themagicrobot

Aged 10 years old out of a class of 30 split between boys and girls only 5 boys collected comics in any meaningful way although everyone would have been getting at least one U.K. comic each week (usually delivered with the daily paper). One lad was considered eccentric because he kept a notebook listing the comics he owned. I just memorised the covers

The film Hue & Cry is currently on TV. It is interesting for many reasons. It was the very first Ealing comedy. It was filmed on location in London in 1947 when many streets were still heaps of bricks and rubble after the WW2 bombing. And the plot revolves around a comic with the unlikely title of “Trump” The film is available to stream in the U.K. on Film4

Out of curiosity how much does a Superman 175 sell for in Sao Paulo? If postage isn't too prohibitive perhaps you could get one from eBay UK for a few £££s. Although perhaps the rare 2 cent variant is considered valuable PS: I just now bought this in the UK for £9 including postage when I realised I didn't currently own a copy (although I had once purchased that comic brand new after spinning a Thorpe and Porter spinner rack for 10 minutes trying to decide which comic I should buy with the lone 1/- coin clutched firmly in my hand).

Only if you can justify the cost of encapsulating a comic that isn't rare or valuable either with or without a metal badge taped to the front.

Someone went to the trouble of listing the contents of this book but didn't leave an image. The Atlas 1959 Batman Annual is missing too.

I found some “reading” copies mostly well defaced by Popular Book Centre stamps. Have you noticed how the Comic Code stamps sometimes have shading and sometimes don’t? The January 1960 Wyatt Earp has a 6d Miller ink stamp as expected. The Black Fury is dated April 1959. If it was part of a batch that came into the UK later that year it was still un-Millered.

Well personally I find everything about old comics interesting. And speculation about those days when you could buy comics from outlets other than comic shops is fun. I think not as many comics went to waste as people think. Job lots and returns were recycled and sold on both in the US and the U.K. The 15 cent stickers are interesting because they appear on Charltons DCs and Marvels. Perhaps someone acquired a stack of old returns/unsold warehouse stuff AFTER July 1969 and took advantage of the price rise to make some money.

Is that a yes or a no? Are you saying there was indeed a team consisting of Gladys and Ethels distant relations repricing comics for some other distributor in Canada?

Here's a sticker from the other side of the Atlantic ocean. I wonder where this comic was for the first twelve months of its life? Or is this comic from Canada? Before comics displayed dual US and Canadian pricing on the covers how much did a 12 cent comic cost in Canada in the 1960s? Was it still 12 cents or more? Would they have used stickers rather than the ink stamps preferred by Gladys here in the UK. Perhaps @OtherEric knows?

If it wasn't for the cute 1/- price this comic would have been ideal for the "please grade my comic" section.

There are loads of pulp experts over at https://boards.cgccomics.com/forum/98-pulp-magazines/ but I guess 99% of them are in the US. As for Classics Illustrated it was repackaged in too many languages for anyone to collect all possible variants. Was T&P responsible for this issue? If so then why a different version with a different price? It still says it is number 2. And I knew Marvel produced their own run of Classics Comics but I must admit I had never before come across this Marvel UK series (a Digest size?) until just now.

@Malacoda Last week you were asking about T&P and the Upper Brook Street address. I think you'd need a full run of Tomahawk or Kid Colt to see exactly when they adopted the Strato Publications Ltd address in the indicias rather than Thorpe and Porter or Jenson. Certainly all the 68 page comics starting from Blackhawk 1 in 1956 and on to the end of the runs in 1959 say Strato. Yet, taking this comic as an example they still displayed a teepee logo on the cover and used the Oadby address for internal adverts. And they complicate things again on the back cover giving Strato Publications a Leicester address. In fact many Classics Illustrateds are attributed to Strato of London but although they started publication in the UK in 1951/1952 as they had multiple print runs (especially of the more popular titles) those issues could be post 1956. https://www.comics.org/indicia_publisher/247/

Happy Holidays from me in UKville to the regulars here. Arthur Ferrier is an under-rated UK (well Scottish to be precise) artist/cartoonist who was quite prolific in his day. The "Lovelies" book from 1943 sells for a premium. https://ukcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Arthur_Ferrier_(1890-1973)

I guess Len was covering his back by adding the words "Adult Comic" (as he did to some of the monthly Mystics/Spellbounds/Voodoos/Zombies) but he couldn't have made it much smaller. I didn't even see it myself until just now. And 2/6d wasn't a great bargain for 100 pages when two 68 page regular Spellbounds would only cost you 2/-!!

@Yorick Go for it! This is a "Jolly Miller Production" despite its contents being at odds with the rest of the "Jolly Miller" books for toddlers. It was 1964 and less than a decade since the horror comics ban and yet Len had no fear, including pre-code horror along with the Marvel Monsters. Here is a real Jolly Miller book. There were many. They probably took all of ten minutes each to write. There were Jolly Miller comics in the early days too.

Having just opened an early Xmas present of a single Malt I’ve suddenly forgotten everything I ever knew about comics Didn’t Mick Anglo package the Super DCs and later, or was it earlier, TV Tornado The world’s Finest is a real comic but the 1/- is a mock-up replacing the 12 cents that was really there. The cartoon was actually two pages long and looks to me like something from Denis Gifford that may have originally appeared in a Miller publication a decade earlier.

There were 14 T&P/Top Sellers Super DC comics (and one Annual) in 1969/1970. I bought the first six issues new at the time but never saw any later issues in my friendly neighbourhood newsagents. I had to wait until the Interweb was invented to complete the set. They weren't the sorts of things you saw at Comic Marts in the 1970s. If I had advertised my desire to acquire them (or any Alan Class books or similar) no doubt I would have been escorted off the premises. How times have changed. It is the more obscure local stuff that is now finally found to be interesting. The Super DC comics with their odd covers were slightly larger than regular DCs, comprised of 40 pages and had Black and White interiors but still cost 1/-. It's odd to see this one re-cycled and sent out again with a 5p sticker. Never seen one stickered before. The address for letters was High Holborn House and the address for Top Sellers at that time was Great Portland Street. Here is another image of the famous back covers.

Is this written by anyone currently frequenting the CGC Boards?? https://g1rm.wordpress.com/2023/05/23/a-short-history-of-newsagents-and-how-you-bought-your-american-comics-from-them/

As this comic advertises a 1974 calendar so I guess it must date from the second half of 1973.

By Miracle Man No 3 they had reduced the price of Classics Illustrated in the adverts (and presumably at the shops) to 1/- This advert has been posted in the forum before. Seen in Miracle Man 11 so this issue must be published after May 1965.

This T&P reprint from approx 1963 fills half this big 68 pages comic with ancient Mr District Attorney strips. The cover is obviously different to the Dell original which was a photo. Why did they put a Comic Code stamp on this reprint? There wasn't one on the original comic so the contents wouldn't have been submitted. T&P just made things up as they went along didn't they? The advert for Classics Illustrated on the inside front cover is odd too. It says they cost 1/- when all the images clearly show they were 1/3d.

Easy access! That's a laugh. My "system" of storage is designed to re-discover random things I've forgotten about and lose track of everything else. However I happen to have Frogman Comics images to hand for reasons that escape me. There isn't much in the way of inside indicia in T&P comics. The best you get is either within an advert or on the back cover so here are Frogman Comics Numbers 1 and 4. Note "September" is mentioned. The same advert appears in the Arnold Frankenstein No 2 (which displays ABC comics' Lower James Street London address on the back cover) so I surmise they both came out around the same time.

@Malacoda You never got into Humour or Romance comics? You don't know what you've missed. Some of the Patsy Walkers produced over the last decade may not have had art to my liking but the plots were fun and you actually cared about the characters. I have all Charlton's Go-Gos. The more light-hearted She-Hulks are comics at their best. I am currently re-reading Barbara Slate's Angel Love from 1986/1987. That straddles Humour and Romance. Interestingly it doesn't display a Comic Code seal of approval but you have to read it to find out why. The story is deceptively dark in contrast to the cartoony art.

Not Brand Echh Not imported by T&P?