Malacoda

I think it had to be. If they had announced it with any notice period up then anyone contemplating any purchase of an import would have run out and bought it. Every business that used imports in any way would bought anything it could in advance and crashed sterling even further. Callaghan & Wilson had both been vehemently against devaluing sterling, but Callaghan had staked his reputation on it to the point that he had to resign as Chancellor. This was really a huge deal as the UK and every other major country had been part of the Bretton Woods financial accord since the war. Bretton Woods required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars to within 1% of fixed parity rates and then the dollar was convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks at $35 per ounce, so it tied every country (except Russia) effectively to a global gold standard. Changing where you sat against the dollar changed where you sat against every currency in the world and against the global gold standard. As you say, everyone knew it was coming, but when and by how much was a secret. Even then, speculators were killing the currency reserves.

OK, this is my tight five. 1st Marvel PV hiatus: Duration: October 1964 to August 1965 Started because: prior to the 1964 election, the new govt was proposing a new import tax, but as no one knew when the tax would begin or the percentage, and PV’s had to be ordered 3 months in advance, the only way to get ahead of the tax was to flip to stamping in advance (hence the first stamps are still 9d). Ended because: the tax was supposed to be a temporary measure but actually lasted 2 years, so after 7 months of waiting, T&P flipped back to 10d PV’s, which then took 3 months to catch up to cover date. 2nd Marvel PV hiatus: Duration: October to December 1966. Started because: in the first 6 months of 1966, T&P was headed for bankruptcy and bills were not getting paid. Marvel reduced supply accordingly, restricting the number of titles (and possibly the volumes of the ones that still got PV’s, though I suspect not). Ended because: IND bought T&P and normal business relations were resumed. 3rd Marvel PV hiatus: Duration: November 1967 to March 1969. Started because: UK devalued currency. Again, it was not known by how much or when this would be, so T&P went to stamps in advance. During this period, I think T&P enjoyed the flexibility of extra volume (which is why the stamps carry on in tandem with the PV’s afterwards) and during this period they were flipping printers from ECP to WCP, so each cover date month was made up of up to 8 print runs from 2 different suppliers. This also coincides with the Marvel explosion of new titles and breaking out of ST/TOS/TTA into 6 separate titles. Bafflingly, they did not automatically put the new titles with the new printer, so they not only had to be launched but then separately migrated to WCP. It was clearly decided not to add flipping back to PV’s to the chaos. Once all titles were under WCP (after cd Jan 1969), they re-started PV’s which kicked in from cd April 1969. You can see that this issue related to the printers, because, unlike the 2 previous hiatuses, when PV’s resume, it happens all in the same cover date month: everything that was going to get a PV gets one at the same time, but not based on release date, based on cover date, clearly co-ordinated by the printer.

I have tried that group and while it has some interesting photos of the area, they are quite religiously pre-1960. There are some photos of London Road where Fred's original newsagents was, but I haven't seen one of the actual newsagents. I am in touch with some other people on FB (who have memories of the area and more specifically of T&P) and I did think for a moment there I'd found one of the Ethels, but nothing helpful so far. Mostly it's people whose parents or grandparents worked there briefly and remember getting free comics that were subsequently binned. Best not to think about that. I will keep chatting to these people and report anything useful that turns up.

I think the old T&P premises at Thurmaston actually became the Walkers premises. It's hard to work out exactly, but T&P moved out in 1971 and Walkers sold the brand to Standard Brands in 1971 who I believe relocated the crisps & snacks there while Walker's went back to their original core business....pies! The Walker's factory has morphed into a monster since then, so it's hard to work out.

Funnily enough (and non-ironically), from what I can gather, the stamping went on in the warehouse and what they all wanted was to get a job in the office, so there actually was a queue for that.

Wouldn't be surprised. That's how I'd recruit for that kind of job - find someone reliable and then offer a full time position. That said, labour laws were different in the 60's. I imagine it was easier to hire & fire then and you probably weren't expecting someone to spend 40 years in the stamping shed anyway.

Two by the looks of things. The Oadby & Wigston Advertiser and the Oadby & Wigston News. I feel like the competition must have been intense.

This is absolutely amazing stuff. I have tried to search the Leicester Mercury a couple of times and found nothing. I didn't even know there was a Leicester Chronicle or a Leicester Evening Mail. Phenomenal. Is this from the British Newspaper Archive or somewhere else? This is really amazing. My flabber has never been so gasted.

But then it says 'Apply Sex Ho'. Sounds like an interesting position.

The day of the week, the name of the moving company, the name of the MD, the name of his dog.... Seriously, heartfelt thanks to both of you. It's really seldom you find a smoking gun and this is one. Steve Chibnall suggests that the move to Thurmaston was probably a cause of the bankruptcy. Something I was always curious to know was: did they move straight from Oadby to Thurmaston overnight or were there stopgap premises. The fact that Thurmaston appears literally a month after Oadby indicates to me it was an immediate move and therefore likely a force majeure which does substantiate (or certainly does not contradict) the idea that they moved into premises they could not really afford because they had to move fast (and, I reckon, nearby as they obviously did not want to lose staff at the same time they lost the HQ building and they must have been in a state of some chaos....I've no idea how much stock burned). Profound thanks to both of you for this one.

First off.... Nice catch on 45. Many thanks. I saw 2 or 3 of these on ebay, but no pics of indicias, so that's a big win. As you say, we don't know the exact numbering, but according to the Mad website (which I think is fan not official, but one would hope they have some expertise), it ran 7 or 8 times per year from 1959 to 1965 and then went monthly in 1966. You can probably make multiple iterations of this, but for arguments sake, if we assume it was 7 times per year for the first 2 years then stepped up to 8, we'd be at no 46 by Sept 1965.... and then 47 in Oct or Nov, the Christmas issue we know was 48 and can assume was published in December and the NY issue we know was 49 and can assume was published in January. So it kind of works, and puts the indicia change from Oadby to Thurmaston somewhere between September and December 1965. It's possible, of course, that the admin didn't catch up immediately and the old address remained in print, but given that the old address burned down, I reckon they would have been on top of this. To your point about relevance, you're correct, it has no relevance that I am so far aware of, to the stamping, but to be honest, I'm not really interested in the stamping except in terms of what it reveals about distribution. My interest here is to understand the ownership structure of T&P in between the period when Fred left and IND bought it out. There are competing theories and if, as it looks, the move to Thurmaston was smack in this period, it surely has something to tell me. Also, it's interesting that Mad may have gone monthly right at the time they moved to Thurmaston. Is that a coincidence or causal? Could be that with higher overheads to cover, they needed to milk the Mad cow (see what I did there?), or could be that they had always wanted to increase distribution and the upgrade to Thurmaston made it feasible? Also, in Steve Chibnall's article, he references the move to Thurmaston as being one of the causes of the bankruptcy, so it's interesting that the move seems to fall about 7-10 months in front of that. Also, of course, as I'm sure you know better than me, we have all learned stuff that seemed irrelevant to key subjects at the time, but as the jigsaw takes shape you suddenly realise, in a Columbo stylee, who the murderer is. I've discovered quite a few answers hiding in plain sight, but you have to pile up lots of clues before you get to say...

Just before I dig into this, what kind of graphic were you imagining? Obviously, I can stick a summary onto a picture of some description, but I assume you have in mind a graphic that would somehow enhance the explanation, make it easier to understand/digest and/or make things clearer by virtue of being a pictorial representation.....but I'm buggered if I can work out what that would be!

Cover date March 1962

Derek Smalls on bass there

Are you sure? I heard she had an invitation....

Mmmmm. I read this for the first time in the reprints in MWOM and still remember being blown away by it. For some reason, I always remember this (fondly) as the Enchantress dropping a piano on Hawkeye, but it was actually a safe! Weird impact on MWOM - for some reason - I assume space due to the annual's higher page count - while they were reprinting this in MOWM #92 & #93, instead of DD #15 which would have been slated to be reprinted over these 2 issues, they reprinted the first story out of Subby #54 and the origin of Cap from TOS #63, but this was obviously a last minute decision based on realising that they had too many pages. However, when they went back to printing DD in MWOW #94, they re-printed the originally slated issue (#16) and completely omitted #15 from the run. You probably didn't want to know that.

Yes, it's weird that AF 15 and Hulk 1 both massively outstrip FF1 when FF1 is the first and the start of the SA MU. I assume it's because they went nuts in the 70's when the TV shows were on and then again when the movies hit, whereas the FF has never really had that boost.

This sounds like every conversation with my gf, where she points at a 100 pieces of clothing and tells me to chuck some out, whereupon the 2 items I pick are the literally the only 2 she thinks should stay. My dress sense was recently reclassified from a disaster to an actual emergency.

Ah yes. My FF1 has a note saying 'never take this out again'. Quite whether it actually still constitutes a copy of FF1 is being hotly debated between the CGC who claim it is and the British Library who claim it's more a papyrus. Apparently it's in slightly worse condition than the Magna Carta.

@themagicrobot Most Spideys are out because of the web motif and this one is too far indented, so not Spidey?

@themagicrobot It's got to be silver age, which makes DD one of the less likely candidates.

I disagree. I think the original quiz, where there definitely was a specific answer and someone actually knew what it was, was very much out-of-keeping with the general vibe of this thread. Now you have absolutely no idea what it was and anything could be the case, thereby igniting the fuse on years of intense, highly-researched, well-argued and heroically pointless speculation, it's much more in our wheelhouse. LET'S GO !!! This is too creamy yellow, I think.... And this is indented too far. This seems more like a possibility...?

Good Lord. Marvel, DC, Charlton, Archie, Tower, Harvey. All the major food groups represented That's more variety than in my entire collection, I think. Particularly shrewd move to lay in a reading copy of Lois Lane #50.

You were actually trying to snag every single copy printed. And immediately succeeded.