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. •
Amazing Stories – 32 reprint issues (June 1950 – 1954) 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. 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. •
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. •
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. •
New Worlds &
Science Fantasy – in the 1960s, T & P distributed the British science fiction magazines
New Worlds and
Science Fantasy (also known as
SF Impulse), published by
Roberts & Vinter). When in July 1966 Thorpe & Porter went bankrupt (
see below) while owing Roberts & Vinter a substantial sum, the resulting financial pressure led Roberts & Vinter to decide to focus on their more profitable magazines, and the February 1967 issue of
SF Impulse was the last, though its sister magazine
New Worlds, survived via an
Arts Council grant.
Comics Because of the UK importation ban, T & P got into the comics business – primarily with reprints – in the 1950s with a selection of
romance,
western, and
war comics, reprinted in black-and-white from American companies like
Gilberton,
American Comics Group,
Atlas Comics,
Crestwood Publications,
Dell Comics, and
National Periodical Publications (now
DC Comics). Thorpe & Porter was one of the first British publishers to print its own clean versions of the comics, "using blocks made from imported American matrices." Right off the bat, Thorpe & Porter's most successful comics title was
Classics Illustrated (The comic followed the plot of the film with images of the film's actors rather than
Ian Fleming's original
novel.) In the period 1951 to 1953, Thorpe & Porter acquired a number of fellow British publisher
Arnold Book Company's reprint titles, It featured black-and-white reprints of DC's
Mystery In Space and
Strange Adventures stories with slightly adapted covers from the original
Mystery In Space series. T & P published a hardback
Mystery In Space Annual in 1968. Although it used the cover to
Mystery In Space #95, the contents of the annual were complete random issues of remaindered comics from a number of companies including their covers, and not
Mystery In Space stories. Other reprint titles with which T & P had some success included
Blackhawk,
Gene Autry Comics,
Forbidden Worlds,
Kid Colt, Outlaw,
Tomahawk, and
Young Romance.
MAD UK was published by T & P from 1959 to 1979, and then continued on with other publishers until 1994, producing 290 issues in all. The
Brown Watson imprint, (Most covers were probably illustrated by UK artists.) 24
Double Double titles were published, mostly featuring
Superman or
Batman (and their associated supporting characters). The titles with the most issues were
Action Double Double Comics (5 issues),
Adventure Double Double Comics (4 issues), and
Batman Double Double Comics,
Detective Double Double Comics, and
Superboy Double Double Comics (3 issues each). According to owners of some of the comics, the oddest thing about the
Double Double line was, "not all issues had the same four comics inside. It was possible to purchase two copies of
Double Double Detective #3 and find different coverless DC issues within. It was even possible to sometimes find a
Marvel comic mixed in with the DCs!" In the 1970s, the
Brown Watson imprint was known for the hardback comics
annuals it published based on popular film, television, animation, and comics properties. The annuals featured a mix of comic strips and illustrated text stories. the company's most successful comics launched during this period included the long-running titles
Funny Half Hour,
Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes,
Edgar Rice Burroughs Korak, Son of Tarzan, and the various
Pocket Library titles, particularly
Western Library,
Chiller Library, and
Romance Library. Skinn's
House of Hammer was a
horror-themed magazine of all original content, which combined text articles with comic strips, and helped launch the careers of a number of British comics creators, including
Steve Moore,
Brian Bolland,
John Bolton, and
David Lloyd. Skinn and Brown Watson line editor John Barraclough often used some of the same artists for their comics properties.
Mad UK, meanwhile, won the 1977 Eagle Award for "Favourite Black & White Comicbook – Humour." == Imprints ==