Marvel UK Price Variants 16 16

[Albert Tatlock]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

here we go, three of the same JIM #64 font types - all have slightly different box edging due to printing variances:

 

The registration in this period is never perfect, even on more upmarket items than comic books.

There should have been a bloke standing at the end checking them as they came off, and if anything was going wrong, he would have the press stopped and adjusted.

Tiny variations like this, though, would not have triggered his pactised eye, only something a lot more obvious.

There are always spoils, these would have been binned on the spot. The first few are usually a bit dodgy, then as the run proceeds after the necessary tweaking, it should run smoothly and produce as near as possible identical copies.

I will try to find some badge prints I had produced back in the day to illustrate this.

[Garystar]

Does FF#110 “green thing” existing as cents but not pence tell us anything about printing order? I’d always assumed it indicates cents was printed first with either plate or ink in wrong place before being spotted. 

[Get Marwood & I]

23 hours ago, Garystar said:

Does FF#110 “green thing” existing as cents but not pence tell us anything about printing order? I’d always assumed it indicates cents was printed first with either plate or ink in wrong place before being spotted. 

I've owned two of them, down the years, green Thing FF#110s. I got one at a fair cheap. It's a really cool book.

Without knowing explicitly what the physical operational process was, it's difficult to say which came first and I can think of a way for both cents and pence to have been printed first and still generate the FF#110 cents error:

• Cents run first - the error starts the run, is noticed and corrected, cents continues, plate change for pence
• Pence run first - pence starts the run without problem, plate change for cents, that is messed up, generates the error copies, is noticed and corrected, cents run completed

A printing expert (from the 1960's/70s) might laugh at my theorising there, based as it is on logic, and not practical knowledge. 

I've looked at a lot of printing scenarios to try to make a determination - here's another:

 
                    Cents                                        Pence

Why would the 'ghost' of the pence blank price box show on the cents copy? When you look at the books that surround it though, you can't determine an order as there is a logical, reasonable explanation for it happening either way.

I know that printing experts have commented in this and other threads. But their expertise was of later printing production methods. Someone would need to be aged 100, and have a great memory, to be able to say what they did in Sparta in the early 1960's. I can theorise logically, but sometimes logic isn't what happened. 

It's fun to speculate, but until a video surfaces showing someone preparing the plates, presses and making the mid run changes etc in 1962, we may never know exactly what they did, or in what order.  

[Get Marwood & I]

Similar scenario here, @Garystar Gary:

My old pence and cents copies of ASM #108:

Very similar print quality and registration on both as you can see.

Here is a second cents copy that I picked up however with, what looks like to me, the ink / plates applied in the wrong order:

I'm guessing the black plate would always be applied last, as that 'frames' everything. The copy above looks like the colour plates was applied over the black.

So which came first? 

Alright, I put the NDS copy in for a laugh.

And definitely not this one:

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

"When you can make a post about ASM #108, with a pence copy, cents copy, insert copy, Philippines copy, and an error copy from which you elaborate on the printing scenario discussion, and leave no trace, it will be time for you to leave"

@Spider-Variant 

[Albert Tatlock]

Has anyone yet mentioned these two little beauties (or should that be big beauties)?

Latest material in them is mid-1961, but I think they did not appear until 1963 or 1964, possibly for the Christmas market.

Lesser spotted of late, I reckon.

[Albert Tatlock]

And here is a scan of another copy, Miller, but with a T & P stamp.

Have been trying to dig out my own copy to compare, have whistled and whistled, but it is slinging me a deaf 'un.

[Garystar]

47 minutes ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Has anyone yet mentioned these two little beauties (or should that be big beauties)?

Latest material in them is mid-1961, but I think they did not appear until 1963 or 1964, possibly for the Christmas market.

Lesser spotted of late, I reckon.

Two very scarce books which don’t turn up often. I don’t recall ever seeing either in the flesh and don’t have either, although I do have this version of Spellbound Album;

[Get Marwood & I]

[Albert Tatlock]

47 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Too true, I'll go and stand in the corner for a while, if the cap fits.

Still interesting, though.

[Get Marwood & I]

9 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Still interesting, though.

It is. I have a little folder with some examples of that bumper, and other such books, in the vaults. Worth a post at some point. 

[Get Marwood & I]

Don't you sad face me Patricia 

@rakehell

 

 

OK, I'm over it  

[rakehell]

15 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Don't you sad face me Patricia 

Sorry Dorothy. To be fair, I was going for something more like , but the reply options are a bit too limited for fully free expression. And I'm usually too busy (lazy) to quote & reply properly. I was just trying to express a little anxiety about you pulling the Pacino out like that. Stern, Dorothy. Very stern.

[Get Marwood & I]

3 hours ago, rakehell said:

Sorry Dorothy. To be fair, I was going for something more like , but the reply options are a bit too limited for fully free expression. And I'm usually too busy (lazy) to quote & reply properly. I was just trying to express a little anxiety about you pulling the Pacino out like that. Stern, Dorothy. Very stern.

Yes, just another failed attempt at humour on my part Pat. Never mind. 

[rakehell]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Yes, just another failed attempt at humour on my part Pat. Never mind. 

I wouldn't say you failed, Dot. I was giggling when I replied. Mind you, I wasn't really awake. Maybe I imagined it....

[Get Marwood & I]

I see Darryl has listed what looks like an original owner X-Men run on the bay.

2-7 are pence copies, 8-12 T&P stamped cents (below), then it's back to pence from #13 on.

Nice when it all ties in isn't it:

[Garystar]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

2-7 are pence copies, 8-12 T&P stamped cents (below), then it's back to pence from #13 on.

I’ve always thought the big inky stamp on #8 to be particularly ugly. I’m sure mine looks even uglier than the one you show. 

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Garystar said:

I’ve always thought the big inky stamp on #8 to be particularly ugly. I’m sure mine looks even uglier than the one you show. 

Aesthetically, yes I agree, but I have developed a fondness for our UK price stamps now, since focussing more on them. I think I said earlier, I never thought I'd ever be disappointed not to see one (on certain books at least).

9d, 6d, 3d.... 

[Get Marwood & I]

Afternoon 

Do you ever get that feeling before you post something that you've already posted it at some point? I do. Probably because I do similar things a lot, and after a while they all blur into one.

I was looking at arrival stamps again this week on Charltons, trying to work out the dates for books without cover months. It was very successful, thanks for asking. And then I did the same on some Archie 15cvs after an email conflab with a Bill (of Bill's Archie 15cv thread fame).

Then I thought I'd have a go at a random Marvel UKPV related date, because it was too hot to go outside and live a little.

There are 15 Marvel titles cover dated November 1966. I picked that date because it sits within one of the UKPV gaps but has three UKPVs in evidence, straying into it. What I like to do is to see whether arrival date stamps / markings, which themselves give a good indication as to printing dates, help inform why some UKPVs exist and others don't. Regular readers will know the score. I did it recently in my DC thread to prove a longstanding absence. 

Anyway, 12 of the 15 Marvel November 1966 cover dated books are eligible to have a UKPV because UKPVs exist before and after the gap. If I plot those 12 books in order of their 'On Sale Dates' as per Mike's Comic Newsstand, I get this:

 

Straight away, it seems to show no obvious cut off date for the production of UKPVs to cease, if we assume that 'on sale dates' correlate to production dates (which you would presume that they would).

But one thing I have found is that many of the 'on sale dates' on Mike's Comic Newsstand do not tie in with the actual dates on the comics themselves. Certainly not for Charlton. A quick scout about online and I find these three:

   
                  August 24th                              August 18th                               August 16th

If I replot these books using those actual dates instead of those on MCN, I get this:

 

Kid Colt Outlaw doesn't count for UKPV eligibility as it is a 25c issue and, at the time, no UKPV was made when that happened. 

So that leaves us with a clear picture which, and I accept it is all anecdotal, seems to imply a natural cut off date for the UKPVs. Perhaps the instruction to the printer to suspend UKPV production came mid-August hence three got through and the rest didn't. 

I'll need to find actual examples for the remaining non-UKPV books of course, for the exercise to stack up fully - maybe those dates are different too - but it's interesting how cleanly it panned out after the brief assessment.

All good pointless fun, which I may of course have already posted... 

 

[Albert Tatlock]

Edit FF 66 to 56.