 Thorpe & Porter's distinctive "tipi" ("T" "P") logo. | |
| Company type | Publisher,Distributor |
|---|---|
| Industry | Periodicals |
| Founded | 1946; 79 years ago (1946) |
| Founder | Fred Thorpe |
| Fate | Defunct (c. 1979) |
| Headquarters | Melton Road, Thurmaston Oadby,Leicester (1946–c. 1959) 249-289 Cricklewood Broadway, London (c. 1959–1971)[1] Columbia-Warner House London (1971–c. 1979), United Kingdom |
Key people | Dennis Juba,[2] William E. Kanter (1963–1966),Roger Noel Cook (1974–1979),Dez Skinn (1976–1978) |
| Products | Comics, magazines, paperback books |
| Owner | Fred Thorpe / Porter Group (1946–1959) Gilberton World-Wide Publications (1959–1966) |
Number of employees | 50 (1952)[2] |
| Parent | Independent News Distributors (1966–1967) Kinney National Company (1967–1969) Warner Communications (1969–1977) W. H. Allen & Co. (1977–c. 1979) |
| Divisions | Strato Top Sellers Ltd. Brown Watson General Books Distribution (G.B.D. Ltd.) |
Thorpe & Porter (widely known asT & P) was a British publisher, importer, and distributor ofmagazines andcomic books. At first, the company was known for repackaging American comics andpulp magazines for the UK market. Later on, it became a publisher of original material. The company released more than 160 comics titles in the UK, the most prominent beingClassics Illustrated,MAD UK,Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes,Larry Harmon'sLaurel & Hardy,House of Hammer, andForbidden Worlds. T & P's most prominent imprints were Top Sellers Ltd. and Brown Watson. Thorpe & Porter operated from 1946 toc. 1979.
EntrepreneurFred Thorpe started with anewsagent's shop inLeicester, where he recognized the appeal of Americanpulp magazines andcomic books. AfterWorld War II, however, the UK was intent on promoting homegrown publishers, and thus banned the direct importation of American periodicals.[2] In 1946, Thorpe joined with the local builders merchants' company thePorter Group to formThorpe & Porter as a publisher.[2]
In 1953, T & P seems to have acquired theArnold Book Company (ABC) as a separate line (ABC was owned by Arnold L. Miller, the "Son" in the British reprint publisherL. Miller & Son, Ltd.). Arnold Book Company appears as animprint on the T & P titlesJustice Traps the Guilty,Kid Colt, OutlawYoung Brides, andYoung Romance from that point until 1958,[3] when ABC shut down. (T & P later published a second volume of 13 issues ofJustice Traps the Guilty.)
In 1959, with the lifting of the UK ban on importation of American periodicals,[2] Thorpe & Porter became the sole UK distributor of bothDC andMarvel (as well asDell,Charlton, andAmerican Comics Group) comics. The comics were printed on American printing presses — along with a special cover giving the British price instead of the price in cents — and shipped across the Atlantic. (Marvel comics were issued with the covers altered [in the USA] to show a UK price instead of US price; whilst the cover month was removed. DC comics were franked with a circular UK price stamp after their arrival. A few Marvels were also price-stamped in a similar fashion.) Inside the front cover, with theindicia, a sentence mentioned Thorpe & Porter as sole distributor in the UK market. Thus it was that brand new American-printed copies ofFantastic Four #1,Amazing Fantasy #15,Amazing Spider-Man #1, and countless others appeared in the UK.
To aid in their comics distribution, Thorpe & Porter provided newsagents with T & P-brandedspinner racks.
Gilberton, the U.S. publisher ofClassics Illustrated (which T & P had been distributing UK editions of since 1951), acquired Thorpe & Porter from Fred Thorpe in the fall of 1959.[4] Gilberton had launchedGilberton World-Wide Publications as a European branch in 1956, and T & P became part of its stable of European publishers.[5] (After the sale, T & P's offices moved from Leicester toLondon.)[citation needed]
In 1962, the production of new issues ofClassics Illustrated shifted from Gilberton's New York offices to Thorpe & Porter, with Gilberton's founder's son,William E. Kanter overseeing everything beginning in 1963.[6] As a consequence, of the 181 British issues ofClassics Illustrated,[a] 13 never appeared in America (additionally, there were some variations in cover art).
In July 1966, Thorpe & Porter went bankrupt,[2] which left many of its clients being owed substantial sums.[7] The company was purchased byIndependent News Distributors (IND), the distribution arm ofNational Periodical Publications (DC Comics).[2] (Traditionally, IND distributed all DC publications, as well as those of a few rival publishers, such asMarvel Comics from 1957 to 1969, in addition to pulp and popular magazines.)
In 1967, DC and IND were purchased byKinney National Company, which in 1969 purchasedWarner Bros.-Seven Arts and becameWarner Communications.[8][9] As a result of all this consolidation, by 1969 T & P's comics output became almost exclusively reprints of DC titles, as well asLarry Harmon'sLaurel & Hardy, a color comic book series based on theLaurel & Hardy animated TV series.
In 1971, Warner's international distribution operations merged withColumbia Pictures to formColumbia-Warner Distributors. Thorpe & Porter moved its offices to the Columbia-Warner House inSoho,London;[10] as now part of Warner Communications, the Thorpe & Porter brand was mostly replaced byWilliams Publishing. (Thanks to Gilberton World-Wide Publications,[5] Williams had European-language divisions in Denmark,[11] Finland,[12] France,[13] Germany,[14] Italy,[15] the Netherlands,[16] and Sweden;[17] most of these publishers were sold off around 1979.)
In 1976, British editorDez Skinn was brought in to expand the comics arm of Williams Publishing. He took over editingMAD UK,Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes,Edgar Rice Burroughs' Korak, Son of Tarzan, and theLaurel & Hardy comic. He also launchedHouse of Hammer.
Warner sold its publishing division, including Thorpe & Porter, toW. H. Allen & Co. in 1977, which in 1978 decided to close it down[18] (with Skinn almost immediately moving on to the top position atMarvel UK).[19] This spelled the end of most of T & P's titles, except forMAD UK and the Brown Watson line. Former T & P production editor Ron Letchford acquired the rights toMAD UK. He formedSuron International for this purpose, eventually selling the license toLondon Editions, which later merged withFleetway Publications.[20]MAD UK finally ended its run in 1994. For their part, the Babani brothers of Brown Watson retained the various licenses for their hardback annuals, and in 1979 formed a new company,Grandreams, to continue publishing them. Grandreams lasted through at least 1996.[21] After his stint atMarvel UK, in 1982 Skinn startedQuality Communications and revivedHouse of Hammer (asHalls of Horror); he continued the magazine until 1984.
Thorpe & Porter started out as a publisher of lurid and sensationalistpaperback books, originally indigest size and later in the more traditional format.[2] T & P set up a number of imprints —Hermitage Publications,Knole Park Press,Beacon Publishing Co. Ltd.,Strato Publications, andJewel Books — and in the period 1947 to 1953 published over 60 titles, by such authors asFrank Fawcett (writing under the pen name "Ben Sarto"), George C. Foster,Paul Renin, and Leslie A. Scott.[2] T & P also distributed similar paperbacks from other publishers, including Muir-Watson andRobin Hood Press.[2]
The paperback craze died down in the period 1951 to 1953, partly as the result ofHome Office clampdowns on "obscene and objectionable publications;"[2] and by the end of 1953, T & P was no longer in the paperback publication business.
Next, T & P moved into the realm ofpulp and digest formatscience fiction andfantasy magazines. Setting up relationships with American publishersZiff-Davis andColumbia Publications — which were eager to license their content due to the declining popularity of pulps in the U.S.[2] — and also withGalaxy Publications andQuinn, licensing British reprint editions of their new digest format magazines, T & P published reprints in this capacity from 1949 to 1960 under their Strato Publications imprint so long as they maintained this, and then under the parent Thorpe & Porter imprint, most notably with the titlesAmazing Stories andFantastic Adventures (Ziff-Davis),Beyond Fantasy Fiction,Galaxy Science Fiction (Galaxy), andIf (Quinn, then Galaxy), and alsoWeird Tales, a long-established independent fantasy & horror magazine.
Because of the UK importation ban,[2] in the 1940s and 1950s American comics typically arrived in the UK asballast on ships.[30]
T & P got into the comics business — primarily with reprints — in the 1950s with a selection ofromance,western, andwar comics, reprinted in black-and-white from American companies likeGilberton,American Comics Group,Atlas Comics,Crestwood Publications,Dell Comics, andNational Periodical Publications (nowDC Comics). Thorpe & Porter was one of the first British publishers to print its own clean versions of the comics, "using blocks made from imported American matrices."[31]
Right off the bat, Thorpe & Porter's most successful comics title wasClassics Illustrated[2] and later the spinoff titlePixi Tales (the company's new name forClassics Illustrated Junior, which featuredfairy tale adaptations). T & P publishedClassics Illustrated reprints (and a few original stories) from 1951 to 1963;Pixi Tales, meanwhile, lasted 87 issues, from 1959 to 1963. UK issues ofClassics Illustrated that were never published in the United States includeAeneid,The Argonauts,The Gorilla Hunters andSail with the Devil.Mick Anglo adapted three stories — byEdgar Allan Poe,Oscar Wilde, andWilkie Collins — for the T & PClassics Illustrated. The BritishClassics Illustrated adaptation of theJames Bond filmDr. No was never published under the U.S.Classics Illustrated line (making it a collector's item in the States),[2] but instead was sold toDC Comics, which published it as part of their superhero anthology series,Showcase.[32] (The comic followed the plot of the film with images of the film's actors rather thanIan Fleming's originalnovel.)
In the period 1951 to 1953, Thorpe & Porter acquired a number of fellow British publisherArnold Book Company's reprint titles,[2] includingJustice Traps the Guilty,Young Brides,Young Eagle, andYoung Love. (When T & P acquiredJustice Traps the Guilty, it continued the numbering of the ABC version; with the other titles, T & P restarted the numbering at #1.)
The T & P imprintStrato (originally created for its paperback line) published thirteen issues of aMystery in Space reprint, a 68-page A4-size magazine, between 1954 and 1956.[33] It featured black-and-white reprints of DC'sMystery In Space andStrange Adventures stories with slightly adapted covers from the originalMystery In Space series. T & P published a hardbackMystery In Space Annual in 1968. Although it used the cover toMystery In Space #95, the contents of the annual were complete random issues of remaindered comics from a number of companies including their covers, and notMystery In Space stories.[34]
Other reprint titles with which T & P had some success includedBlackhawk,Gene Autry Comics,Forbidden Worlds,Kid Colt, Outlaw,Tomahawk, andYoung Romance.[2]
In October 1959, T & P began publishingMAD UK. The British version ofMad magazine received access to the publication's back catalog of articles and was also encouraged to produce its own localized material in theMad vein. Essentially, T & P repackagedMad to a 32-page monthly from a 48-page-eight-times-a-year U.S. publication. Conflicts over content occasionally arose between the parent magazine and its international franchisee; when a comic strip satirizing theEnglish royal family was reprinted in aMad paperback, it was deemed necessary to rip out the page from 25,000 copies by hand before the book could be distributed in Great Britain.[35]MAD UK was published by T & P from 1959 to 1979, and then continued on with other publishers until 1994, producing 290 issues in all.
TheBrown Watson[b] imprint,[10] launched in the early 1950s, originally published genre paperbacks likeSinister Forces by Alvin Westwood (1953) andThe Horror from the Hills byFrank Belknap Long (1965). In the period 1959 to 1966, Brown Watson published T & P'swar comics seriesConflict Picture Library (200 issues, 1959–1966) andRomance in Pictures (235 issues, 1960–1966), the latter of which featured stories reprinted and translated from Spanishromance comics. Other long-running titles from the 1960s includedPocket War Library andWorld Illustrated (reprints fromGilberton'sWorld Around Us series).
In 1966, T & P published a 68-pageAvengers comic, with original art byMick Anglo andMick Austin consisting of four 16-page stories. Anglo also illustrated comics version of the television seriesCharles Rand andDanger Man.
Between 1967 and 1970, T & P released an unusual line of 128-page comics calledDouble Double. Each issue was made up of fourremainderedDC comics (with their covers removed) glued together with a new cover.[37] (Most covers were probably illustrated by UK artists.) 24Double Double titles were published, mostly featuringSuperman orBatman (and their associated supporting characters). The titles with the most issues wereAction Double Double Comics (5 issues),Adventure Double Double Comics (4 issues), andBatman Double Double Comics,Detective Double Double Comics, andSuperboy Double Double Comics (3 issues each). According to owners of some of the comics, the oddest thing about theDouble Double line was, "not all issues had the same four comics inside. It was possible to purchase two copies ofDouble Double Detective #3 and find different coverless DC issues within. It was even possible to sometimes find aMarvel comic mixed in with the DCs!"[38]
In the 1970s, theBrown Watson imprint was known for the hardback comicsannuals it published based on popular film, television, animation, and comics properties. The annuals featured a mix of comic strips and illustrated text stories.[10] (The hardcover annuals tradition was a staple of the UK comics scene; the company most known for this type of publication wasWorld Distributors, which started producing them in the 1950s.) Brown Watson's most popular, long-running annuals wereHanna BarberaScooby Doo Where Are You... (8 annuals, 1973–1980),Tarzan (7 annuals, 1972–1979),Laurel and Hardy (6 annuals, 1969–1980),Superman/Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder Annual (5 annuals, 1974–1978), andPlanet of the Apes (3 annuals, 1975–1977). Artists who worked on the annuals includedJohn Bolton,Ian Gibson, andDavid Lloyd.[10] Brown Watson was run by the brothers Brian Babani and Peter Babani.[10]
Most of T & P's other publications in the 1970s were listed under theTop Sellers Ltd. imprint. Formatted like American comics, with 32 pages of content,[39] the company's most successful comics launched during this period included the long-running titlesFunny Half Hour,Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes,Edgar Rice Burroughs Korak, Son of Tarzan, and the variousPocket Library titles, particularlyWestern Library,Chiller Library, andRomance Library. Skinn'sHouse of Hammer was ahorror-themed magazine of all original content, which combined text articles with comic strips, and helped launch the careers of a number of British comics creators, includingSteve Moore,Brian Bolland,John Bolton, andDavid Lloyd. Skinn and Brown Watson line editor John Barraclough often used some of the same artists for their comics properties.[10]House of Hammer was given the 1977Eagle Award for "Favourite Specialist Comics Publication — Pro."[40]Mad UK, meanwhile, won the 1977 Eagle Award for "Favourite Black & White Comicbook — Humour."[19][40]
Starting in the 1950s, Thorpe & Porter published a number of men's magazines of questionable taste, an early title beingClubman, and another beingComic Cuties.
In the 1960s and 1970s, T & P and then Williams published a line ofsoftcore pornography magazines with titles likeSex International News,True Love Stories,[2]Cinema X,Cinema Blue,Parade,Game,Blade,Voi, andSensuous.[10] Many copies of those magazines were seized and forfeited in a series of police raids in 1972 and again in 1975.[2] In response, in 1976 Williams created theGeneral Books Distribution (G.B.D. Ltd.) imprint for its adults-only titles.[10]
| Title | Issues published | Publication Dates | Reprinted issues | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazing Stories | 32 | 1950–1954 | June 1953, December 1952, and January 1954 | First 24 issues were pulp-sized; the last eight were digests. |
| Dynamic Science Fiction | 3 | 1954 | June 1953, December 1952, and January 1954 | Source:[44] |
| Fantastic | 8 | 1953–1955 | Sept./Oct. 1953–Dec. 1954 | |
| Fantastic Adventures | 24 | 1950–1954 | Mar. 1950–Jan. 1953 | |
| Fantastic Novels | 1 | 1954 | May 1949 | Published byPembertons and distributed by Thorpe & Porter; undated, but numbered 1. Source:[45] |
| Future Science Fiction and Science Fiction Stories | 14 | 1951–1954 | Mar. 1951–Mar. 1954 | |
| Marvel Science Stories | 1 | 1951 | Feb. 1951 | |
| Science Fiction Quarterly | 10 | 1952–1955 | May 1951–May 1954 | |
| Super Science Stories | 3 | 1949–1950 | Jan. 1949, Nov. 1949, Jan. 1950 | |
| Weird Tales | 28 | 1949–1954 | July 1949–May 1954 (with many issues skipped) | In two volumes |