themagicrobot

Yes on second thoughts perhaps someone did copy a stack of back covers. Photocopiers are pretty good these days. But anyone could scan an image for nothing. Why pay $28. Here are Fantastic back page, the original pinup and the print.

Anyone with the right links should be able to visit my Box stuff. There is 9GB of goodness in there. Sorry I have changed the link. Forgot to tick a box in Box. PS: Someone in the US is selling a back cover of a Fantastic comic for $28.79 claiming it is a print produced by Marvel UK on "heavy stock". Dunno about that! He says:- Offered here is a Vintage POWER PIN-UP Print featuring PEPPER POTTS. These awesome pin-ups were only available in Europe and distributed thru Marvel / UK originally released in 1960's on the back covers of the Marvel magazines. These were purchased from a UK collector as original prints but we have yet to find info to back it up. These are likely later releases in the UK, they are copyrighted but there is no date on them to actually determine when they were released but they have never been released in the US. The print is in great condition, quality printing on heavy stock, and are 10" x 14"

Sorry no. I tended not to save old price lists. They would depress me today I think. Just read another FU where someone asks Alan how much a 1952 Superman would be worth. The reply was ..................................£2..........................(but we are talking about 1974. And perhaps most of the more popular Fanzines have been scanned. These three certainly have. Not sure about the one the alien is reading though. PS: Paul did Escape magazine which I purchased. Did I ever share this article Alan Moore wrote in Escape? I doubt it has ever been reprinted. https://app.box.com/shared/mhl4jil0jm

Yes https://www.comicsfanzines.co.uk/ is the sort of place we visit when others are on dating sites/UToob/social media. I hope someone will let me know when Comics Unlimited 54 (presumably a one-off now everything is accessed via the Interweb) appears. In the meantime I too was looking at some old issues online this week. Actually the site is missing quite a few which I probably own. In FU19 dated May/June 1974 someone asks Alan about a gap in Marvel distribution. Alan says "World Distributor's contract ran out and another company competed for the distribution rights. WD won and start again with August 1974 cover dates". This seems odd to me. Why would WD be so haphazard as to let contracts expire? In FU27 dated June 1975 there is this mention yet again about "ballast" which probably was a (very small) thing. I have mentioned before visiting a (Camden?) market stall around that time. They had hundreds of water stained Marvels, and flicking through them they were all the same three or four issues.

I said I don’t aim to collect full runs and here I am with a full set of Fantastics What do I do with them now? You can’t really put them upright on a shelf like Annuals. Looks like another trip to Argos for a Metal file/box And I am one issue away from a full set of Ranger. Alas they aren’t numbered. Just weekly dates and I can never remember which one I need. If I had a flat cap I’d be able to put my free badge on it. Still looking for the free Apollo. Was it life size?

I think now is the time to buy Silver Age UK comics before they reach silly Marvel US Silver Age prices. As I found I was only a few issues short of a full run this year I decided to locate a few Fantastics. It proved quite difficult to find issues that didn't have missing back covers. And a few eBay sellers didn't even mention the missing back cover in their ads. Perhaps they actually didn't notice/care? Of course collecting stuff from your youth is trying to recreate that feeling when you first saw/read that comic for the first time. A free Apollo Space Craft??? Here's MY 9d!!!!!!!

It certainly looks like it could be a crude stamp of UK £sd old money but again, it seems rather expensive. What years are those two books? For most of the 1960s T&P were happy to sell them to you (not me....I was collecting Michael Moorcocks) for Two Shillings. PS: There is an Ace Double D-177 written by C H Thames with the best ever title for a book I've ever come across. Violence is Golden. I wonder why no one had thought of that one before?!?

I have a folder containing two dozen random odd comics from other shores. Started 40 years ago the aim was to collect one example from each country (until I realised just how many countries there were with their own comic industry). Why did they (for a time) call Batman "Leather Patch" in Sweden? And here Superboy is called Cloud Kid. He's lost his "S" on his chest for reasons unknown.

When young I loved the sdrawkcab world of Bizarro stories in Adventure Comics. In fact I have just purchased this beat up old comic to read about the Bizarro Legionnaires. It has a bonus on the cover of my favourite T&P price stamp AND a Curt Swan autograph. And all for £6.99. When I have read it I will stick it in a picture frame having just purchased a box of 20 new/old stock ones of the perfect size from a charity shop. Even tatty comics look fine (well...sort of ?!?) when framed. Who needs CGC encapsulation? Who was it that said "Books furnish a room"?

I once owned FF 10 - 110 and a few earlier issues. That would have been about the time @Malacoda was reading No 171. It is tempting to leave that first Annual to be opened at a later date but I would want to check the parcel did contain the right comic. I've only ever got the wrong book once out of hundreds of transactions but....... Talking of eBay parcels. A couple of years ago there was an item on the local TV news about a guy who had passed away. When relatives visited his cluttered terraced house the front room was stacked full of hundreds and hundreds of unopened parcels. Further examination of the packages showed that every one contained comics....... I am not a completist, apart from maybe a few titles that only ran to 10 or 20 issues. But I have started cataloguing what I do have just so an xml spreadsheet exists showing what is in the boxes. I am perhaps a quarter of the way through the task. I never had the first Fantastic Four Annual, but I expect to unearth numbers 7,9,10,11 at some point.

5/- for a copy of Analog in 1966 seems daylight robbery. In 1963 they cost a mere 2/6d. I guess, as SF readers were older, they thought they could get away with it. When Analog increased to 60¢ we were charged 6/-. If a 25¢ Wonder Woman could be sold here for 7½p a 50¢ magazine ought to have been 15p or 3/-

Did they keep the numbering going just for the Second Class Postage and the 600 subscribers (who might not have liked the new format anyway)? I would have started the new horror HOM at number one. But numbering with comics can be bonkers (usually Charltons) even Marvels sometimes. For example, I came across this comic, which may not have been distributed here, which I might have purchased at a London Comic Mart when it was new. According to the GCD there were only 4 issues. So how come this says number 6?? It seems the small print says Marvel Adventures while the first two issues say Marvel Adventure?!? All six issues say Marvel Adventure on the cover however. And Marvel Adventure seems a good title for a series that they let go to waste. PS: It's interesting how they play around with the original cover artwork on the reprint. Thinking about it, they were reprinting something that was barely nine years old. That's like yesterday to me nowadays ?!?

House of Mystery 173 contains a Statement of Ownership statement. The average print run was stated to be 306,000. An average number of 157,000 reached circulation. How many of those would be returns that would end up in the UK at Thorpe & Porter? An average number of 147,000 are classed as Office Use/Left Over/Unaccounted for/Spoiled after Printing. How many of those (if any) would end up in the UK at Thorpe and Porter? I've pondered this question before, but what did they do with half the print run (of this title and many others) that they never ever distributed in the US?? And as they had these figures why did they continue to print 300,000 of each issue if they didn't intend to distribute 300,000?? And for a single issue nearest to the Statement of Ownership filing date House of Mystery had 600 subscribers. For the previous four years the comic had featured the superhero J'onn J'onzz and for two years Robby Reed with his "H" Hero Dial. Those 600 subscribers would be caught by surprise with issue 174. Gone were the fantasy/science-fiction/superhero stuff and overnight it became a Horror comic. Perhaps the stories weren't quite as gruesome as back in the 1950s, but for such an abrupt change why didn't they bother to mention it in No 173s letters page???

I’ll have to make it harder next time

QUIZ Can anyone name all or any one of these three (four??) comics??

Dich Turpin appeared in umpteen issues of Thriller Picture Library. All the covers were different. Dunno about the interiors. And Gold Key did a Dich Turpin too!!

So there's no way to say Philip K. ? Perhaps Philip KDick or Philip KindredDick? I'm still waiting for Postman Pat to deliver that Graphic Novel about his (brief but complicated) life.

As for me, I am old enough to have seen it in 1967 but then I was too young to fully appreciate it. It was finally repeated, as you say, late at night in the mid 1970s. But then I had yet to own a video recorder. The Prisoner is like some comics, books, music that you can return to quite a few times and still enjoy. It wouldn't have been made in these days of Pilots and focus groups. Lew Grade (who looks the spitting image of my late Grandfather!?!) trusted his instincts and let Patrick go away (on location no less) and make it with just a handshake. Lew trusted his instincts with others such as Gerry Anderson and Jim Henson and was responsible for many hours of great UK TV in the 1960s and 1970s (that he could sell to the US too). PS: Lew/my Grandfather's double is the one on the left if you were wondering.

I recommend Portmeirion as a day trip or even a holiday. I used to subscribe to the Six of One fanzine and went to a couple of viewings on a big screen in the days before you could obtain the series on VHS/before it had been repeated on satellite TV/before it was available as a tape/DVD partwork from your friendly neighbourhood newsagents. Every episode was odd, yet thought provoking in its own way. "The Girl who was death" was a spoof on James Bond and the like. I recall a scene in a pub where he drinks down his pint until he sees YOU HAVE YOU HAVE BEEN YOU HAVE BEEN POISONED. I surprisingly can't see that on UToob.

I've always liked this clever cover. The GCD says the cover features Johnny Thunder as he does indeed have a story within. But his horse wasn't that colour. To me it looks far more like Bartholomew Aloysius Lash and Daisy, although where they could be taking a cart-load of scripts and comic codes is anybody's guess.

I still have a recurring nightmare of arriving at my friendly neighbourhood newsagents on a saturday morning clutching my just-received Half-Crown pocket money and discovering it was no longer sufficient to purchase three brand new tantalising DCs. PS: I've been trying to work out what this price stamp says. I guess it says 7p same price as ours at the time ?? but don't forget the ½ p vat !! It appears bewilderingly complicated with various rates charged but I believe that currently Vat is 23% in Éire but magazines and comics benefit from a "second reduced" rate of 9%.

It appears to be accepted wisdom that the first Romance comic was Simon and Kirby's Young Romance. When Prize moved away from comics in 1963 it must still have been popular enough for DC to continue with it until 1975. I like this cover, despite it failing to display a T&P ink stamp. One could have been tattooed to her shoulder or his helmet. But why is the guy's father insulting his son's pillion passenger by calling her a "Greasy Bike Bum" ?? She seems alright to me. Now, DC may no longer be publishing Young Romance after 1975 but surely they kept hold of the trademark. They must have done as there was a Young Romance one-shot not too long ago with Superman embracing Wonder Woman. So why did Marvel UK use the Young Romance title in 1980?? And is it the same girl on these two comics. It looks like it to me. Or did most women look like that and constantly shed tears in the odd world of Romance comics.