themagicrobot

Enjoy your meal. I'm at the early evening drinks stage and am still on the laptop because there's been nothing decent on TV for 17 years. And to confuse the matter further Fantastic Four 116 was definitely a "giant" 25 cent issue (according to the spine) but has a 6p price printed on the cover, rather than an 8p price covered by a sticker. Perhaps looking through all the titles with a November 1971 cover date would find more oddities.

I beg to differ on this one. I'm sure when printed originally the 8p prices were definitely designed to be the correct ones as all those comics were 25 cents with 52 (count em) pages. The next issues went back to the regular size/price. Why the 6p sticker?? Who knows? Thorpe and Porter may have had second thoughts as these issues were one-offs in the runs and decided to sell them at the same price as imminent future issues so as not to confuse customers/newsagents. Note the writing on the spine of ASM 102

Cover dated September 1964

On the 15th of this month we "celebrated" 50 years since we said goodbye to old money and went with the decimal currency we know and love (and no longer use as it's all tap and go now anyway). When there were 252 pennies to a Guinea I loved collecting coins. You could still find copper coins in circulation with Queen Victoria's head on them 70 years after she died. Even at the time I found it odd that Marvel comics were still priced at 1/- right up to October 1971 cover dates (which must have been on sale around that time) even though that was 8 months after the currency had changed. Didn't anyone at T&P think to mention it? It's not like we weren't warned as 5p and 10p coins had been already introduced in 1968 to prepare us for the change. PS And they weren't even sure what to price the Giant sized 25 cent Submariner 43 at??

For taking this thread to realms undreamt by the CGC forums you win a No Prize

Looks more like a number 26 than Half a Crown. This is a 2/6.

Were Williams in Germany (who produced 3 issues of Charles Rand to our one) the equivalent of Thorpe and Porter here? In the 1970s I had a few Die Spinne and one lone Bags Banny.

Looks like it was repackaged Euro stuff.

Bought one brand new. Cost me 1/6 then. Bought another a decade ago god knows why. There was only ever this one issue of "The Man from S.U.N.D.A.Y" with very good reason. The art is supposedly by Mick Anglo who had spent the previous ten years drawing a quite acceptable "Marvelman". Perhaps he drew "Charles Rand" in the dark as the character's heads, arms and legs don't seem in the right proportion to their bodies.

Would Stan sign a Mystic? I'd need to see a photo of him doing so. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1ST-KEY-AVENGERS-1-CGC-4-5-SIGNED-STAN-LEE-MYSTIC-54-L-MILLER-UK-1965-RARE/333880821982?hash=item4dbcd908de:g:MfIAAOSwqo1gHn7v

slightly obscure corner of British comic book publishing history Not half. That book won't make the best seller list. At 20 squids I can't really justify the cost when I can get something more interesting to read like four copies of The Defenders or She Hulk for that money.

Google maps have images from July 2008 too which might have less traffic.

Yeah don't get too excited. They only list Len's own comics but there is some interesting stuff about the man himself. Marwood is the only person in this particular dimension doing research into the comics Miller imported.

An extremely unexpected place to find an exhaustive index of all the Miller/Arnold comics ever issued is within Nos 15 and 16 of Peter Normanton’s UK Horror magazine “From The Tomb”. The index along with a fascinating article is by Frank Motler. There’s even a photo (thanks to Alan Austin and Steve Holland) of the less than scintillating premises where these comics originally emerged from !!

Magnifying glass time. Do my eyes deceive me or is Famous Monsters of Filmland No 2 changed to No 1 (along with a T&P teepee)?

Love the stamps. Even miss the Comic Code stamps on modern (not me!) books. Horror Monsters No 7 appears to be our New Series No 1 with a cute RV stamp. Issue No 9 is oddly our No 7. How does that work? And was the "New Series No 7 2/6" over printed here in the UK or done by Charlton?? I think we should be told....

The seller of this Superman 132 claims it was the first officially distributed UK copy of the title and is most likely correct. I owned an issue back in the day and there seem to be quite a few around even now. I would have bought it second hand from a UK market stall in the 1960s but never noticed (or cared) if it had a T&P stamp or not.

Never mind, it seems the regular issue had two prices too...

Perhaps I should have placed this in Marwood's UK Charlton thread? Do any other issues have TWO Len Miller UK prices?

This Charlton comic is expensive and coveted even by non-comic-collectors because the cover and interior story features a once-popular beat combo. I'm sure they feel conned once they open the comic up. The story, near the back of the book, features just one fleeting panel that mentions the Fab Four.

Dates for comics can make your brain hurt. Cynthia Doyle 69 was cover dated April 1963. It would have been on sale quite a few months before that. The Statement of Ownership thingy included (in tiny print) in that issue was dated September 1962. It states the average number of comics of that title sold monthly for the previous 12 months. But Cynthia's comic hadn't been going for a full year as of September 1962. The first issue was number 66 dated October 1962. So the production figures mostly refer to the comics' earlier title Sweetheart Diary. And no details of returned/spoiled issues as in the later more detailed statements,

Has anyone got an hour to spare?

The statement of ownership was definitely in all titles from all publishers annually until quite recently. Well quite recently for me at any rate. I remember posting something about the scary low figures for Fantastic Four before it was cancelled (a decade ago?). Even a great comic like She Hulk in 2003 only sold 27,000 issues on average I recall. And as I'm idle I'll post something (just slightly amended) here I already said on the Interweb many years ago regarding DCs Adventure 404: So the print run was over 600,000. Yet only 350,000 were sold. A massive 250,000 were "left over"!! And only 511 people subscribed. I would have sacked the whole subscription dept immediately or begun a new campaign to increase the number of subscriptions taken out. DC was missing a trick. I read somewhere that Charlton's "left over" comics found their way to the UK. I read somewhere else that for stores in the States at that time to get their money back on unsold magazines they had to tear the front cover/logo off for proof. So what did happen to those 250,000 unsold/returned issues? Did they ever leave the warehouse? Were they pulped? Were future production runs amended to reflect how many issues per month were actually required? Did some of them end up in T&Ps Leicester warehouse?

I've looked around at other threads in this forum such as Modern/Bronze etc etc and I haven't a clue what they are talking about/why what they are talking about is so important to them. I thought I was on more familiar territory with your threads but here I've no idea what is going on?

1960s DC covers are often so eye-catching that they deserve putting in a frame. I don't mind the ink stamps but I highly dislike price stickers. I ruined too many comics until I realised there was no point even attempting to remove them. (And here is another comic sporting a decimal price years after original publication).