The Distribution of US Published Comics in the UK (1959~1982) 15 15

[Redshade]

8 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I know 

Who's Muphry? Not Murphy's mate is he?

The two may well be acquainted but Muphry is indeed an individual entity. Look up "Muphry's Law".

[yrag9591]

5 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Yes, he's aware of Duncan's work / guides. Tell me more about the one by Alan Austin please Gary - and your work in support of it.

Alan published four editions of The Comic Book Price Guide For Great Britain, the first in 1975 and the last in the early 1980s, from memory (the third edition was two separate publications, one for Marvel and one for DC, so there are five in total). The idea obviously came from Overstreet, but Alan included lots of information (such as ND issues) and pricing that was relevant to the UK market. Much of the information, particularly on DC, was supplied by me. Most of the comics photographed inside were mine, too. I think Duncan McAlpine bought the rights from Alan, and went on to produce the much more professional editions from the late 1980s onwards. Unfortunately, Alan, who was one of the leading lights of UK fandom for many years, died about three years ago.

[Get Marwood & I]

13 minutes ago, yrag9591 said:

Alan published four editions of The Comic Book Price Guide For Great Britain, the first in 1975 and the last in the early 1980s, from memory (the third edition was two separate publications, one for Marvel and one for DC, so there are five in total). The idea obviously came from Overstreet, but Alan included lots of information (such as ND issues) and pricing that was relevant to the UK market. Much of the information, particularly on DC, was supplied by me. Most of the comics photographed inside were mine, too. I think Duncan McAlpine bought the rights from Alan, and went on to produce the much more professional editions from the late 1980s onwards. Unfortunately, Alan, who was one of the leading lights of UK fandom for many years, died about three years ago.

Sorry to hear that Gary. He left his mark on the hobby though - must have been cool working on that. 

[rakehell]

13 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

@rakehell @Redshade @Kevin.J @themagicrobot @Mr Thorpe

Guys, anything to add here? The Gold, Silver, Bronze lark is just to get the thing going and an excuse to post pretty pictures.

I'm in! Still processing all the info. Top work as usual, mate. Been concentrating mostly on foreign stuff lately, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye out. 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

9 hours ago, Redshade said:

The two may well be acquainted but Muphry is indeed an individual entity. Look up "Muphry's Law".

I didn't actually know the misspelling was a thing Stephen. See, we're always learning in these threads 

46 minutes ago, rakehell said:

I'm in! Still processing all the info. Top work as usual, mate. Been concentrating mostly on foreign stuff lately, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye out. 

 

Cheers Tricia 

[Gnasher]

 

16 hours ago, yrag9591 said:

A couple of thoughts:

1) In your first post, you mention someone who is doing research into non-distributed (ND) issues. I assume he has the British price guides published by Alan Austin and Duncan McAlpine. There's lots of information about ND issues in those. I provided much of the information in the Austin guides, so it should be good (I hope).

2) I mentioned this thread to a friend of mine who I knew would be interested, and he said he suspected that the very early distributed issues (such as that War At Sea) were not distributed in early 1959, but in early 1960 along with the first distributed DCs. We've no evidence for that, though.

Here's Lew Stringer's write up on the Alan Austin Price Guide..  http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2007/12/price-guide-from-past.html

[Get Marwood & I]

18 hours ago, Mr Thorpe said:

Thanks 'Get Marwood & I'. A fascinating thread! So fascinating I registered and this is my first post. Many thanks to Gary for pointing me to these forums.

The 'A.M.Co' stamp looks remarkably similar to the 'L.M' stamp. Could this be Arnold Miller, who was Len Miller's son and was heavily involved in his father's company? I admit I have never seen that stamp before, or at least not noticed it.

Re Thorpe and Porter and their first distributed comics in the UK. In the 1950's T&P did a series of black and white reprints, as I'm sure you are aware, of many DC titles. It makes sense that once they were able to source the real McCoy American editions, they would ditch their (inferior) b&w reprints. I offer you exhibit A. It looks as if T&P were publishing their version of Blackhawk up to when distribution started. I believe these are the final 2 issues of the T&P versions. Note the cover dates of the comics they were reprinting.

It sounds like Bob Mandry was there! It would be great to know what else he remembers being in those boxes particularly Charltons and ACG's.

Hello Mr Thorpe!

I somehow manged to miss your post yesterday, sorry (it might be because it needed to be approved prior to posting, being your first post and all).

Yes, our AM Co stamp does indeed have a whiff of Miller about it doesn't it:

 

As you say, it could indeed be one of Len's Dad's. He was trying to muscle in at the time from the looks of it 

I have some scans of other odd looking stamps which I'll post in later entries. While we have you, you don't recognise this 'RV' one do you - it appears around 1964/5 on Charltons:

Good point about T&P moving from the B&Ws to the originals, thanks - I'll look into that a bit more. 

Thanks for the kind words - I'm honoured that you'd join the forum just to comment here. Welcome, and stick around! 

Cheers, Steve

[Get Marwood & I]

5 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

18 hours ago, Mr Thorpe said:

Thanks 'Get Marwood & I'. A fascinating thread!

Hello Mr Thorpe!

I somehow manged to miss your post yesterday, sorry (it might be because it needed to be approved prior to posting, being your first post and all).

 

 

Yes, it does look like the first post from new members has to be approved by a moderator before it lands, so I wasn't ignoring you @Mr Thorpe :

On 7/18/2018 at 4:52 PM, Scott =) said:

Due to the recent spike in spam activity, we've made an update to the boards that hides posts from new members until a moderator has reviewed and approved them. Once a moderator has approved a post by someone, that person will be able to post freely from that point forward, without a moderator needing to intervene.

Good News: That means you shouldn't see any more Korean / Chinese / etc spam threads! 

Bad News: Making legitimate new users wait to have their posts published isn't our favorite thing in the world.

We're working on other solutions to prevent robots from creating accounts / make posts at all, but those updates will  take longer to get done. Once they're done though, we should be able to remove the restriction on new members and put things back the way they were before 

Thanks for your patience and for doing such a good job of reporting the spammers to us!

Scott

 

[Garystar]

My Alan Austin price guides. The colour one is my original from 1983 which explains why it’s falling apart. 
1975 - amazing fantasy #15 mint £15

1979 - amazing fantasy #15 mint £120

Green lantern #76 mint £18
1983 amazing fantasy #15 mint £300

[mikeyc67]

Never seen those - fascinating

[Get Marwood & I]

20 minutes ago, GARYSTAR said:

I love that they're all pence copies on the cover there 

Oh for a time machine.... 

[Mr Thorpe]

That 1983 Alan Austin Comic Guide has had a lot of love!

Thanks for the welcome, Steve. I found your Miller Marvel thread last night and was totally entralled. That probably qualifies me as a sad case too.

That RV 9d stamp looks familiar -I've probably seen it on some of my old Charltons. No idea what it stands for. I'd love to find out.

I looked through a few of my Charltons today, (inspired by this thread I might add!) and I thought you'd like to see this. It's safe! It's April 1959 so doesn't beat the War at Sea #29 which is 2 months older.

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

31 minutes ago, Mr Thorpe said:

That 1983 Alan Austin Comic Guide has had a lot of love!

Thanks for the welcome, Steve. I found your Miller Marvel thread last night and was totally entralled. That probably qualifies me as a sad case too.

Glad you liked it. You can't beat a Miller

Quote

That RV 9d stamp looks familiar -I've probably seen it on some of my old Charltons. No idea what it stands for. I'd love to find out.

I've been trying to find out for a long time. No luck yet

Quote

I looked through a few of my Charltons today, (inspired by this thread I might add!) and I thought you'd like to see this. It's safe! It's April 1959 so doesn't beat the War at Sea #29 which is 2 months older.

That's cool because it's my first April 59 T&P'd Charlton - keep 'em coming Mr T 

[Kevin.J]

No date stamp  

 

[Kevin.J]

On 6/30/2020 at 8:51 PM, Mr Thorpe said:

Thanks 'Get Marwood & I'. A fascinating thread! So fascinating I registered and this is my first post. Many thanks to Gary for pointing me to these forums.

The 'A.M.Co' stamp looks remarkably similar to the 'L.M' stamp. Could this be Arnold Miller, who was Len Miller's son and was heavily involved in his father's company? I admit I have never seen that stamp before, or at least not noticed it.

Re Thorpe and Porter and their first distributed comics in the UK. In the 1950's T&P did a series of black and white reprints, as I'm sure you are aware, of many DC titles. It makes sense that once they were able to source the real McCoy American editions, they would ditch their (inferior) b&w reprints. I offer you exhibit A. It looks as if T&P were publishing their version of Blackhawk up to when distribution started. I believe these are the final 2 issues of the T&P versions. Note the cover dates of the comics they were reprinting.

It sounds like Bob Mandry was there! It would be great to know what else he remembers being in those boxes particularly Charltons and ACG's.

 

 

 

 

 

Hey Mr Thorpe, great first post and welcome to the boards  

 

[Kevin.J]

4 hours ago, GARYSTAR said:

My Alan Austin price guides. The colour one is my original from 1983 which explains why it’s falling apart. 
1975 - amazing fantasy #15 mint £15

1979 - amazing fantasy #15 mint £120

Green lantern #76 mint £18
1983 amazing fantasy #15 mint £300

Its good to see these again, I have a few of them buried very deep somewhere

I was in the market in the 80s for an AF 15, the few I turned up believe me were a lot more than the guides used to say  some dealers used to have them on their walls at the marts but wouldnt sell them.

I did have a few chances at crazy prices and bottled it, seem like bargains now now though   

[Get Marwood & I]

50 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

   

Snap 

Same number '2' T&P stamp. Different placements but both attempting to dodge the action...

[Get Marwood & I]

28 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

I did have a few chances at crazy prices and bottled it, seem like bargains now now though  

The number of times I turned down AF15's because £800 was 'too much'.... 

[Kevin.J]

15 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

The number of times I turned down AF15's because £800 was 'too much'.... 

I remember someone approached me once when I had a table at a mart and had Amazing Spidey #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15, he wanted 1k each for them and wouldnt split them, I tried but I couldnt raise the money but these were as close to NM as I ever seen, never seen him or those books since, my memory says they were both Pence copies ( maybe not  ) but if that AF15 was graded it would be the highest Pence by some margin.

I guess I shouldnt complain too much though  

 

 

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

7 hours ago, Kevin.J said:

I remember someone approached me once when I had a table at a mart and had Amazing Spidey #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15, he wanted 1k each for them and wouldnt split them, I tried but I couldnt raise the money but these were as close to NM as I ever seen, never seen him or those books since, my memory says they were both Pence copies ( maybe not  ) but if that AF15 was graded it would be the highest Pence by some margin.

I guess I shouldnt complain too much though  

Cor!