Marvel vs. DC: The Distribution Bottleneck

[bartl]

Someone commented on something in another group which brings to mind a question involving a particular expertise of Steven's.

Most people here know the story of how, when Marvel comics started, Martin Goodman, having committed to a distribution company that had gone bankrupt, was forced to distribute the comics through a distribution company controlled by DC, which severely limited Marvel's expansion ability.

However, it just occurred to me that Goodman didn't file (or threaten to file) an antitrust suit against the company or DC. Steven, you know the ins and outs of the distribution industry; did it have to do with the cement shoes aspect, or was it something else?

[Steven Grant]

Both DC and IND were far beyond the cement shoes level by that point, but look at it from Goodman's point of view: he's got a company teetering on the brink with no distribution. He goes to the only real distribution left, and they say, yeah, okay, we'll distribute your books -- but you only get 8 superhero titles (or whatever it was; I've heard anywhere between 8-12) because that's all we think the market can handle. Even though you KNOW the distributor's in bed with your dominant rival because, hey, they're not even TRYING to hide it, you've got a choice: you can go along with the deal, and your company stays alive, or you can file a lawsuit you may or may not win against a company with the lawyers to spend you into your grave before it even comes to court, adjudicated by a government that has recently shown itself to be next to completely hostile to the cause of comics publishing, and in the meantime your books aren't being distributed. Which means you're out of business, and, with lawyers swarming round, flat broke in no time.

Plus once you file suit you basically give permission for your own financial records to be open to all comers, at a time when comics companies jealously guarded their financial records.

If you were Goodman, which would you do? Follow the high road or stay in business?

Not to mention comics publishing was also sort of an old boys club at the time; hell, one of the versions of the creation of FF says Goodman decided he wanted to publish a superhero team book because he'd found out JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA was doing boom business when he was playing golf with DC head Jack Liebowitz. Which he reportedly did regularly.

It's also possible the distribution deal with cooked up between Goodman and Liebowitz over a golf game, Liebowitz basically doing Goodman a favor by giving him the means to stay in business. (I don't know that, I'm just speculating.) There's no reason DC or IND had to distribute Goodman's books...