Thorpe & Porter

Entrepreneur Fred Thorpe started with a newsagent's shop in Leicester, where he recognized the appeal of American pulp magazines and comic books. After World War II, however, the UK was intent on promoting homegrown publishers, and thus banned the direct importation of American periodicals.[1] In 1946, Thorpe joined with the local builders merchants' company the Porter Group to form Thorpe & Porter as a publisher.[1]

Thorpe & Porter started out as a publisher of lurid and sensationalist paperback books, originally in digest size and later in the more traditional format.[1] T & P set up a number of imprints — Hermitage Publications, Knole Park Press, Beacon Publishing Co. Ltd., Strato Publications, and Jewel Books — and in the period 1947 to 1953 published over 60 titles, by such authors as Frank Fawcett (writing under the pen name "Ben Sarto"), George C. Foster, Paul Renin, and Leslie A. Scott.[1] T & P also distributed similar paperbacks from other publishers, including Muir-Watson and Robin Hood Press.[1]

The paperback craze died down in the period 1951 to 1953, partly as the result of Home Office clampdowns on "obscene and objectionable publications;"[1] and by the end of 1953, T & P was no longer in the paperback publication business.

Next, T & P moved into the realm of pulp magazines. Setting up relationships with American pulp publishers Ziff-Davis and Columbia Publications — which were eager to license their content due to the declining popularity of pulps in the U.S. —[1] T & P published reprints in this capacity from 1949 to 1954, most notably with the titles Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic Adventures.

T & P published a run of 23 issues of Weird Tales between November 1949 and December 1953, and another five bimonthly issues dated November 1953 to July 1954 (with the volume numbering restarted at volume 1, number 1).[2] In June 1950, T & P began publishing a reprint series of Amazing Stories which lasted until 1954, totaling 32 issues.[3][4] The Thorpe & Porter issues were undated, but the pulp issues were numbered from 1 to 24, and were initially bimonthly. With December 1953 came the change to digest-size and a perfectly regular bimonthly schedule that lasted until February 1955.[4] Also in June 1950, T & P began a reprint run of Fantastic Adventures, which consisted of 24 undated issues (all but the first two of which were numbered) released through February 1954 (these were abridged versions of U.S. editions dated from March 1950 to January 1953).

From November 1951 to June 1954, T & P began reprinted 14 numbered and undated issues of Future Science Fiction and Science Fiction Stories, corresponding roughly to the U.S. issues from March 1951 to March 1954.[5] And starting in February 1952 and continuing through August 1955, T & P published ten issues of the second series of Science Fiction Quarterly. The issues, which were cut from the U.S. editions, corresponding to 10 of the first 13 issues, from May 1951 to May 1954. (The omitted issues were November 1951, May 1952, and August 1953.) The order of publication was not the same as for the US editions.[6][7]

T & P's reprint run of Fantastic lasted eight bimonthly issues from December 1953 to February 1955; the issues were not dated on the cover. These correspond to the US issues from September/October 1953 to December 1954, and were numbered volume 1, #1–8.[8][9]

In the 1960s, T & P distributed the British science fiction magazines New Worlds and Science Fantasy (also known as SF Impulse), published by Roberts & Vinter). When in July 1966 Thorpe & Porter went bankrupt (see below) while owing Roberts & Vinter a substantial sum, the resulting financial pressure led Roberts & Vinter to decide to focus on their more profitable magazines, and the February 1967 issue of SF Impulse was the last, though its sister magazine New Worlds, survived via an Arts Council grant.[10]

Because of the UK importation ban,[1] in the 1940s and 1950s American comics typically arrived in the UK as ballast on ships.[11] T & P became one of the first publishers to print its own clean versions of the comics, "using blocks made from imported American matrices."[12]

Thorpe & Porter got into the comic book business in the 1950s with a selection of romance, western, and war comics reprinted in black-and-white from American companies like American Comics Group, Atlas Comics, Crestwood Publications, Dell Comics, Gilberton, and National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics).

The company's most successful title during this period was Classics Illustrated[1] and a spinoff title called Pixi Tales. T & P published Classics Illustrated reprints (and a few original stories) from 1951 to 1963. Of the 181 British issues,[lower-alpha 1] 13 had never appeared in America. Additionally, there were some variations in cover art. UK issues never published in the United States include Aeneid, The Argonauts, The Gorilla Hunters and Sail with the Devil. The British Classics Illustrated adaptation of the James Bond film Dr. No was never published under the U.S. Classics Illustrated line (making it a collector's item in the States),[1] but instead was sold to DC Comics, which published it as part of their superhero anthology series, Showcase.[13] (The comic followed the plot of the film with images of the film's actors rather than Ian Fleming's original novel.) Mick Anglo adapted three stories — by Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Wilkie Collins — for the T & P Classics Illustrated. Pixi Tales, which featured fairy tale adaptations reprinted from Classics Illustrated, lasted 87 issues, from 1959 to 1963.

The T & P imprint Strato (originally created for its paperback line) published thirteen issues of a Mystery in Space reprint, a 68-page A4-size magazine, between 1954 and 1956.[14] It featured black-and-white reprints of DC's Mystery In Space and Strange Adventures stories with slightly adapted covers from the original Mystery In Space series. T & P published a hardback Mystery In Space Annual in 1968. Although it used the cover to Mystery In Space #95, the contents of the annual were complete random issues of remaindered comics from a number of companies including their covers, and not Mystery In Space stories.[15]

Other titles with which T & P had some success included Blackhawk, Gene Autry Comics, Forbidden Worlds, Kid Colt, Outlaw, Pixi Tales, Tomahawk, Young Brides, Young Love, and Young Romance.[1]

In October 1959, T & P began publishing MAD UK. The British version of Mad magazine received access to the publication's back catalog of articles and was also encouraged to produce its own localized material in the Mad vein. Essentially, T & P repackaged Mad 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 the English royal family was reprinted in a Mad 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.[16] 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.

In the period 1951 to 1953, Thorpe & Porter acquired a number of fellow British publisher Arnold Book Company's reprint titles,[1] including Justice Traps the Guilty, Young Brides, Young Eagle, and Young Love. (When T & P acquired Justice Traps the Guilty, it continued the numbering of the ABC version; with the other titles, T & P restarted the numbering at #1.) Arnold Book Company was owned by Arnold L. Miller, the "Son" in the British reprint publisher L. Miller & Son, Ltd.

In 1953, T & P seems to have acquired the Arnold Book Company as a separate line; Arnold Book Company appears as an imprint on the T & P titles Justice Traps the Guilty, Kid Colt, Outlaw Young Brides, and Young Romance from that point until 1958,[17] when ABC shut down. (T & P later published a second volume of 13 issues of Justice Traps the Guilty.)

In 1959, with the lifting of the UK ban on importation of American periodicals,[1] Thorpe & Porter became the sole UK distributor of both DC and Marvel (as well as Dell, Charlton, and American 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 the indicia, a sentence mentioned Thorpe & Porter as sole distributor in the UK market. Thus it was that brand new American-printed copies of Fantastic 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-branded spinner racks.

Starting in the 1950s, Thorpe & Porter published a number of men's magazines of questionable taste, an early title being Clubman, and another being Comic Cuties.

In the 1960s and 1970s, T & P published a line of softcore pornography magazines with titles like Sex International News, True Love Stories,[1] Cinema X, Cinema Blue, Parade, Game, Blade, Voi, and Sensuous.[18] Many copies of those magazines were seized and forfeited in a series of police raids in 1972 and again in 1975.[1] In response, in 1976 T & P created the General Books Distribution (G.B.D. Ltd.) imprint for its adults-only titles.[18]

Thorpe & Porter's comics publishing output in the 1960s was more spotty, with the most successful titles being Pocket War Library and World Illustrated (reprints from Gilberton's World Around Us series).

In 1966, T & P published a 68-page Avengers comic, with original art by Mick Anglo and Mick Austin consisting of four 16-page stories. Anglo also illustrated comics version of the television series Charles Rand and Danger Man.

In July 1966, Thorpe & Porter went bankrupt,[1] which left many of its clients being owed substantial sums.[10] The company was purchased by Independent News Distributors (IND), the distribution arm of National Periodical Publications (DC Comics).[1] (Traditionally, IND distributed all DC publications, as well as those of a few rival publishers, such as Marvel Comics from 1957 to 1969, in addition to pulp and popular magazines.) After the sale, T & P's offices moved from Leicester to London.

In 1967, DC and IND were purchased by Kinney National Company, which in 1969 purchased Warner Bros.-Seven Arts and became Warner Communications.[19][20] As a result of all this consolidation, by 1969 T & P's comics output became almost exclusively reprints of DC titles, as well as Larry Harmon's Laurel & Hardy, a color comic book series based on the Laurel & Hardy animated TV series.

In 1971, Warner's international distribution operations merged with Columbia Pictures to form Columbia-Warner Distributors. Thorpe & Porter moved its offices to the Columbia-Warner House in Soho, London.[18]

Between 1967 and 1970, T & P released an unusual line of 128-page comics called Double Double. Each issue was made up of four remaindered DC comics (with their covers removed) glued together with a new cover.[21] (Most covers were probably illustrated by UK artists.)

24 Double Double titles were published, mostly featuring Superman or Batman (and their associated supporting characters). The titles with the most issues were Action Double Double Comics (5 issues), Adventure Double Double Comics (4 issues), and Batman Double Double Comics, Detective Double Double Comics, and Superboy Double Double Comics (3 issues each). According to owners of some of the comics, the oddest thing about the Double Double line was, "not all issues had the same four comics inside. It was possible to purchase two copies of Double Double Detective #3 and find different coverless DC issues within. It was even possible to sometimes find a Marvel comic mixed in with the DCs!"[22]

The Brown Watson imprint,[18] launched in the early 1950s, originally published genre paperbacks like Sinister Forces by Alvin Westwood (1953) and The Horror from the Hills by Frank Belknap Long (1965). In the period 1959 to 1966, Brown Watson published T & P's war comics series Conflict Picture Library (200 issues, 1959–1966) and Romance in Pictures (235 issues, 1960–1966), the latter of which featured stories reprinted and translated from Spanish romance comics.

The imprint's greatest notoriety, however, came in the 1970s, from the hardback comics annuals it published based on popular film, television, animation, and comics properties. The annuals featured a mix of comic strips and illustrated text stories.[18] (The hardcover annuals tradition was a staple of the UK comics scene; the company most known for this type of publication was World Distributors, which started producing them in the 1950s.) Brown Watson's most popular, long-running annuals were Hanna Barbera Scooby 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), and Planet of the Apes (3 annuals, 1975–1977). Artists who worked on the annuals included John Bolton, Ian Gibson, and David Lloyd.[18]

Brown Watson was run by the brothers Brian Babani and Peter Babani.[18]

Most of T & P's other publications in the 1970s were listed under the Top Sellers Ltd. imprint. The company's most successful comics launched during this period included the long-running titles Funny Half Hour, Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs Korak, Son of Tarzan, and the various Pocket Library titles, particularly Western Library, Chiller Library, and Romance Library.

In 1976, Dez Skinn was brought in to expand the comics arm of Warner Communications's UK publishing division. He took over editing MAD UK, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Korak, Son of Tarzan, and the Laurel & Hardy comic. He also launched House of Hammer, a horror-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, including Steve Moore, Brian Bolland, John Bolton, and David Lloyd. Skinn and Brown Watson line editor John Barraclough often used some of the same artists for their comics properties.[18]

House of Hammer was given the 1977 Eagle Award for "Favourite Specialist Comics Publication — Pro."[23] Mad UK, meanwhile, won the 1977 Eagle Award for "Favourite Black & White Comicbook — Humour."[24][23]

Warner sold its publishing division, including Thorpe & Porter, to W. H. Allen & Co. in 1977, which in 1978 decided to close it down[25] (with Skinn almost immediately moving on to the top position at Marvel UK).[24] This spelled the end of most of T & P's titles, except for MAD UK and the Brown Watson line. Former T & P production editor Ron Letchford acquired the rights to MAD UK. He formed Suron International for this purpose, eventually selling the license to London Editions, which later merged with Fleetway Publications.[26] 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.[27]

After his stint at Marvel UK, in 1982 Skinn started Quality Communications and revived House of Hammer (as Halls of Horror); he continued the magazine until 1984.

Titles that published 30 or more issues.

• Benjy and His Friends (30 issues, 1971–1972)
• Blackhawk (37 issues, 1956–1958)
• Classics Illustrated (181 issues, Oct. 1951–June 1963)
• Fox and Crow (31 issues, early 1970s)
• Gene Autry Comics (36 issues, 1953–1954)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs Korak, Son of Tarzan (71 issues, 1971–1976)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes [1st series] (7 issues, 1970–1971)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes [2nd series] (116 issues, 3 March 1971–1975)
• Forbidden Worlds (145 issues, 1950–1969)
• Funny Half Hour (171 issues, 1970–1979)
• House of Hammer (23 issues, Oct. 1976–July 1978) — changed title to Hammer's House of Horror and Hammer's Halls of Horror; later revived as Halls of Horror by Quality Communications
• Kid Colt Outlaw (58 issues, 1950–1960) — contained black-and-white reprints from both Atlas Comics and DC Comics
• Larry Harmon's Laurel & Hardy (142 issues[33] plus eight extra-large issues,[34] 1969–1974)
• Mad (290 issues, Oct. 1959–June 1986)
• Pixi Tales (87 issues, 1959–1963)
• Pocket Chiller Library (137 issues, 1971–1977) — reprints of Italian and Spanish horror comics followed by some original stories by European and British creators[35]
• Pocket Detective Library (67 issues, early 1970s)
• Pocket Romance Library (113 issues, 1971–1974)
• Pocket War Library (229 issues, 1965–1972)
• Pocket Western Library (188 issues, 1970s)
• Tomahawk (41 issues, 1954–1957)
• World Illustrated (34 issues, 1960–1963)
• Young Brides (38 issues, 1953–1955)
• Young Love (46 issues, 1953–1955)
• Young Romance (39 issues, 1953–1955)

• Batman & Robin Annual (1972)
• The Bionic Woman (2 issues, 1977–1978)
• Casper's Ghostland Annual (1973)
• Charlie Chaplin Annual (1974)
• Flash Gordon Annual (2 issues, 1968 and 1981)
• The Flintstones Annual (1976)
• The Funky Phantom Annual (1974)
• The Gemini Man Annual (1978)
• The Great Grape Ape Annual (2 issues, 1977–1978) — 1977 annual featured Hong Kong Phooey; 1978 annual featured Boss Cat
• Hanna Barbera Scooby Doo Where Are You... Annual (8 issues, 1973–1980)
• The Harlem Globetrotters Annual Featuring Dastardly and Muttley and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1973)
• Inch High Private Eye & Pixie & Dixie Annual (1977)
• Laurel and Hardy Annual (6 issues, 1969–1980)
• Logan's Run Annual (1978)
• The Magician Annual (1975)
• Marvel Presents the Superheroes Annual (1978)
• The Muppet Show Annual (1978)
• The New Avengers Annual (2 issues, 1977–1978)
• The Pink Panther Annual (1976)
• Planet of the Apes Annual (3 issues, 1975–1977)
• Popeye Annual (2 issues, 1972–1976)
• Science Fiction in Pictures Outer Space (2 issues, 1963)
• The Six Million Dollar Man Annual (3 issues, 1977–1979)
• Star Wars Annual (1978)
• Superman Annual (1972)
• Superman/Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder Annual (5 issues, 1974–1978)
• The Sweeney Annual (2 issues, 1977 & 1978)
• Tarzan Annual (7 issues, [Sept.] 1972–[Sept.] 1979)
• Wacky Races Annual (3 issues, 1973–1976) — 1973 annual featured Motormouse and Autocat; 1975 annual featured the Harlem Globetrotters

• Thorpe & Porter at the Grand Comics Database
• Brown Watson at the Grand Comics Database
• General Books at the Grand Comics Database
• Arnold Book Company at the Grand Comics Database
• Ashley, Mike (2005). Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-779-4.
• Jacobs, Frank (1972). The Mad World of William M. Gaines. Lyle Stuart, Inc. p. ???. Library of Congress Card No 72-91781
• Tuck, Donald H. (1982). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 3. Chicago: Advent: Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-911682-26-0.
• Tymn, Marshall B.; Ashley, Mike (eds.). Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-21221-X.