Malacoda

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.

I know. I got that off this auction site and it's still there.....allegedly with High Res pics, but I can't get it to open. Have a go.... https://www.andersonandgarland.com/auction/lot/the-fantastic-four-nos-21-23-32-and-37/?lot=228573&so=0&st=&sto=0&au=343&ef=&et=&ic=False&sd=1&pp=100&pn=1&g=-1#

Haha! I've-got-something-you-don't-have ! Ne-ne-ne-ne-neeeer-ner. Actually, the only copy I've sighted is this terrible photo. It's a really awful photo, but thankfully a nice big thuddy stamp. Thank you Ethel.

One thing is that we know Gold were the distributors for DHOKF, Savage Sword of Conan and those titles, but that was in the 70's. There were no Marvel Magazines in the 60's (except a 2 shot Spidey). I've always assumed that what Gold were distributing in the 60's were Magazine Management's For Men Only, Stag & Male type magazines which would have been right up David Gold's alley, which is how they came to be connected to Marvel. But I don't actually know that.

Ha! I think it was Albert who first posited it on here but I had that conversation with you & Ben off board last year and GS was kind of acknowledged as the prime suspect. Yes, the orange ones were unbranded.

Lovely. Ta. Of course, it won't prove that other distributors weren't using the same stamp, but it will prove that Gold were.

Yeah, there's no end to it is there? Let me ask something else to the group. Whenever I bought Deadly Hands of Kung Fu (which wasn't often because 25p was a massive sum of money), it was never a UKPV. Always a US price and an oblong orange UK price sticker. Are there David Gold distributed magazines or comics from the 60's which have the famous oblong stamp we think is his?

I think there are makeweights. I think T&P had volume deals with all their suppliers, but with Marvel they were obviously a lot tighter organised because the PV's were printed for T&P and had one useable point of sale only. However, if they had leftovers, overspill, copies that were printed for a US wholesaler or retailer who didn't need or want them, whatever, Marvel knew T&P could stamp them, therefore they had a guaranteed failsafe / backstop sale and I think T&P wanted as much as they could get their hands on. You're right, there are other publishers, but Marvel were in a unique boat. They were screwed on their distribution deal in a way that no other publisher was and they printed specific runs of PV's for the UK market to a level that none of the others did. So they had to be watching events at T&P far more closely than anyone else. You're right inasmuchas we see these stamps for other publishers and at other points in time ( I imagine they are completely generic John Bull stamps) but in what numbers? You & I and our fellow boarders have looked through thousands upon thousands of comics (looking for all kinds of things) and how many comics have these stamps? And of those, how many fall into the 66'ers? I agree that to an extent you find what you're looking for and miss what you don't, but let me ask your own question back to you..... "Could we find enough examples to put the 'they only exist because of the UKPV gaps' theory in doubt?" If we could, why haven't we? I appreciate we've targeted the known cover stamped issues but all of us have looked at zillions of PV's as well. When I went through Duncan's website, pulling up the one or two mistakes that are there (!) I spent as much time capturing PV's to prove they weren't cover stamps or Non D as I did looking for cover stamps. Actually, that's a lie, not more time because the PV's were easy to find & the CS's were usually harder, but my point is there's a lot of comics where he says it's Non D or CS and I went trawling for PV's and did not find these anomalous stamps. So far, these issues where there are stamps (of any description) as well as PV's are in a tiny minority. You might be right. I'm sure if we looked for more, we'd find more (that's practically axiomatic) but if there were significant numbers out there, why haven't we found more than this? I think if we look we'll find more, but I think they'll be the same issues over & over again. Because they're makeweights and 'Hey Fred, we've got some leftover Daredevils this month. You interested?'

Notwithstanding that #20 is a UKPV. Ahhhhh....that was my earliest issue of DD for years. Bought it at Dark They Were. By the way, re: your #21 stamp, Sue Storm called.....

The search in the top right is not bad. Depends whether the person who uploaded the pic also typed clearly & specifically what it was. But you did.

Gold stamp AND a sticker? OK, maybe it's time to go outside, walk in the sunlight, talk to girls....

And another that's completely useless. Not too sure why I'm posting these.....

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.