Malacoda

I think X men 25 is definitely out there as a 1/- OP. I think this is it, but too faded except for the 1/-

The 66'ers really are the gift that keeps giving, aren't they? One thing I think we can at least be clear about is that the cause & the outcome are potentially not linked. In a lot of cases, you can say issue X arose, they responded with Y and it caused Z. It might be, if my pet theory about the T&P bankruptcy is correct, that Gold were sounded out, possibly as a permanent replacement, possibly as a temporary one, but the final result was just these few months of leftovers fell into their hands. It might be that there was never any suggestion of Gold taking over for T&P and they ended up with these in a one off Del Boy deal.

True dat. Though on other copies, Ethel went pretty accurately into the Corinthian columns. Sits really well here, don't you think? What is the term for something that sits well on a SHIELD cover? A Jasper, perhaps?

This probably doesn't mean anything because it's probably just the exact same copy, but my copy of DD 29 has the exact same double stamp. I mean the other thing is, of course, is that DD 29 is actually a UKPV, so why are there stamped copies at all, let alone Gold stamps and what are 1/- higher priced, roundy T&P style stamps presumably from the 1967-1969 period with no PV's?

Superb find. I usually (and by usually I mean once in a million years) find this one with this T&P O.P. stamp which must surely be a rarity. The fact that there are issues with both this and the Gold oblong must put DD #22 in a class by itself. Anyone have a theory about what the O.P. stamp denotes? I think it sits nicely in our theories about stamps denoting months/batches as it was presumably a remainder which T&P distributed later. Really great find though.

I must be missing something here. Surely, if we know DC were sending returns, it’s axiomatic that it was the less successful titles, inherently the US returns, that were getting sent over here. Also I don’t think Fred was choosy to start with. He’d been ganting to get his hands on any kind of American publication since the war: magazines, books, pulps, anything American. He started importing leftover newspaper supplements, then imported the printing matrices to reproduce them, then moved onto comics, pulp magazines, Classics Illustrated, Bible stories, Horror comics, Esquire and other girly mags, anything American. Even before the ban on fiction was lifted he started importing American non-fiction to get the shipping lines established. And when the ban lifted he was straight in there. So when he called DC and said ‘I’ll take anything as long as it’s cheap’ they must have looked at the warehouse full of returns and thought it was Christmas.

What does that look of weary resignation mean, Mr. Marwood ? ( BTW, that would be a great gif to end a thread on).

Indeed, although a lot of people believe paper quality was a contributing factor, which I find quite compelling. If all of the damage was done by the blade right there, straight off the press, I think Eastern would have surely changed the blade rather than carry on mashing a blunt blade into tens of thousands of comics. Also, it went on for years, so someone at Marvel or the news vendors themselves would have complained eventually. It seems more likely to me that the blade caused rough edges, micro tears in the edges which, due to the quality of the paper got worse over time. This would explain (1) why it went on for so long (2) it wasn't brought to their attention for so long (3) it wasn't picked up as an error before leaving Waterbury and (4) it also makes sense to me that as the comics got handled and read by excited little hands, such a defect would emerge. Also based on the scale of the operation, I find it impossible to believe that no one was performing quality checks on either the guillotines or the finished comics. Eastern was printing over 26 million comics per year in the 50's. God knows what the number was by the 60's.

Good point. I also thought of something else that might be relevant, but doesn't answer this point: we know that Eastern were using inferior paper for the covers compared to the paper used by Sparta because of the Marvel chipping.

I think it may be because comic printing fell between two stools. Typically different processes of printing (and therefore different ways to make the ink dry) were used for newspapers vs magazines. Comics, of course, required both because they are like newspapers inside, but have glossy covers like magazines. World Color invested heavily in web printing the 50’s and upgraded to a best-in-world web offset system at their newer plant (in Effingham) in the 60’s. Cold set web offset printing relies on the ink to dry into the paper – this is what you typically use for newsprint. Hot set offset printing, like glossy covers, requires the printed paper to be dried by heat because most of the ink doesn’t soak into the paper, it just sits on top of it. Then, because of the heat of the paper/ink, it has to be artificially cooled because it’s too hot to work with. However, it’s the first bit, the heat, that determines how fast it dries. The cooling bit is to counteract the drying process, not part of it, however it does catalyse it. In Sparta. they were producing up to 40,000 comics per hour per machine (don’t know how many presses they had) and by the next day the whole lot was shipped, every day. So, we can say that when the comics & covers were put together, they had been printed by two entirely different processes, the ink was dried by two different processes with different time frames and the whole thing was done at breakneck speed. But the key point: the covers were made by a process where the ink is dried artificially onto the surface of the glossy paper and the innards were designed to dry by letting the ink sink into their rougher, cheaper paper. So….if you put a not-quite-dry-yet cover onto a comic, the inner paper will do its job and absorb the ink. If, at the end of your print run, you have to re-set the press to print the UKPV, and then get this last 2-5% of the run out of the way to do the next 20,000 comics, it doesn’t seem a big leap to me to believe that the UKPV’s were more likely to suffer ink separation. I think another clue might also be in the fact that you only find it in these super-oldies (?) By the 70’s in Sparta, you can see stacks of the finished covers piled up together waiting to join their innards, so by that point they must have been long since dry (though you do still see colour bleed on the covers themselves).

You're not kidding. I reckon that must come as close to non distributed as it's possible to get. It's also a real swine to search for outside of ebay etc. The amount of hits you get for 'daredevil' coupled with just the number 4 is about a bazillion. I was considering taking the easier option (...just building a time machine).

OK, I'm not going to bother trying to make new friends in future. I'm just going to come to you.

Hi All, apologies, as this has probably been covered somewhere in the last 15 years, but does anyone have a scan/pic of a UK copy of Daredevil #4? I believe there are no UKPV's ( i.e. pence printed copies), but allegedly there might be some ink stamped ones out there? Sgt Fury came over as a stamped one that month, so it's possible. Many, many thanks.

Indeed. I think the first time I encountered it, it was called Cents to Pence 1951 - 2011. It's had some re-titlings since then. I know he interviewed Ray Wergan in some depth, that's the bit I'm gagging for.

Imagine trying to be a Miller completist. You'd basically have to round up every copy of every issue imported.

OK, so no printed pence, no stamp, no sticker residue, no scribbled biro price.....and yet the Miller indica. Nice. And the fact that other people have similar copies means it wasn't just a one off that missed the stamp while Ethel was staring out the window dreaming about Tony Curtis. So.......do we know if there are other titles from this month that were distributed without a price? Also, given the propensity of collectors now to describe anything they can from the Timely vaults as a 'Marvel prototype', we should note this issue has the origin of Doctor Droom.. Also, while these gentlemen are saying 'nothing can be so huge' 'Torr can' if you look at the size of his hands and his head compared to the size of the blokes, Torr actually has surprisingly dainty feet.

I can't find any trace of either of those, but many thanks. I love Transworld. They were a fully global company of which there is virtually no trace now. They make the Illuminati look like Apple.

Do you reckon that Jonathan Shatter is the guy who looks like Morten Harket on the 1st cover and James Bond's hairdresser on the 2nd one? I feel like those girls are barking up the wrong tree.

Wow. So those are UK reprints of Tower stories? Does it mention Transworld anywhere in the indica? Could I ask you please to post it? Thanks

So T&P imported the originals, but Transworld actually had the worldwide distribution rights to reproduce the material. I know Alan Class reproduced these, but were there any other UK reprints of Tower?

Getting back to this, I always feel like the real story of T&P (also Marvel, DC and everyone else) is off page. 39 UBS is a £5m gaff, with small but palatial interiors and original frescos on the walls. If this was warehousing for MAD comics, it was the most expensive warehouse on the planet. An accommodation address makes a lot more sense, but then how many foreign dignitaries were they entertaining? How many awards ceremonies did they attend? If Fred had a fancy woman, I would have thought she'd be in Leicester. The only time he ever left the place was world war two (and that's only because Hitler refused to hold it Leicester).

Same month as ST 101, which was the first Human Torch solo story.....also in very short supply. Brutal month for FF fans!

Fair enough. I captured some of them last year. Out of date, but still indicative vs the US numbers. There were none for 7 as of 2014 (out of 412 graded US copies). The only other one from the first 15 that had zero was #15 (280 graded US copies).

Hey Albert, were you asking about slabbed copies of UKPV's somewhere? FF 7 ? Something else? I can't find it. Maybe it was a dream.

For anyone who wants, 30th century are still selling these plate sets. Alan Class Reprints (30thcenturycomics.co.uk)