themagicrobot

Do you mean UK price variants? Have you any specific example in mind? DC UK price variants appeared in the 1970s. Only a handful of people here collect/appreciate King comics so as you mention the mid 1960s in particular I assume you are referring to Marvel Comics. As they are ten times scarecer than cents variants then grade for grade they ought to be worth more.

I guess you're trawling through the IW/Super stuff having exhausted every other publisher from the 1960s (bar Lightning comics)

Sorry for that. I'll remove my errant redundant post should I?

Presuming that this stamp was placed on the comic when it was new it is interesting to see a "No tax" 10d stamp as early as 1959. Also is that a letter "B" on the stamp? Does that mean there may have been comics stamped with the letter "A" the previous month?

Sort of. I was just thinking about Atlas comics in the late 1950s. Stan would have had Joe back as soon as work picked up. They were still working together on a newspaper strip. Depends how much you think Jack was involved in the concept. Or Jack could have stayed at DC and have the Challengers blast off into space and return with super powers. And Steve could have come up with a Spider-Man concept on his own and taken it to Charlton. In this alternate reality Charlton comics would have been massive and Atlas comics would have faded away.

I was reading an old issue of Alter Ego magazine over the weekend. Half the magazine was a massive article about the life (and death) of Joe Maneely. He had been Stan's go-to artist for almost a decade but died before the Marvel Age of Comics even began. He drew Horror, Funny Animals and Westerns but not much in the way of Super Heroes because, apart from a few experiments reviving Captain America and the Sub-Mariner, Atlas weren't really doing that genre in tthe 1950s. If he hadn't died young in a tragic accident, being as prolific as Kirby but also always doing his own inking too he would probably have been offered Spider-man or the FF or some others and Marvel would have looked quite different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Maneely

I always liked this unusual cover (from Charlton's Unusual Tales 5) despite the fact that the cover doesn't really have any bearing on the story inside. And although it was 1956 Charlton were still stressing within that their comics conformed to the code. Even so this cover gave me nightmares as a child when I first saw it fronting Sinister Tales 31 in the mid 1960s. Then the top of the cover said "NEW AMAZING STORIES". By issue 139 Alan had sensibly removed the "NEW" as the same stuff came round again. ins

Tod's comic used to sell for 99p but those days have gone.

No doubt Martin Goodman really thought producing hit comics was easy but launching 20 new titles all at the same time was a bit much. No doubt the returns/unsold stock were massive hence Thorpe and Porter being able to sell many of them to us for 5p a throw. But it seems to me that he pulled the plug before he had given the comics/creators a chance to find their feet. They are now 47 years old and still available for 99p or £30 encapsulated (not mine) but perhaps their time will come when people realize they are so bad they're good like Archie's MightyRadio comics, Tower comics, most ACG heroes etc ad infinitum.

I have two full sets (at least) of all the 1975 Atlas/Seaboard comics (not the magazines) because someone was selling a job lot of most otf the titles (incredibly cheaply a decade ago) that contained the one issue (Vicki) I still needed and I thought I may as well tidy up and get the other missing issues. I also have 20 copies of the Brute No 2 but that is another story.

I might even have to re-read the thread from the beginning. I'm sure I would have read page 68 but I can't remember what I had for lunch and keep buying comics from eBay I already own multiple copies of. 109 pages and counting. The perils of posting to a forum/board rather than into a website where you can keep content/information and comments on that information in seperate places.

It seems that although the company continued to be called Thorpe and Porter, long before the bankrupcy, Fred Thope, one of the main originators of the company, had moved on. Having planned a "quiet retirement" (at the age of 50 or even younger ?!?) with his pipe, instead he set up Ulverscroft the publishers of large print books in 1964. I remember the first ones in my local library. The print was gigantic but so too were the books. He soon settled on large print but more standard-size books. Here is an image of him in 1969 aged 55, the year he was presented with an OBE. He died in 1999 at the age of 85.

So the story continues??? Wikipedia says: Was there any disruption to comics being shipped from Thorpe and Porters warehouses to UK newsagents after July 1966? You'd think there'd be some sort of transition period if a company went bankrupt and was taken over but I can't recall any shortage of comics in the summer of 1966. Perhaps Albert can recall more? And who would be the clients left owed substantial sums? Someone in the States that had shipped comics over the atlantic in previous months? Or was IND owed substantial sums and aquired Thorpe and Porter as a result? Wikipedia goes on to say: Not sure I fully follow what is being said here about their output being "exclusively reprints of DC titles". Do they mean,but don't mention,that Thorpe and Porter now no longer produced their range of pocket books, but were now publishing the Super DC magazine?

The only cartoon/comic characters named after an english furniture maker from the C18th or any other century for that matter. Oh I forgot about Ikea-Man and Captain Ercol?!?

Congratulations @malacoda. This thread already covered more ground into the history of comics than most of the Interweb but you've just taken it to a different level. I doff Albert's cap to you. And A Brief Review of The First Official UK Distribution of US Published Comics in 1959/1960 (Followed by a selfless engagement in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, a high and noble endeavour) is a more fitting title but probably steve ought to change brief to some other adjective of his choice?

I thought I must be in the wrong thread until I saw that we are now blathering?!? Brief review? Ha! It's not me doing spreadsheets to calculate how rich I am Albert. According to some dealers who shall remain nameless most of my collection, should I wish to sell it to them, is worth 5p apiece. I've just counted all my boxes and multiplied that by the guesstimate of numbers of books inside and find I am rich beyond my wildest dreams with a value of £1250.00. I need to work on my image editing skills but I do like to see some colourful pictures in this thread to break up the blathering....

Collectors Item Classics? Even the Annuals soon went to reprints.

When you'd spent all your pocket money and then handing 10 comics you'd read and weren't that bothered about and getting 5 comics that looked great in return (and no money changing hands) always seemed like I was the one winning.

DCs had 80 pages (for real good ones). Stan's Marvels only had 72 pages. I always felt cheated.

If Lichtenstein had used that cover instead of those boring DCs then I reckon about eight bazillion. Even so I'll swap it with you for my coverless Secret Origins 80 page giant (that I actually bought like that from a market stall in 1966).

What do you think is wrong with us in the UK? Here we are debating minutiea as if it is the most important thing on our minds. I've just looked around these boards and most everyone else is saying "Hey! Look! I've got a comic! Here's a picture. How much is it worth?"

Periodicals have historically always been tax (ie VAT ) zero rated in the UK and presumably Ireland too. But perhaps other goods imported into the Republic of Ireland were subject to an import tax. The increased price for the Irish comics must have reflected the extra shipping costs involved.

But if it were Thorpe and Porter sending comics to Dublin, why not stick an Ireland sticker over the UK 10d price? Or could the comics with their cents prices have arrived in Dublin directly from the USA?

I asked the seller of this comic whereabouts in Ireland she would think it would have originated. She said her father was at a boarding school in Dublin. So this fits in with the theory that DC and Marvel comics (at least in the 1960s) weren't generally distributed across the whole of Ireland. But limited numbers did find their way to Dublin.