Get Marwood & I

Can someone tell me - is GEEzusWalks of previous good character? Has anyone had any issues with them? If not, how about a compromise and a rule tweak. That would be that you have to be found to 'pull a book' twice to be added to the PL. That way, any seller who is the innocent victim of outrageous circumstances can carry on. If they do it twice though, they get punished until they make the second complainant whole. There is no definitive proof that GW did what he is being accused of - pretending to have lost a book which was underpriced so as to not lose out financially. So if he is of previous good character, should we not fall on the side of innocent until proven guilty? Now that GW has had his reputation trashed - rightly on wrongly - in these long running threads, do you not think that - if he is innocent - that in no circumstances will he delete pictures again prior to completing a sale etc? If he did, and pulled the same excuse, there would be no argument that he shouldn't be punished. And we all know how long everyone's memories are around here for shenanigans. The buyer did not lose any money. They were refunded. They potentially lost the money they could have gained by flipping, but they are not out of pocket. Annoyed - yes - but not out of pocket. So punishing someone for not letting someone else make money off of their ignorance / error seems a little harsh to me, as a one off. Everyone can make a mistake. Everyone can find themselves in one of those outrageous scenarios where a sequence of events stack up as if the Universe is hell bent on punishing you - sell the book, find it's underpriced, then you can't find it, oh God I'm going to look bad here, you've deleted the pictures, oh no surely not etc etc. Very unlikely, but it can happen. So give people of previous good character a chance. Do it twice? Throw the book at them. Is that fair? What if he's suicidal as a result of all the abuse he's facing / faced? We've had threads recently from people appearing to be in trouble. What if he feels that stating his position once or twice is enough? What if he feels that the abuse he has faced is out of all proportion and has decided to leave the boards? We don't know. Do we give people of previous good character a chance, or do we throw the book at them based on - admittedly strong - circumstantial evidence for a crime in which no one lost anything that they already had (except a reputation maybe)?

"Whassat? What'd you say?"

Great, thanks Joseph. A fun task to have! I'll be interested to see if you find any titles that I have missed, or books that are dated outside of the current known ranges. I'll post the key body of your website article here for those that might like to read it. Your explanation of the 'first wave' being produced first, and without Marvel's knowledge, is quite groundbreaking information. I don't plan to debate it here, despite having a number of questions myself, and will instead keep an eye on your ongoing discussions with Ben over at Wordpress Towers. Good luck! Australian Premiere Editions (APE) By Joseph Italiano There has been a lot of misinformation about these US Marvel comics printed specifically for the Australian newsstand market in the early nineties. They have been described as 1A variants (which applies to some other editions printed for other countries), but this is not accurate. The 1A status was simply arrived at with the limited information available at the time. The information presented here was obtained by us, first hand, from the Australian Marvel Sales rep, whose job was to increase Marvel comic newsstand sales. At the time, circa 1990, we (Alternate Worlds) were supplementing our direct market purchases with local newsstand editions, (since newsstand editions here were released two months after we had already received the direct market copies). This meant if a book was to unexpectedly become popular and sell out, we still had a source to restock the book. Alternate Worlds was (at that time) purchasing through the newsstand distributor Gordon & Gotch (G&G). Circa 1990, G&G "lost" the rights to distribute Marvel comics in Australia. We obviously began buying from the new distributor Network (NDD). The Australian Marvel Sales rep. approached us before hand to tell us about the new Australian editions that were going to be produced. He was so buzzed about the new more collectable editions that would increase Marvel’s newsstand sales in this country. (We had direct contact with the Australian Marvel Sale rep, as we were a distributor too). To alleviate some of the problems they were having with delayed release times and the "damage" caused by the local newsstand "defacing" comics with Australian price modifications and return dates, resulted in the Australian Premiere Editions (APE). Up until now these editions have been termed Type 1A cover price variant. Type 1A variants are standard US editions that were printed with the local country's currency price. There are a number of differences between Type 1A books and APE, as follows: 1. APE books have a different cover month to that printed inside the book. It is not just the price that has been changed. The reason for this, is that the new distributor wanted to avoid newsstand writing anything on the cover (to preserve collectability). The month on the cover was the month the comic would be available until, on the newsstand in Australia. Like the US theory, they were hoping to extend the lifespan of the comic on the shelf for more than one month. 2. The APE books were collated first, before any other editions. This was so the lag time between US editions release and Australian edition release would be reduced. As soon as these books were printed, they were shipped, while the regular US editions were yet to be completed. We are unsure how much time difference there was between the editions, but in any case, they can be identified as the first of the print run. After about a year of this practice, Alternate Worlds broke the news about APE's. APE's are the “first” print runs of the US books. As soon as this fact came out and Marvel head office realized that some pencil pusher down the line had effectively made all their comics “second” editions, they took immediate action. I presume that after they became aware of the APE concept, although the Australian variants were still produced, only the first years of books are actually APE and after that they are just Australian variants. Facts about APE's 1. Print runs for APE for the Australian newsstand market was 2000-4000 per book. 2. Many local collectors, shunned Australian cover price editions as they thought they were inferior to the US cover editions (many thought they were local reprints), so most newsstand sales were to casual readers. The remaining non-sold copies were pulped. Estimates (depending on title) suggest that most books had a survival rate of 5%-10% and those that did survive are usually in low grade condition. These “variants” are vert rare. 3. Not all Marvel titles were distributed on the newsstand in Australia, but all books that were, were from 1991 cover date. 4. During this short time, many key books were released. These include: a. New Mutants #98 (1st deadpool) b. Silver Surfer #47 (1st Infinity Gauntlet) 5. This whole exercise was not a “Marvel experiment”. Marvel head office let their reps do there thing and were unaware of this experiment until we broke the news in 1992 with our ads in the CBG (Comic Buyers Guide), selling these books and a prominent back issue dealer contacted Marvel about the books after buying some from us. Marvel denied everything. This then prompted Marvel head office to contact us about the issue. The local agents created this entire concept without specific knowledge from their superiors. Since we did not want to put Marvel offside, we backed down even though we knew that the APE editions are identifiable as being the first of the print run (at least for the first year or so) and the regular US editions are technically second editions. Now that so much time has passed, it is no longer an issue for Marvel any more.

I knew it! Intriguing isn't it. I found the images online some time back and on first glance thought it looked like a 'proper' price variant. Everything looks the same (front and back) and the UK price sits alongside the 10c price indicating that it might not be a reprint. I ran it by Andy @goldust who knows much more than me about the history of comics and he advised it was a Canadian book printed at the same time as the Canadian copy, but with a 6d price added for the UK market. It's the only one of it's kind that I've seen and I doubt I'll ever get the chance to buy both to compare them. Being Canadian, it sits outside of my research strand anyway (UK price variants of US published / printed material) so it's not like it's the eighth confirmed publisher or anything. Interesting difference in the colouring between the two copies, although that could be the image / scanner.

A knob short of a bunk up

I'm going to collect Banksy. Shouldn't take long, there's only one of him.

Der, der d-der, der d-der, der-d-der-d-der, duhn nan. Duhnan. 

I say!

The cover to 141 is on Google I see. I'll dig the files out at the weekend.....

Black Knight, Black Kni-ight, I bought two - taint right Der, der d-der, der d-der, der-d-der-d-der, duhn nan. Duhnan.

Knighty knight

I'm going to have to dig my old files out and report back. I saved a load of ebay sales pictures back in the day

Cheers Nes I'll post an update at the weekend. The spreadsheet is showing a number of titles all stopping at the same time, coinciding with a cover price change, so it's getting easier to speculate how many there may end up being. No new titles on the website from Joseph above so far.

That's my kind of graph Reggie! And files. Oh yes So I'm reading it right, is that saying that ASM #141, 149, 168, 174 and 175 have no confirmed pages?

Cup of tea?

Run, it's a pence copy! Run!

Nevermind all that ADAMANTIUMTEETUM. That first one is six dee in Gt Br

Even better. Take that!

Luverly....

What's all this crap you've posted in my thread Rakehell!

I must confess that I had the same suspicions. I too hope that there is nothing serious going on. Steve has done some quite magnificent work and it would be a shame were he not to publish it somewhere in some form. Don't listen to The Count. He's just Marwood with an extra o. The Carnival (of Monsters) is over when I say it is.

I refer the Honourable Gentleman to the reply John Morlar gave earlier.

Someone shot him Fog. All is well. Apart from the being shot thing.