themagicrobot

Way back on page 4 of this very thread:- In an old copy of "Paperbacks Pulp and Comicbook Collector" magazine back in the 1990s there was an article entitled "The sign of the Tee Pee" by Steve Chibnall. This may be the same Steve Chibnall who is currently a professor at Leicester De Montfort University (who states one of his interests as "Sociology of collecting". The article is all about the Leicester based company created by a Fred Thorpe and a Mr Collis of Porters Building merchants (!?!) responsible for those ink stamps on those musty old comics you love. Most of the article concerns paperbacks, pulps, magazines, "gentlemen's magazines" like Razzle etc. One interesting passage says; "The breakthrough came when the ban was lifted on imports. Comics publishers in the US expected 40% returns which would normally have been pulped; but export offered an alternative to "burndown". We were able to buy copies at less than the original wholesale price." Thorpe and Porter were soon distributing a million comics a month. I have a pdf of the article if you can't wait until the magazine is delivered.

Well I found these so far and have the rest somewhere in unlabelled boxes. Never sure if it was "Super Adventure" or "Superadventure". If Atlas no longer were doing pulps they certainly were involved in comics in the 1950s as well as the Annuals. In the great British tradition the Annuals continued for many years after the comics had been discontinued. I always found it interesting that the Atlas comics stopped (1960) at pretty much the same time that T&P began importing DCs. Was it a co-incidence or connected? Did K. G. Murray's licence to produce Superman/Batman fare in the UK expire/was brought to an end as National wanted to use the UK as a dumping ground for their surplus. The K. G. Murray Supermans etc continued in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.

The only other Atlas Annuals that I have easy access to are these Batmans. The 1964/1965 book has the 18 Bride Lane address. The 1967 Batman Annual (purchased new by me in the autumn of 1966) lists the 334 Brixton Road SW9 address.

By some synchronicity, yesterday I was reading this 1952 Superman Annual which on the back cover says: "Printed by Morrison and Gibb Ltd, Tanfield, Edinburgh 4 for K. G. Murray 56 Young Street, Sydney, Australia. Distributed by Atlas Publishing and Distributing Co Ltd 18 Bride lane, Fleet Street, London EC4."

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.