Malacoda

On 3/18/2024 at 3:05 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Stop asking questions! 

Shan't! This touches on some fascinating areas.....although I do appreciate that I'm in a pretty small crowd with regard to what I find fascinating (the last Distribution Con was just me with a big name sticker and a bloke sweeping rubbish round my feet hinting heavily that he'd like to go home now, please). 

Wait....what?  So you've got: 

A 10c US original with dual pricing (should we not be remarking on that?). 

A 6d 'British edition'  which I assume is a reduced price re-cycle of the 9d original with a 6d sticker on it? 

and then a  1/- stickered British one.  So there were stickers to put the price down from 9d to 6d and then later more stickers to put price up to 1/- ?

But US imported comics didn't cost a shilling until 21 years after this was published. 

According to GCD, Bell were producing bespoke comics for the British market for only a very short time around 1946, so this is quite a historic survivor. 

On 3/16/2024 at 7:34 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

That's very kind, thank you Rich 

You're most welcome.  And keep in mind, I've basically only posted on one thread, so I've barely scratched the surface of what you've accomplished.   Oh, and by the way....

On 3/14/2024 at 12:02 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Well, it's always worked for me and I don't think I've done too badly on it.

That's obviously completely true.  Much of what you've researched has never been researched by anyone else and, even if it had been, it would surely not have been to the same depth and with the same relentless, meticulous dedication. Or with the same incisive conclusions drawn.  Where you say  "I've always liked to own the comics I write about where I can, rather than use other peoples scans"  I fully get this. There is nothing like holding the actual artefact in your hands, feeling the paper, smelling it and, in the case of stickers, holding it up to a 200w bulb.  However, I think your other great strength has been the courtesy and credit you extend to other (less expert) adventurers in this curious back alley of comic collecting.  I think your expertise coupled with the appreciation and respect you extend to others has created a gathering of eagles (bonus points if you can identify where I stole that from) and the interactions that have blossomed in that environment (particularly with input from those who were there at the time) has mushroomed into something far greater than the sum of its parts.  

I'm not disagreeing with what you say about your methods, I just think you're underselling yourself and your achievements. 

On 3/11/2024 at 5:48 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

You wouldn't believe how many comics I've bought down the years just to prove things, large and small. I've always liked to own the comics I write about where I can, rather than use other peoples scans. I've sat on discoveries for months, sometimes years, waiting for the book(s) I need to surface to complete a picture. Some of my pending folders are so old I have to remind myself why I created them in the first place  

I fully agree with this in principle, but in practice, life's too short to wait years for a knackered copy (of something you don't actually collect) when you know that someone you chat to (probably on here) might have a FN+ copy of the smoking gun run behind them.  That said, sometimes you need to get enough of a critical mass to even frame the question.  I'm currently groping towards a question for your Alan Class Club thread, but I need to hone it down first. 

On 3/11/2024 at 10:42 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Cheers for the comments boys. I've hopefully got another variation example to post soon. It all depends if the millimetre that was visible in the listing is telling me what I think it is... 

I hate that.  I saw a Doc Strange 179 with what may have been a T&P stamp but it was in a massive bundle. The seller said it was already parcelled up and wouldn't open it to tell me.  I was sorely tempted but once bidding went over £500, it was too much money just to find out it was a dealer stamp or similar.  Still haunted by it. 

Good luck.   

On 3/9/2024 at 1:59 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

It's sometimes hard to decipher what is going on production-wise when comparing books like these, but my gut tells me that these two copies came from separate print runs - covers and guts - and are not the result of a mid-run cover plate change to accommodate an alternative inside front cover. Why those 'cut out' pages vary is anyone's guess.

The salient learning point for me here is that variations of this comic exist in the first instance - I don't think I've seen that fact noted anywhere online before, even in those blogs written by those who clearly know what they're talking about (which, in this area, I largely don't).

Something that may be a factor in some of these differences, going back to the war and the post war years, is paper rationing. In the US, Canada and the UK, newspapers were still published, but rationing meant that publishers had to get clever.   For newspapers, there was no real choice as they were limited to size of newspaper they could print.  In the UK,  in 1939, it was reduced immediately to 60% of their pre-war consumption of newsprint. Paper supply then came under the No 48 Paper Control Order on 4th September 1942 and was controlled by the Ministry of production. By 1945 newspapers were limited to 25% of their pre-war consumption. Wrapping paper for most goods was prohibited, so ironically, newspaper would have been even more useful. UK newspapers didn't get back to their pre-war size until 1953 (and I think that was only because Liz got a new hat that year).  

In the US, there were similar restrictions.  When Al Kanter was trying to print second + runs of Classics Illustrated, he did it by buying up paper allotments from 9 different publishers in NY, so you could have bought yourself 9 copies of the same edition and found each one subtly different.  When he published CI 7 (Robin Hood) it was so popular it went to 5 editions in a matter of months.  Despite being produced across only 7 months, the 3 latter editions came from 3 different printers on paper stock from 3 different publishers. 

The high suicide rate among Classics Illustrated completists is probably unrelated.