Albert Tatlock

Diamond T & P lookalike stamp on Wonder Woman # 154.

Triangle stamp on Rawhide Kid # 34. OP 1/- stamp on Thor # 134, one of the delayed shipment of late 1966. Who were OP? PB (again, who are they?) 9d stamp on Unusual Tales # 32. I have 3 of these, all with identical stamps, so presumably applied by the wholesaler, not the retailer. Star sticker to obscure Miller price on Gorgo # 2, but no other price showing anywhere.

I am pretty sure that the fellow who brought them to my attention had no legitimate claim to them. It looked to me like they had been dumped, and if I had not heard about them, they would have gone for salvage.

I reckon these were just dumped on the market to whoever would buy them by T & P. The one I have came into my possession around 1980, when they were already well out of date. A lot of them are damaged, heavy scuffs, etc, but that could have happened during the last stages of their voyage through the secondhand channels. T & P stamped had done the rounds, no joy, maybe the unstamped never went out for distribution and just lay orphaned in T & P's vaults until someone decided to take a chance. Of course, the 2/- price stamp could not really have been an indication of the retail price at that time, post-decimal. The problem here is that none of us know the workings of the remaindered book trade at the time, so all we can come up with are informed guesses. I never saw any of these 2/- stamps 'live' in any shops. possibly market traders were flogging them?

But some have T & P stamp and some do not. I have looked through a selection of this batch that I got at the time, and there are stamped and unstamped all jumbled up. The date range covers only a few months, but the stamps are spread seemingly at random across the whole batch. They would presumably have been stamped very soon after arrival at T & P, so our light fingered suspect would have had to be quick. And if they went astray before arrival at T & P, why do some of them have a T & P stamp? They have clearly been offered for sale in retail outlets somewhere before being abandoned, but I have no idea where. I am stumped.

Yes, but how did they get into the warehouse without T & P handling them to begin with?

These are deeper waters than I thought. Here are a few Kamandi WITH diamond 2/-, but WITHOUT T & P stamp. Was someone else able to bypass T & P?

But why should the Yanks have sent stuff to colonial Singapore, and not to the glorious motherland? Was our money not good enough? Maybe Uncle Sam was not as capitalist as we thought. More on this later.

Original full price 1/-. Could T & P have handled the returns? Or could MV, or someone else, have handled T & P's unsold stock?

Suspense # 11 (Sept. 1960) apparently did not reach Britain, but I have found one advertised in an old sales list of Ron Bennett's, ex of Singapore.

Here comes towel, catch!

Action War Picture Library also published by MV. Did they use T & P?

TTT teeters on brink. Name of publisher is on cover, but who is the DISTRIBUTOR? Can we get a look at the inside covers?

From CGC census: FF # 1 cents 2456, pence 20 FF # 6 cents 1120, pence 20 FF # 7 cents 798, pence 2 TTA # 62 cents 332, pence NIL Why Marvel did not send over adequate supplies of FF # 7, I do not know. The result, though, is that FF # 7 as a pence is rocking horse.

Bilko is still around. He has conned his way onto the Man. Utd board.

Free Rupert Ritzik!

But this cannot possibly be a first use of the 1 stamp, which took place months before this example could have arrived in the UK.

It's not far off. # 42 should be a 1 stamp, so it is only a couple of months behind. If it is right, though, it is the earliest recorded JO to be shipped by DC. The earliest I ever managed to find was # 41.

The guy who has drawn Jimmy's face should be taken on as a regular.

No idea, unfortunately. The newsagents of the day did not seem to shelve or rack their comics in any particular order, so, unless you observed the delivery driver, it would be impossible to tell. The comics, when they arrived, were in a bundle tied up with string, with sheets of cardboard top and bottom. Sometimes you could see the dent made by the string on the top copy. I suspect they would have been bundled up by the local wholesaler and sent around in batches, varying in number according to the orders placed by each retail outlet.

Fantasy Advertiser contained frequent want lists with TTA # 62 prominent. I have some in my spares with a previously unrecorded stamp, which I will upload as soon as I find them, but it is a needle in a field of haystacks at the moment. There is an anecdote there, too, but I will leave it until I can find the actual items.

JIM # 110 was scarce, and does not appear on Frank Dobson's list. Alan Austin lists # 109 as 'rare' and # 110 and #111 as 'scarce', but I do not recall #111 as being hard to find. Alan did a lot of good work, but he cannot be relied upon 100%.

The shipping strike was over too quickly (less than 2 months) to affect comic distribution long-term. Alan Austin's guide of 1979 lists most of the late 1966 issues as 'scarce', but he does not give a reason.

They were not missing at the time. They were on sale as usual, but I was not paying attention to the cents or pence issue. Only ones which arrived out of sequence were the late '66 issues.

The only interruption in supply that I can remember was the late 1966 issues. I was buying all the main Marvel titles from early 1965 onwards, and they all appeared on schedule except for those 2 month's issues. They are there as a tell-tale gap in Frank Dobson's sales list sent out while they were still missing.