The Outer Limits

This sounds as unreal as an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.

Imagine going to see your favourite local band and finding they were backing The Eire Apparent.

Imagine going to see your favourite local band and finding they were backing The Eire Apparent and The Nice.

Imagine going to see your favourite local band and finding they were backing The Eire Apparent, The Nice and The Amen Corner.

Imagine going to see your favourite local band and finding they were backing The Eire Apparent, The Nice, The Amen Corner, and The Move.

Imagine going to see your favourite local band and finding they were backing The Eire Apparent, The Nice, The Amen Corner, The Move and The Pink Floyd.

Imagine going to see your favourite local band and finding they were backing The Eire Apparent, The Nice, The Amen Corner, The Move, The Pink Floyd and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Download the Programme as a pdf here.

More Atlas/Seaboard

The short-lived Atlas comics line started strongly and quickly imploded all in the space of 6 months worth of bi-monthly issues. A few years ago Paul Kupperberg posted this list. Apparently his brother Alan worked at Atlas for a while. Most of the comics on this list didn’t actually get as far as the newsstands. Or if they did get printed/published they didn’t get distributed. Comics take a few months from script/artwork to production so some must have been well under way when the decision to close down was made.

I only found out about this list via a chance visit to The Grand Comic Database. The 15M figure for the UK is assumed to mean we received 15000 copies of each issue of the comics and 25000 copies of the magazines. The comics we received were no different to the regular issues though. Most were hand-stamped 10p by Thorpe & Porter. The magazines received 20p stickers. Most people appear to have attempted to peel off these price stickers. There are many second hand issues circulating with damaged covers as a result. In the States, oddly, the print runs of the magazines were much smaller than for the comics. I would have thought they could have sold more magazines.

More Atlas

Unlikely Tales

Terry and Sinead

Terry talking about All Kinds of Everything: If it had “copyright Leonard Cohen” people would say it was a work of genius.

Chequered Tape

Who invented the chequered pattern so popular in motor racing and numerous other applications? No one knows. There are instances on Roman tiled floors from 2000 years ago, C16th Churches and Scottish Tartan kilts. Freemasons used it for their own symbolism. A chequered flag is used in motor racing and UK emergency services like police cars and Ambulances use chequered pattens on their vehicles to this day. Not forgetting Battenberg cakes, Houndstooth patterns and Chess/Draughts boards.

It is a pattern that gets noticed. Hence DC comics decided to put a chequered pattern on the top inch of all 535 of their comics between February 1966 and August 1967. Kids would know which comics were DCs as they flicked through the spinner racks. DC called these “Go Go Checks” in a reference to those groovy swinging 60s I guess. Although the 1960s didn’t really swing for most people. Val Doonican, Engelbert Humperdink and other crooners were as likely to be in the Top 20 as Jimi Hendrix. People still wore hats and drove Austin A35s. Scooter would seem a lot cooler if he rode a proper motorbike (or even a Scooter) rather than what looks like a Honda 50 moped!!

DCs remained my preferred reading matter in the mid 1960s. The covers were intriguing and the stories within were bonkers. Marvel comics usually consisted of long fights between heroes and villains. In fact Marvel comics often featured fights between their heroes due to their policy of punching first and talking later.

Who are we?

Who are these odd looking small characters? The answer is to be found below.

Who am I?

√ Checklist

The √ Checklist in April 1988 Marvel Comics puzzled me. Here it appears that the Web of Spider-Man comic has been around longer than Spidey’s Amazing Spider-Man. It has reached issue No 373 in this alternate reality whilst the other title languishes at No 299. In our reality the final issue of Web of Spider-Man was No 130.

PS: I wonder if anyone actually “checked” (ticked in English) the Checklist? Another thing to look out for along with missing Pin Ups and Marvel Value Stamps when buying pre-owned issues.

The Queafles

The history of rock n’ roll cannot be told without the story of The Queafles. Their debut album of 1961, ‘Inhale The Queafles!’, set off a chain reaction which defined pop culture for the rest of the 20th century. Tommy, Ricky, Patty and Koko from Liverpool became household names overnight upon the release of ‘I Want To Flick Your Bean’ (1961). The lyrics may sound innocent when compared with the band’s development throughout the 1960s, but they were considered groundbreaking at the time and even kicked off a sexual revolution in Japan.

Final Issue

The final issue of (the first series of) Marvel’s Rawhide Kid was No 151 in May 1979. Mysteriously, this issue also had a UK Price Variant. This was unusual for a couple of reasons. Historically final issues of Marvel’s lesser titles tended not to appear as UK Price Variants (if they had even bothered to do so for earlier issues). If they were distributed here, Marvel Funny Annimal, Romance, Western, other reprints etc tended to be cents issues with T&P ink price stamps. In the case of Rawhide Kid, his comics, along with the other Marvel Westerns, had last previously seen a UK Price Variant way back in 1967. So why was the lone No 151 an exception? Oddly, the May 1979 issue of the Avengers appears to be missing as a UK Price Variant, even though issues prior to it and afterwards all displayed 12p prices. Such is the enthralling (yawn!) wacky world of Comic Distribution.

Interestingly, this issue contains one of those annual Statement of Ownership declarations. This, as usual, contains some amazing figures that I don’t claim to understand. The average number of issues printed is stated to be 245,000. Fair enough. But the average number of issues DISTRIBUTED is 83,000. The average number of copies NOT DISTRIBUTED is 160,000. Similar odd figures like this crop up time and time again over the years. Admittedly, usually it is more like 50% Distributed and 50% not, with some of the more popular titles obviously having fewer issues going to waste. It has been pointed out by others that it would perhaps only take half an hour to print 245,000 copies and it was hardly worth stopping the machines 5 minutes early. But it seems a waste to me. If it was my business and I had 245,000 issues to distribute I would have done my best to shift them. Elsewhere on the Interweb there are stories of an early comic book shop/reseller borrowing half a dozen trucks and purchasing cheaply pallet loads of back issues from the 1960s/1970s that had been sitting in warehouses for years and never distributed.

So I guess you can see why Rawhide Kid 151 was the last issue. It was a dated and unpopular reprint issue (originally printed a mere 7 years earlier) similar to other lesser Marvel titles printed only to fill up shelf space. Of those 83,000 distributed I wonder how many would end up unsold and returned/pulped? The comic is noteable only for its new cover artwork and the fact that one page had the panels re-arranged to squeeze in the Statement of Ownership form. And of course this rare UK price variant with the ALL-COLOUR COMICS heading. One day it will be worth a fortune (or not).

Damage Control

As the Marvel heroes spend so much time in cities fighting super villains there is bound to be considerable damage to the buildings and infrastructure around. I recall the time Thundra or someone similar sends She Hulk crashing down through the road. She emerges upside down head first inside a subway tunnel just as a train approaches. She rips her way through every carriage saying something like “That smarts”. Frankly it is amazing more civilians aren’t hurt or killed with such stunts happening regularly. So it seems so obvious I wonder why no one thought of it earlier. There must be teams that go out and do the repairs. Who foots the not inconsiderable costs for these works? She Hulk is an Attorney. Has she got insurance? If so then the premiums must be colossal. Damage Control first appear in the 1988 Marvel Age Annual and there were a number of 4 issue mini-series. I have just stumbled across the third set. Purchased new 30 years ago and read for the first time this week! The art is odd and the plot is odder. One of the Damage Control team has gained “Cosmic” power and threatens to end all life in all dimensions and universes as they are all a bit too untidy for his liking. Even Galactus and Infinity seem unable to stop him.

Alan Class & Co Ltd

In the 1960s Alan Class was located in Shoreditch and Hampstead London. In the 1980s Alan operated from premises in Regent Street. Then he moved to Islington. Here, the three story (and basement) premises were the last building standing on the corner of a street where it would originally have been attached to a row of terraced houses. Alan used the ground floor and basement.