Malacoda

So you're assuming that the July cover dated UKPV's went to World and the CS's went to T&P?

That's amazing. So you have an absolutely crystal clear memory of buying SS 10 (and we all have some memories we know are 100% correct) via a channel that must have been normal 'high street' distribution but have never seen another copy. So you know absolutely that it happened once, but only once. It certainly does reinforce the idea that leftover cents copies were distributed, particularly to seaside towns, as US returns long after publication. The fact that it was over 3 years after publication indicates it had a very strange journey. I don't suppose there's any chance that one of the 3 you have left is...the one?

I fully agree with this. My bent is distribution and if 1 or 2 copies rocked up, it is still, to all intents and purposes non distributed. If a PV shows up, that is different as it means a few thousand must have existed. We would regard a comic that was only imported by dealers as non D and yet they might have imported hundreds of them. Different time, but Neil Craig at Futureshock in Glasgow famously imported 1,000 copies of every issue of the Wolverine mini-series, so if you lived in Glasgow, this comic was pretty much limitlessly available, whereas some comics we know were supposedly CS distributed, it takes years to find even one example.

Presumably not Mike Pence, though. Hi Frisco. That's a lovely TTA. I always enjoy the Indica. 'Vista Publications' indeed. I wonder if there's actually an exhaustive list of Martin Goodman's rabbit warren of companies.

I'd believe it was option B. And I'd have no trouble believing that happened. Even now, one is always seeing 'warehouse find' and that's in these digital days.

You'd be right from July 71 onwards. DC were still with T&P, but Marvel changed to World, so would no longer be welcome on T&P's spinner racks.

You say that, but you know if I handed you a shipping manifest from June 1969 with a note that said 'Sorry Dennis, No Nick Fury this month. Best wishes, Sol' you would want a few minutes alone with it.

Oh. Right. But then....dealers charging more for ND is also.....indicative....of.... [shuffles towards door] [sound of door closing]

Right, agreed, but then where do you get mid July from? It's the 'mid' I'm querying.

Has that actually been established? I believe it. but do we know it? It also sits very nicely with the anecdotal evidence (from everyone who was around then) that you often found Marvel comics, especially at holiday/seaside locations, long after their cover dates. If they were stamped US returns, it would sync up nicely.

while we're here, does anyone else have any evidence that the following were or definitely were not distributed in the UK: TTA 62, FF 80, Nick Fury 14, Silver Surfer 10, Cap 113, 115, 116, 117 Fury 13, Doc Strange 179, 181, Tower of Shadows 4,5,6,7,8 & COTL 12, Chamber of Darkness 3,4,5, Am Adv 1 & 2, Astonishing Tales 1 and Conan 2 and 7. Much appreciated. I mean....very much!!!

Can't thank you enough for staying on top of this. I think the logic of looking at UK prices from dealers is sound (and potentially even sale prices on ebay, (though I'd want a massive sample base). Not sure it works for 30th Century on this SS example. They have 12 in VG+ at £28. It's hard to tell with them as they are fabulously strict graders, so either of those VG's could be a FN- somewhere else.

Yes, it is, although there might be a slight leap there. The last dual PV/CS are indeed July and they date from an on-sale date of mid April (13/4/71) in the US but I'm not sure you can then say that makes the stop point in the UK mid July as they would have all come over on the boat together regardless of different release dates in the US. Maybe Gary's not making that leap, maybe I'm reading that leap into his 'mid-July' and he knows it was the middle of July for some other reason? Of course, it may be that the PV's came over in sync with the cover date month and the CS's came later, but again that doesn't support a mid July cut off. I need to do more work, but I'd say cover date July 71 is the stop point unless something else is indicating mid July. Having said that, Gary is extremely meticulous, so apologies to Gary if I've made rash assumptions.

I look forward to you tying those two things together.

I actually started at the end and worked backwards because I was looking at the duality leading up to the handover to World and then realised it just went back and back. I thought the presence of both in this run up period could be indicative of a phased handover, but when I noticed how chaotic it was I got that sinking feeling that what I was looking at was exactly what I thought it was but for the opposite reason. It’s not PV/CS duality starting up because of the handover, it’s PV/CS winding down because of the handover. I believe duality goes to July 1971, when T&P ceased distribution, with some comics ceasing duality in July (cd), some in June (cd) and some in May (cd) depending on on-sale date. I need to do more checking, but ebay is absolutely buggered this morning. I checked my BB speed and it’s 105 Mbps so it’s definitely not me.

So what does this mean? Makeweights? Top ups? Did Marvel agree a volume figure to be printed with T&P and then send leftovers / overspill? Were they returns that came in subsequent months like DC comics? I guess we need to check if it's everything all the time or just isolated incidents. I'll be back with a lot more data. Don't flip around. Steve, I hate you. You're sleeping on the sofa tonight.

Much as it pains me to say Steve was right, he was so right. He was beyond right. He was Steve Wright. The reason there's a blip in the pattern, is that there is no pattern. There is only blip. There are cover stamps and pv's together all over the shop. I will check some more examples tomorrow, but here's 16 months of Hulk to be going on with.

Do you think that could have been a factor? I always assumed the reason that they didn't have an October issue is because they were preparing for the big November double size 25c bonanza and it was virtually impossible to get Adams to turn in 17 pages on time, let alone 34. Stan Lee tells a story that he would give Adams a far-away deadline and then call him all the time to say 'how's it going, Neal?' Adams would say 'it's all in hand, Stan'. Then the day of the deadline would finally arrive. Stan would call him and say 'where are the pages, Neal?' and Adams would say 'it's all in hand, Stan. I'll start on it tomorrow'. If I recall, the reason that #97 is by Big John with Neal Adams listed as a consultant is because Adams turned up at five past midnight with a complete re-write of the issue, setting it in a far flung future where a Skrull museum curator was explaining the end of the war as a matter of history. Of course, that was impossible as it would have tied their hands for every subsequent story forever, so it had to be completely re-drawn at the last minute, by Big John. So, I always assumed that the 'missing' issue was actually the first half of #93. If you look at it, it breaks exactly into two pieces: the first 17 pages are Ant Man's Fantastic Voyage and the second 17 get back to the Kree/Skrull plot.

Hi Gary, Just returning to this, it was playing on my mind that if the determining factor was the date and Avengers 90, Daredevil 78, FF 112 etc escaped the dual PV/stamp scenario, by being released at the end of April, then the previous issue should potentially have been caught in. Sure enough, Thor 189, DD 77, Subby 38 and Astonishing Tales 6 all have both PV's and cover stamps. Of course, there's some anomalies (what would you expect?). Hulk has both for 2 issues (140 & 141) and Avengers seems to have escaped both (though maybe I just didn't find any, this is a first search). This does give us some inconsistences with the dates. Why are some titles more affected than others and why are some dates affected and not others, but of course, the date stamps were added afterwards to normal cents issues which were part of the normal print run, so they don't add or subtract anything from the debate. I suspect more and more that either there were teething troubles at World or Marvel arranged a 1 or 2 month overlap to cover potential teething troubles. Either way, I think that this just reinforces that this was the moment of handover. It was just messier behind the scenes than it looked from outside. Now I just have to check the surrounding months to satisfy Friend Marwood about the question of permanent duality.

I agree. I think TTA 62, FF 80, Nick Fury 14 and Silver Surfer 10 are The Unfindables. Cap 113, 115, 116, 117 Fury 13, Doc Strange 179, 181, Tower of Shadows 4,5,6,7,8 & COTL 12, Chamber of Darkness 3,4,5, Am Adv 1 & 2, Astonishing Tales 1 and Conan 2 and 7 might turn up one day, especially Fury 13 & Doc 179, but those top four are not happening. I think I'd be upset if TTA 62 turned up now. It's literally the single non D issue in the whole first 7 years of the MU (Apart from the 66'ers, but that's different) .

Just for....a moment....I felt special....

OK, I'm writing to them and asking them to send me the pic.