Malacoda

Yes. It's logical to think that whatever made it an odd-bod going out might also be the reason it survived i.e. it wasn't part of normal distribution so never got sent back in. It therefore doesn't indicate that there's a load more of them out there.

It was certainly a job no one wanted. I found one of the Ethels (don't get excited) but she literally spent 2 weeks putting price stickers on comics in 1960, and then moved up to a job in the office. The interview for the job in the office, she said, went like this: they asked her to add up some numbers in her head and as she got it right, she got the job. I would imagine the interview structure for the price label sticking job was even less rigorous.

Don't suppose you know where that copy is? If it ever passed through Leicester, we could easily tell....

Pure speculation, but logically, the T&P reps must have had their own storage facilities (maybe just their own garages and lock ups) to make up the separate batches for the different towns and newsagents in those towns. And they must have stored the returns somewhere before taking them back to the nearest depot to be returned to Oadby. If you were the rep for Devon, based let's say in Ilfracombe, there is no way you did 8 hours of driving every day just to pick up and drop off stock at the Plymouth depot. You'd have to have storage. So the potential for a box of odds & sods that get forgotten is no surprise.

Thanks Steve. A nice reminder of why we're here and a great one-hit refresher. Re ASM #18, yes, we have stamped 9d's and the Obliterator + the mysterious 10d, but we also have 9d's replaced by the standard T&P 10d including the number. This indicates either that they got wind of the tax change in mid-batch (not likely, T&P would have re-priced the lot) or that the 10d were stragglers (possible), or most likely that they didn't necessarily stamp every issue of every title in one go, but rather got batches together for distribution. Given T&P's system of reps coming from far and wide to load up the vans themselves, this would make sense. If your rep from the Outer Hebrides is coming down to wherever your most northern depot is, you're going to get his whole order of magazines, Mads, books & comics ready to get to that depot, not make him come back next week when all the comics have been stamped. Obviously we can't be definitive about anything where we only have single examples, but if this double stamped T&P Spidey 18 is indicative of anything, it surely scotches Ireland? Also, didn't we determine that the Irish comics were more expensive, not the same price? It might be that the Irish comics were returns, but then there would surely have been a lot more of them and also, from the quote Albert posted from Tony Roche, they seem to have turned up in the cover date month.

Jessica Jones was far and away my favourite of the Netflix series. If you haven't seen a lot of those, you have a unique opportunity to watch them in event order (which means jumping around between the series, but of course that's effortless these days). I've been watching the whole of Marvel in chronological order - so starting with the Cap 1 movie, then the Agent Carter TV series, the Agent Carter one shot, Xmen First Class, DOFP, Xmen Origins: Wolverine....you get the idea. All the movies, TV series & one shots from every studio, everything from Blade onwards. I can send you the viewing order if you REALLY want a binge. From the newer stuff, Wandavision is phenomenal. You will realise why everyone has the knives out for Doc Strange 2 when you see it. Hawkeye is good fun. I always wanted the wisecracking, smug, pain-in-the-arse Hawkeye from the silver age, and this goes absolutely the opposite way with the family man angle, but I enjoyed it. It's more like one of the Netflix series, IMO i.e. it has more of the street-level punch ups of say Daredevil than the cosmic villainy of the Avengers movies. It’s also a kind of detective story so probably has more in common with Jessica Jones than the other Disney series. No spoilers, but some familiar and welcome faces turn up too. F&WS - some amazing flying and action sequences. It's basically a 4th Captain America movie without Cap, probably closest in tone to the 2nd Cap film (globe-trotting spy movie). It also struck me that what Marvel did quite badly in the 70’s when they tried to introduce more black characters, this does a lot better. I think it was all done in quite a ham-fisted way when the Falcon was introduced in the comics and I think maybe they went back to that original intention and did it a lot better. Or maybe I just think that because I always start from the comics and maybe the MCU doesn’t. Loki is full on bonkers. Where Hawkeye is like the Netflix series – bone crunching ‘real’ fights with occasional full on super hero effects and action, Loki is the exact opposite. Full on cosmic time travelling science fantasy with a lot of comedy. Big scale, big sets, lots of effects. Probably closest in tone to the 3rd Thor movie.

By the way, I think binging was necessary for Loki, Hawkeye, Falcon & WS and the Netflix shows, but I don't think you will gain from binging She Hulk. The episodes are all separate though related, and it's a much lighter tone. It's very much Byrne's She Hulk, breaking the 4th wall and where the comic parodied super hero comics, this does the same to the movie /TV genre. That makes it sound quite naff, but it's actually rather fun. Support cast is great. Also, watching it each week, like we used to watch TV, is really nice in a way I can't quite define.

Well, it's all correct information,,,,,

Yes. That. would. be. hilarious.

Lordy Mama. You have a slabbed #48 signed by Stan? OK. That is quite some collection. Kev, while you're checking for SS 10, could you please also look for stamps of 15, 16 and 17. There are plenty of PV's and unstamped cents copies, but no stamps found so far. (Actually, I say plenty, #15 seems to be pretty rare despite being a PV). As Steve will tell you, I spent an entire year scouring the Tinternet for Avengers #9 and DD #4 before realising that I actually owned stamped copies of both. And they're supposedly impossibly rare. Nothing would surprise me.

Might actually be the case. By the 80's they would have been typesetting on computer keyboards - US keyboards don't have the £ symbol, you have to hold down multiple buttons to get it, but if every UK comic you'd ever seen was a figure with a p after it, maybe this looked right.

Blimey O'Reilly. When I posted that, I started with 'this is for you, Gary' but I had no idea how much it was for you. Thank you for sharing that story. I think of all comics, if you discover the Surfer at a young age, he has the potential to really make you bond. When I read 'the Super Heroes' at the age of nine, I was enthralled by the Surfer - for some reason I thought the X men were silly and did not read them. Imagine my delight when I finally realised how good they were and had a whole run to catch up on. Odd really as I'm sure the reading age for the Surfer is well above the early X men. Thanks for all pics as well. And above all, thanks for not posting those 17 ink stamped ones that we agreed not to tell Steve about.

.....and thank you for the considered, thoughtful push back. You don't get diamonds without some pressure. Ultimately we all do this for ourselves, but I agree with you, when you post something that you think should be of interest to a particular group, and it's met with silence, it does make you wonder if you're barking up the wrong tree. Or just barking. Thank God for this little padded cell of like-minded nutters.

Indeed. And this is one that Duncan is adamant was ND. Alan Austin, interestingly, does not list it as so, but he also doesn't list it as 'scarce' which is his norm and I would say this definitely counts as scarcer than the average, so I don't think it was on his radar. Obviously, you can't ever prove a negative. Even if you found the actual shipping manifest from 1969, you could only say that it was missing from the manifest, it doesn't prove it wasn't in the crate. But here's my take: there does seem to be a dearth of this issue. If one wanted to believe it was distributed then one would have to hypothesize that there was some reason why ALL, maybe 8k to 20k copies, the stamped copies and PV's disappeared without trace and this is pretty much the only comic of its era to which that happened. Occam's Razor would suggest one incidence of them not being printed is more likely than 20,000 incidences of them being binned & destroyed. The version of events where it was not distributed but some randos came over later seems to fit Gary's experience, the volumes that are around now, the memories of people like Duncan and the fact that, try as we may, we can't find a single bloody copy of it out there anywhere.

I think 4 or 5...but there are 23 copies of no 1 which is interesting considering no 1 was squarebound, so much more prone to destruction and a new title and cost a whopping 1/9, you'd think no 10 and later, normal bound, cheaper priced issues would have a much, much higher incidence of survival. Is this because people knew number ones were collectible at this point? The Surfer was also the first title started at Sparta, so superior quality to previous squarebound issues.

Just to tidy up my syntax, I mean the fact that nobody remembers it like that is because it didn't happen like that. Somewhere along the way. despite each cover date month having between 4 and 7 different on sale dates in the US, they all rocked up at my newsagents at the same time (at least that's how I and others remember it). The 60's seems more mixed.

No. No no no no no no no. I'm disagreeing with you in case that wasn't clear. If there were a 100 copies of SS #10 for sale on UK ebay, sold by guys with descriptions like 'old comic for sale - clearing out my attic' and he was selling it along with 4 years of the Beano, a pair of moonboots (hardly worn) and a steering wheel for a 1973 Ford Cortina I would definitely say that this indicates that SS #10 came over in quantity and is out there among there general populace. But there are 2 copies of SS 10 in the UK on ebay, one by the Atomic Ninja's Comic Store and the other by Global Nostalgia. Only collectors have this issue. And, to underline the point, your poster boy is a guy who has Silver Surfers bound in hardback leather editions. Seriously, do we believe that this guy would not have got a copy of Silver Surfer 10 unless it was on the spinner rack at Bert's Mags, & Bags? This guy is the collector to end all collectors. He's probably THE Collector. He makes Gary look like he's not trying hard enough. I would say that the very limited availability of this comic and the people who own it are one of the better indicators that it did not get distributed.

It wouldn't necessarily. It's more the other way round. If the Surfer was seemingly printed in the middle of the batch, prior to a whole bunch of other titles which were distributed, you would pretty much have to assert that he got missed off for some other reason e.g. there was a whole pile of Silver Surfer 10's sitting there waiting to go but they got misplaced. If that had happened, they would surely have sent them later. If they were PV's pretty much definitely (though your Rawhide Kid issues would beg to differ). The point is really that a counter-argument could be "aha, well, ASM, FF ,Thor, Hulk and Millie Goes To The Betty Ford Clinic all had on sale dates after SS #10, so how come they caught the boat?". The fact that he's last in the line removes that argument and makes it a possibility. I've got a load more work to do US vs UK sales dates. In the 70's we all remember that the comics arrived and left all grouped together by calendar month. Yes, there were stragglers and odd-bods, but what NONE of us remember is that every month, half the titles were cover dated for that month and half of them were the previous month. In the 60's, it seems less clear. It seems more sporadic and collector's memories are all different together, if you know what I mean. I suspect that this is partly related to differences in printing & shipping, but mainly because T&P and World were completely different animals.

Thanks for this. I will pursue.

Yup, good point. Though we have no idea what these stamps actually mean, it seems bloody unlikely they're retroactive, so the on sale date may not be reliable.

If I ever, you know, go a little bit too far down the rabbit hole, you would tell me, wouldn't you, guys?

Conclusion: That said (a) there are no titles that have one ND issue (unless it’s number one) (b) if you were manipulating the order, why pick the Surfer? Doc Strange and Nick Fury were both cancelled from this month, and both had just had 2 issues ND, yet they were both still distributed in November and the Surfer was selected for ND? 4 out of the last 6 issues of Captain America were ND – why stop there and ND a single issue of the Surfer? It makes no sense. I think the first theory is correct. There is just so much mess and such a suddenly foreshortened deadline around SS #10, I can easily see how it would happen by mistake and it makes no sense as a conscious decision. So now that I’ve conclusively proven Silver Surfer #10 was ND and why, how long do you reckon we will need to wait before someone turns up a stamped copy? I reckon a week at the most!

Theory Number #2 Because I haven’t taken up enough of your time banging on about this one single comic. It might be deliberately ND. I think that during the 3rd hiatus, with the expansion of Marvel titles, T&P found the flexibility of having a cents-only order that didn’t have to be carved in stone 3 months in advance very attractive. However, there were enormous benefits to having the PV’s: the time saving of not having to individually stamp tens of thousands of comics is not hard to calculate. Also the reduced wage bill, reduced mess, space saving, lack of confusing dual pricing for newsagents, the list goes on. I also think that a key difference between 1967 and 1969 is that when the hiatus ended, everything had been transferred to Sparta, who could rattle off a few trillion PV’s faster and probably more cheaply than ECP. The solution, obviously, was to have both. Have a core order of PV’s for the core titles and top those up with cents copies and just have cents copies for the titles where the demand might be lower or more variable. But I think they went one better. I think they started using ND as well. I mean, that’s not really a different method to varying the size of the order, it’s just ‘varying’ it down to zero. Everyone who's still awake: I don’t think so, Rich. I think the ND’s were the usual ups and mis-fires in distribution, printing issues, batches that missed the boat, titles that weren’t ordered, etc etc etc But here is the thing that is very telling: during the last 28 months of T&P Marvels, there are 36 titles comprising 495 issues. So that’s a pretty decent sample base. How many titles have ND issues? 14. How many of those titles had PV’s? None. And how many of them are reprint titles? None. Every single time there’s a ND, it’s from one of the titles that has cents only issues. Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid, TOS/ Cap, Captain Savage, Nick Fury, Dr Strange (remember, I said 179 would be back), Tower of Shadows, Chamber of Darkness, Where Monsters Dwell, Where Creatures Roam and even the first issues of Amazing Adventures, Astonishing Tales and Conan. All of these titles have ND issues and every one of them is (1) an original-material title (i.e. not a reprint) and (2) was not in the PV print run prior to going ND. 495 out of 495 is an undeniable pattern (actually, technically, it’s 494 out of 495 because the first issue of Where Monsters Dwell is reprints, but I’m pretty sure that was not supposed to be distributed – it was a last minute substitution because Captain Marvel was cancelled unexpectedly). Again, it could just be 494 coincidences, but I would say it’s a pretty undeniable pattern. And Silver Surfer 10 was the first issue which should have been a PV but wasn’t. It does fit that pattern.

Theory Number #1 1) The first thing to note is that the Surfer was hanging ten off the print run: check out this table of on-sale dates and tell me which title, if any, had the greatest potential to miss the UK distribution deadline, to literally miss the boat (by the way, Captain Savage was ND, so no help there). 2) I don’t know why the Surfer was originally last (maybe because they were all GS and therefore square bound so stapled differently and had the covers attached differently?). It’s possible that when they set the print runs up, they did the GS comics last, but for whatever reason he has the last on-sale date. 3) As long as he was GS, there would be no PV’s, leaving T&P to stamp the comics as they did with the annuals, Marvel Tales 1 & 2, Marvel CIC and Fantasy Masterpieces (for the most part). 4) From issue 7, the Surfer went monthly, but this didn’t affect ‘the UK batch’ because there was no ‘UK batch’, we just got cents copies. This is where the bonkers relationship between the on-sale date and the cover date comes from. To give you a flavour for the knife-edge the Surfer was on compared to other titles, this is his run compared to Spidey for the same months (lead time in days from on sale date to 1st day of cover month). 5) From issue #8, the Surfer went down to a 15c standard size, this was demonstrably completely unexpected. There is no mention of it coming on the Bullpen Bulletins in issue #7 though they were clearly desperately short of material that month and no mention on the letters page – one of the responses to the letters even mentions the number of pages in the comics and doesn’t reference the upcoming change to the Surfer the very next month. 6) Then at the end of issue 8 there is note from Stan explaining the unexpected change, which he literally says caught them with their pants down. 7) Stan says that this is because we, the readers, demanded that the Surfer go monthly that very month. I suspect it’s more likely an issue with the distributor. This is the exact month that it flips from IND to Curtis, so, messily, half the titles are distributed by IND and the other half by Curtis. The Surfer, being at the end of the print run, was conversely one of the first to flip. 8) So this means, as Marvel didn’t know it was happening, and T&P certainly didn’t know it was happening, there was no time to get the Surfer added to the PV print run. As you can see, the uniquely tight gap between the on-sale date and the cover month date meant that with the last-minute decision on Surfer 8, number 9 would presumably already have been in the print schedule by the time the conversation with T&P about a PV took place, so the first issue of the Surfer which SHOULD have been a PV was…all together now…. number 10! (Keep in mind that half the titles were PV and half were cents stamps, so it was by no means a given that the Surfer would be a PV). So why did it fail to happen? Don’t know. But look at the dates. The Surfer had always been printed last, was always printed tightest against its release date, and had always been excluded from the UKPV print run, so it wasn’t like it got knocked off the PV schedule, it just failed to be added to it in time and if any title was going to miss the boat, it was always going to be the Silver Surfer. The really interesting thing is that it seems that no PV’s meant no cents stamps issues either. Why? You would imagine that with the PV’s not getting printed, they would have made up the order with a ton of cents copies, but they didn’t. This is how I think it happened: 1) We know that distribution is split exactly down the middle at this point: there are 10 titles which get PV’s which then get a load of (seemingly variable in quantity) cents issues added to the order to top it up and there are 10 titles which have cents issues only, to be stamped by T&P. Obviously, these are not part of the ‘top up’ list as they are all cents copies to start with and there would be no difference between the main order and the ‘top up’…. they’re all just cents copies. 2) Let’s imagine that as two job lists at Sparta Distribution: (1) the cents only list, where the whole order is made up of cents copies and (2) the PV + cents copies list, where the order is based off the PV print run and then cents issues are added. This would definitely be two separate lists, as List One would be wholly the US domestic order and List Two would be wholly the export order, parcelled up and headed straight for the docks. 3) With the Surfer, from issues 1-9, he’s on List One: there’s a standing order to put (let’s say) 8,000 cents copies into the UK crate because there were no PV’s. 4) The Surfer has just changed from bi-monthly to monthly creating the unprecedently tight distribution schedule. Then when he drops overnight to a standard 20 pages, they decide to do PV’s from issue 10 so the cents-to-be-stamped order is, obviously, cancelled and he’s deleted from List One. 5) Then, due to the time crunch / a scheduling error / general confusion caused by the change in size / price / frequency of publication / whatever, he doesn’t get added to List Two in time for the PV print run. 6) As the cents top up copies are a function of List Two, he doesn’t get these either. 7) As he’s now on neither list, there are no Silver Surfers shipped to the UK. Later, when people are scratching their heads saying ‘why are there so many Silver Surfers left over this month?’ they realise and send a wad of the leftovers in next month’s crate, which is why a handful of them show up as seaside specials after the event. This may all be coincidence, but then you have to believe that the change in size and price, which demonstrably caught everyone on the hop, had nothing to do with it, the change from bi-monthly to monthly had nothing to do with it, the flip from cents copies to PV’s had nothing to do with it and the fact that the Surfer was the last title printed each month had nothing to do with it. The balance of probabilities would perhaps suggest otherwise.

Silver Surfer 10 OK, so what the Hell happened to Silver Surfer #10? (this is for you, Gary…not that you ever asked for it, obviously….) Things to keep in mind: Evidence indicates that the cents issues which came over with the PV’s from April 1969 to July 1971 came over directly alongside them in the same months (changes in price and currency format tie up with the titles which had no PV’s and also the stamps stop dead when the PV’s transfer to World). There are some comics that were non-D clearly by intention, but there are others that equally clearly were supposed to be distributed but something happened (e.g. TTA #62, FF #80 and our old friend Silver Surfer #10). Doc Strange #179 may also be on that list, but I suspect not. More on that later.