Malacoda

I sometimes think the hardest part is getting past all the fake, made up nonsense written about them so you can get the real, made up nonsense that actually happened.

Most likely a copyright issue? Presumably Dell only paid for the US rights to this photo.

Thanks for these. Interesting. I see no 4 credits Hillman Periodicals which is the US originator but the earlier one doesn't. Also a handy list of some titles actually published (not just distributed) by T&P. Thanks.

That could be a quote from Douglas Adams.

Gents, I need some help, please. Does anyone have any T&P's from 1946 to 1959 - I mean from the reprint period during the import ban. What I'm trying to establish is when they started using the Upper Brook St address so what I'm trying to get my hands on is the indicias so I can establish when this first turns up. Ideally, I'd have a bunch of issues from month/year X none of which mention it and then a bunch from the next month where they all carry it. I think the magazines may be more reliable than the comics as they will have the distribution month on them, whereas the comics don't seem to have months in a lot of cases. If you have any Classics Illustrated that would be great, but they are an absolute dumpster fire in terms of dating anything....both the UK reprints and the US originals, so they are chaos within chaos. I'll do a couple of posts on them in a while as they're interesting, but absolutely nuts. With that in mind, any of the other titles would be great. I'd particularly like anything from 1953 and 1954, as I think the start date is June 1954. I think the point where they start publishing the UK edition of Esquire in June 1954 is the first activity out of the Upper Brook St address. The difficulty is sorting out stuff they actually published through their labyrinth of imprints vs comics that they just distributed on behalf of other publishers. I think the ones below are all actual T&P publications. If anyone has any of these they can access easily, that would be very much appreciated. American Eagle Western (1955) Blackhawk (1956- 58) Bugs Bunny (1953) Spellbound (Comics to hold you...) 1953 Eerie (1952) Forbidden Worlds (1950) This is ABC Frogman comics (1952) Gene Autry Comics (1953/4) Jesse James Comics (1952) Justice Traps the Guilty (1957/8) Kid Colt, Outlaw Kid Colt, Western Comics Kid Slade, Gunfighter (1957)

I've never read the romance titles, but I agree they seem to be (unintentionally) funnier than the funny comics ever were. I've never heard anyone express much love for the Love titles (you old softy), but as Charlton practically invented the genre, it would make some sense. I know people like their 50's horror comics which were supposed to be genuinely nasty. I have heard it said that Charlton started the whole romance genre, but I think Kirby and Simon got there first at Crestwood the year before and Charlton were just the best & fastest imitators. Would that be right?

#5 also has those big shilling stamps. #1 has PV's. 2 should as well. I've never got into the humour & romance titles, too much else to do, but NBE does look quite interesting. I wonder what lurks beneath this 2/- sticker. Also, according to Paul Gambacinni, he coined the termed 'Brand Ecch' to refer to the competition in ASM #7 which would be pretty ironic as he got told off for it at the time.

And our old friend.

Not Brand Echh, beautifully caricatured by Marie Severin. Actually looks quite a bit like her. She might have cheekily done Lois as a self portrait.

Zoinks. If this is issue #1, I assume it's from before ABC joined T&P, so it was distributed by Millers?

@Get Marwood & I Hey Moonboy, check these out. The second one is a fantastic rimshot.

Yup, that's spot on. The stamping number system had long since got to pot by 1970, but the stamps with numbers on continued to be used randomly (purely as pricing tools). Then in 1970 the ampersand stamps arrive and they are used in tandem with the number stamps for a few months, but by the last quarter of 1970, they go fully over to ampersands.

When you compare it to the kind of hackery he was turning in when he came back, you can see he had clearly given up. 'You want it fast and least-possible-effort? Well here you go.'

Indeed. What I love about this is how Ditko uses the panel size on the page and the size of Spidey within the panels. At the start the panels are tiny and seen from a distance so Spidey is tiny, dwarfed by the sheer tonnage of metal and concrete on top of him, then as he begins to exert himself, not only do the panels get larger, but he fills more and more of the frame, the camera zooms in, as it were, as if he is physically changing as he summons every ounce of strength he has. It's really a masterclass in visual storytelling. When I was kid, I was blown away by this but without even realising how Ditko was manipulating my eye.

Weirdly, I literally (10 minutes ago) finished watching Spider Man: Homecoming, which I had completely forgotten nods to those legendary Ditko panels....and here it be.

Absolutely that. This Aquaman is from 1967. God knows when it acquired the 5p sticker.

Do you think there's a phase of stickers? It seemed to me that stickers crop up sporadically throughout, but usually (not always) to oversticker a stamp at the point of a price increase.

Apparently one of the things that took people aback, particularly after Gold & Sullivan took it over, was the packing ladies, ciggy in mouth, nattering about Corrie, the weather and the price of fish as they obliviously put together packages of porn.

Loads of that. A chap called Nigel told me his mum worked there in the 50's and used to bring him home the T&P reprints of Classics Illustrated. Also, a lady named Sue told me that her neighbour Mrs. Clarke (very possibly Ethel herself) used to bring her home a comic every week. She said that even then she was aware she had some rare ones ( FF & Superman), but her mum chucked them all out.

Indeed. That looks printed, and from issue #1. Amazing. That magazine was an indy produced by a couple of guys in Topanga Canyon, which is a kind of artist's colony with a film festival, so makes a lot of sense that they produced the mag, but international distribution from issue 1? Maybe the UK edition was a reprint? The US edition doesn't have the price in that spot or in black, so it wasn't a straight swap out on the K plate.

Hi Robot, I'm absolutely positive it wasn't Ethel, I was just taking her name in vain for expediency. The oblong stamp belongs to (most likely candidate) Gold Star, so this would be a David Gold's version of Ethel (I think I called her Donna previously). These are the stamps we see on the 66'ers, but this comic is 4 months after the 66 hiatus, so it's one of the ones that proves that whoever was standing behind Donna when she stamped it, didn't just get the 66'ers but occasionally got other randos. Steve has substantiated this at length, so yes, you're right, they were clearly being imported by more than one company, but the irregularity suggests they were bin-ends, leftovers, maybe US returns, not a regular deal. Those Dell's are absolutely tremendous. Thanks for posting. One stamped at 2/6 and the other stamped with something else and then stickered 2/6 does indeed make it look like Ethel (the real Ethel) accidentally stamped it with a regular 9d stamp and then realised it was a 25c'er and stickered over the stamp. The obliterator stamp was clearly not on duty, but I guess if she had a roll of 2/6 stickers, that would be the way to go. As this is 1962, she might not have encountered a GS comic at this point?* Given the relative infrequency with which we see the oblong stamp, I can easily see Donna doing the first one upside down as it was clearly not her day job. The thing I liked about this is, much like the Which-Was-Printed-First debate, you could never know what order comics were stamped in or where in the immense pile a particular comic was, but with this one, having stamped the first one upside down, she obviously would have righted it, so you can actually say that particular one was on the top of the pile. Which, of course, helps us with absolutely nothing at all, but every now and then something like this makes me feel a little shiver of connection to the person stamping these comics all those years ago. At the moment (probably) that she stamped that, I was not even one year old. As she went 'oh Bloody Hell...' and turned the stamp the right way round, she can't possibly have imagined that mere babes-in-arms would, 56 years later, be speculating about that moment. It's a strange and wonderful thing we do here. But mostly strange. *I just put this to make Steve do a spit take with his Ovaltine and put up the list of GS'ers up to this point.

Of course, with the stamp above, I guess there's a 1% chance the comic was upside down, but I think we can pretty much assume that this issue was the first one on the pile and Ethel had the stamp upside down. Wouldn't it be sooooooo much easier if we could reliably make those kind of assumptions about other stuff?