themagicrobot

Alas it’s not the first time you’ve told me to get out Hence my reaction this week.

@Get Marwood & I Stop and think how it looks for a moment. You quote me (why?) and then say “who cares” Just because you start a thread doesn’t mean you own it. I’ve always tried to show some positivity in my posts here. Try it. PS I would have laughed at the “who cares” if it didn’t contain a link to the dead Class thread. That was just rude.

I see you're back to your normal mode of telling me I'm posting in the wrong thread. AGAIN. Give it a rest eh?? WHO CARES.

Here are a couple more tatty comics. This Uncanny Tales is unusual. It actually contains two complete consecutive Daredevil stories (Nos 57 and 58). Alan more usually printed stuff randomly. I assume with the dual pricing that the comic originally appeared in late 1970 or early 1971. So the material was quite recent. Other Class comics at the time published Spider-Man material from a similar time. How and why did he manage to get hold of this when most of his other stuff was from the late 1950s/early 1960s? Was it a lucky accident? Odhams had finished with the Marvel reprints and Marvel UK was still in the planning stage so I guess the material was fair game for a period. Thorpe and Porter's Race for the Moon No 1 for once does actually contain the contents of Harvey's first issue (along with Man in Black tales to fill all the "Big 68 pages". Later issues, when they had used up the Harvey material, continued with Atlas, ACG and even the odd DC strip.

L. Miller certainly covered all the bases. From Adult magazines, horror, westerns right through to Nursery Age books. There were a bewildering number of "Jolly Miller" books. I'm not really sure what age group they were aimed at. They were just cut-and-paste jobs full of grainy photos of Trains, Planes, Ships etc along with nursery rhyme stuff. I'm surprised to see the prices being asked for Captain Video comics. I'm also surprised to notice that the first two issues cost 9d and contained alternate colour pages. That experiment quickly ended and No 3 was back to black and white and a 6d price. Most of their comics were 6d until the introduction of the squarebound Shilling Mystics etc. PS: I don't think UK readers would have had a clue what the Dumont Television Network was. At the time the comic was published we still only had just the one TV channel (Auntie Beeb) and our first commercial TV channel began in 1955. I wonder if they showed Captain Video? Even in the US the Dumont Television Network will be forgotten being as it only broadcast from 1940 to 1956.

I was always taught not to run with scissors. Flying with them could be equally dangerous. PS: Yes, I had to look at it twice. It does say "the greatest news of the ear" ?!?

I wonder if this letter is genuine or really written by the Editor? I was surprised by the results of a competition. This shows Miller's did have national coverage, reaching Scotland, Northern Ireland and remote outposts like Tottenham, Paddington and even Monument Road Birmingham. I think I can picture the two newsagents round the corner from there where young John may have purchased his Captain Marvel comic. I wonder if he noticed/approved a few weeks later when it turned into Marvelman and his Captain Marvel fan club badge was suddenly obsolete.

Wow. I hadn't noticed that. Vaccines for TB/Consumption only rolled out slowly for school age children in the UK from the mid 1950s. So in 1953 Norma was in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stannington_Sanatorium Who says comics aren't educational.

Whilst everyone is still in a Miller frame of mind, here is No 17 and a glimpse of what it contained (apart from the Fawcett strips). I wonder if any of the "kids" featured are still alive??

I own just one Miller Captain Tornado. It appears to be a band dessinee (ie: French in origin). The small print says it comes from SNPI 22 Rue Bergere Paris. I think if you look closely you can see where they changed text/word balloons. (See also Pango and Sergeant O'Brien). Your copy mentions Agence Arcadie also of Paris.

There are actually at least three variations. Don't forget this "U K Edition" one. The "shield" stamps and that big 2/6 stamp always look so clear, unlike many of the fuzzy T&P stamps that I wonder if they were done by machine? This third one was perhaps done by hand. I'm not prepared to spend £90 to check more closely

Yesterday I found a copy of Jigsaw No 1 and Adventures into the Unknown 4 in a box file mixed in with some 1970s Marvel UK comics. They hadn't seen the light of day for 30 years. So today I decided to collect the full run of Jigsaw. This seemed an attainable goal being as there were only two issues. They are still reasonably priced/so rubbish no one wants them (choose the phrase you prefer). So when exactly did L. Miller cease trading?? The few available sources say 1966. This Harvey comic has a cover date of December 1966 and was on sale in the US from the 15th September 1966 so I suppose it could have rocked up in the UK in late 1966 but it may have arrived in early 1967? As it displays a Miller ink stamp it must have been one of the last comics they distributed?? Discuss. PS: Typing "Jigsaw Comic" into eByGumBay I discovered these. I own a couple of Warren jigsaws I never knew there were such things as Charlton jigsaws. Why anyone would want to sell/buy a jigsaw with missing pieces is beyond me. PPS: Have you noticed how Harvey comics often have their titles obscuring the Comic Code stamp whilst ACG makes sure the Comic Code stamp obscures their title. PPPS: Here is the back cover of that Adventures into the Unknown No 4. I guess it would be up to Gladys and Ethel to send out copies of the Justice Traps the Guilty Album. It would make a change from price stamping for the staff but I doubt if there would be a mad rush from the UK public for such a (quite expensive at the time) niche publication. You deface your comic by cutting out the coupon. Then you send it to "the address at the bottom". But the T&P address is at the top of the coupon? So to London? Or to Gladys and Ethel at Leicester?

@OtherEric Of the thousands of UK hardback Annuals there were Muppet ones of course.

If these stamps do belong to Goldstar then his girl never developed the techniques employed by T&Ps Gladys and Ethel.

On a lighter note, this one is directed at Steve as I don't know the answer and if anyone does it will be him. In 1968 I bought the first issue of Spectacular Spider-Man magazine-sized magazine. It contained a long Spidey story in black and white just like "proper" comics here in the UK. It even had a T&P price stamp on the cover. I still have it somewhere safe with my Famous Monsters of Filmland No 1. I can't currently find that either! The second issue was in full colour. I never saw one at the time. Are there any around with T&P stamps? The ones currently for sale are tatty and very expensive and unstamped. Anyway, to come to the point, the last page of No 2 advertises the story for the next issue entitled "The mystery of the TV terror". So it must have been completed, or well under way. But there never was a next issue. Did that story ever see the light of day (in a comic or more recently in a book) as it is not like Marvel to waste material??? PS: I lusted after a Kawasaki 350 Avenger but never had one. Torture tests? What's that all about?

@Malacoda In the 1960s lived on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border. Lots of my comics were purchased in Alfreton, Hucknall, Mansfield, Bolsover. A Great Aunt lived in Eastwood next door to the house D. H. Lawrence was born in. The sort of terraced house where you step out of the front door straight onto the pavement. Then moved to Birmingham in 1974. PS: Got a Romeo. What an odd comic. The first half looks just like you'd expect with artwork in the style you'd see in other D C Thompson comics. But I'm not so sure about the second half of the comic. Were these strips drawn just for Romeo or had they appeared elsewhere before. The artwork for Rose the Slave Girl looks like something you'd see in a Fawcett comic. The car and the bus stop in Stolen Kisses don't look like they would belong in downtown Dundee.

@Get Marwood & I Sorry to hear that. Had a similar situation last year. "Lots to do" was an understatement.

My Grandmother was one of ten children who all grew to adulthood living in the same county. My father was very family-orientated and we visited all these great-aunts and great-uncles and their own families too regularly through the 1960s. This enabled me to reach newsagents a dizzy fifteen or twenty miles away. There always appeared to be a newsagents within walking distance of everyone's houses in those days! Many relatives lived in terraced houses just off the High Street. For every shop with Marvel comics there would be five that stocked only DCs. DCs were very regular and I seldom missed an issue of a title I was collecting. Most Sundays we went to my Grandparents for lunch. My Grandfather gave me some money and I would run up the road to the General Store/Post Office/Newsagents and their well-stocked spinner rack. It was there in 1966 that I purchased Showcase 59 and immediately decided to start collecting the series. It was a long wait between issues and I bought many many other comics in between but it was more often than not that I would get my latest Showcase from that very same shop right up to issue No 93 in 1970. I never missed a single issue. PS: I now seem to have misplaced Showcase 66. What's the betting I can no longer pick up a back issue from a market stall for 6d and I'll have to pay £££s to fill the gap.

I didn't look at a map or have a calculator to hand so if you want more precision there were actually 42 counties in England in 1966. And the average monthly figures for an X-Men comic was 255,000 so I wasn't that far out. I wasn't including Scotland or Northern Ireland but in 1966 Wales had 13 counties. Perhaps they should be included. So we have your 6% of 255,000 making 15300. Divided across 55 counties, assuming all four corners of England and Wales received equal shares and the figure comes to 278. So take Nottinghamshire and work out how many different towns in that county. According to the 6% figure a place the size of Mansfield would have received 8 copies of an X-Men 20 for example. Mansfield would have received 300 copies of The Beano EACH WEEK by comparison. There are a lot of newsagents in Mansfield, although not all would be serviced by a T&P rep. Does 8 issues of X-Men for a whole town seem feasible? Or was distribution of Marvel Comics not evenly spread over the country? In the 1960s I bought loads of Marvel comics in Devon and Cornwall so they almost made it to Lands End.

I don't want to bore the six visitors to this thread (even more than I usually do) by repeating myself. But I'll repeat myself. In the Midlands I never saw ANY new Archies, Harveys or Charltons in the mid 1960s. I'm not saying there were none, but like Albert, I roamed quite a wide region to visit markets and second hand bookshops and all the newsagents in between and noticed what was out there even if I couldn't afford to buy it all. The first new Charlton I saw was in 1967 when I purchased Blue Beetle No 1. I still have it. I ought to check if it wears a T&P stamp or not. The local barbers shop had a large stack of Harveys to read while waiting. How he acquired them I don't know. His son was at school with me and he said they weren't his. I never saw any of those odd comics for sale new until the early 1970s. I suspect as Charltons and Harveys were L Miller's (and perhaps for a while Charltons were Golds or nobodies) that distribution was concentrated down south. Gold Key and Dells were more likely to be found in Department stores, Toy Shops or Woolworths than newsagents.

How many comics can you physically fit onto a spinner rack? That is a very good question. Mr Google says a spinner had 44 pockets and could hold 220 comics. Someone else says 250 comics. Seaside spinners often had comics top to bottom but there were often Alan Class comics mixed in with the others. I got my DCs in the 1960s from a shop half a mile away. It was opposite a Colliery. The top half of the spinner contained soft porn and Mad magazines so there was only room for 100 comics. What I don’t know is how often the spinner was replenished. I’m sure that was done more often than monthly as the little shop was always incredibly busy. From 1965 to 1970 I visited at least 3 times a week and got unbroken runs of Action, Superman etc but never ever saw a Marvel comic there. In fact none of the newsagents in my town had any new Marvels in the 1960s yet secondhand ones were reasonably common on the two market stalls that appeared every Friday and Saturday. I had to cycle 2 miles to the next town to get my new Fantastic Fours. School friends that collected Marvels would tell tales of only finding them at shops when visiting relatives miles away. Something changed in the early 1970s and suddenly Marvels were more plentiful than DCs and also Charlton’s began to appear in quantity too.

@Albert Tatlock Gotta love some of the eBay sellers across the pond. He claims that issue of Fantastic 71 is rare because the CGC haven't encapsulated any compared to the original Marvel comics. When I was completing my run, not only were rear covers often missing, if the covers were intact the comic would have an address written on the front of back just like this one does. In the 1960s so many comics were delivered by newsagents in the UK along with the morning paper. By the time I was 14 I had managed to get five different weekly UK titles delivered. That was because my father paid the paper bill. I needed all my cash for the spinner rack. Incidentally I had a morning paper round and there was a reason UK comics weren't all released on the same day. I would be delivering the Dandy on Tuesdays. The Beano on Thursdays etc. It spread the load out. I pleaded with my friendly neighbourhood newsagent not to write our address on my precious comics to no avail. There was a constant turnover of boys (seldom girls) who soon tired of getting up at 6am in all weathers to walk the streets. It was almost as bad as climbing chimneys. I however had a work ethic and delivered Sunday papers too as there was no other way of feeding my habit of DCs. PS: If @Malacoda is right about Marvel UKPVs actually accounting for 6% of production ( not the between 5% and 10% I've seen quoted elsewhere) then in the 1960s when 250,000 copies of X-Men were published that means we received around 15,000 to cover the whole country. If there are approx 40 counties in the UK that means each COUNTY (not town or city ?!?) would have received less than 400 copies of X-Men.