Get Marwood & I

Seems it can mean many things.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILY_sign

They did, yes. I believe they were cereal box printers or something like that. Definitely. I love all the variations that come with Charlton multiples. No two copies the same! Lippy the Lizard will testify to this @lizards2 That seems to be a widespread opinion / industry view - printing 200K didn't cost much more than 100K - even more so if you did it yourself 'on the cheap'. But if you know from previous sales figures that you will always sell around X of a given ongoing title, why double that figure? Double the paper cost, double the ink cost, double the time. Storage, delivery - everything potentially twice what it needed to be. Why carry that on for years, knowingly doubling your workload? If a shop gets 10 copies, and always sells around 5, why engineer to have all the additional operational activities that are associated with the production and eventual disposal of the other 5? You probably need to have worked in the industry to understand it all, but on the face of it it seems operationally self defeating. Why not a 10% excess, or 20%? Why 100% (as appears to be the case)?

Something a little different here - maybe I've been living under a rock all my life but I never knew that this hand gesture meant 'I love you' until I spotted this eBay auction the other week: So all these years, Spidey has actually been telling his enemies that he loves them... "I love you, Mysterio"

I don't think so Albert, for Dell if that's what you mean, as the printed UKPVs ended in mid-1961 and the T&P stamped cents copies don't kick in until mid-1962. There appears to be a transition period which I'll post about one day in the Dell thread with a proliferation of a certain unbranded stamp type and of course there are lots of miscellaneous stamps and stickers to be found out there in numbers too low to indicate anything systematic. But I don't think Ethel would ever have had Dell UKPVs and cents copies in front of her at the same time. The same goes for UK shopkeepers I think, if extant copies with discernible UK markings on are anything to go by.

Nice. I love a stamp fight

I compiled them over many years collecting as a Spidey completist, referencing a group of others doing the same. Between us, we never found any of the missing issues with a jewellers insert. Specifically in respect of ASM #234, that issue had a bespoke insert (Marvel Guide to Collecting Comics) which was likely the reason for the MJI omission. Enough avid collectors were on the hunt, over many years, so if one of the 'missing' issues were to appear now it would likely be a construct, i.e. someone built it post production for a laugh or to try to make money. Here's a good attempt at that - good in the sense that it stands out from fifty miles away as being a fake:

...missing the fact that it already had a printed shilling price....

Great blog - I took a peek this morning. It makes me want to do something similar. Maybe one day. Yes, it's one of those things we may never know, isn't it. Keep digging though, and I'll keep an eye for a Car 54 #3..... You might enjoy this thread below, Baggs. Some UK stuff in there too:

I've started threads on all seven UKPV bearing publishers Baggs, by the way. I thought I could annoy seven times more people that way. The journal summary for Dell is here, with a link to the discussion thread within it:

I have cents priced Thorpe & Porter stamped Dells ranging from mid-1962 through to 1966. Your Car 54 #3 was cover dated October 1962, with an Oct/Dec reprint, so falls into that possible UK distribution date range. I don't have a stamped copy of that particular issue in the files, but do have an issue #4: I'm just in from a day on the road, so will read your blog tomorrow

Nothing beats that, does it. Your early experience with comics, as a kid, when it was all real and you believed in it. Nigh on fifty years later, we're still recalling those first experiences here. I've created a lot of threads on this forum over the last six years, and poured a lot of energy and enthusiasm into them. Some chart the results of decades of mucking about with comics but most relate to the latter years of my life when the pursuit of variant detail took over from actually reading the damn things. Don't get me wrong, I've loved gathering lost and forgotten information about books that no one cares about and my old Charlton thread will always be a personal favourite. But of all of them, this is the one I'm most glad that I started as it comes from that original innocent starting point - the love of your first comics. It covers the characters I've loved the most, from the time when comics meant the most. If I never post here again - you never know what's around the corner, do you - I'd be more than happy for this to be the last thing I write about comics. My fond recollections of the perpetually down on his luck Peter Parker, his courageous alter ego Spider-Man who always tried to do the right thing whatever the personal cost and the whole original gang, perfectly rendered by the long since departed Ross Andru - a man we can never meet to thank - and using just a pencil, his obvious talent and a no doubt trusty camera. Thanks Reggie.

We've only found three copies between us. So they likely don't. Fit in, I mean.

Oh. Can't say that either.

It's all gone to , hasn't it.

@pompeylad Aren't you glad you came back, Baggs

I don't see the problem, Richmond. Jiffy Bumsnot was in accounts at Thorpe & Porter, wasn't she? You can't get more relevant than that. And didn't she marry a bloke from distribution called Watt? Changed her name to Jiffy Bumsnot-Watt, which used to cause some confusion in the office. "Hey, where's Bumsnot?" "What?" "Sorry, Bumsnot-Watt. I forgot she got married" "What?"

Philip K is one of the words on the forum the profanity filter, Albert. Regrettably, it can be both a persons name and another word for schlong. Schlong isn't on the filter. So if you want to use the Philp K word in a derogatory manner, just call your target a great big schlong head and it will pass the filter. But Don't ever call Philip Philip K Schlong. That would just be silly. See also Grayson and Van Dyke.

Welcome back Baggers. I remember you. If you want to change your name back to Baggsey, and don't know how, drop me a line and I'll show you how Coolio in the Glasshouse! The all important question, Baggs - did your DC#272 have a T&P price stamp? Thanks for these - I note that none of them are earlier than those I've recorded to date... ....and none are on my "missing" list. I'll cross reference the stamp numbers though, later, as I like to have images of any with differing numbers. I suppose I should do an update on this soon. I've been adding to, but not reporting on the 'missing list'. Nice to see you back

237 was the figure I always worked on, and I went into this in some depth back in the day: #289 was the only one where there was a suggestion that it existed (can't recall from where now), but I never found evidence to support it myself and the fact that it was a double sized issue made it all the more unlikely.

Thinking about it, I may have confused Jonty with Juniper Blunderslut, that other well known UK distributor of the time. Easy mistake to make, Daphers

I've got a few JBs in the files. I think his name was 'Jonty Bitchcrack'.

Says the man who probably has fifty eight copies in a box he's long forgotten about, under another box with another sixteen in it. Probably

Keep the noise down or you might start a stampede.

I lost track of how many ways the Kid was priced in the end: The Bermuda stamp may well have been a Gold Star one. Similar font. Circles, Oblongs, Triangles. Maybe Golders watched Play School as a pipe and slipper....

That whole Doc Ock storyline stayed with me. I always felt sorry for him when he turned up at May's again, in tramp mode. Then asks Peter for a piece of chicken after he's had a wash and brush up. "May's a good woman. Better than I deserve" he said, or words to that effect. The oddest things stay with you, don't they. Like the squashed bird I mentioned earlier in the thread from ASM #153. I think it was 153, anyway, without checking. The football one. The power of charm, with a dash of nostalgia. Oh, and Andru art of course.