Get Marwood & I

When I was about 17, I used to go to a small comic shop down an alley near Tottenham Court Road. I went there regularly, and always left my bag at the counter which was the owner's - a proper misery guts - policy to stop people nicking things. One day I decided to sell all my Doctor Who memorabilia so I could buy some clothes to look half decent (that's another story). He bought the lot and paid me a pittance. About enough for a jumper. The next week, I went back to see if the latest Doctor Who Bulletin was in. It was always in the same place, just in the doorway, so I just stuck my head in to see if it was there. He promptly banned me, ordered me out and said "You never leave your bag". It may have been a case of mistaken identity, but I had the presence of mind to call him a tosser, reminding him that he'd only just ripped me off the previous week. Anyway, they knocked it down in the end. With a bit of luck he was still in there.

Was she pissed?

I had the British version of that video with the hologram! Such a good film that, back in the day. Even now, despite seeing it about eighty five times, I get excited when the craft opens for the first time, the welcome mob are bathed in light, and......

You've won it twice? That's just taking the piss Greg. Do you think they could make you a newsstand plaque this time? Put a barcode on it or something.

Ah, the rare .2p variant

Good luck

Indeed. You have to jump through hoops, trying to make their site better. A bit like CGC really.

Spot on. It's a great resource, and one I'd love to support, but adding books to it is like pulling teeth. Add to that that they insist on cropped images. Cropped images make it harder to gauge authenticity. And then there's their naming conventions. Apart from that, excellent.

I want to shop there. There was a fabulous old bookshop in Stratford back in the day. I used to go there in my lunch hour and, if I was lucky, find a PKD or two in the musty basement. It looked just like that actually - it was run by a bear.

This is the (CGC) card collectors forum @KaileeS CS - is this something you can help @Sensei_jay with?

Apparently, it got so bad in one meeting that they threw him out of a twenty story window. "Flying Saucerman" was the subsequent news headline.

Cool cover isn't it. I love the greyed out but fabulously detailed coach, and the colour speech bubble edging. He was on a roll on these books, wasn't he

I wish set ups like this still existed. Back in the day you could find old comics everywhere. Little stalls in markets here and there, corners of shops, boxes outside on the pavement. Individual shops are rare now - every town looks the same. I remember the walk from Rodney's in Barking up to Ilford in the 1980s. There were two or three places on route that had back issues. Just single shops owned by people rather than chains that sold everything and anything. There was one sort of junk shop on route that had boxes on the pavement and inside. Such a different world and, whilst it was 30 or 40 years ago now, it still feels like yesterday to me. I think the post war, pre-internet decades, for all their faults, were the best time to be alive myself.

They passed the recruitment process.

Just as it should Patricia! Here's the Nine Dee You Kay Pee Vee:

Congratulations to all the registry set winners! And to the three new FsOTY! @Hudson @Prince Namor @valiantman @wytshus That's a great write up of the winning sets

Mis-ta Bloo Skeye-eye....

No.

Hold on - what's that banner that bloke's holding say? Bottom right. I can't quite make it out Albert

Well that Kimota the blue. Sorry

I spotted this lot on eBore in the week - lots of Miller's Book Exch. stamps and stickers in evidence (love that 9d sticker): The seller was Philip. I know this because I wrote to him, not because I recognised his sock in the picture. He said: A bit of Googleation later and I find it's still there! So I email the manager of the market and after a chaser get this from Helen: Nothing since. @Albert Tatlock Albert, you're a Northerner aren't you. Going to Brick Bradford anytime soon? Is this theirs, or nay!

Wizzard sighting!

All good fun. I've got another distribution snippet to post later which is interesting. Just got to look something up first. I quite like these old fanzines. Here we go. Remember when I did the DC stamp number plotting exercise and took a selected group of titles all the way up to cover date 1970? And, towards the end, the number sequencing went from the broadly monthly (shipments) of the early cycles to show a lot of bunching in the latter cycles which, if replicated in practice, would have meant that shops got a few successive issues at the same time? Well this snippet, while referring to 1971, indicates that that sort of thing was indeed happening: This is from Fantasy Domain #4. The title started in 1972, so maybe those distribution problems were happening before 1970 too, hence the bunching on my plotting tables. Two separate bits of evidence pointing in the same direction is always a good thing, isn't it