IFC.)
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You are almost certainly correct that we're using the term "remaindered" incorrectly; we mean either leftovers or returns. We don't know which at this point.
I've always assumed that Fox running the first story page on the IFC was a way to try and avoid the resales of stripped copies. Then again, some of his later books have a story title on the first panel of the second page to make it somewhat easier to ease into the story if the cover is missing. Which makes sense for the giants but defeats the original purpose of the IFC story page if that was the intention. Who knows at this late date?
The IW books are not old contents with new covers; there are clear differences. Most notably the loss of the book title at the top of each page. IW, as I understand it, somehow got old plates and was printing from those.
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For what it's worth, the rule about sending the logo/masthead in lieu of returning existed (and still exists, I believe) to save the retailer postage costs, otherwise the cost of returning could be similar to the refund. For that reason, it's very unlikely that these are returns--I get the impression that Fox would be too cheap to accomodate retailers further (covering their postage costs or sending someone to pick up the returns), and retailers aren't going to ship more than they need to.
So, they're probaly overruns--which in the book world do get sold as remaindered. That still leaves the question open of whether the overrun was intentional (with the books destined for the Giants) or accidental (with the Giants designed to siphon off the excess), though.
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There are one or two Fox giants for which one of the "remaindered" comics is a comic that was otherwise not released. I'm not a Fox expert, but worked with one to get data on known combinations entered into the GCD. I couldn't tell you which off the top of my head, but a quick stroll through the GCD records would.
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Very true in that they're probably not returns, then. Fox was notoriously cheap. Would there have been returns of books from the distributor level, or would they destroy them as well?
The 1948 Almanac is unique in two ways, as far as I know: it's the only one with an extra 16 page signature unique to the book and, in my admittedly limited sample, it's the only one where the sub-issues weren't individually stapled.
I didn't know the giants had otherwise unknown issues, but I seem to recall an otherwise unknown issue of Dorothy Lamour that showed up somewhere so it's less surprising that there are others.
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I didn't know the giants had otherwise unknown issues, but I seem to recall an otherwise unknown issue of Dorothy Lamour that showed up somewhere so it's less surprising that there are others.
I scanned that Dorothy Lamour and I can't recall where the heck it was. I think maybe in an issue of Red or Blue Circle or one of the other comics from the "publisher" whose name I won't mention because I also can't remember what we decided its name was.
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Would there have been returns of books from the distributor level, or would they destroy them as well?
That's something I hadn't considered at all...but also don't have any idea how that might work.
Though in the vein of "keep it cheap," and keeping in mind how many companies nearly went out of business after a dispute with the distributor, my guess would be that they trash the surplus and refuse to pay for it.
What I mean is that there's a lot of evidence that distributors don't pay until after THEY sell, and that a lot of their business practices revolve around saying "would I lie to you?" But any conclusion drawn from that (like mine above) is just a guess.
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Most of the Fox Giants are remaindered books, Yoc. It's just the 1948 Almanac of Crime that isn't that I know of. I think it's one of the first- if not THE first- Fox Giant.
It probably depends on how you define "Fox Giant". One of the 1946 variations (or two of them, depending on whether you count by covers or by contents) of Everybody's Comics is a rebound surplus copy of either the Ribtickler giant or the 1944 giant issue of Everybody's Comics. Of course, these were published by various surrogates, not by Fox itself. Except that the 1946 new cover used to rebind the 1944 issues has the winking foxhead and is © Fox Feature Syndicate, Inc. (but has no publisher listed, just copyright). One of the most vexing and confusing titles of the Golden Age. I have the 1946 version that is a rebound 1944 issue, and tried to sort it out at the GCD.
http://www.comics.org/series/7434/
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True enough, fox_centaur. When I say "First Fox Giant" I mean specifically the standard "throw four random coverless books together" type; there were several others earlier I don't know that much about. I suppose in that context the Almanac is something of a transition between the two types; the earlier ones were produced as Giant issues while the later ones were random. This one has a small new section and a simulated random mix, even if it really wasn't.
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And I'm now working on the Variety Comics giant. This one is more clearly from leftover, stripped books: there were even small (less that 1 inch) chunks from at least one of the original books.
A quick request: if anybody with good search-fu is bored, could they try and locate a cover for My Love Memoirs #12? GCD doesn't have it; Heritage had a group of three issues from which I have pulled a scan containing roughly 15% of the cover. The only good thing about it is it gives me a frame for a note begging for a better copy of the cover!
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It's great to know that a major TV network started out as a publisher of comic books. ;-)
Errr...we *are* talking about the same Fox, aren't we??
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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?
(|:{>
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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?
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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 (|:{>
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
:)
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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.
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Sounds like a fun collection!
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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!
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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!
:)
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And, after a little research, I realize that it's the copy we already have on the site.
Not A copy, THE copy. I can tell by the damage to the IFC. I wonder what route it took to me; because I wouldn't sell it for what I paid for it, much less what they had to get so it could be sold to me for what I paid.