Malacoda

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.

Comics, yes. Superheroes, I’m not so sure. I think human beings are always fascinated by the idea of humans with extraordinary powers. Before we were monotheists, we believed in demi-gods and humans who were part-man, part-God with a variety of super powers. In the middle ages, we explained crop failures and maladies not by bacteria and diseases, but by evil witches and supernatural powers. When we discovered horrific murders, did we invent criminal psychology or did we invent vampires and werewolves? I think super-powered beings are a natural go-to of the human imagination. That’s why people who have never picked up a comic book in their lives still say things like ‘it’s my Kryptonite’ or ‘my Spidey sense is tingling’ ....because those things have a cultural resonance far beyond their source material. I think for a long time, super heroes were the mainstay of comic books because it was impossible to realise such fantastic stories in other media. As soon as cinema was finally up to the job, look what happened. Super heroes are bigger than ever in the 21st century.

OK, so far Mad has nailed it down to somewhere between Aug 63 and Dec 65. Looks like I'll have to check the porn out. I'll be back in a couple of months. The things I do for you boys.

Maybe they're right and I'm wrong. Of course, that would mean that the factory was 10 miles from the front door to the back door. Imagine being the janitor for that place.

Indeed, but according to them, it was 'Melton Road, Thurmaston, Oadby, Leicester' which is actually a conflation of the two. Oadby is South of Leicester, Thurmaston is North. The first address was East Street, Oadby, Leicester and the second was Melton Road, Thurmaston Leicester. They're about 10 miles apart.

@Get Marwood & I @themagicrobot Mad's a very good shout. I was going to begrudgingly check it anyway, because I have checked it in the past and the registered office is always either our friend in Upper Brook St or 30-34 Langham St W1 or the Top Sellers office in Gt Portland St or somewhere else in London, but lo and behold, the subscriptions addresses are indeed, as predicted by Marwood, the Leicester addresses. Thanks to both of you. Tally Ho!

I would have gone with a redheaded nurse, but that was taken.

There was me thinking I'd picked something instantly recognisable from the once-seen-never-forgotten category and all the time I was being beguiling and mysterious. I guess the Goblin would approve.

Hey Robot, Albert (and anyone else who can answer this)..... In your collection of T&P originals, could we infer from the indicias when the fire destroyed Oadby and they moved to Thurmaston? I don't think I've ever seen an indicia that names Thurmaston. Obviously the reprint comics ceased in 1959, so not helpful. I wondered if I could work it out from things like Galaxy sci fi. Interestingly, that publication flipped from Oadby in the indicia to our mysterious address in Mayfair sometime around 1957 as near as I can pinpoint it at which point Oadby was definitely still around, so, as per usual, I've just found another question and no answers. Can you figure this out from your stash or can you recommend me a T&P publication from the early 60's that I can track down ? Many thanks, gents.

Hey Robot...wanna buy Supes 193? I can do you a copy for 2/-. Or 1/9 Or 1/6

You....you're actually asking for a hiatus theory summary. OK, Pandora, hold my beer. Seriously, how one-stop do you want it? Like a paragraph each?

At the risk of Marwood putting me over his knee, this is a key question. You supposition is exactly correct. Brilliant as Steve Chibnall's article is, this is one area where it can give a decidedly wrong impression (or at least it did to me). I will be back to this.

Hey, come on, Dude. We get that the establishment of the sequentiality (our favourite word) is the end of the road for you, but others in the group would like to know what the numbers meant and what they were for. Surely we can keep speculating? Surely it's directly relevant to this thread? And maybe, just maybe, if we keep plugging away, we will find the answers...

This idea is extremely seductive. The thing I struggle to answer any other way is: why else would they have stamped every individual comic? It was a Herculean effort....to what purpose? The comics would have been bundled up and have an inventory / batch description / summary sheet etc at every leg of their journey, including arrival at T&P and at the retailers / newsagents. The point at which that would have fallen into complete disarray was after they had been on shelves for x amount of time. And the numbers would have told you what that X was by comic and without needing to check anything else. OK, so for proponents of this theory (yourself, Albert & others) .....do you accept Marwood's contention that the system broke down around 64/65 and if so, what's your take on that? I mean, how is it possible that it broke down if it was an indispensable part of the distribution system and what, if anything, could have replaced it? And if some easier, more efficient & readily available system existed, why wasn't it put into effect before Ethel stamped literally millions of comics? I want to believe.

Beautiful - 277 to 284 numbered 2 to 9. It's practically dinner and dancing with Ethel. BTW Albert, I'm ready to go next level and prove (well...within reason....) both you and the Robot right about some of this. You have conflicting theories, but I think you're both right.

This is 1960, so it calmed down pretty quick. Now I just have to figure out exactly when it fell over. I've given Table Boy (TM) the first half to chew up and spit out, but he'll probably be through that in a few minutes.

Not to me, but I think multiple months sorted by release date and then see what happens to the stamp numbers over time in relation to the release dates is the thing that would tell us something. Let me finish off my Marvel dive and ping it over to you. I think it's strongly indicative.

What got me thinking was this: your beautifully-detailed tables are laid out by stamp number and then you account for the chaos by saying e.g. ‘majority Feb/Mar cover dates’. So it’s a stamp-centric approach which gives us that perspective i.e. it shows the stamp numbers in a clearly defined way and the fuzziness is all in the dates. What if we added the opposite perspective? Went cover date / release date centric and then captured each (in some cases, multiple) stamp(s) for each issue? i.e. we showed the issue numbers/dates in clearly defined way and the fuzziness in the stamp numbers. (And what if the fuzziness then started to look clearer?) What would the two approaches laid together show us? Then, what if we went next-level? Your tables are quite DC-centric (logically as the system is DC by design and Marvel by accident). However, Marvel is a lot more clear-cut and logical. It’s difficult with a DC sample to infer much about the stamping system / import process because, well, garbage in, garbage out, whereas Marvel’s more streamlined operation offers a clearer picture. I think Marvel is the Rosetta Stone by which you can decode what was going on at T&P and then look at the more-chaotic DC process through that lens. Another point is: to what extent does the stamping/admin process control the import process and to what extent is it merely a reflection of it? At one point, you said that the stamping system began to break down around 64/65 which made wonder…..did it? Or did the system stay the same and just reflect the greater chaos that was turning up in the crates from Newark? How would one tell? Handily for the us, the Rosetta Stone works because 64/65 is the period where Marvel was on hiatus, so if you want to know if the stamping system was breaking down in 64/65, you can look at (organised) Marvel rather than (chaotic) DC. More to come.

Hey Albert - before I waste a lot of time, please tell me. When you say they're mostly out of sequence, you mean in the early months, right? I was thinking that if I mapped a reasonable sample of the DC stamped comics from the mid sixties, by stamp number, by number of copies on sale in the UK over X period of time, and then analysed it against US release dates, a pattern might emerge. Sure, there would be a ton of chaos, but if DC were printing & distributing comics, which were spending a roughly uniform amount of time in US spinner racks before being gathered back up and a (relatively small) proportion of them being shipped to the UK, that a pretty strong correlation would emerge between the stamps on most of the comics and the US release dates. It would be very chaotic and you'd be looking for an overall pattern rather than a hard and fast correlation, but they would all have been through the same process together in a reasonably defined time frame. Obviously, due to the different print schedules, cover dates will be all over the place, but release dates might yield something.

No, no, my fault. From the context of the conversation, I took it that they were original purchases. You could, and did, obviously, buy them much later from a dealer, mart, ebay, wherever, so they could simply be US cents copies that were sold in the States and came over later. I jumped to conclusions.

Possible, but more likely they were just returns stacked up waiting for the pulper when Fred suddenly called Jack and said 'the Balance of Payments crisis is over. Send me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to make me a bundle. Send me whatever you've got.'