Back in the late 1960s, it was not uncommon for a kid to have several Mravel comics in their collection with only half a cover.
In most instances, it was the title of the cover that had been sliced off with a razor..sometimes nicking the first or second pages below as well.
But, the point is, the story was usually intact, and a discerning fan could recognise the title and issue based upon the remaining cover or idica and Stan's soapbox, and letter pages, etc.
There are several theories on why so many of the books existed and where they were coming from.
What's your story?
My understanding is that these were "cleans" or bootleg copes, maimed by organized crime and then repackaged for resale at a fraction of the cost to various drug stores, news stands, etc.
The title of magazines and publications were sliced off to be mailed back to the distributor or publisher (someone) for credit as unsold (and "destroyed")... however, the mob was then selling them at pennies on the dime for a second profit.
Many key marvels found their way into collections in this manner, in the years before fandom, conventions, the internet or back issue services were common.
Do you have an alternative explanation?
Replies
Nope, I don't think there is one. Those comics were being resold illegally. And we were the innocent dupes who made that black market such a success. Oh, the shame of it! And the fun!
Had I known that then, I don't know if it would have changed my actions or not. Back in the day, they were so ubiquitous, and I sought them out with such regularity, that I became quite adept at digging into the plastic well enough to be able to discern the middle comic in a Three-Pack (for a dime!), which usually was a humor or war comic.
I learned many lessons from those comics: Was it worth buying a pack if I knew I had one of the comics? Could I find enough different permutations of the dozens of packs on the stack to avoid any duplicates, at least in the outside comics, if I compared enough permutations? And if someone before me had ripped open packs to pull out comics they wanted, was it okay for me to use the leftovers to put together an ideal pack? Did I have to take a war/humor comic as part of the deal? Should I complete one of the opened half-packs and buy it, saving the retailer's damaged goods, or should I leave the opened half packs on the shelf and buy a completed pack?
Math, ethics, science (in extrapolating the full middle comic from a thin slice of the edge), reading. It was all there when shopping for comics packs!
There are plenty of comics in my collection without logos, some of which I bought from the store in my youth and others I've come across at comics shops and cons. (I'm a big believer in reading copies, and nothing cuts the price more than having the logo sliced off the cover). Many of those cheapy cellophane-wrapped packs had the entire cover gone, not just the logo, which kind of hid the fact that they were "stolen," were anyone to understand what was going on.
Many paperbacks still carry a warning on the copyright page that says that if you bought the book without the cover, it may have been reported to the publisher as unsold or destroyed and is unauthorized, which is the same thing as with comics.
Comics stopped it a long time ago, but apparently paperbacks continue to be sold that way. Every time I see that warning in a book, it brings back all those memories of packs!
To be sure, there were some legitimate packs, especially from DC and King Comics, and others for mass merchants later on, I think. DC promoted its SA versions heavily in their comics for a little bit. They even listed the comics in the pack on the header card, which was nice. I didn't see those too much, though.
-- MSA
It may not have been the silver age, but I admit that I found the first three issues of the four issue Wolverine mini series by Clarmont and Miller in one of those three for the price of a buck baggies at a Revco drug store when I was unemployed for a few months. I had to borrow a buck from my dad, but I've never been more happy with a purchase.
I was the only such three some of GREAT comics in the display. I also had tried to examine others through the plastic, but also determined there were usually a mix of archie, gold key or Marvel. (NEVER a Marvel and DC combo.)
I too got pretty good at determining what brand that middle comic might be.
And yes, I think it's perfectly alright to pick and choose... even assembling your perfect pack from pre-openned packs would seem to be ethically OK with me... provided you weren't the one tearing them open! Try to convince the store owner that it wasn't you....HA!
As I've said elsewhere, I found to my great shock, a MINT copy (except for the title being sliced off) of the first appearance of the Swordsman in the Avengers #20 (if memory serves). That was back in the day of "marvel chipping" and great muted oranges and purple covers scenes with dramatic Kirby poses, etc. (Anybody know just when that Marvel Chipping appeared to end?)
At another store that routinely sold coverless comics and used comics for a dime, I had an opportunity to pick up almost every copy of Wally Wood's THUNDER Agents, including Dynamo and other books of the same universe. I recognised the artwork, but knew nothing of the heroes/main characters, and so turned my nose up at them. Sigh...if only I had known...
But I did get a single copy each of the first three "Spymaster" or "Spyman" by unknown creator Jim Steranko when it came out on the rack. Unfortunately, it never went beyond three issues...not even time enough for letters from fans to be printed in a letters column!
In each example above, the stores in question were small Italian family grocery stores in a small rural Michigan town in the shadow of the motor city. I wonder if the supply or distribution of these under-the-counter rip-offs parallelled the fresh fruit & veggie distribution net? Truckers? Teamsters? Who knows? It was curious that it all came through Italian family markets though....
I haunted those shops just about as often as the main drug stores with the traditional spinner racks that got the legit monthly books.
Why sometimes cut off just the logo and other times the entire cover? Did some distributors demand more of the "destroyed" comics than others? Did they think the worse the comics looked the less likely people would want to buy them?
Maybe I'm jaded, but I don't think Independent News was a clean operation. I've read that they were in with the mob. So if comics were being resold illegally, Independent News was not only aware of it, they were probably getting a cut.
The idea that you could just take off a cover or cut off half a cover and get credit for the whole book seems like a regulation that was intended for abuse.
I think they claimed they just wanted part of the cover because the entire magazine would take up too much space if they got thousands of them. The statements of ownership back then often said around half of the issues printed were sold so that's a lot of returns. Doesn't sound very effificient. I'm surprised the newstand market lasted as long as it did.
In recent years I've seen comic book stores where they will put hundreds of the same comic on display in the window just to promote a first issue or a special issue. It seems like a lot of comic shop owners have been stuck with a glut of comics that won't sell and no way to return them.
In publishing, it's expected that a large percentage of printed material will not sell. But they kind of have to produce that many copies to sell 50%. That's calculated into the cost of a print run.
I remember studying those statements of ownership and being shocked by how much was not produce even for sale. It seems like a whole lot was printed without any plan to actually sell it.
But then I worked in a saddle stitch bindery one Christmas and a huge number of the flyers we produced ended up as garbage. I've also worked in the post office at Christmas and seen coffins full of magazines destined for the pulper.
Seemed like a lot were damaged every month.
Why sometimes cut off just the logo and other times the entire cover?
I imagine it depended on the distributor or the guys doing it, as tearing off the cover would be easier than tearing off the masthead in a clean rip. I have a bunch of comics where the first five or six pages are cut too, indicating they just swiped through with a razor blade. It didn't matter, since the comic was being destroyed (or sold to a kid for a couple pennies). But I didn't know they fell off a truck! Honest!
The statements of ownership back then often said around half of the issues printed were sold so that's a lot of returns.
The rule of thumb was that a comic that sold at least 50% of its print run was profitable. Some comics sold into the 60% or so. They could adjust it some by cutting the print run, but more often I think they sent out 10 copies to each store and five came back. I don't know if that same five would sell if the store only got six. I'd think it might, but I don't know how it worked.
Doesn't sound very efficient. I'm surprised the newsstand market lasted as long as it did.
Newsstands didn't like comics, because comics made the stupid mistake of maintaining their cover price and cutting the page count. So instead of staying consistent with other magazines, they became cheap and not worth bothering with, since the distributors were making pennies on each sale rather than a few dimes as on other magazines. Comics should've kept changing the price and kept the 64-page count, creating anthologies and fat comics to compete. It might've changed comics forever.
It seems like a lot of comic shop owners have been stuck with a glut of comics that won't sell and no way to return them.
A surprising (to me) number of comics today are sold with variant covers by popular artists, but to get them, dealers have to order large quantities of the first issue. They receive one variant in a ratio of 25:1, 100:1 or whatever. Some dealers order way too many copies to get the variant, which they sell at a cost that covers all their overage plus some profit.
I guess everyone ends up happy, but the last time I saw that kind of stuff going on so routinely was the 1990s, and nobody ended up happy that time.
-- MSA