Get Marwood & I

That's lovely Gary, thanks. It looks like the copy I have saved in the files as it goes: I checked only the other day to see if I could find an earlier cover dated copy than the October 1959 dated Adventures #112, but no luck - it still leads the ACG pack: They're quiet underloved books aren't they, ACG. Although I recall Mr T liked them.

What else would he say it on?

Summary A total of twenty six Harvey 15c price variants are confirmed to exist between the cover dates of April and October 1972 inclusive Twelve titles bear one or more variant with, currently, no one title having more than three For April - September, each 15c book has a reduced page count of 36 pages compared to the 52 pages of their US distribution counterparts The three known October dated 15c variants all have 20c regular priced counterparts and, therefore, the same page count The circumstantial evidence presented in this journal points strongly to the books being produced for UK / overseas distribution Finally, do we like Little Lotta a Little? No, we like her a Lotta

How many more 15c variants are likely to exist? To recap, there are 102 issues in the 15c variant cover date window of April to October 1972, occupying 41 titles. I have found twenty six 15c variants so far, covering twelve titles. As I noted in my previous post, later 15c variants all have a unique line of indicia wording in place of the absent regular indicia that was removed along with the first four wraps. The regular indicia looks like this... ...but because that wrap is removed in the 15c copy, it needs it's own 'replacement' indicia, or legal wording, which looks like this: That 15c variant specific wording above also appears in the 25c and 35c counterpart versions, on the fifth internal wrap, in all the cases that I have seen where a 15c variant unique indicia exists. It is missing, however, in many of the 25c/35c books that do not currently have a 15c variant indicia confirmed. Accordingly, if a 25c/35c book in the 15c variant date window does not have that replacement 15c indicia wording on its 5th internal wrap, then that is a good indicator that the book may not have had a 15c variant produced. To be able to put the theory into practice, you have to own or get sight of the indicias of the 15c variants and the 5th internal wraps of their regular counterparts. I have many of them, but have a large consignment on order which will help me flesh out this review. In the meantime, here is one example of how it might work: We know from the tables I posted earlier that all eight known 15c variants cover dated September 1972 have unique 15c variant indicias. I also know that their 25c counterparts have that 15c unique indicia at the foot of their 5th internal wrap, or 11th page. If that scenario holds true for all titles, then a look into the 25c versions of the books for which no 15c variant has been found should be revealing - if it has the 15c indicia wording on the 5th wrap, then a 15c variant may well exist. The extract above shows that no 15c variants have been found for the in scope title Wendy Witch World. Issue #45 is a September 1972 dated book. So, if the rule follows true, the presence of the 15c indicia wording on the 11th page will indicate a 15c variant may exist. As we see, it doesn't: Additionally, Wendy Witch World is not a title for which I have found any UK distribution evidence. This makes sense in a way - one Wendy title was enough to satisfy the UK audience. My assumption therefore is that Witch World was not in scope for UK distribution and, therefore, no 15c variant will exist. It is not a watertight indication of course, given the mix of regular and unique indicias in the early months. And the printers may have just forgotten to add it or, indeed, added it to a book that was not in scope (like they forgot to remove the 'Giant Size' logo from Hot Stuff #110). The hobby is littered with variant hiccups and anomalies, where general patterns have one or two examples that buck the trend. But, coupled with the UK distribution title aspect that I cover in the preceding post, it is a reasonable enough theory to present I think in the absence of any alternative. If the title wasn't distributed in the UK, a 15c variant is unlikely. If a title's regular copy has no replacement indicia line on the 5th wrap where expected - certainly for August / September dated books - then again a 15c variant is unlikely. Here are some work in progress tables I am in the process of finessing, as more physical copies come in. Don't take them as gospel just yet: With all this in mind, my belief is that there is at least one more 15c variant bearing title to be discovered - Richie Rich Riches (which would buck my 'only one Wendy' theory), and that there may be an additional six to twelve 15c variants out there to be found. If Richie Rich #114 does turn up incidentally, it will break my earlier 'three variant' maximum statement. I'll continue to keep researching these books, in the hope of building a full set, and will post updated tables as more evidence comes in. As ever, only time will tell if there are indeed more variants out there to be found, and whether the theories I've posed here in this journal entry stand up.

Were the Harvey 15c variants intended for the UK market? And now to my 'why do these books exist' theory. Historically, price variants in the same currency have tended to be an indication of a market test by the publisher, in the home country, to see if the home market will bear an increased price. Most of the main publishers have done it, with the Marvel 30/35 cent variants being the most widely known (and collected). Charltons are my favourite, out of interest, with these Harveys coming in a close second. Under what circumstances though, would a publisher test a lower price in his own country? That doesn’t make much sense, does it, so I can’t see how these Harvey 15c books could relate to some test of US customer buying habits. Much more likely is that the books were produced for a specific purpose, or target audience, that had no market testing element. If the books were intended for a specific purpose within the US, then you would expect the US to be where the majority of the books would subsequently turn up and be found by collectors - people like Mark Arnold who have made the study of the publisher part of their life's work. But the evidence I have gathered to date shows the majority of known copies have been discovered in the UK. Could it be therefore that the specific purpose – the reason they exist - is because they were intended for distribution in the UK, with no home / US aspect? Let’s look at the circumstantial evidence. Firstly, I can confirm that Harvey comics were definitely distributed in the UK, as cents copies with UK price stamps on the covers. I know this because I have been gathering evidence and examples of this distribution for some time now and have examples which cover not only our 1972 15c variant date period, but which date all the way back to 1959. The main identifiable distributor throughout was L Miller & Co, and their branded stamps can be found with 6d, 9d and one shilling prices from 1959 to 1970. Here are just a few of the scores of examples I have gathered to date, one showing each price: So we know that Harvey comics were distributed in the UK in the first instance. Crucially, perhaps, a good number of the known 15c variant copies I have gathered have 6p UK price stamps on them. These three below are not L Miller stamps, but likely the work of the distributor that took over from them (Miller wound up in the early 1970's - a story for another day): In 1972, standard size comics in the UK were priced at 6p. A quick look at the other main US publishers and we see, for the period: Marvel comics were priced at 6p, printed as formal UK Price Variants DC comics were stamped with 6p Thorpe & Porter price stamps for standard size comics, but, tellingly, 7 1/2p for 'giant size' issues Gold Key comics were priced with 6p price stickers, to be followed by 6p printed UK Price Variants Charlton comics were distributed with 6p Thorpe & Porter price stamps and stickers So it was clear that 6p was the standard, desired price of UK retailers at the time the Harvey 15c variants were incepted. When Harvey decided to increase the price of their comics to 25c 'Giant Size' books, any ongoing UK distributor would have been forced to either buy them at a reduced margin to price them at 6p, or price them at 7 1/2p (like the DCs). Could it follow therefore that, on notice that Harvey was planning to increase the size and cost of their books in the US, that the UK distributor would have asked for a '6p/15c' version, to preserve the standard UK comparative price? Maybe Harvey were a hard enough sell at 6p, and an increase to 7 1/2p just would not have flown in the UK. So an agreement could have been made to reduce the content and, therefore, retain the desired, headline 6p UK 15c equivalent price. What do we think? Does that sound plausible, likely even? I've put together this table to show where I found the 26 current confirmed 15c variants: I think this illustrates my argument quite effectively. Twenty three out of twenty six have copies found in the UK, seventeen exclusively, with two each in Germany and Australia (which possibly travelled there from the UK). And of those twenty three found in the UK, seven have 6p UK price stamps on the covers. If these 15c books relate to a US, home-based experiment, then why have they not been found in the US, by US collectors? The answer must surely be because they were all shipped over here, to the UK! If Mark Arnold went to the trouble of writing a 700 page book called “The Harvey Comics Companion”, presumably with input from other like minded Harvey collectors and enthusiasts, then surely that US-centric group would have found the others by now? How can they find three in the US, and I find twenty six from my desk in the UK? The only logical theory is that the books were made for distribution in the UK and have gone largely undetected as a result as the number of UK based Harvey enthusiasts would likely be low. In short, no one has ever looked for them over here. This does not surprise me, as most people in the UK - dealers included - were oblivious to the fact that Charlton produced over 500 UK Price Variants for the UK market until I flagged them up so the fact that these 26 Harvey books went under the radar all this time is no surprise at all. And why would a US researcher focus on the UK when looking for cents priced variants? They'd have no cause to. The final piece of circumstantial evidence lays in the close match between the titles that were known to be imported and distributed in the UK around the time and the titles that, so far, received the 15c variant treatment. Look at the table below and you will see that of the 41 titles in the 15c variant window, 14 were distributed in the UK (evidenced by the aforementioned UK price stamps). Compare that list of fourteen to the twelve 15c variant titles and we see ten of them match (click to enlarge): That can't be a coincidence, the 15c variant titles matching up like that with the UK distributed titles that preceded them. So, until an alternative theory is proposed, or contrary evidence produced, I'm going to run with this theory - the Harvey 15c variants were made for distribution in the the UK (and perhaps a few other non-US locations), the UK being the second largest market for US published comics behind the US themselves. Anyone have an alternative theory?

Are the differences between the 15c variants and the US/Canadian versions always the same? No, is the short answer! In all cases that I have seen, the 25c US and 35c Canadian versions are identical apart from their cover prices, throughout the 15c variant date window at least. We know from the previous entry that our Spooky #132 has four differences but those differences weren't constant throughout the 15c variant date window. I have put the chart below together to show how the differences change from April to October (click to zoom in): As you can see in the 'notes' comments, the indicias of the 15c variants vary by month and issue. Four wraps are removed in each 15c variant to reduce the page count to 36. Where the first internal wrap is removed, the indicia page is lost and a 'replacement' 15c variant specific indicia is present, presumably to fulfil any legal requirement. Here are two further examples showing two Little Dot 15c variants, one with a standard indicia (#143) and one with the 15c variant specific replacement (#145): From the examples captured so far in the above table, we can see that the 15c variants started off with regular indicias and then, towards the end of the run, all had the replacement ones, possibly as the printers got the hang of producing the various distribution versions. Both of the August dated books, and all eight September 15c variants have the unique variant indicia. Then, just as they got the hang of it, the 15c variants ended, likely due to the price change to 20c of many titles. One interesting anomaly - the May dated Hot Stuff #110 is the only book of the 26 variants that retains the 'Giant Size' wording in the top left logo box. This was removed on all other titles, with the 'Giant Size wording' moving to the separate cover blurb (removed from the 15c copies of course). The 15c version of this book is therefore a little misleading, being a 36 page Giant Size comic! It begs the question whether the overall Harvey logo change was brought about by the inclusion of the regular size 15c variants in the production run, doesn't it. If they had retained that original logo they would have had to remove the wording each time from just the 15c copies. Trickier, perhaps, to amend this each time.... ...than to remove this:

Apart from the cover price, how do the Harvey 15c variants differ to their 'regular' US and Canadian distribution counterparts? As I noted earlier, there are three possible versions (all first printings) for each comic in the April ~ October 15c variant cover date window: Standard 20c/25c priced copies for US distribution 35c priced copies for Canadian distribution 15c price variants I managed to track down a copy of all three versions of Spooky #132, a 25c regular US priced book cover dated September 1972.... ....and found these four differences: 1. Cover Price Pretty obvious this one, each version has its own unique cover price – we have the 15c variant price, the ‘regular’ 25c US price and a 35c price for Canadian distribution. Incidentally, Harvey comics in this period do not have pricing noted in their indicia wording, so there are no differences to detect there where present. 2. Cover Blurb The 25c US and 35c Canadian versions both have 52 pages and carry a ‘Giant 52 Pages’ cover blurb accordingly. This blurb is absent from the 15c variant copy however, as it has a reduced page count (see difference #4) 3. Spine wording The ‘Giant Size’ wording, present on the 25 and 35c versions, is also absent from the spine of the 15c variant. The printers got 'em both! 4. Internal Page Content Whilst the 25c and 35c versions, of course, have the 52 pages that their cover blurbs announce, the 15c variant is missing the first four wraps, coming in at 36 pages. This doesn’t affect any of the story content by the way, as Harvey titles tended to comprise a number of short stories and we are just missing a few of them. The indicia is therefore absent from the 15c version as a result of the missing first wrap, but a separate line of ‘replacement’ legal wording is present (see images below). Interestingly, that wording is repeated in the 25 and 35c versions on their 5th wraps accordingly, indicating that the 'guts' were printed as one lot, used for all versions. As we will see in a later post, the presence of this additional wording may be an indicator as to whether a 15c variant exists for the other books and titles in the date range for which a variant copy has yet to be found. 15c version 'replacement' indicia: 25c version regular indicia: In addition to the above, I put the graphic below together to illustrate the four Spooky differences:

What is currently known to exist? So far I have found a total of twenty six Harvey 15c price variants between the cover date months of April and October 1972 inclusive. I've plotted them on a chart, as I always do, and here is the extract showing just the titles for which a 15c variant has been found (click on it to zoom in): Between those cover dates, Harvey released a whopping 41 titles with 102 books in the frame for a possible 15c variant. Clearly, if I were to find a 15c variant outside those dates, the numbers would expand, but my research so far indicates that this is unlikely (I'll explain why later in this journal entry). Of the 41 ongoing titles in the window, twelve currently have one or more 15c variant confirmed: Friendly Ghost Casper #163 Hot Stuff, the Little Devil #110, 111, 112 Little Dot #143, 144, 145 Little Dot Dotland #53 Little Lotta #102, 103 Playful Little Audrey #101, 103 Richie Rich #113, 115, 116 Sad Sack #226, 227, 228 Sad Sack and the Sarge #95, 96, 97 Spooky #132 Tuff Ghosts Starring Spooky #42, 43 Wendy, The Good Little Witch #74, 75 Here's one of each title that I currently own: So far, no one title has yielded more than three 15c variants. This 'no more than X variants' scenario exists quite a bit in my variant work, and it is often the case that sets of variants have a maximum number that no one title ever breaks. So even though there are several titles with four issues within the April-October window, I do not expect any of them to yield more than three 15c variants. Except maybe Richie Rich. I'll explain why later in the journal - it relates to what the internal content tells us. All regular US distribution Harveys in the April to September period are priced at a 'Giant Size' 25c. The October books are priced at either 25c or 20c, with the majority at 20c. All the October 15c variants I have found have 20c regular US copies, so there are currently two sets of variances by price: 15c/25c (April-September) 15c/20c (October) Some of you reading will already be aware that the books in the April-October 1972 15c variant date window also qualify for 35c priced Canadian distribution copies too, so there are actually three possible variations for each book to look for if you are feeling adventurous. You can read more about the 35c priced copies here, in a rather splendid article written by a chap called Sal and two fellow researcher friends of mine, Bill and Ben. Here are the current 26 known 15c issues in their folders, which comprise examples of each book type where found - 15c, 20/25c and 35c: They look nice, don't they

What's that you say? The mystery of the Harvey 15c variants, you say? Never heard of them! Well, I certainly hadn't until last year when, whilst researching the distribution of Harvey comics in the UK by our old friends L Miller & Co, I happened across a book on eBay proclaiming an unexpected cover price. "Oh", I thought, "I didn't know there were price variants for these?", and I started Googleating. I like to think I'm quite good at Googleating now, after years of scouring online for variants, but I couldn't find anything about them. Not one reference, one comment, one loving blog column - nothing. And not one copy on the GCD either, or in any of the usual comic places (including here). Odd. More in depth Googling ensued until I finally found one reference in a wonderful book called 'The Harvey Comics Companion' by Mark Arnold, which I duly purchased. Here's what it had to say, on page 411: "These (Hot Stuff #110, 111 and Little Dot #143) are the only Harvey books known to have these variants": "Blimey" I thought, "Only three examples? These are rare", so I started looking for them. Oddly, given the obvious pedigree of Mr Arnold, I soon found quite a few more than the three listed and I thought "Aye, aye, I'm on to something here...." Fast forward a year or so and not only have I found a whopping 26 examples, but I've also, I think, established why they exist. That doesn't happen often - the what and the why. And happily, given my UK credentials, I think they exist because we - The UK - exist. I'm going to drop Mark Arnold a line shortly, to let him know what more I've found and it will either be a pleasant surprise for him or he's been keeping updates quiet for the next volume of the Harvey Companion (go buy it by the way, it's brilliant). Mark, if you're reading, Hello Anyway, Harvey 15c price variants exist for at least 26 books dated between April and October 1972. Amazing really, to be posting this information, in depth, for what appears to be the first time, when the books themselves are 50 years old this very year. Happy Birthday, books. Here's a nice looking example, with its 20c regular US copy alongside it: Cracking cover, isn't it. And notice how Harvey always chopped the code off? Read on, if you're interested, for the full fifteen cent variation low down!

Collector! Mostly of things that others don't

I think the system is now set so that you can't edit a first PM in a new PM stream, but I've never had a problem editing subsequent ones - just that recurring duplication for me. It seems that issues affect members differently nowadays and we don't seem to get consistency in our problems anymore. Which itself is a problem, I suppose

Yeah, not a big deal, as losing PMs is, just thought it might be linked and help drive out a solution.

Oh, look, now you're just taking the piss

Why limit it to Mars Bars?

I have a related recurring, but curiously opposing experience. I send a PM, and it works. I then think of something else to add, go to create an additional PM comment, and when I click to begin typing, the previous successful post is duplicated again, but without the 'clear editor' message that you should get when a previous post was not sent for some reason. I have to manually clear the body text, to start typing my next comment. Not sure if that helps explain anything - some people are losing PMs - I'm doubling them!

PM me. I will look for it. I will find it. And I will PM it back to you.

Who was it? Whisper it

CGC Admin64 would never have made that mistake

GG changes his name and avatar more often than his pants

I'm on Chrome and it's there, GAC. Go to Mike's profile page as below by clicking on his avatar - look for the little clock arrow to the right of his name: Click on that: And you should get this pop up: The name change history dates back to when the Invision software went live, so most members will have name changes for the last five years. I have seen some go missing though, including my own. No idea why. If you don't see the arrow symbol, then the member has either not changed their board name, or they did and it pre-dates the last update. It is on my Mobile device too, on the profile page. Try Mike and see if it's there .

Blue

Good man. Shocking for someone so young. Just shows you how fragile life is.

What an awful tragedy. As a mark of respect, should we add his name to the thread title?

I love the ad page there. Get Gold Key Would that be rare Andy, a Barks signature in a book?