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Who was responsible for the distribution of US comics in the UK? When did distribution start? When did it end? What publishers sent their comics to the UK? Which comics made it over here and which ones didn't?
The answers to these questions are surprisingly complicated, and form the basis of a nearly 500-page (and counting) discussion thread on the CGC message boards. What follows is an attempt to distil some of the info in those pages into a slightly more user-friendly form, and to preserve the research work published there should CGC decide at some point to close their chat boards. None of what appears below would be possible without the invaluable research of the posters on that board, most prominently Steve Cranch, who started the thread and did almost all of the heavy-lifting in terms of identifying when distribution into the UK started and with what titles. Steve has also comprehensively catalogued all of the UK Price Variants from all of the publishers that printed them (i.e. printing variations of original US comics specifically made for sale in the UK - more on this later) - Marvel, DC, Charlton, Dell, Archie, Gold Key and King Comics. Thanks Steve!
As it stands, the distribution of Marvel and DC comics into the UK is best understood out of all of the publishers. For others - Charlton Comics for instance - what little in the way of primary sources there are and, more importantly, the comics themselves, tell an extremely complicated tale of competing distributors, likely periods of non-exclusivity, and returns shipped to the UK possibly many years after their initial publication.
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