Thorpe & Porter (widely known as T & P) was a British publisher, importer, and distributor of magazines and comic books. At first, the company was known for repackaging American comics and pulp 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 being Classics Illustrated, MAD UK, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, Larry Harmon's Laurel & Hardy, House of Hammer, and Forbidden Worlds. T & P's most prominent imprints were Top Sellers Ltd. and Brown Watson. Thorpe & Porter operated from 1946 to 1979.
Corporate history Origins 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. In 1946, Thorpe joined with the local builders merchants' company the Porter Group to form Thorpe & Porter as a publisher.Chibnall, Steve. "The Sign of the Tee Pee: The Story of Thorpe & Porter," Paperback, Pulp and Comic Collector Vol. 1: "SF Crime Horror Westerns & Comics" (Wilts, UK: Zeon Publishing / Zardoz Books, 1993), pp. 16–29. Archived at Box.com. Retrieved Dec. 28, 2020.
Relationship with Arnold Book Company In 1953, T & P seems to have acquired the Arnold Book Company (ABC) as a separate line (ABC was owned by Arnold L. Miller, the "Son" in the British reprint publisher L. Miller & Son, Ltd.). 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,"Thorpe & Porter : Arnold Book Co. (Indicia / Colophon Publisher)," Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Dec. 21, 2020. when ABC shut down. (T & P later published a second volume of 13 issues of Justice Traps the Guilty.)
Marvel and DC distributor In 1959, with the lifting of the UK ban on importation of American periodicals, 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.
Sale to Gilberton Gilberton, the U.S. publisher of Classics Illustrated (which T & P had been distributing UK editions of since 1951), acquired Thorpe & Porter from Fred Thorpe in the fall of 1959.Jones, p. 315. Gilberton had launched Gilberton World-Wide Publications as a European branch in 1956, and T & P became part of its stable of European publishers. (After the sale, T & P's offices moved from Leicester to London.)
In 1962, the production of new issues of Classics 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.Jones, pp. 242-243. As a consequence, of the 181 British issues of Classics Illustrated, 13 never appeared in America (additionally, there were some variations in cover art).
Bankruptcy and acquisition by DC/Warner In July 1966, Thorpe & Porter went bankrupt, which left many of its clients being owed substantial sums. The company was purchased by Independent News Distributors (IND), the distribution arm of National Periodical Publications (DC Comics). (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.)
In 1967, DC and IND were purchased by Kinney National Company, which in 1969 purchased Warner Bros.-Seven Arts and became Warner Communications. 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; as now part of Warner Communications, the Thorpe & Porter brand was mostly replaced by Williams Publishing. (Thanks to Gilberton World-Wide Publications,Jones, ibid. Williams had European-language divisions in Denmark,Williams, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. Finland,Kustannus Oy Williams, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. France,Williams France, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. Germany,BSV – Williams, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. Italy,Edizioni Williams Inteuropa, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. the Netherlands,Classics/Williams, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. and Sweden;Williams Förlags AB, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Apr. 30, 2021. most of these publishers were sold off around 1979.)
In 1976, British editor Dez Skinn was brought in to expand the comics arm of Williams Publishing. 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.
Sale to W. H. Allen and closure Warner sold its publishing division, including Thorpe & Porter, to W. H. Allen & Co. in 1977, which in 1978 decided to close it downSkinn, Dez. "The End of HoH," DezSkinn.com. (with Skinn almost immediately moving on to the top position at Marvel UK). 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."Suron International Publications," Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Dec. 19, 2020. 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.Grandreams, Grand Comics Database. Retrieved Dec. 20, 2020. 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.
Publications Paperback books Thorpe & Porter started out as a publisher of lurid and sensationalist paperback books, originally in digest size and later in the more traditional format. 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. T & P also distributed similar paperbacks from other publishers, including Muir-Watson and Robin Hood Press.
The paperback craze died down in the period 1951 to 1953, partly as the result of Home Office clampdowns on "obscene and objectionable publications;" and by the end of 1953, T & P was no longer in the paperback publication business.
Pulp and digest format British magazines Next, T & P moved into the realm of pulp and digest format science fiction and fantasy magazines. Setting up relationships with American publishers Ziff-Davis and Columbia Publications – which were eager to license their content due to the declining popularity of pulps in the U.S. – and also with Galaxy Publications and Quinn, 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 titles Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures (Ziff-Davis), Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction (Galaxy), and If (Quinn, then Galaxy), and also Weird Tales, a long-established independent fantasy & horror magazine.
Weird Tales – 23-issue run (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).Weinberg, Robert (1985a). "Weird Tales". In Tymn and Ashley, pp. 733–734. Amazing Stories – 32 reprint issues (June 1950 – 1954)Brian Stableford, "Amazing Stories", in Clute & Nicholls, Encyclopedia of SF, pp. 25–26.Tuck, p. 535. 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. Fantastic Adventures – 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). Future Science Fiction and Science Fiction Stories – 14 numbered and undated issues (November 1951 to June 1954), corresponding roughly to the U.S. issues from March 1951 to March 1954.Ashley, Mike (1985a). "Future Fiction". In Tymn and Ashley, p. 283. 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.Ashley, Mike (1985a). "Future Fiction". In Tymn and Ashley, pp. 549–550. Fantastic – 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."Fantastic", in Tuck, pp. 557–558.Ashley, Mike. "Fantastic", in Tymn & Ashley, pp. 230–231. Galaxy Science Fiction – far and away the most successful of T & P's British reprint editions, began in January 1953 with the eccentrically numbered volume 3 issue 1 (of the American original vol. 5 #1), proceeded to reprint the previous American issue (vol. 4 #6) as volume 3 issue 2, followed by American vol. 5 #2 as vol. 3 #3, vol. 5 #3 as vol. 3 #4, etc, proceeding in a more or less orderly fashion – dropping the extraordinary Volume 3 number after Volume 3 issue 12, continuing monthly (with the occasional hiccup) as far as issue 94. After volume 3 issue 12, one or two short stories, and quite often the reviews and a non-fiction department were dropped from the U.S. original, and from issue 80 onwards of this BRE the only differences were the printing of the U.K. price and number replacing the U.S. price and date on the cover. After issue 94, a round ink-stamped U.K. month number over price was stamped on the front cover of the original U.S. editions.