Marvel UK Price Variants 16 16

[ADAMANTIUM]

11 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

I'm thinking that it could just as easily be part of the printing plate.  The "art" didn't totally get cleaned up with the overlay.  Isn't that done way before the printing presses actually start to roll? In other words, there are two different related but unrelated plates, and the pence one didn't quite get all the cents residue knocked off.

That totally jives with what Chuckles was told.

That was kind of what I was getting at  thank you for eloquently putting it into words!

[lizards2]

42 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

55 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

I'm thinking that it could just as easily be part of the printing plate.  The "art" didn't totally get cleaned up with the overlay.  Isn't that done way before the printing presses actually start to roll? In other words, there are two different related but unrelated plates, and the pence one didn't quite get all the cents residue knocked off.

That totally jives with what Chuckles was told.

That was kind of what I was getting at  thank you for eloquently putting it into words!

Thanks  - it looked like incomprehensible gibberish when a I first posted it, so I edited it a few times. 

Running already printed sheets through again to overwrite the price just didn't make sense to me, although it certainly looks like that might have been done in the example - probably an illusion.

[Get Marwood & I]

58 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

1 hour ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

That was kind of what I was getting at  thank you for eloquently putting it into words!

Thanks  - it looked like incomprehensible gibberish when a I first posted it, so I edited it a few times. 

Running already printed sheets through again to overwrite the price just didn't make sense to me, although it certainly looks like that might have been done in the example - probably an illusion.

 

Cheers Mike / Mark, thanks for your thoughts 

I do know they didn't run already printed sheets through and overwrote them, but I'm not an expert. Aman619 knows a lot about the printing process, hence my earlier call out to him, and I hope he'll dive in at some point. He did explain it all to me once, but I can't find it. It might be in the font variation thread somewhere.

Liz - like the new avatar. Very sedate. I will miss the old boy though - remember this one from last year?:

 

Not enough mucking about in 2018 so far for my liking. First Barry sighting though 

On the subject of the printing process, which has always interested me, I picked up this pack of an old Alan Class reprint from 1962. The pictures aren't the best, but you should see 'Out of This World' #21 along with the four original cover plates plus COA signed by Alan Class himself (he's still going strong):

Looking at the plates you can kind of see how it was done, with a fairly crude scraping out of the plate in places where no ink was wanted. It's a cool thing and a pence copy (albeit not a Marvel reprint, but it's my thread and I'll post what I like in it)

Anyway, let's see if the printing experts chip in soon. All good fun 

Not long until Bobby's thread now. Keep 'em peeled.....

[Get Marwood & I]

Pence ramblings alert!  Pence ramblings alert! 

 

[lizards2]

53 minutes ago, Marwood & I said:

 

Liz - like the new avatar. Very sedate. I will miss the old boy though - remember this one from last year?:

 

Yes - Barry never fails to creep me out.

I might go back to the Goombah at some time.  I was looking for a witty photo to assist my "that's what she said??" response to Sharon's "you need some lotion" comment in her GA/SA/BA sale thread, and I stumbled across the Burt Reynolds lizard.  I think it may be too small in the avatar to get the full effect, but it is a lovely, sexy photo.

Edited January 6, 2018 by lizards2

[Get Marwood & I]

15 hours ago, Marwood & I said:

 

@Aman619 @VintageComics - Guys, what do you think of Ryan's ( @Foley) observation here? Does the fact that tiny parts of the 12c price can still appear to be seen behind the 9d price indicate that the 12c was first and the 9d second? Logic says so, yes?

Coupled with the article I posted from Chuck a few posts back which says US copies first, is this sufficient evidence to settle this long questioned scenario do you think? Or just one random example for one days printing schedule?

Your thoughts please, while I look for more examples (I have 3,007 images to look at tomorrow). The two visible dots of black above and to the left of the 9d copy do seem to line up with the 12c  in the US copy, but maybe it's a printing glitch / trick of the eyes? 

Whaddaya think?

Cheers, Steve

 

 

 

@Aman619 @VintageComics Guys! You've both been online since I posted this - are your notifications not working or have I gone too far through the tedium barrier?  

[lizards2]

Roy is surely chasing squirrels somewhere..., 

[Aman619]

Hello!   As to the Spidey cover price box question... yes I agree the little mark is from the leftover uncleared up 12c price .  Reworking plates on crappy comics never warranted the same attention to detail as higher priced quality jobs would.

As to chucks story, he may be right, but HE IS ONLY describing covers with prices on White areas. In these cases you need only create a pence version of the black plate, and stop the presses, swap it in place of the cents black plate, and carry on.

However, when the price is in a color or art area, ALL affected plates need new pence plate versions.  Hence the white boxes they used as a solution.) ...And ALL plates must be swapped out. But if his info is correct that the pence copies were indeed printed as a second batch here in the states, then the only difference is the time between press runs to swap 4 plates not one.

to wrap up, all four inks are always printed at the same time for every cover. They do not run already printed covers back through the press. Lining them up etc is not worth the time trouble and expense... cheaper to just roll more blank paper stock hrough the press and print all the colors together in the same pass. The paper waste is incredible but an acceptable cost of doing business. At least nowadays not all of it ends up in landfills, like our Keurig cups do!

[Aman619]

Oh, and to Ryan’s question about the sequence of the covers variations based on the leftover pieces of the 12c marking?  In a court of law, this would not be considered proof, because the error is in the pence plate itself.  No matter which order they were printed the error would show up! They could have been printed a year apart too ... what’s in the plates appears on the comics.

my guess though is that they took care of the larges runs first so long as the time between runs was quick.  This is because it takes some time on every new press job, to get the inks up to proper strength, and to balance each ink color with the other inks until they get the desired effects that match the approved matchprint proof client signed off on.

this happens with the press running full strength! Churning out printed sheets that are looks horribly bad and wasting paper. Therefore, once they are all set, they lock it in and want to let it run without making more changes as long as they can. This would argue for doing the bigger US press run version first.  After changing just the black plate they could pretty quickly be back up to speed. And because the US version is the clients main concern.

but technically, they could print the smaller run first. But if small enough the pence run would only take a blink of the eye! No time for a break while it’s running, so human nature says to me they set up the large and longer print run and deal with the stupid foreigner still later after a pint or two. 

[Get Marwood & I]

@Aman619, thanks for jumping in 

I've read your explanations but, if you don't mind, I want to make sure I'm understanding them correctly. I know you know what you mean, but I'm not sure I currently do 

If I look at the printing plate below I can see the raised part of the plate that will, for example, be responsible for printing the 1/- price in black ink on the comic cover:

 

In the case of the ASM #5, there will presumably have been a similar such plate that printed this 12c price in black ink as follows:

 

Are we saying that, once the 12c copies had been run that the same printing plate was then altered so that the cents price was 'cleared off' and replaced with a pence price? If so, that would explain why, when the pence copies were then printed, parts of the 12c still showed:

The failure to completely clear the 12c price was the reason that tiny parts of it can still be seen. Is that right?

Or are we saying that two separate plates would have been made up - one cents, one pence - prior to any printing taking place? If so, explain to me if you can why the pence one would have remnants of the 12c ones price on it please. That would surely mean two cents ones were made, and then one of them would have been altered to make the pence one - right?

The reason I persist is that if there was only one plate, then the cents must have been printed first. How else would remnants of it exist on the pence copies?

Hope I'm explaining myself correctly. Do you think I can find a video anywhere on the web that shows how it was done! 

 

[Aman619]

7 hours ago, Marwood & I said:

@Aman619, thanks for jumping in 

I've read your explanations but, if you don't mind, I want to make sure I'm understanding them correctly. I know you know what you mean, but I'm not sure I currently do 

If I look at the printing plate below I can see the raised part of the plate that will, for example, be responsible for printing the 1/- price in black ink on the comic cover:

 

In the case of the ASM #5, there will presumably have been a similar such plate that printed this 12c price in black ink as follows:

 

Are we saying that, once the 12c copies had been run that the same printing plate was then altered so that the cents price was 'cleared off' and replaced with a pence price? If so, that would explain why, when the pence copies were then printed, parts of the 12c still showed:

The failure to completely clear the 12c price was the reason that tiny parts of it can still be seen. Is that right?

Or are we saying that two separate plates would have been made up - one cents, one pence - prior to any printing taking place? If so, explain to me if you can why the pence one would have remnants of the 12c ones price on it please. That would surely mean two cents ones were made, and then one of them would have been altered to make the pence one - right?

The reason I persist is that if there was only one plate, then the cents must have been printed first. How else would remnants of it exist on the pence copies?

Hope I'm explaining myself correctly. Do you think I can find a video anywhere on the web that shows how it was done! 

 

Ok. Maybe I explain assuming everyone knows about plates, and film separations.  

Before you get to the “plates” that the presses actually print from, they work with “film separations”.  Separations are the process by which the b/w artwork, text, lettering, logos and coloring instructions all get combined photographically (stripped) into four sheets of film negatives, one for each ink color: cyan/blue, magenta/red, yellow/yellow, and black.  

These film negatives ( so called because they are reversed; white areas will print in the ink color) are then exposed onto the metal plates, where acids eat away the areas that are not supposed to transfer ink to the paper (picture tiny raised area like tiny mountaintops, that receive ink as they brush up against the ink rollers...)

anyway... you can keep working with the separations , making changes and versions of the covers all you want. This is all done way before you go on press.  So in Chucks scenario, they have 5 plates ready before they begin. 4 plates C, M, Y, K for the US edition.  Plus N.A. extra Black plate they they will swap out at some point in the print run. 

And as I mentioned earlier if the variant price or whatever was in a color area of the cover, they would need 8 plates ready before beginning.  However, because they were swapping out ALL the plates, the variant covers would be - in reality - basically a NEW print setup, and wouldn’t really have to be done the same day etc due to the longer delay.  But, perhaps since the artwork would be identical, they probably have some advantages to getting the variant cover printing done right away while the press has been inked and ready...

 

so the answer your question, yes, extra plates are necessary.  And the reason you can see a bit of the twelve cents is because of sloppy stripping.  I alluded to this earlier, saying that this was just cheap work. Perfection was not in their minds. 

[Aman619]

Here’s a quick video.  Skips a bunch of steps, (like the separation process) and it’s a modern print job, the “plates are no longer made of metal!) but gives you a visual of the process and the enormous size of the presses etc.  

 

 

[porcupine48]

On 1/6/2018 at 5:53 PM, Marwood & I said:

 

 

 

Not enough mucking about in 2018 so far for my liking. First Barry sighting though 

On the subject of the printing process, which has always interested me, I picked up this pack of an old Alan Class reprint from 1962. The pictures aren't the best, but you should see 'Out of This World' #21 along with the four original cover plates plus COA signed by Alan Class himself (he's still going strong):

 

tres cool.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

7 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Ok. Maybe I explain assuming everyone knows about plates, and film separations.  

Before you get to the “plates” that the presses actually print from, they work with “film separations”.  Separations are the process by which the b/w artwork, text, lettering, logos and coloring instructions all get combined photographically (stripped) into four sheets of film negatives, one for each ink color: cyan/blue, magenta/red, yellow/yellow, and black.  

These film negatives ( so called because they are reversed; white areas will print in the ink color) are then exposed onto the metal plates, where acids eat away the areas that are not supposed to transfer ink to the paper (picture tiny raised area like tiny mountaintops, that receive ink as they brush up against the ink rollers...)

anyway... you can keep working with the separations , making changes and versions of the covers all you want. This is all done way before you go on press.  So in Chucks scenario, they have 5 plates ready before they begin. 4 plates C, M, Y, K for the US edition.  Plus N.A. extra Black plate they they will swap out at some point in the print run. 

And as I mentioned earlier if the variant price or whatever was in a color area of the cover, they would need 8 plates ready before beginning.  However, because they were swapping out ALL the plates, the variant covers would be - in reality - basically a NEW print setup, and wouldn’t really have to be done the same day etc due to the longer delay.  But, perhaps since the artwork would be identical, they probably have some advantages to getting the variant cover printing done right away while the press has been inked and ready...

 

so the answer your question, yes, extra plates are necessary.  And the reason you can see a bit of the twelve cents is because of sloppy stripping.  I alluded to this earlier, saying that this was just cheap work. Perfection was not in their minds. 

Thanks again Aman619, that's clearer. Guess we'll just have to put it down to sloppy stripping 

[lizards2]

3 hours ago, Marwood & I said:

Thanks again Aman619, that's clearer. Guess we'll just have to put it down to sloppy stripping 

[Get Marwood & I]

4 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

                                                       

 

[lizards2]

1 minute ago, Marwood & I said:

 

Hey - quit expropriating my schtick 

[Get Marwood & I]

3 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

Hey - quit expropriating my schtick 

                                                              

[Comics4All]

Are the pence copies just as valuable as the 12c or are they considered reprints or a something like a foreign language print?

[Aman619]

That’s the 64 thousand dollar question, and the the answer is somewhat in flux.  To date pence copies and all foreign editions were lumped together, because the understanding was that they were all printed overseas, at a later time from the US editions.

but it’s feeling like many if not all the pence versions may have actually been printed on the same presses as the US editions, and, possibly only hours later. Should this be the case, or, should collectors now - for whatever reason - consider them on a par with the US editions, their values may increase dramatically.