Archie UK Price Variants 5 5

[Yorick]

On 8/4/2022 at 11:32 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I didn't realise when I picked it up

I've done that... once.  One book in a stack on feebay that I was after.  Apparently there are desirable books in there!  (All in for the TAR!  )

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/4/2022 at 7:41 PM, Yorick said:

I've done that... once.  One book in a stack on feebay that I was after.  Apparently there are desirable books in there!  (All in for the TAR!  )

Teen Confessions #50 

Charlton's the winning issue there! 

[Yorick]

On 8/4/2022 at 11:44 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Teen Confessions #50 

Charlton's the winning issue there 

It's in the mail to the UK! 

[lotemo]

On 8/4/2022 at 1:28 PM, Yorick said:

@Get Marwood & I So the chair you sat in didn't sell?  Your writings make me laugh out loud.  People here wonder what I'm looking at...

...and THANK YOU for that Jughead Creature cover.  Never seen that before and it's GOOD!

I think the creature cover appeals to horror collectors too.  They basically copied the creature from the black lagoon in great detail.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 8/6/2022 at 5:31 PM, lotemo said:

I think the creature cover appeals to horror collectors too.  They basically copied the creature from the black lagoon in great detail.

Cool. Here's another Creature featuring pence copy, this time for Charlton:

[Get Marwood & I]

Morning 

Despite searching for Archie UK Price Variants for nearly five years I've only just received confirmation that Archie #109 exists as a 9d price variant. I suppose this serves to illustrate just how scarce the books are. Five years of looking, one inconclusive near miss (see earlier in the thread), and then one solitary copy finally lands at Marwood Towers. That's not to say it has any particular monetary value of course, as I do seem to be the only one actively pursuing the Archie UKPV set and seeking to establish what exists.

Anyway, here it is:

One interesting thing I spotted is that the 9d price appears to be printed over the original US 10c price which is still faintly visible as a ghost outline:

 

I've seen this before, on King Comics and others, but this is the only example within the Archie UKPV run that I've found. I like to see things like this, the little printing quirks which betray the origins of the book and which, in this case, seem to underline that the book came from the same original print run.

I've got 25 of the 26 known Archie UKPVs now, but I do expect that there are a few more out there. I likely look closer, and more often, than anyone else alive for these books, and it's taken me five years to find this one. So my old mantra of "if you spend years and years looking, and find nothing, then...." takes a well deserved rap on the knuckles today.

Quite right. 

[OtherEric]

There are at least a few of us who really do appreciate your efforts, @Get Marwood & I.  Not that I'll ever do anything with the info (other than keep an eye open for the books), but I'm glad the information is available.  Thank you.

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/21/2022 at 8:57 PM, OtherEric said:

There are at least a few of us who really do appreciate your efforts, @Get Marwood & I.  Not that I'll ever do anything with the info (other than keep an eye open for the books), but I'm glad the information is available.  Thank you.

 

[Malacoda]

On 10/21/2022 at 11:06 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I've seen this before, on King Comics and others, but this is the only example within the Archie UKPV run that I've found. I like to see things like this, the little printing quirks which betray the origins of the book and which, in this case, seem to underline that the book came from the same original print run.

This is fascinating.  In CMYK printing, you have 2 kinds of black in the Key colour.  The more normal, or basic black, is called Plain Black, which is what I absolutely always assumed was used for comics (and still do).  For more upscale printing, you can produce what's called Rich Black, where you lay Cyan, Magenta and Yellow down and then put black on top of it (CMY together produce black anyway, then when you put actual black on top of it, you get 'Rich Black'). 

This is really strange in that only the yellow is visible.  If they were doing it in rich black, you wouldn't see this (magenta + cyan = blue, cyan + yellow = green, yellow + magenta = red). If you were printing in plain black, you wouldn't have the price on the CMY plates, and if you were printing in rich black, the yellow would be on top of C and M making it black even before the key colour (black) went on it.  There's no obvious (to me) version of events that creates a yellow only 10c price stamp. 

Maybe, just to emphasise the price, make it pop, they had the 10c price on the yellow plate as well and didn't consider (or didn't care) that the UK price in black would be a different shape?  The yellow under the price is a different shade of yellow to the yellow on the cover but that doesn't mean anything (you can set different tones into the colour by what used to be called Dots Per Inch (and is now pixels).  The colour toning would be different on the banner to the illustration anyway. 

Hopefully, someone reading who properly understands this stuff will put me in my place.....?  I'm just speculating. 

And, yes, I know what you're thinking Steve.  You've seen colour bleed around that Marvel All Colour Comics banner they did especially for us Brits. Me too. Can't find any examples though.  Any up your sleeve? (so to speak). 

[Aman619]

Printers have limits to total ink coverage.  They will never print 100% of each ink in same spot (C M Y and K). Most printers top out at 300 -- even in the image areas. Nowadays photoshop has color settings that reduce each inks coverage automatically when prepping the final files. (Some images do contain areas of 100% of each ink that must be changed.)  So "rich Black" can simply be and is usually stripped to print 100 K over 40% C.... or maybe 40% of C and M and Y under the black.  But in cheap printing better to avoid registration issues by just using the Cyan with 100black.  And the result is a rich black that does the job well enough.  (Again nowadays with digital file creation, you need to set your black text to a rich black (40 cyan under 100K) while also adapting the under inks to the image it is printing on top of to avoid gaps of no ink by misregistration.  (A red background could have 40 C and 40M and even 40 Y because the red will be high % of both M and Y.

What I think happened here is that the yellow plate for the 10c run was mistakenly used in the 9d print run.  I can't remember if the thread has generally proved that UK Archies were printed first before the 10c copies (like Marvels), but either way the plates were mixed up and the yellow 10c was printed in both runs.  The usual sloppy "get it done and out" cheap comics printing!

 

[Aman619]

a cool aspect (to me anyway) is why 100 black ink doesn't always look black enough.  One reason is the paper surface. It isn't as flat as it appears to our eyes and fingers. It is a rough surface when you get close (try with a loupe), often with strands sticking upward kinda like blades of grass. Like everything: skin, close ups of insects etc, it gets downright ugly and chaotic the closer you look.  Laying down ink on this uneven paper surface flattens it out temporarily, but it bounces back up in many spots, exposing the white paper that the ink didn't touch as the blades flattener them.  To our eyes this 5% (or so) of lighter areas appears as a lighter, weaker black (same as adding white paint to black makes a dark grey).  So, printing the same spot with C and M or Y further coats the area leaving no more white spots.  

In the physical, real world, light is "subtractive".  Light is "white" and contains all colors of the visible spectrum (the rainbow) . All objects absorb all hues in the spectrum from the white light except its own true color. Thats the color we see.  A computer monitor and TV's are "additive"... meaning we see black/nothing until the pixels are activated. When they are all going full blast we see "white"    This is why as any computer artists will agree, what you see isn't what you get!  There are colors possible on a monitor that can NEVER be printed with CMYK inks. And many ink combinations that are impossible to see on a screen.  Designers learn to stay within a "gamut" of achievable colors on press.

Others can describe this in more detail, and better.  I always was fascinated by this aspect though.  You dwell on this too long and next thing you know youre in the Matrix!  Are we only imagining everything we see as we walk around in total darkness??  Just images in our heads?

[Get Marwood & I]

I've had these printing discussions in a few threads now - here's a recent example of a related scenario, where a price is in colour due to a likely accidental absence of black:

https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/513170-an-unusual-batman-4-any-explanation/?do=findComment&comment=12527295

I'd post a bit more on the subject, but I'm away at the moment. Look up my King Comics thread for more ghostly examples, if you can find it. 

[Aman619]

On 10/27/2022 at 5:50 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I've had these printing discussions in a few threads now - here's a recent example of a related scenario, where a price is in colour due to a likely accidental absence of black:

https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/513170-an-unusual-batman-4-any-explanation/?do=findComment&comment=12527295

I'd post a bit more on the subject, but I'm away at the moment. Look up my King Comics thread for more ghostly examples, if you can find it. 

I remember that Batman 1.  I started a post about it but there's so much going on I stopped.  If we state as a point of reference that the blue/Cyan plate is "correct" -- the Black plate is off register to the right and downward.  Magenta plate is off too high.  Both of these expose the Blue and white areas we are seeing in the skyline. What puzzled ,e until I zoomed in just now was Batmans double "black" outline of his cape.  I see now that this ties in Smith my rich black post above.  The outline touching the blue cape is actually CMY -- a brownish black.. The misregistered Black outline to its right is the richer black, made of MYK (there's bo Cyan in a pure Red).  I was confused how the black plate printed BOTH lines til I looked closely..

The real mystery is the price circle, especially the black cents sign all alone. And why is it further down lower than it should be? But, looking again today, here's my take:  The "10" and the black circle around the price area did not print. Badly inked, faulty blanket, I don't know why.  But looking again, the black plate cents sign is so low because the Red plate is too high, and the black is too low and to the right.  Thats why it falls outside the white circle.  Had the circle outline and the 10 printed, it would all be as out of register as the rest that we see happening in the skyline and cape.

The splotchy cape inking is also just another onpress issue. 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Aman619

[Get Marwood & I]

On 10/27/2022 at 5:11 PM, Aman619 said:

I remember that Batman 1.  I started a post about it but there's so much going on I stopped.  If we state as a point of reference that the blue/Cyan plate is "correct" -- the Black plate is off register to the right and downward.  Magenta plate is off too high.  Both of these expose the Blue and white areas we are seeing in the skyline. What puzzled ,e until I zoomed in just now was Batmans double "black" outline of his cape.  I see now that this ties in Smith my rich black post above.  The outline touching the blue cape is actually CMY -- a brownish black.. The misregistered Black outline to its right is the richer black, made of MYK (there's bo Cyan in a pure Red).  I was confused how the black plate printed BOTH lines til I looked closely..

The real mystery is the price circle, especially the black cents sign all alone. And why is it further down lower than it should be? But, looking again today, here's my take:  The "10" and the black circle around the price area did not print. Badly inked, faulty blanket, I don't know why.  But looking again, the black plate cents sign is so low because the Red plate is too high, and the black is too low and to the right.  Thats why it falls outside the white circle.  Had the circle outline and the 10 printed, it would all be as out of register as the rest that we see happening in the skyline and cape.

The splotchy cape inking is also just another onpress issue. 

There's some more regal examples to get your teeth into here, Aman:

https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/430163-king-comics-uk-price-variants/?do=findComment&comment=12360297

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Easily the best condition 9d priced Fly I've ever seen:

And it's mine! 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 7/21/2021 at 11:38 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

I wonder how that worked contractually - that split of titles across two different UK distributors? The same as it did with the early Marvels I presume. 

So, in conclusion, the evidence shows that:

• T&P were the first to distribute UK stamped Archie Comics in the UK from mid-1959 cover dates
• T&P were likely responsible for the six months of printed UKPVs
• T&P shared the UK stamped distribution with L Miller from December 1961

Enjoy that Daphne? @rakehell

All good fun 

I added another B&V Fifty Three to the collection, see? And it had no T&P. Whoopee! 

I was a poet, but I was unaware of my natural strengths in that particular field.