Get Marwood & I

The board profanity filter wiped it!

Current Andru Super Spidey World Indoor Participation Event ( for short) participants: Stevie Jackie Garie Reggie Sounds like the members of a pop group

I, for one, see what you did there. You can never have too many puns. I like a good pun Math Teacher Singular. The trick is not to over-think them.

Really Gary? I never knew.

Oh, look at them The one on the left looks familiar but I've no idea about the image sources for the other two Even jigsaws were better back in the day. Modern life is indeed rubbish, isn't it. If only comparatively.

@Garystar From now on, this will be in my mind when I think of you Gary: Come to think of it, there's got to be a jigsaw of Jigsaw, surely

That's the current thinking, yes.

March-April 1965 indicia dates: ....vs July-August Marvels....

In respect of the Marvel November 1971 6p stickered copies (with 8p printed prices underneath), whose mistake do you think it was Rich?

Goodie, let's see who else bites... @Garystar Gary - you a jigsaw man?

No worries Joe, good luck. Some books are annoying like that - 98% near mint plus and 2% fine minus. It's working out the overall grade in the middle that's the hard bit.

Well, it's subjective, grading, as we know, and I tend to be harsh, so if I was putting that up for sale on eBay myself I'd likely call it a VFN at best. The creases are magnified by the black edge which pushes me away from grading it as a NM of any description (9.0, 9.2 etc). It's difficult without having the book in hand of course - every one of those ticks likely means the book was folder at some point to create them but it may be better or worse in hand. Photos never do it justice. I'm sure others will chime in at some point but I'm as confident as I can be that CGC would not give that a 9.4, if that was your hope. Always a nice book to own though, a Hobby Gobby.

Who's up for a Spidey competition then, with this jigsaw? Once I've got it back from my sister who's dying to give it a go (seeing her tomorrow, then again the following Friday) I'll do it again, time myself and post the results here. I'll then post it to the next volunteer who can do the same and so on. I'll include a results sheet in with it so each successive player can record their scores and add any notes before passing it on to the next player. It'll be a bit of fun and something to look forward in the thread - each players attempts as the parcel travels around the world and seeing their pictures here of the completed puzzle. Anyone like to do that, and add themselves to the player list? Obviously there will be a cost involved for each player, the posting on to the next player. If we run out of players, the winner gets to keep it. I'll give Reggie @Spider-Variant first refusal seeing as he more or less keeps the thread alive - post here if you'd like to play

I think I see quite a few colour breaking spine creases Joe, sorry, so unless my eyes are deceiving me, I think 9.4 is unlikely.

One thing I've thought about doing is trying to put together a one page map of the history of the books distributed in the UK for the first 5 years from 1959/1960. Just for the sake of crude illustration, something like this: It would be nice to try and illustrate which publishers books came over (either UKPV or stamped), who distributed / solicited them (Miller, T&P), where they were sold (and whether that was regional or full UK) and what happened to the unsold copies. It could be fleshed out with dates and detail but still be a useful manageable one page summary, I think. So for Charlton, we know that their books came to the UK in that first 5 year period, we know who distributed them (Miller, T&P, RV) and their respective cover dates, we know in what manner (printed UKPV and stamped cents) and the current anecdotal evidence that I have indicates that they were distributed only in certain regions of the UK. And I see no evidence of a SOR arrangement - no remaindered compendiums, no half price stamps - which indicates that they maybe were sold or binned. I used to do a lot of process mapping in one of my old jobs, so I'm confident it could at least look snazzy. And I have enough factual evidence in the files to populate something for every publisher for whom UK distribution evidence exists. A job for another day perhaps.

Fair enough.

Robot, have a read of this post - the '@' tags you're doing aren't working mate: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/314118-the-n00b-guide/?do=findComment&comment=11714832

Good post - this is why I was hoping you'd join in - you've spent a lot of time investigating the history of the publishers themselves, looking for answers, while I've tended to use the comics themselves to tell the story. I still think the process for unsold copies differed by area / shop, but much of the evidence does indeed point to a SOR model for DC. I think to much credence is placed on the DD's though as they are predominantly DC (just a handful of Marvels) and had a limited life. What about the returns for (the majority of the other) Marvel comics, Charlton, Archie etc? Did the DC returns process exist just for the lifetime of Double Double comics? What about before and after? And where does Miller fit into the jigsaw? He was importing Marvel (for a bit), Charlton, IW, Harvey on and off throughout the 1960's. Why aren't there 'DD' equivalents for the unsold copies of those?

Yes, my observation was limited to 'the sample period'. I think we've posted quite a few examples of T&P stamped UKPVs either here or in my other threads. That is definitely a thing - lots of possible reasons for it happening I would imagine.

I can't remember the last time I read the OPG grading definitions and had forgotten that that reference was even in it As I noted last night, I've not seen enough examples of this myself for it to register as a thing in the UK Rich. That doesn't mean it wasn't happening of course, perhaps in a localised way / area - you'd imagine the majority of such books might have been chucked away, so perhaps there just aren't enough examples out there to prove it either way. I wouldn't take an OPG US procedural comment myself as necessarily applying to the UK though.

Not when you put it like that, no! That's one area I need to brush up on actually, reading the various reference books about the early Marvel days. I'm guessing there's nothing in them specifically about the arrangements made by Timely / Marvel with Miller and T&P?

Depends which way they were working Gary - up or down! Could the 77 be the year and the 18 the product number? Hard to imagine that there were 7717 other products preceding it?

Pair of fatties aren't they. Put me in mind of Razorback for some reason. It's a curious choice for a jigsaw image isn't it. In fact, the one I got seems to be the only satisfying image - the rest are a bit random aren't they. Odd choices when you consider the issues that they were working from, and all the classic Andru poses that were available to select.

Good man Gaz! I recognise the fourth as another Andru swipe too.