Comics placement in Movies: The Wrong Arm of the Law

[Republishing post from 2022.

Of all the posts of this blog, this received not a single comment back in 2022. C'mon chaps.....]

Spent part of this Saturday afternoon re-watching the 1963 British comedy The Wrong Arm of The Law. I’m sure many of our UK readers recall seeing this film many times on Christmas afternoons in the early 1970s, when I used to avidly watch any British comedy film of the late-1950s and early 1960s.

© Studio Canal. The Wrong Arm of the Law 1963

The film The Wrong Arm of the Law was one of the last films that Southsea-native Peter Sellers made in England before decamping to Hollywood, paired with Lionel Jeffries (incidentally Jeffries' brother owned a TV aerial and electronics shop in Southsea) for comic support.

Studio Canal have remastered this black & white film for blu-ray and the image really sparkles. Peter Sellers and Lionel Jeffries are on top form, and the extensive London suburb location work of various High Streets has real nostalgia value for a time of long gone streets and cars.

The film remains most famous for the high-speed car chase around Uxbridge Moor in a classic Aston Martin DB4, but this time around my eye was caught by comic books on display. 

There is a scene half-way through the film when police officers are idling the time in a control room on "No Crime" night, when the gangs of London have agreed a truce. To pass the time, they are all reading different magazines.

Take a look at this shot; what do you see? Look closely.

© Studio Canal. The Wrong Arm of the Law

Dominating the foreground is the Dell Comic Car 54 Where Are You?, issue #3, cover dated October 1962, published in the US June 14th 1962. The earliest this comic would have been on sale in the UK was at the very end of September 1962.

© Dell . Car 54, Where Are You? #3

© Dell. Car 54, Where Are You? #3 - Interior Art

Car 54, Where Are You? had aired on NBC on TV in the States from September 1961 to April 1963, but it was not until April 9th 1964 that ITV premiered the show in the UK, with the final UK transmission on 29th September 1966. The strong placement of the comic on screen would only have had relevance for US cinema-goers at the time of the films release in 1963.

The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted the 'Superman' logo on the magazine that the young lad is reading in the background. It is an unusual styling of the logo. After a bit of digging, I've concluded that the comic in question is an issue of UK comic weekly Buster, folded around to show the Superman masthead from an interior page.

According to George Shiers' "Whacky Comics" blog, Superman US newspaper strips were repurposed  in the UK in 1959 for the pages of Radio Fun, continuing right up until the title merged with Buster in 1961, at which point it continued in Buster for a further year. The panel below (credit the Whacky Comics blog) is a sample of a Superman page within Buster.

© Fleetway Comics. Scan credit to George Shiers

So we can conclude that the Buster comic (published prior to the end of 1962) and Car 54 #3 (in UK end Sept 1962) were reasonably contemporaneous, but there is a timing mystery concerning the headline of a newspaper seen on screen a few seconds later. (See below).

© Studio Canal. Headline "Ron Flowers Collapses".

The newspaper headline "Ron Flowers Collapses" refers to Wolves football (soccer) player, wing half Ron Flowers, who collapsed from 'flu during the England national team practice on 12th April 1962. It is interesting that a newspaper at least six months old was used in the filming.

I am coming to the conclusion that the scene with Car 54 and Superman were cut in at a later date for the US release of the film, and that UK Studio Canal have restored the film from a US print.

There is one final shot of an unknown comic page in this scene. I have rotated the image should any of you wish to peruse your Buster collections to identify the exact page.

© Mystery page - presumably from Buster in 1962.

A visit to New York

A couple of weeks back Mrs B and I spent a couple of days in New York on a Spring break. We always try to visit something a bit off the usual tourist beat. This time my better half suggested visiting the J P Morgan Library & Museum, which is a museum and research library. Completed in 1906 as the private library of the banker J. P. Morgan, the institution is housed at 225 Madison Avenue in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan.

The famed banker and philanthropist J Pierpoint Morgan was an avid collector of books, ancient illuminated manuscripts and Egyptian treasures, and amassed a world-renowned collection. The museum is a fantastic place. J P Morgan acquired three original Gutenberg bibles from the 1450s, and the collection is on display for all to see.

Gutenberg bible 1455

It’s a very eclectic collection, where pop art of the 1960s is to be found alongside the ancient totems of past cultures. Of interest to readers of this blog may be an original printing of Topps “foldees” from 1966 (remember them, when printed by A&BC in the UK?).

Also a Roy Lichtenstein painting inspired by (or perhaps plagiarized from) a comic panel drawn by Jack Abel, called “CRAK”.   Double-click the photos to read the text card next to the exhibits, which acknowledges Jack Abel and Bob Haney’s original work in the April/May 1962 issue of Star Spangled War Stories. 

I’ve also included a photo of one of the Gutenberg bibles from 1455 - white pages!  And it’s never been in a mylar bag :-) .

I heartily recommend a visit.

Earlier we visited The Mysterious Bookshop, situated in the Tribeca neighbourhood on Warren Street. It is the oldest mystery bookshop in North America, owned by the writer, editor and publisher Otto Penzler, past editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. An amazing place, with wooden bookshelves extending up the 15-feet walls.

When then walked a couple of miles to Katz’s Delicatessen. I had to sample their signature dish - a huge corned beef sandwich on rye. I failed to finish it.

The following day we headed over to Montclair in New Jersey for a visit to the Montclair Bookshop, pretty much unchanged since my first visit almost fifty years ago. A great place to find old SF books, or browse the vinyl LPs. 

And finally, a shot of the top of the Empire State Building, for my money still the most impressive skyscraper in New York. Of course, we all know the Doc Savage's HQ was on the 86th floor back in the 1930s.

Any recommendations for places to visit?

Kid Colt #119 - a rara avis

© Marvel

The comic you see before you is a rara avis indeed. 

Neither this particular comic, nor any other copies, ever appeared in the spinner racks of newsagents in the UK or drug stores in the US in the late months of 1964. 

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the comic - Kid Colt #119 - is the UK-variant edition, printed as usual by World Color Press in Sparta as part of the US print-run, but never shipped to the UK.   I don’t believe that Duncan McAlpine’s Comic Price Guide for the UK has it tagged as ND (Non-distributed in the UK), but that it surely was.

Here’s the story, as related by friend of this blog @malacoda, corroborated by @Get Marwood & I. 

Up until Sept 1st 1964, all Marvel comics printed in the US for Thorpe & Porter distributors to be shipped to the UK were printed with a price of “9d” (nine old pence) and with the cover month removed.  After Sept 1st 1964, all Marvel comics heading to the UK were US cents copies, and the comics were hand-stamped with the prevailing UK price upon arrival in the UK.

Why did this occur? The most likely explanation is that in the run-up to the 1964 General Election, the topic of increasing import duties was mooted, and Thorpe & Porter decided they needed the flexibility to price their comics closer to home in the UK to cope with potential upcoming import duties. So they notified World Color Press to cease printing 9d on comics destined for the UK. But the run of Kid Colt #119 had already been printed with the old price - 9d - but had not yet been shipped.

For whatever reason, the batch of 9d Kid Colt #119s were never shipped to the UK, as World Color Press switched to shipping US cents comics, and the cents version of Kid Colt #120 appeared on UK shores.

Thorpe & Porter subsequently decided to increase the price of Marvels sold in the UK to 10d, and the run of Kid Colt #119  languished in a warehouse somewhere in the US.

At some point - probably years later - the batch of UK Price Variant Kid Colt #119s eventually surfaced, and found their way into the collector’s market.

Which is why pretty much every Kid Colt #119 with a UK price is in very good nick. It was never in a spinner rack.

Take a look on eBay for a 9d copy - they’re all for sale in the US. I picked up this beauty a few months back. Some great Kirby artwork in the backup story. Stan Lee wrote the main story, illustrated by Jack Keller. I’m not aware of any critiques of Stan Lee’s Western tales?