Albert Tatlock

McVities have now been taken over by a Turkish firm, Pladis, but they haven't brought much Delight with them.

The very nice lady who lived next door to us at this time worked in the nearby McVities biscuit factory and was always bringing round bagfuls of broken biscuits, a staff perk common at the time, which no doubt the bean counters have put a stop to by now. She also bestowed the occasional comic on me, I remember ASM # 10 being one of them. I already had it, but accepted it and mumbled my gratitude in case she decided to find a more worthy recipient, dental inspections of gift horses not being the done thing.

He should have got the Nobel Prize instead of that miserable git Dylan, who did not even bother to go and pick up his gong. JCC would have given them a thing or two to remember him by.

Half a mild all round, and a mince pie. Terms and conditions apply. Subject to availability. Do you think I'm made of money?

Good pub quiz question follows from this. Which UK offshore island has the highest population? Answer, of course leaving most baffled, is Portsea. Must try to get out more.

.......and of course, this is the grassy knoll time of year, so if anyone wishes to fill us in on details of anything mystifying in our hobby, fire away.

Harold Wilson, announcing (through his puppet James Callaghan) the decision to devalue from £1 = $2.80 to £1 = $2.40 in late 1967, famously said that the pound in your pocket or purse had not been devalued. https://moneyweek.com/415830/19-november-1967-harold-wilsons-pound-in-your-pocket-fib Of course, it meant that the sterling funds that T & P were using to provide us with our escapist literature of choice bought 14% less product, so a price increase at our end was inevitable.

And here is another labour worthy of Hercules, to assemble a complete gallery of the issues crossing the 9d/10d divide of 1964. The arrival of Action # 317 was when I first noticed, in my local newsagent, the dastardly deed perpetrated upon the stalwart collectors of the day. My jaw dropped, and my face must have been a blend of the first and second reactions of Superman as depicted below. My heart sank as I realised that things would never be the same again. 'Where will it end?' read the thought bubble above my head. But I had no choice, I reluctantly forked out the extra pre-decimal penny.

I will not be able to rest until I have pedantically corrected the above to 'you and me'. There, I feel much better now.

A couple of copies of Action # 323, on the cusp of the handover from large to small T & P 10d stamps. The second scan shows the small one, faint, but just about visible. Maybe the new stamps were dished out part way through that month's stamping session, or maybe the small stamp was applied to a latecomer, we will probably never know. Anyway, that is another task for the completist, to assemble a full house of all the large and small stamps from the issues available in this crossover period. But surely, there cannot be anyone, even on these boards, whose anorak has such a stranglehold. Unless anyone knows better, of course.

I knew the Dobie Gillis would turn up one day, as I espied one cluttering up a tumbledown shack posing as a stamp dealer's premises on the edge of the local railway line in the dim and distant past, probably 1963. At the time, however, my interest was confined to the more mainstream titles, so even though it could have fallen into my clutches for 3 old pennies, I spurned it. Never saw any issues of the two outstanding cartoon titles, though. The next to fall may be Unexpected # 43, which I added to my collection in about 1965. Alas, it was a victim of a lapse of judgement when I pruned my holdings a few years later. It has since been replaced, but by an unstamped copy.

# 1 1960

What's your book called? Where can I rush out and buy it from? ISBN number? Reading this stuff online is fine, but nothing beats the impact of the printed page. Of course, if the copy I buy is shrink wrapped, I will just not be able to bring myself to desecrate it by tearing off the plastic, so I will not be able to read it until second-hand copies, well thumbed, I doubt not, begin to appear on ebay.

Gottit! Page count tallies, 96pp plus covers, meaning the dopes have printed it with a missing page. So now we have advanced to a known known. Reading through it, the missing part is fatal to the plot, as the continuity is destroyed. And the B & W version looks very dull alongside the original. Half a crown in 1962 would have got you Incredible Hulk # 1, AF # 15 and FF # 2, with enough left over for a Beano.

Can't find it now! It has Mysteriously Traveled/Travelled, but it can't be far away....................

No ads, a few story pages, but all longer than 1 page. Square bound, so no evidence of loss elsewhere. I reckon it is an error in production, but unless we can turn up another copy, we may never know. There are known unknowns, blah blah...........

Tales Of The Mysterious Traveler/Traveller (take your pick). I have recently purchased a copy of the reprint album of this title, which Duncan's site dates to 1962. The first story, Little Boy Blue, which has 6 pages in the original, has only 5 in the reprint (see attached scans). Page 5 is not present. I cannot see any signs of a page having been removed, and in any case there would have had to be something on the other side. I wonder, then, whether the reprint was accidentally produced in an incomplete form. If anyone here has a copy to compare it with, that would clear it up. Hope someone can help. Link below is to the original US version. https://ditko.blogspot.com/2009/11/unusual-tales-little-boy-blue.html

Could that be Ethel on the way to lay in more ciggies?

Not yet, but I intend to make a pilgrimage one day, if the Lord spares me long enough

This is a very old trick question. It was Sunderland (I was there). And Villa won it in '81.

Let us single out just one of the comics under discussion, say JO # 139. Under the old system, some, possibly a known quantity, possibly an unknown quantity, would have arrived at T & P nearly 6 months after US readers had had the privilege of discovering what was depicted between its covers. Under the new system, a known quantity would have arrived seemingly 3 months in advance of its companions, the returns from US outlets. So Fred and his gang would have no further need of fresh supplies of that issue. Would it have been cost-effective to ask for JO # 139 (cents version) to be weeded out of future return cargoes? Probably not. Did Fred factor in the late arriving cents returns when placing his UKPV order? Who will help by posting the minutes of the board meetings at T & P? Maybe these matters were discussed there at even greater length than we have here. Or then again, maybe not.

..........but of course they would have got their hands on the books that much sooner than if they had waited for returns, which may not have arrived in the desired quantity. UKPVs would have been supplied in exactly the quantities ordered, but the original question still remains, why then, and why was it discontinued? Why not roll it out across all titles? There is a lot to digest in the original post, I will go through it again, slowly and carefully, over my half a mild in t'Rovers this evening, to see if I can tease out the nub of the argument. Possibly there are some red herrings in there, but then again, maybe all the pieces of the jigsaw are needed to complete the picture, we shall see.

A great deal of thought and effort has gone into this, obviously, but I still cannot grasp why T & P would have believed that soliciting UKPVs at that point would have been advantageous, unless it cut the cost of labour involved in the stamping process, but surely that would have been tiny compared to the other costs of running the business, rent and or/rates, record keeping, transport and fuel, and all the rest.

I don't take offense, although those across the pond might. I don't even take offence, it takes more than these musings to offend me.

The UKPV copies were printed because T & P asked for them to be printed, surely, and not because they had been forced to accept them. Keeping the machine running on cents copies would have saved time. And T & P could have laid off a few of Ethel's colleagues. Wonder if they considered going on strike over the threatened redundancies.