Malacoda

Interesting. Noted. Thank you. If I understand, this is PV Charlies (duals) rocking up in the UK at first importation and, due to bonkers inflation since they were printed, being repriced to 12p directly from 10p before even hitting the spinners, right? So it's the same environment, but a key difference is the Marvels were seemingly distributed at cover price up to 2 years earlier, then re-circulated with stickers, having jumped straight across 3 price increases.

Update on this. I had always assumed it was my newsagent who was opening the Lucky Bags and repricing them (if, indeed, that was happening), because I only ever saw it at this one newsagents (though it seems very unlikely to me that that was the only one doing it, given what we know about returns never finding their way into the pulper). Recently, I finally found another one of these for sale. Ghost Rider 11 from April 1975, repriced all the way from 8p to 12p (+50%, nice work if you can get it) some time after March 1977. So the same as the Thor above. Why am I telling you this? Because, unless he happened to shop at the same newsagent to me, it might well indicate it was the sales rep, not the newsagent. I checked the seller. He was from Slough (about 13 miles from my newsagent, so almost certainly the same rep). But then I got chatting with the seller (lovely chap) and he told me that he bought his comics on the way to school from a kiosk on Osterley station which is less than 3 miles from my newsagent. So pretty much certainly the same world rep. Can we agree, it would be an almost impossible coincidence for two different newsagents miles apart to unearth three different comics, years apart and re-price them to the then-current price of 12p with the same stickers. This has to be the world rep, doesn't it?

I see it's Charlatan, not Charlton, but the reference to cancer must be unintentional, surely? I mean, they're bad, but not that bad.

There's a number of incidences of companies using names or slogans that later became unfortunate, but calling yourself 'the Big C' ....?

Right, right, right. So is that actually Ben's blog? I thought he was the Evil Overlord behind it, or does he contribute to someone else's grand folly?

What's the guide they're talking about?

Well, that's 6,000. Congrats, everyone. 7,000 beckons.... As you know, for years I've been interested in the 7th era of T&P distribution (the bit where there are stamps and PV's at the same time). For the last few months, I've been following all of the missing ones plus a basket of other issues (89 in total) to see what patterns emerge. Results to follow when I have a representative sample base. After trawling through hundreds of each issue, this DD #59 with a very faint big stamp rocked up. Does anyone have an interesting stamp / sticker of DD #59?

Is this a Rogue's Gallery of the earliest PV's to celebrate the 6,000th post? Also, I like the 20 posts per page thing. It means we always hit page anniversaries at the same time as post anniversaries.

Totally agree. I mean, if you were literally just focussed on the actual physical distribution of comics, you'd be.....well....me, I suppose.

Yeah, but you know I'll just post a new hiatus theory and bag it (along with the 7,000th and 8,000th at the same time).

Whoa! Page 300. Congrats, everyone.

Do you not see that on the menu when you right click a pic on ebay? It's new. For a while I was having the same issue you were with pics, then that popped up.

Rest assured I will be quoting that out of context at every opportunity.

Mmmmmm. Usually stamps just widen and deepen mysteries and throw up anomalies. It's super satisfying when they cough up some answers.

Imagine what a full one minute commercial would cost to air now.

Yes. Oh dear God yes. I found this only helps you isolate to print screen it or take a pic of it, you can still only save it as web file. If you 'magnify image', you can save it as a png file. That's fine for me, but of course, if you reopen it in whatever picture viewer you use, you should then be able to save it as a jpg or other format too.

Exactly this, I think, though, as ever, it's nicely complicated. Odhams finished, after which IPC had the Marvel licence. However, they only reprinted Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer, the Western strips Ghost Rider and the Ringo Kid and Homer the Happy Ghost in TV21 magazine, probably because those strips were the closest to TV kind of fare. It's hard to tell when IPC actually lost the licence for Marvel because they stopped doing reprints a full year before MWOM came on the scene, so I suspect they may held some vestigial rights. Of course, you get the Martspress debacle in late 71 / 72, but Leonard Matthews (Martspress) was ex-Fleetway (IPC) anyway, and they packaged comics for IPC, so the distinction between Martspress and IPC is a fuzzy one. One point of interest is that World distributors were the publisher/distributor for Marvel annuals in 1968, 1970 and 1971 (when IPC had the UK reprint rights), and then Fleetway (IPC) became the publisher for the 1973 and 1974 annuals (published in 1972 and 1973). World Distributors were surely the logical candidates for the annuals from the get go because (a) annuals were their bread & butter (b) they were Marvel's distributor for the US titles and (c) they were the distributors for the annuals from 1968 - 1971 and 1975 - 1979, so there's a strange break for these 2 annuals that went to Fleetway. It might have been that this was the deal for giving up the distribution rights, or it might have been the distribution rights for the annuals were a completely different kettle of fish to the weeklies or it might have been the arrival of Al Landau and his determination to take the annuals away from the Pembertons, but either way, it's weird that those 2 annuals were diverted to Fleetway - there's some story there. Whatever the case, there was definitely a lack of anyone reprinting Marvel with any conviction from 1969 to 1972 so I can well believe Alan saw his chance.

Yes, of course, you're right. With paper rationing/shortages here, they were printed all over the place. Amazing to think it was cheaper to get it printed in Italy and shipped back than printed here. That said, Transworld lived up to their name when it came to getting the UK Marvels printed in the 70's (Spain, Belgium and, bizarrely, Finland).

That's weird. The two people I first thought of looking this image were the puppet master (plump version) and Inigo Pipkin, who, of course, was also a puppet master. That must be an association from childhood, but I never made it before.

And this also says printed in Italy for Publishers in Italy, so presumably other countries in Europe too.

Indeed. It does have a whiff of.... Good spot. Probably means they were distributed by Surridge Dawson, John Menzies or one of the other national newspaper distributors. If Tommy Tompkins was setting out on his delivery round from Hackney every morning, he'd have been knackered by the time he got to Glasgow.

Wow. Are we really doing this? OK. There's a Derek Robert Wright who was born in June 1944 which would make him the (w)right age for this lad. Now (or in 2010 anyway) living in Rayleigh. Plenty of East End lads moved to Essex after the war (and became car dealers and named their daughters Sharon....not that I'm stereotyping here).

For a second there, I thought you meant all three on one comic. Now that would be a beautiful mess!

LOL, in fairness to Millers, I think that was horror comics. I'm not convinced there ever was a bankruptcy as such (despite what wikipedia says). Bankruptcy is a pretty slippery thing anyway. T&P most definitely were declared bankrupt, involuntarily, but the receivers put the comic distribution business into one of the company's subsidiaries [T&P(Sales) Ltd] sold it to their chief creditor and main supplier (IND) and carried on with barely a break in distribution (2nd hiatus). So their bankruptcy was, to the untrained eye, pretty much just on paper. With regard to Millers, I suspect Len became ill or died in 1963 and the company ownership was restructured, so the original company on paper may have been changed. @themagicrobot this article pretty specifically says that the company went into final voluntary liquidation on 24 September 1974, the decision having been made at a meeting of directors (Florrie Miller, Arnold Miller and Doreen Lewis) on 21 June 1972. @Get Marwood & I Steve, I suspect this is what you remember reading? Bear Alley: Marvelman in the news

Yes please. I tried to find some info about Irving Mannheimer and Worldwide Distributors, but, of course, all I could find was a court case for porn. As usual.