BACK IN THE 1960s , comic publishers didn't have marketing budgets. There was nowhere for them to advertise their comics, except for in other comics. The only method they had available to them was to print way too many copies and try to get them in front of their customers, by dumping them onto the newsstands in great numbers. "Returns" of 50% weren't unheard of and, indeed, was considered normal. This newsstand comics rack was what the Summer 1949 (cover-dated August) comics industry output looked like. Click on the image to expand it , and you'll see titles like Crime Does Not Pay, Superboy, Crime Patrol, Millie the Model and a whole bunch of Classics Illustrated. These "returned" comics would have the cover title logos torn off and sent back to the wholesalers for credits against the next issue. The mutilated returned comics were then supposed to be trashed, but many newsdealers simply put them out for sale again at 5c. Newsvendors would tear the co...
BACK IN THE LAST CENTURY I earned my living in the magazine business ... and the prevailing wisdom at the time was that you didn't ever - under any circumstances - mess with the magazine's logo. In fact, any kind of change to the magazine's masthead was frowned upon, and even re-branding exercises were viewed with much suspicion. In the last entry in this blog, I looked at the many times that Marvel Comics changed their magazine's logos during the 1960s ... it all seemed so much easier then. But even less acceptable was the idea that you could transform the comic's logo for just one issue for, oh I don't know ... Dramatic Effect. From a marketing perspective, that's an even bigger risk than changing the logo as part of the natural evolution of a magazine's masthead Strangely, though this blog focusses on Marvel Comics, and I've always maintained Stan Lee was far more willing to experiment with different approaches to comics and storytelling than his...