Month: January 2018

Look around. Read and enjoy!

Wanted to make a point and this sale does that. This is a £10.00 book at the online store and it was sold to someone in the United States.

Note that from the £10.00 I get £3.75 -the other £6.25 goes to the printer and print on demand company.  It’s still £3.75, right?  Check the screenshot below this.

The Ultimate Centaur Collection 2011

A4
b&w

148 Pages
Price: £10.00 (excl. VAT)Prints in 3-5 business days
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hoopercomicsuk?searchTerms=the+ultimate+centaur

Previously available as two seperate volumes and now collected into one 146 pages volume!

Vol 1

Centaur -the short-lived publishing house of some of the first and most unique Golden Age heroes that still live on in legend today! The Eye Sees! Truly weird and bizarre! The Clock! Airman! The Sparkler! The Blue Lady! Plymo! The Arrow! And others. Volume 1 is a treat for all Golden Age comic fans and a must have!
Volume 2

The Skull,The Shark,The Blue Lady and Amazing Man! These were part of the First Wave of US Golden Age comics that also includes Mini Midget and Mighty Man. This book also reprints the one and only appearance of the very first comic book Owl from 1940! A must for comic fans and Golden Age buffs!

Note the * and fluctuations due  to currency exchange -like most US companies the POD will wait until the rate suits them and not the publisher -me. So, based on previous knowledge that figure will be more like £3.00.
Still, £3.00 though, right?  Sadly, no. You see, the US Tax people will tax me on that as a foreign trader and have been doing so for two years now despite my tax exemption claim –I cannot get a tax statement to cover this from HM Tax and Revenue because I simply do not earn enough to justify the effort or document (and I was told to stop sending in statements re. sales until I reached a certain figure because it was time wasting –someone in comics wants to be honest and gets the brush off!).

It means that the IRS will tax me. I may get £1.50-2.00 out of this sale.  Increase the book price? No.
That tells you how it all works!
Now, cutting back on posts due to something I only learned today about the blog on other devices.  So look around.  Read and enjoy!

1939 -A Bad Year To Try To Sell British Comics To Germany.

Now, the idea of Amalgamated Press sending Caldicott and Carstairs (you have no idea who they are, do you?) to Germany at the start of the Second World War to sell its comic sets (strips) to the Germans may seem silly to you.  I mean, one country at war with another and fatalities on both sides does not make you think of “business opportunities” does it?

Well, in 1982 there was the Falklands War/Guerra de las Malvinas and if you really need an history lesson on that you need to read some books.  Anyway, I was on one of my regular trips to Fleetway/IPC and talking to Dave Hunt who edited a football comic (I’ve gone into this before) and showed him a few samples from artists and was told that although it looked “top quality” there was a problem.  It seems that British artists would expect the full going rate per page which was not in anyway that great but it was a bill paid and food in the cupboard.

I was told that strips were being drawn by Argentinean artists, there were some delays in getting the finished art (everything was posted back then no scans!) back.  Quite a few Argentinian artists were employed on the company’s comics.

I then met Managing Editor Gil Page and asked about the Argentinian artists and was told they were used on a few books because they were paid far less. Now the fact that artists were being paid less annoyed me a lot.  You do the same work as a British artist you should get the same pay, right? British artists who were quite capable of doing the same work, were losing out to cheaper …well, not even competitors.

But there was another aspect that seemed odd considering the gung-ho climate being generated in the UK at the time.  We were in a state of war with Argentina and were recruiting, employing and paying artists from there because it was “cheaper”.  And the company continued to employ Argentinean artists even after the conflict but when there was still an official state of war.

The excuse was that this was business and had nothing to do with the war going on.   I know a few people were shocked when they heard of this and you know those legendary, great creative editors everyone seems to currently worship as they re-write the history of what they did at Fleetway/IPC (I met and talked to most of them so I know what they were doing) ?  They knew and had no problem with this practice and one in particular showed me art from Argentina that was “not really up to scratch but it’s cheaper”.

Think about that and ask yourself: would the AP have employed German artists during World War II because it was just “business” and cheaper ?

We know that American comics were full of crooks and the UK had its own versions -but double and triple book-keeping and “publishing fiddles” were far more subtle.  Like a lot of American comic editors, their British counterparts also have a lot of known (in circles) dirty secrets but this is all being glossed over and when spoken about they are just jokingly called “roguish”

A crook is a crook and I just do not care to join in with the praising of the people or perpetuating the lies of their pals and hanger-ons about what they did, what they created.  Writers and artists were treated like shit and cheated: remember that and this involved editors not just management.

Why were editors not allowed to know where the company was storing all the original artwork -so much of it went, uh, “missing” that it makes the loss of Kirby artwork look like a drop of piss in the ocean.  Management knew where the art had been going.

I remember having to provide a copy of scripts I was paid for because the accountants had caught on to non-existent scripts they were paying out on.  And ask why I was never paid the £5000+ for scripts and art -“take that up with the editor. He is no longer with the company”…says it all.

Self publish and be poor through your own work!

Flying In and Flying Out

I have to wonder whether some of my posts are a bit too “obscure” for some readers. I have covered

Marvel and the Avengers as well as the Sub-Mariner (the Avengers a few times!) and DC with my look at the Justice League (volume 1 of course).  Then there was the mega Atlas Comics post.  Posts on Indian comics, Chinese (PRC and Hong Kong) as well as comics from Singapore.  Russian, Polish, French and German comics…

And let’s not forget the Small Press!

The problem is that I have no idea what interests readers out there -but the high view numbers indicate I must be getting something right!

So, for a while -as long as I can- I’ll keep the mix going. There have been, I checked, 2,702 comments since 2011 and, sadly, most of that is chat between myself and friends!  Still I can use that as a good stat!

Now, gotta fly as my date just flew in.

It Was A Very Long Day And A Very Painful Night…I’m not talking about my love-life.

tee hee hee hehe heh hehehehehe….little costumed people jumping and flying about…hehehe…in my room.  Whooo! There goes a blue and yellow one flying past my nose…hee hee hee.

shh! They are watching!

Well, I tee hee hee hope everyone enjoyed the Atlas Comics Mega Post yesterday? Neck and eyes are ruined but if someone enjoyed it the effort was worth it. Is that sarcasm? By 23:00hrs (UK time) I had comic cover blindness and the text was vanishing in a fog of my own eyes making!

Subzero, over at Tales From The Kryptonian, noted that his post yesterday was number 900.  So out of curiosity I checked and there have been 95 (What??) this month.  Since 2011 there have been some 6,013 posts.  Now even with blogger’s habit of making images vanish you are still looking at thousands of images and I really –really– do not want to even think about how many million words. I fainted when I though of the posts on the old Yahoo 360 blog, the Freeservers and WordPress and what they contained!

As I have written before, all of this is done with no sponsorship (especially not from the companies who do well out of CBO) or GoFundMe or Patreon or whatever.  Buy a magazine with just the one mega Avengers post and it would cost you a lot of cash. Two or three mega-posts and you are looking at the cost of a very hefty book.  Costs that would reflect the amount of time and work put into them.

Now I know you don’t really care and I’m sure people switch off what they read in these posts but: my online store is covered in cobwebs but full of books that should be my income. If you want to show support for all this effort then please visit the store and consider buying something you like the look of.  Thank you.

If you are saying “Why the feck should I spend my money on your books?” Then God Bless You (in  the true Victorian beggar meaning of that).

I had a couple other big posts planned but let’s see what the reaction is (I may get two comments from the usual two people!)

Now…someone keeps flying past my face….