Post by MacNimon on Jul 11, 2011 11:49:47 GMT
Did you ever read that small print on the inside cover or splash page of all those American comics, you know the one about not being allowed to rebind or resell the issues without the covers, etc? It usually looks something like this...
Well, there was a period in the late 1960s/early 1970s when this was well and truly ignored by DC's UK distributors of the time, Thorpe & Porter. They had a policy of taking the covers off of any unsold issues they had, printing new covers for them and binding any 4 available spare issues together inside these new covers; they then resold them as Double Double Comics.
Because of this policy there was no strict contents list for any particular issue...you could quite easily pick up 2 copies of the same issue of a Double Double comic and find different contents inside! While it was usually DC comics which received this treatment, it was also occasionally known for a Marvel comic to be included in the mix so you'd possibly get one with 3 DC and 1 Marvel in it.
There are 24 different covers to Double Double Comics, as far as is known. Here's a list of the titles, and the covers they reprinted for this purpose - remember the interiors could be any combination of four coverless comics, mostly DC but sometimes Marvel, and totally unrelated to whatever appeared on the cover. They are:
Action (Unnumbered) 1 (price = 1/9, cover = Action 333)
Action 2 (1/9, Teen Titans 4)
Action 3 (2/6, Justice League 56)
Action 4 (10p, Action 336)
Adventure (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Adventure 335)
Adventure 2 (2/6, Adventure 358)
Adventure 3 (10p, Adventure 366)
Batman (Unnumbered) 1 - (1/9, Batman 168)
Batman 2 (1/9, Batman 160)
Batman 3 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Batman 170)
Detective (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Detective 345)
Detective 2 (1/9, Blackhawk 163)
Detective 3 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Batman 152)
Jimmy Olsen (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Jimmy Olsen 87)
Justice League 1 (2/6, Action 328)
Justice League 2 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Justice League 59)
Lois Lane (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Lois Lane 60)
Strange Adventures 1 (2/6, Strange Adventures 186)
Superboy (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Superboy 124)
Superboy 2 (10p, Superboy 139)
Superman (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Action 329)
Superman 2 (1/9, Superman 184)
Superman 3 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Action 335)
World's Finest 1 (2/6, Superboy 123)
Marvel UK used the same option to get rid of many of their unsold titles in the late 70s. The same applied, covers were printed but there was no guarantee of getting the same issues inside. Too bad I never saw any of these when I was a boy...
Well, there was a period in the late 1960s/early 1970s when this was well and truly ignored by DC's UK distributors of the time, Thorpe & Porter. They had a policy of taking the covers off of any unsold issues they had, printing new covers for them and binding any 4 available spare issues together inside these new covers; they then resold them as Double Double Comics.
Because of this policy there was no strict contents list for any particular issue...you could quite easily pick up 2 copies of the same issue of a Double Double comic and find different contents inside! While it was usually DC comics which received this treatment, it was also occasionally known for a Marvel comic to be included in the mix so you'd possibly get one with 3 DC and 1 Marvel in it.
There are 24 different covers to Double Double Comics, as far as is known. Here's a list of the titles, and the covers they reprinted for this purpose - remember the interiors could be any combination of four coverless comics, mostly DC but sometimes Marvel, and totally unrelated to whatever appeared on the cover. They are:
Action (Unnumbered) 1 (price = 1/9, cover = Action 333)
Action 2 (1/9, Teen Titans 4)
Action 3 (2/6, Justice League 56)
Action 4 (10p, Action 336)
Adventure (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Adventure 335)
Adventure 2 (2/6, Adventure 358)
Adventure 3 (10p, Adventure 366)
Batman (Unnumbered) 1 - (1/9, Batman 168)
Batman 2 (1/9, Batman 160)
Batman 3 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Batman 170)
Detective (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Detective 345)
Detective 2 (1/9, Blackhawk 163)
Detective 3 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Batman 152)
Jimmy Olsen (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Jimmy Olsen 87)
Justice League 1 (2/6, Action 328)
Justice League 2 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Justice League 59)
Lois Lane (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Lois Lane 60)
Strange Adventures 1 (2/6, Strange Adventures 186)
Superboy (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Superboy 124)
Superboy 2 (10p, Superboy 139)
Superman (Unnumbered) 1 (1/9, Action 329)
Superman 2 (1/9, Superman 184)
Superman 3 (12 1/2p + 2/6, Action 335)
World's Finest 1 (2/6, Superboy 123)
Marvel UK used the same option to get rid of many of their unsold titles in the late 70s. The same applied, covers were printed but there was no guarantee of getting the same issues inside. Too bad I never saw any of these when I was a boy...
