CCL Messageboard

One possible explaination to the UK priced books is maybe they did not print all copies in the US and then mail/ship them over there. It would be quite conceivable that they shipped the ARTWORK overseas to the UK, and the UK printed them there. This would also allow distributers to return them, without huge shipping expenses.

I'm just guessing, but it would make better sense than shipping copies overseas by boat or air.

During the 70's and early 80's when I recall most of the US/UK price variants, they were indeed all printed at the same time, same place, the good ol' US of A. The printing plates for the covers were changed slightly to reflect the price difference towards the end of the print run. With Marvel, the banner was also altered slightly. Instead of saying "Marvel Comics Group", the UK priced variants stated "Marvel All-Colour Comics" to distinguish them from the black and white Marvel UK reprints.
We got our comics 3 months after you guys did back then. They took a while to get over here!