Malacoda

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.

I'm pretty sure this is actually happening with TOS 71. I've seen 3 weirdo stamps on IM's punch flare now. Here's 2 of them.

Indeed. I was thinking earlier that Millennials could do with a bit more living in the past. I think we (Gen X'er's, which I appreciate not everyone on here is), were brought up by Boomers, so we share a lot of their values. Millennials were brought up by social media, so they live in a certainty vacuum where they don't know what today's principles, facts and realities are until they've logged on. Alan Coren once said that there were 2 Wikipedia contributors who had created his entry, but did not agree about his DOB, and they continually 'corrected' each other. He said that until he had logged on in the morning and checked, he never actually knew what age he was on any given day. I imagine this must be what it's like to be a Millennial.

Completely agree. And I'm surprised that his young researchers haven't clued him up about UK, Canadian, Aus etc variants. Mind you, Overstreet was never what it's cracked up to be. It's supposed to be based on actual sales, but in 99% of cases, the VG value is GD x 2 and the FN value is GD x 3 (or sometimes 4, but exactly 4), so demonstrably not based on sales, except by self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e. comic dealers price based on Overstreet, so that price relationship becomes reality). That said, you would imagine that ebay and other internet sales have exploded any influence dealers were exerting.

Agree, but also, wasn’t it weird when you saw Tom Holland as Spidey having got used to Maguire & Garfield? I thought ‘well, he’s just ridiculously young’ and then realised that that was actually the age Spider Man was supposed to be. They actually did go back to his 60’s incarnation. And, of course, Marisa Tomei seemed ridiculously young as Aunt May, and then you remember that teenage Peter having an octogenarian aunt was almost biologically impossible (particularly as women never had babies that late in the 1940’s) and Marisa is actually the logical age for Peter Parker’s aunt to be. I’m also not sure about secret identities. Don’t we all have secret identities now, Marwood? Love Malacoda.