Journey Into Mystery #65 - Different 10c Price Sizes ? 0

[nmtg9]

If it wasn't for that 9d Gunsmoke 58 I would've gone with Ewan's theory about the US Bases.

 

Remember, Thorpe and Porter said they were sole distributors in the UK but that 9d L Miller copy throws that theory of the bases out I think

 

Excellent work Steve.

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

I looked at my unslabbed PreHeros... seems this all took place in a period just before the large circled 10 cent prices appeared.. I think the basic USA Atlas price looks like the image below...

 

I found quite a few issues with this "normal" price, all had Printed in USA and no mention of anyone other than Vista Publishing or other Goodman trade names companies.

 

But when the price had a rounder c after 10 they each had the last line of the indicia stating Thorpe and Porter. I don't have any 9D pence copies, or the ones that state Thorpe and Porter large below the USA indicia.

 

 

also, some with the rounder c were in white boxes, and others were on the colored art, meaning the covers were re-printed in entirety... so, I still dont have an answer for that without some understanding of how Atlas distributed and licensed their books back then,

 

Thanks for your two posts - you sound like you have a knowledge of the printing process which is going to help this debate. I'm afraid I couldn't completely follow some of your points though as I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'knocked out' etc.

 

The trouble I'm finding is that every time I think I see a pattern, an issue appears which contradicts it. I like to try to break things down factually and then present options to prompt the debate. Take a look at this and see what you think.

 

 

If you can tell me from a printing expertise point of view that X is not possible because of Y etc we may be able to get to a template that makes sense.

 

Looking at my post for JIM #65, all three font price variants apperar to have the T&P indicia strap line so I'm not sure whether we can link T&P directly to any given font type at this stage

 

All good fun!

 

[Get Marwood & I]

If it wasn't for that 9d Gunsmoke 58 I would've gone with Ewan's theory about the US Bases.

 

Remember, Thorpe and Porter said they were sole distributors in the UK but that 9d L Miller copy throws that theory of the bases out I think

 

Excellent work Steve.

 

 

According to the GCD, L Miller did 24 reprint issues of Gunsmoke Western between 1955 and 1959:

 

L MIller Gunsmoke Reprints - GCD

 

So they already had a relationship with Atlas who produced the originals and we can see therefore how that may have extended to importing the US originals as the scans I've posted for 58, 60 and 63 prove.

 

I think these are one offs and Gunsmoke may turn out to be the only 'Marvel' title we find with L Miller indicias. Maybe L Miller had a go, given that they were already doing GW reprints, then T&P secured the importing rights for all 'Marvel' titles.

 

I'll keep looking for other titles to see if L Miller ever turns up.

 

 

[Aman619]

Well, the major hurdle we face in trying to suss this out is that we lack any idea of what problems Atlas and foreign publishers were trying to solve! What I mean by this is, in such a cheap business as comics back then, they always opted for the cheapest solution possible that produced all the copies they needed. And to do that you need all your orders charted out to plan your solution. We now 60 years later are left to decipher from a few examples we are finding.

 

For instance if you were told you needed 100k copies for the US saying 10c, plus 50k copies for England for 9d, and that's all, you solve it by one way. Probably all printed here and then ship the 50k (unless shipping was more expensive than doing the printing locally in England.

 

But if you also had licensing or distribution deals with 7 other countries, with say 5 different prices, now you have to weigh all your options. Determine if identical priced copies can be all printed at the same time. That's where the decision could have been, let them print it themselves, but we will send them all a generic revised set of negative prepared with a blank price box.

 

Consider too that their foreign partners were also in the magazine business. And they had a say in their solution. Could be they said to Atlas don't worry, just send us copies of your negatives we will make the changes cause we own our printing presses. No problem mate. To which Stan would have replied "carry on old chap!"

 

The clues we are studying, the different indicias and price markings were done with common and inexpensive printing techniques... To what end they were done, we don't have a clue beyond England's needed a 9d price.

[Get Marwood & I]

Well, the major hurdle we face in trying to suss this out is that we lack any idea of what problems Atlas and foreign publishers were trying to solve! What I mean by this is, in such a cheap business as comics back then, they always opted for the cheapest solution possible that produced all the copies they needed. And to do that you need all your orders charted out to plan your solution. We now 60 years later are left to decipher from a few examples we are finding.

 

For instance if you were told you needed 100k copies for the US saying 10c, plus 50k copies for England for 9d, and that's all, you solve it by one way. Probably all printed here and then ship the 50k (unless shipping was more expensive than doing the printing locally in England.

 

But if you also had licensing or distribution deals with 7 other countries, with say 5 different prices, now you have to weigh all your options. Determine if identical priced copies can be all printed at the same time. That's where the decision could have been, let them print it themselves, but we will send them all a generic revised set of negative prepared with a blank price box.

 

Consider too that their foreign partners were also in the magazine business. And they had a say in their solution. Could be they said to Atlas don't worry, just send us copies of your negatives we will make the changes cause we own our printing presses. No problem mate. To which Stan would have replied "carry on old chap!"

 

The clues we are studying, the different indicias and price markings were done with common and inexpensive printing techniques... To what end they were done, we don't have a clue beyond England's needed a 9d price.

 

Yep, some good points. On balance, there may not be a pattern we can lock down. The production approach may well have varied from issue to issue, title to title. I've gathered lots more examples, and they show just that - no pattern. The variations of price vs price font vs indicia data is all over the shop.

 

Still, given that we have Cents copies without T&P indicias, and cents copies with differing price fonts and T&P indicias, we can conclude I guess is that:

 

- The cents copy in your hand may not be a first printing

- It may have been printed outside of the US

- There are multiple variants out there for those that go into that sort of thing

 

I may leave it at that, unless someone else dives in and says "! used to work at Thorpe & Porter / L Miller / The US printers and I can tell you that........"

 

 

 

[Aman619]

I agree with your conclusions.. And when we locate the Thorpe guy, maybe he has a friend who worked at Sparta we can talk to !!

[EwanUK]

Still, given that we have Cents copies without T&P indicias, and cents copies with differing price fonts and T&P indicias, we can conclude I guess is that:

 

- The cents copy in your hand may not be a first printing

- It may have been printed outside of the US

- There are multiple variants out there for those that go into that sort of thing

 

 

 

I think need to be a little careful with the "first print" terminology, as we are still speculating - and I think it's very likely (common sense economically-speaking) that the comics were only printed in ONE original location, but exchanging different plates

 

The are four variants identified

Cents

Cents box

Pence

Cents with UK indicia

 

We will never know what order these were printed in - and to be honest, it could be different for different issues or titles, as is being discovered!

 

So all first prints until we know better ?

 

Secondly, I might be being slow, but I didn't quite understand the post about the box or no box, and why printing dictates a certain order?

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Still, given that we have Cents copies without T&P indicias, and cents copies with differing price fonts and T&P indicias, we can conclude I guess is that:

 

- The cents copy in your hand may not be a first printing

- It may have been printed outside of the US

- There are multiple variants out there for those that go into that sort of thing

 

 

 

I think need to be a little careful with the "first print" terminology, as we are still speculating - and I think it's very likely (common sense economically-speaking) that the comics were only printed in ONE original location, but exchanging different plates

 

The are four variants identified

Cents

Cents box

Pence

Cents with UK indicia

 

We will never know what order these were printed in - and to be honest, it could be different for different issues or titles, as is being discovered!

 

So all first prints until we know better ?

 

Secondly, I might be being slow, but I didn't quite understand the post about the box or no box, and why printing dictates a certain order?

 

 

Take your point Ewan - it's because we're speculating that I was careful to summarise that the cents copy in your hand may be a second printing.

 

You're not being slow - I don't understand the 'printing dictates a certain order' post either, and I wrote it. I must remember not to post when the wife is talking (at) to me.

 

Seriously, I was trying to respond to the preceding post by aman619 who seems to understand the printing process and indicated that the presence of prices with / without white boxes around them could indicate a subsequent printing. Aman619 - please correct me!

 

As it stands, lots of lovely variants out there and a whole host of questions....

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Still, given that we have Cents copies without T&P indicias, and cents copies with differing price fonts and T&P indicias, we can conclude I guess is that:

 

- The cents copy in your hand may not be a first printing

- It may have been printed outside of the US

- There are multiple variants out there for those that go into that sort of thing

 

 

 

I think need to be a little careful with the "first print" terminology, as we are still speculating - and I think it's very likely (common sense economically-speaking) that the comics were only printed in ONE original location, but exchanging different plates

 

The are four variants identified

Cents

Cents box

Pence

Cents with UK indicia

 

We will never know what order these were printed in - and to be honest, it could be different for different issues or titles, as is being discovered!

 

So all first prints until we know better ?

 

Secondly, I might be being slow, but I didn't quite understand the post about the box or no box, and why printing dictates a certain order?

 

 

Take your point Ewan - it's because we're speculating that I was careful to summarise that the cents copy in your hand may be a second printing.

 

You're not being slow - I don't understand the 'printing dictates a certain order' post either, and I wrote it. I must remember not to post when the wife is talking (at) to me.

 

Seriously, I was trying to respond to the preceding post by aman619 who seems to understand the printing process and indicated that the presence of prices with / without white boxes around them could indicate a subsequent printing. Aman619 - please correct me!

 

As it stands, lots of lovely variants out there and a whole host of questions....

 

 

Also, forgot to add, re the four types of variant in your post..........

 

Cents

Cents box

Pence

Cents with UK indicia

 

...... for some issue numbers I've found font variations within their white price boxes and, similarly, font variations for issues with no price box. So the list maybe should be:

 

Cents (two font types found)

Cents box (two font types found)

Pence

Cents with UK indicia

 

I'll put another table together at some point as a final wrap up to prove these types, then leave it at that and wait for a printing expert to stumble across this post. Maybe you could sense check the table for me so we're all happy that it's an accurate summary of what we've found.

 

 

[gaz973]

Very interesting thread, I wish I had something helpful to add to it.

[Get Marwood & I]

Very interesting thread, I wish I had something helpful to add to it.

 

Go find us a printing press expert from the 1950's Gaz

[Aman619]

Ok I'll try to explain. First, in printing when they say "knocked out of" it refers to the combining of type elements into the artwork, (or photos) which are made out of different sized dots that are printing in four different inks, that become a photo to our eyes when printed.

 

To knock out a price to print as white within a colored area of an image means you don't print ANY of the four inks within the letter forms. There Is image data where the letters will appear, so you have to "delete" the color dots where the letters will be, or "knock them out" where they would have printed.

 

I never questioned the term before, it's very commonly understood, but I can see your confusion never having heard it before. It could be that they a "punching out" areas as you would from those old games of chance , or punching out a Chad, or from a ticket. Printers being like any profession where people seek out more colorful ways of talking about their work could have gone from punching out to knocking out... Who knows. As an aside, today with computers all of this is relegated to the background in the production process, as you just need to type the letters move them, size them where you want them and pick a color you like. The computer breaks down for you what you've created onto the four printing ink plates with zero human effort.

 

Now a little printing background info, though doing a Google search will get you more precise and longer explanations...

 

Take a look at comic cover original art. These are called mechanicals in printing. You see that they are made of the actual hand inked line art, plus photostats for all the lettering and logos. The job of combining the art with the logos is done by the "stripper". I'm not sure how the name was coined, maybe stripping elements together.. NOTE: I'm going to ignore the coloring of the covers in favor of discussing how type elements are worked into the art. But short answer is that color separators handle it and their work is turned into negatives, one for each of 4 ink colors. These negative have the type and logos combined into them.

 

So starting with the color separations, the stripper shoots a negative of the mechanical for the type and logos -- it's called a negative because it's a reverse image, black lines are clear and white areas are solid black/opaque. A white comic cover would be a solid black sheet of film. A solid black cover would be clear. If you took the black cover and wanted to "knock out" 10c from it, you just draw 10c on the clear acetate and when it's printed, it would be white type on black bkgnd.

 

Skipping lots of details and stuff, this leads us to how the white 10c boxes we see came about. The four film/negatives for covers with typical dark color areas with the white prices in them all had a black/opaque 10c in the exact same location.... with many dots all around and inside the letters. (These dots determine the colors we will see when printed...). The point being though, that to change the 10c to 9p, you could start over from the mechanical stage, and replace the 10c with a 9p... And shoot new film. OR, you can work with the final negatives and simply paint a react angle over the 10c letters with an opaque paint right on the negative. Instead of 10c appearing within the artwork, you'd now get a white rectangle.

 

The next step is to add 9p letters inside this white boxed area.. To do this you typeset 9p , black letters on white bkgnd, at the size you want it fitting within your white box and shoot a copy of it onto clear film. Then you shoot a negative OF the negative you painted the black rectangle over the 10c letters. Now the black box is a clear box. You then position the black 9p on clear film within the clear box on the new negative-negative you shot, tape them together so the 9p doesn't move, and shoot another negative. You do this for all 4 ink color negatives and the result is a white box with black 9p in it... And --- you end up with an identical cover to the 10c original cover... Down to the last dot.

 

You knocked out the 10c and stripped in the 9p.

 

 

As I stated earlier, Atlas could either place the 9p and print the covers for Thorpe etc. or, provide every foreign licensor with the final film with the clear (white) boxes and let each market add their own price, while maintaining the quality of the rest of the cover artwork as identical to what the US market printed.

 

Changing indicias is essentially the same thing, swapping out the US paragraph for whatever they want to put there... But even easier as the new type is on an empty white area, no colors or dots to worry about.

 

Hope that's somewhat understandable. It's pretty easy, like everything, if you can see it in action..

 

Edited November 7, 2016 by aman619

[EwanUK]

 

The point being though, that to change the 10c to 9p, you could start over from the mechanical stage, and replace the 10c with a 9p... And shoot new film. OR, you can work with the final negatives and simply paint a react angle over the 10c letters with an opaque paint right on the negative. Instead of 10c appearing within the artwork, you'd now get a white rectangle.

 

The next step is to add 9p letters inside this white boxed area.. To do this you typeset 9p , black letters on white bkgnd, at the size you want it fitting within your white box and shoot a copy of it onto clear film. Then you shoot a negative OF the negative you painted the black rectangle over the 10c letters. Now the black box is a clear box. You then position the black 9p on clear film within the clear box on the new negative-negative you shot, tape them together so the 9p doesn't move, and shoot another negative. You do this for all 4 ink color negatives and the result is a white box with black 9p in it... And --- you end up with an identical cover to the 10c original cover... Down to the last dot.

 

You knocked out the 10c and stripped in the 9p.

 

 

Now understood - many thanks for taking the time to explain that

 

So on balance of probability the boxed cents are printed after; not necessarily "2nd prints" (as we know them) but printed second...

 

However, unboxed cents and pence have no such determination

[Get Marwood & I]

 

The point being though, that to change the 10c to 9p, you could start over from the mechanical stage, and replace the 10c with a 9p... And shoot new film. OR, you can work with the final negatives and simply paint a react angle over the 10c letters with an opaque paint right on the negative. Instead of 10c appearing within the artwork, you'd now get a white rectangle.

 

The next step is to add 9p letters inside this white boxed area.. To do this you typeset 9p , black letters on white bkgnd, at the size you want it fitting within your white box and shoot a copy of it onto clear film. Then you shoot a negative OF the negative you painted the black rectangle over the 10c letters. Now the black box is a clear box. You then position the black 9p on clear film within the clear box on the new negative-negative you shot, tape them together so the 9p doesn't move, and shoot another negative. You do this for all 4 ink color negatives and the result is a white box with black 9p in it... And --- you end up with an identical cover to the 10c original cover... Down to the last dot.

 

You knocked out the 10c and stripped in the 9p.

 

 

Now understood - many thanks for taking the time to explain that

 

So on balance of probability the boxed cents are printed after; not necessarily "2nd prints" (as we know them) but printed second...

 

However, unboxed cents and pence have no such determination

 

Yes, thanks aman619 for the further explanation - understanding the printing process really helps this thread. I tried to find a video on Youtube but couldn't find one that made it as clear as your description. Cheers.

 

In pictures, based on this information, the three examples below show that the first 'no white box' 10c copy would have been printed first, then the two 'white box' versions second / third. So they could all be first print run copies, if the changes for the second and third copies were done at the time on the US presses.

 

 

That said, if we look at the two below, and assume that they were done as part of the US first print run, why would they change a 10c price box to another 10c price box in a different font?

 

 

The answer may be connected to which has a T&P indicia line, but I haven't got enough examples to inform this. If not, could it indicate that the copies were printed elsewhere in a country with cents as its currency (Australia / Canada)? They could have been sent the plain white box negatives and then added their own prices?

 

Similarly, why would these two be produced as part of the same print run in the US?:

 

 

Again, the prices are the same but in different fonts.

 

I think we're getting somewhere with this one, but we need an industry expert to shed some light on it. CGC differentiate 9d copies when grading from 10c copies. If we say to them that two different font / price box copies exist for the same 10c comic, how can they grade and encapsulate either as a first print with this question mark hanging?

 

I'm a UK based newbie - who could we pose this to at CGC for their thoughts?

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

 

 

I think we're getting somewhere with this one, but we need an industry expert to shed some light on it. CGC differentiate 9d copies when grading from 10c copies. If we say to them that two different font / price box copies exist for the same 10c comic, how can they grade and encapsulate either as a first print with this question mark hanging?

 

I'm a UK based newbie - who could we pose this to at CGC for their thoughts?

 

 

 

I've sent a question to CGC via their 'contact us' link. Will let you know if I get a response....

[EwanUK]

That said, if we look at the two below, and assume that they were done as part of the US first print run, why would they change a 10c price box to another 10c price box in a different font?

 

Similarly, why would these two be produced as part of the same print run in the US?:

Again, the prices are the same but in different fonts.

 

I'm a UK based newbie - who could we pose this to at CGC for their thoughts?

 

 

The cents then pence white box hypothesis seems entirely plausible. However, do we know of any "non-boxed" pence copies?

 

Different fonts: absolutely why?

Using a very modern example, I understand WD no.1 has some cover text in black then white; both considered "first prints". Another inexplicable printing change (?) perhaps these are just anomalies / errors?

 

CGC - with all respect I doubt they'll know. They call pence copies "UK editions" and I don't think anybody has ever noticed the font or indicia differences until you and I did.

 

Isn't it ironic that our hobby has so much content expertise yet very few of us know much about the printing techniques of the past.

[Get Marwood & I]

That said, if we look at the two below, and assume that they were done as part of the US first print run, why would they change a 10c price box to another 10c price box in a different font?

 

Similarly, why would these two be produced as part of the same print run in the US?:

Again, the prices are the same but in different fonts.

 

I'm a UK based newbie - who could we pose this to at CGC for their thoughts?

 

 

The cents then pence white box hypothesis seems entirely plausible. However, do we know of any "non-boxed" pence copies?

 

Different fonts: absolutely why?

Using a very modern example, I understand WD no.1 has some cover text in black then white; both considered "first prints". Another inexplicable printing change (?) perhaps these are just anomalies / errors?

 

CGC - with all respect I doubt they'll know. They call pence copies "UK editions" and I don't think anybody has ever noticed the font or indicia differences until you and I did.

 

Isn't it ironic that our hobby has so much content expertise yet very few of us know much about the printing techniques of the past.

 

The TTA 16 scans I posted earlier in this thread show a 9d without a white box Ewan.

 

I don't expect CGC to know themselves, I'm more hoping that the thought that they might not know what printing they are grading might intrigue them enough to go looking. They must have hot lines to key industry figures that we don't. We'll see.

 

I agree with you on the lack of historic knowledge though. I bet it's out there but maybe no one has asked the right questions. I'm always surprised by how little some in the hobby care about this kind of thing. I love comics. But I'm also really fascinated by how they were made and by the discovery of variations which pose the type of questions we're raising here. Many would say 'who cares' that there are different price fonts. I'm just glad I've found one or more people who share my interest. So keep posting Ewan !

[Get Marwood & I]

Check out this old thread I found - especially the photos on page 5:

 

Sparta

 

There may be some board members here who could help us. I'll drop a post there.

[Get Marwood & I]

Check out this old thread I found - especially the photos on page 5:

 

Sparta

 

There may be some board members here who could help us. I'll drop a post there.

 

 

....and a great video:

 

[Get Marwood & I]

FONT VARIATIONS

 

Here's the latest summary for JIM. I'll do TTA later in the week:

 

 

 

My posts will quieten down a bit from tomorrow - back to work......