I'll be posting the details of For Mother's Sake shortly, and have just added it to the table:

Five entries in, we can see that there is one B&W that has a different cover dimensions and dressing to the other four - this is likely the first to be produced - and the other four share similar characteristics but are in two distinct groups as follows, with two issues in each:

1. B&W interior / indicia at the back / Speedwell printers
2. Colour interior / indicia at the front / New Avenue Press printers

It makes sense that colour would follow B&W, so I have placed them in the table in the order with which I think they were likely produced. It'll be interesting to see if any of the other 14 issues that I have have fit into one of these three groups.

One other observation - I speculated in previous entries that the missing splash pages in certain stories may have been due to 'unsavoury' content. I was wondering though whether the page count had anything to do with it? Each issue is 28 pages, and each has three stories with no ads. In most cases, only the first story has the original splash page present. If the two missing splash pages were also present however, there would be two extra pages needed but, of course, the page count must be divisible by four. I'll keep an eye on this - maybe the pages are missing simply to fit the page count number - and the splashes usually summarised the story to come, so would be less conspicuous than, say, a later story page.

All good fun.

• Cover banner: This is a STREAMLINE Pictorial Romance
• Priced at 6d
• 28 pages
• Double stapled
• 6 & 7/8" x 9 & 7/8"

The For Mother's Sake is our second 'All In Colour' book, which is basically black and white inside with a bit of red.

The indicia is our second 'Streamline Publications Ltd' one, 105, Curtain Road, London, printed by The New Avenue Press Ltd, 3/4 Sherwood Street, London W.I.:

The Stories this time are:

Story #1: My Crazy Dreams 

This story may have originally appeared in 1949's My Great Love #2, with which it shares a story title, but I don't see a copy anywhere online at present to confirm this.

Story #2: My Security 

This story originally appeared in Women in Love #3, minus the splash page (thanks @Qalyar) and titled 'Unfaithful Wife':

Story #3: For Mother's Sake

This story also originally appeared in TBC

There are no title matches for the second and third stories that I can find, so we assume that they have been altered from the originals - as is starting to appear to be standard practice!

If anyone was wondering, I've not included the book below in any of the figures yet as, despite carrying the 'SPR' wording, it seems to sit outside of the rest and appears to have its own unique layout:

I'll wait to see if I can snag a copy before commenting further. 

On 5/11/2022 at 8:21 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Story #2: My Security 

This story originally appeared in TBC

This was originally published as "Unfaithful Wife" in Women in Love #3 (Fox, 1949). We've now seen reprints of all three stories from that issue!

On 5/11/2022 at 2:32 PM, Qalyar said:

This was originally published as "Unfaithful Wife" in Women in Love #3 (Fox, 1949). We've now seen reprints of all three stories from that issue!

Hooray for Qalyar! 

On 5/11/2022 at 2:32 PM, Qalyar said:

This was originally published as "Unfaithful Wife" in Women in Love #3 (Fox, 1949). We've now seen reprints of all three stories from that issue!

I just updated the entry - quite a title leap as a title isn't it, from 'Unfaithful Wife' to 'My Security'.

What do you think of my earlier page count theory, as a reason for the splash page absences, Qalyar?

On 5/11/2022 at 8:38 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I just updated the entry - quite a title leap as a title isn't it, from 'Unfaithful Wife' to 'My Security'.

What do you think of my earlier page count theory, as a reason for the splash page absences, Qalyar?

 

I think that's pretty likely. These Streamline books have 27 pages of story available, because they use the inside front cover, inside back cover, and outside back cover (!!) for story pages. Most of the original Fox stories are 10 pages long, although there are some 8- and 9-pagers from time to time (for example, "Unfaithful Wife" was a 9 page story). Obviously, they have to make room somewhere to get that page count down to 27, so I assume that's why we're losing the splash page (and potentially an extra page here or there).

Plus, Streamline really seemed to hate the original Fox story titles, and that's a convenient way to get rid of them!

On 5/11/2022 at 2:55 PM, Qalyar said:

I think that's pretty likely. These Streamline books have 27 pages of story available, because they use the inside front cover, inside back cover, and outside back cover (!!) for story pages. Most of the original Fox stories are 10 pages long, although there are some 8- and 9-pagers from time to time (for example, "Unfaithful Wife" was a 9 page story). Obviously, they have to make room somewhere to get that page count down to 27, so I assume that's why we're losing the splash page (and potentially an extra page here or there).

Plus, Streamline really seemed to hate the original Fox story titles, and that's a convenient way to get rid of them!

So we have two possibilities - the missing pages may be down to simple overall page count constraints, or because they featured inappropriate content (given the other amendments that we see).

Or both!

On 5/11/2022 at 9:05 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

So we have two possibilities - the missing pages may be down to simple overall page count constraints, or because they featured inappropriate content (given the other amendments that we see).

Or both!

There's clearly some "both", because we've also seen reprinted pages with amended text or entirely expurgated panels.

On 5/11/2022 at 3:06 PM, Qalyar said:

There's clearly some "both", because we've also seen reprinted pages with amended text or entirely expurgated panels.

Indeed. You can imagine them looking at three stories, wondering which two to drop a page from, and settling on the racy ones! 

Anything that even suggests physical violence seems to have been culled, and I suspect they had some sort of "maximum sexiness" level that they dared not cross.

Also, for the record, I have absolutely no idea what the two unidentified stories are in I Dared Not Love. I haven't even been able to find likely candidates that aren't scanned online.

"For Mother's Sake" from, well, For Mother's Sake, doesn't appear to be online in its original format either. Based on story titles, and ruling out stories where we know the contents don't match, my two best guesses right now are "I Sold My Soul" from My Story, True Romances in Pictures #8 (Fox, 1949) or "I Bartered With Marriage" from My Love Memoirs #11 (Fox, 1950). It might not be either of those, but that's where I'd start looking if, you know, it was actually possible to just grab raw copies of these Fox books and peek inside.

On 5/11/2022 at 3:15 PM, Qalyar said:

Anything that even suggests physical violence seems to have been culled, and I suspect they had some sort of "maximum sexiness" level that they dared not cross.

There are limits to sexiness, yes:

On 5/11/2022 at 3:15 PM, Qalyar said:

Also, for the record, I have absolutely no idea what the two unidentified stories are in I Dared Not Love. I haven't even been able to find likely candidates that aren't scanned online.

"For Mother's Sake" from, well, For Mother's Sake, doesn't appear to be online in its original format either. Based on story titles, and ruling out stories where we know the contents don't match, my two best guesses right now are "I Sold My Soul" from My Story, True Romances in Pictures #8 (Fox, 1949) or "I Bartered With Marriage" from My Love Memoirs #11 (Fox, 1950). It might not be either of those, but that's where I'd start looking if, you know, it was actually possible to just grab raw copies of these Fox books and peek inside.

If we can go from from 'Unfaithful Wife' to 'My Security', then 'For Mother's Sake' could be anything really.

We should have a competition, Qalyar. I'm going for 'Keep The Old Girl Happy' 

On 5/11/2022 at 5:58 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

 

One other observation - I speculated in previous entries that the missing splash pages in certain stories may have been due to 'unsavoury' content. I was wondering though whether the page count had anything to do with it? Each issue is 28 pages, and each has three stories with no ads. In most cases, only the first story has the original splash page present. If the two missing splash pages were also present however, there would be two extra pages needed but, of course, the page count must be divisible by four. I'll keep an eye on this - maybe the pages are missing simply to fit the page count number - and the splashes usually summarised the story to come, so would be less conspicuous than, say, a later story page.

All good fun.

The stories in Fox books often had disposable first pages.  They normally started their stories on the inside front cover, presumably to make copies with the front cover stripped off look less appealing.  But they then did a whole bunch of giant collections of random rebound books, so they wanted the stories to actually be readable if the first page was gone.  

Fox put a lot of effort into being extraordinarily cheap even by golden age comic publisher standards.

Anyway, I think the page count is the most likely issue, but I think it's possible in some cases streamline never actually got the splash pages to use in their books, since it seems that mostly they weren't getting or using the original covers.

On 5/11/2022 at 11:10 AM, OtherEric said:

Fox put a lot of effort into being extraordinarily cheap even by golden age comic publisher standards.

Rural Home would like a word with you about what counts as being "extraordinarily cheap"!

On 5/11/2022 at 5:10 PM, OtherEric said:

Anyway, I think the page count is the most likely issue, but I think it's possible in some cases streamline never actually got the splash pages to use in their books, since it seems that mostly they weren't getting or using the original covers.

That's a really good point Eric - maybe they were using some coverless copies as the source material, hence the absence of the inside cover splash. I recall Alan Class saying something along those lines about his UK reprint titles. Another possibility to add into the 'what on Earth were they doing' mix. 

On 5/11/2022 at 11:29 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

That's a really good point Eric - maybe they were using some coverless copies as the source material, hence the absence of the inside cover splash. I recall Alan Class saying something along those lines about his UK reprint titles. Another possibility to add into the 'what on Earth were they doing' mix. 

In favor of this theory, I checked the stories where we do have the splash page intact. None of them appear to have been the first feature in their original book (which would -- often -- have had the splash page on the inside front cover). So it's very possible Streamline was working from remaindered or otherwise coverless copies. It'll be interesting to see if that observation holds through the rest of the books.

On 5/11/2022 at 5:42 PM, Qalyar said:

In favor of this theory, I checked the stories where we do have the splash page intact. None of them appear to have been the first feature in their original book (which would -- often -- have had the splash page on the inside front cover). So it's very possible Streamline was working from remaindered or otherwise coverless copies. It'll be interesting to see if that observation holds through the rest of the books.

Excellent. Amazing what we can all deduce isn't it, all these years later.

I better get scanning and posting - only another 14 to do!

@Qalyar @OtherEric

Thinking about it boys, do you think Streamline were doing it illegally?

Thorpe & Porter hid remaindered Marvel and DCs in their 'Double Double' compendium comics and 1967 annuals. Maybe Streamline were crossing their fingers no one would notice ten years or so later - especially with the original content hidden under new covers 

On 5/11/2022 at 9:49 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

@Qalyar @OtherEric

Thinking about it boys, do you think Streamline were doing it illegally?

Thorpe & Porter hid remaindered Marvel and DCs in their 'Double Double' compendium comics and 1967 annuals. Maybe Streamline were crossing their fingers no one would notice ten years or so later - especially with the original content hidden under new covers 

As of right now, I think they're probably legal.  What we're seeing so far is almost entirely Fox reprints, with some stray material from a Star book that may have been reprints itself, or inventory from an unpublished Fox book. There's too much consistency.  I suspect they got a bunch of dirt cheap old inventory stories from the Iger shop.

On 5/11/2022 at 6:00 PM, OtherEric said:

As of right now, I think they're probably legal.  What we're seeing so far is almost entirely Fox reprints, with some stray material from a Star book that may have been reprints itself, or inventory from an unpublished Fox book. There's too much consistency.  I suspect they got a bunch of dirt cheap old inventory stories from the Iger shop.

No, they were banned from doing that by the Iger Sanction.

I'll put a table together at some point to show the story sources in each book, so we can see at a glance the overall source inventory. You know I like tables, don't you Eric  

On 5/11/2022 at 11:49 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

@Qalyar @OtherEric

Thinking about it boys, do you think Streamline were doing it illegally?

Thorpe & Porter hid remaindered Marvel and DCs in their 'Double Double' compendium comics and 1967 annuals. Maybe Streamline were crossing their fingers no one would notice ten years or so later - especially with the original content hidden under new covers 

I think it's very possible that by the time Streamline was "republishing" Fox books, there was no one around to enforce the copyright. Fox -- and its affiliated companies, including Central Color Press, its vertically-integrated printer -- went bankrupt in 1950. Fox's assets got pieced out to several other publishers. Charlton bought rights to some of their superhero material. Star Publications (not the later Marvel imprint) ended up with most of their "jungle" stuff, like Jo-Jo and Rulah. I'm really not sure who -- if anyone -- ended up with the rights to their romance titles. Since they're all one-off stories, it's very likely that no one thought there was any intellectual property of value there.

I find it unlikely that someone bought the rights to the Fox romance books, then actually licensed those rights to a dodgy little British company for republication.

On 5/11/2022 at 6:07 PM, Qalyar said:

I think it's very possible that by the time Streamline was "republishing" Fox books, there was no one around to enforce the copyright. Fox -- and its affiliated companies, including Central Color Press, its vertically-integrated printer -- went bankrupt in 1950. Fox's assets got pieced out to several other publishers. Charlton bought rights to some of their superhero material. Star Publications (not the later Marvel imprint) ended up with most of their "jungle" stuff, like Jo-Jo and Rulah. I'm really not sure who -- if anyone -- ended up with the rights to their romance titles. Since they're all one-off stories, it's very likely that no one thought there was any intellectual property of value there.

I find it unlikely that someone bought the rights to the Fox romance books, then actually licensed those rights to a dodgy little British company for republication.

Nicely deduced, Qalyar. 

Story source table coming up later....

On 5/11/2022 at 10:07 AM, Qalyar said:

I find it unlikely that someone bought the rights to the Fox romance books, then actually licensed those rights to a dodgy little British company for republication.

Iger liked to claim they owned the material they provided to publishers, and were just licensing it out.  That's how Fox wound up with Phantom Lady... Iger claimed it was their character and licensed it to Fox, and Quality either agreed, didn't notice, or didn't care.

I'll let you two battle that one out - here's the draft table:

On 5/11/2022 at 10:36 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'll let you two battle that one out - here's the draft table:

As you command.  @Qalyar, choose your weapons.  I shall be dual wielding back issues of Alter Ego in one hand and scans from the Digital Comic Museum in the other!