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Update Archives For December 2006

31 December 2006

British Update: Annuals, Commando PL, Champion, Speed with free gifts & Scottish Vulcans

Many rare gems in this week's bumper British update in the following categories:

*Annuals: Major focus on our Boys’ Adventure annuals, with new listings for Lion (1967-1983), 2000 AD, War Picture Library, and Robin Hood, but also touching on Film & TV (Laurel & Hardy, Dad’s Army) and Girls’ (anyone for Jinty?). More Annual Updates to follow soon!

*Boys Adventure & War Comics: Three distinctive titles from three decades of IPC/Fleetway’s line. From the 1960’s, early issues of Champion, the companion paper to Valiant which lasted only fifteen issues before being amalgamated into Lion. Now a much sought-after collectible because of its short achievable run, this update includes a first issue in excellent condition, marred only by one clean neat cut. From the 1980’s, we have early issues of Speed, the velocity-themed weekly, including early free gift issues in nice condition. But the cream of the crop is a new range of Vulcan from 1975, including several of the incredibly scarce ‘pilot’ series, which was distributed only in Scotland. Reprinting the cream of Fleetway’s adventure strips – Mytek the Mighty, Kelly’s Eye, Trigan Empire, Saber, the Steel Claw, Robot Archie, and the Spider, in sequential order, this title ran for thirty issues in Scotland before re-launching as a national late in 1975. However, because the strips continued directly from where the Scottish edition left off, readers felt they’d come in mid-story, and the national edition only lasted 28 issues before folding into Valiant as a pull-out supplement. First series editions are almost never seen – except in Putney! So if you want the finest work from Don Lawrence, Jesus Blasco, Reg Bunn and more, grab ‘em quick… they won’t be here long!

*Boys' Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Another huge helping (300+ issues) of Commando Picture Library, ranging from several issues below #200 right up to issues above #3000 with hundreds of issues in-between. This is the second portion of our recent incoming batch of this most popular title. Watch for more coming soon.

Posted by Rob | 03:10 p.m. GMT | 31 December 2006

American Update - Modern Reprints

*Modern Reprints: DC offers us Spirit Archives Volume 20 and Showcase Shazam! Vol. 1 this time, while Marvel strike back with Masterworks for Avengers (Vol. 6), the Mighty Thor (Vol. 5), and Golden Age All-Winners Comics (Vol.2); we also have obtained copies of the out-of-print SHIELD paperback Vol. 1, representing Steranko’s innovative work on Marvel’s 1960’s super-spy, and the second printing of the original livery Iron Man Masterworks (Vol.1), limited to 390 copies worldwide. Other new releases from DC are the second volume in the Batman Chronicles, reprinting every Batman story from 1939 onwards in strict order as full-colour paperbacks, and Huntress; Dark Knight Daughter, collecting the 1970’s adventures of Earth-2’s second-generation adventuress. Also, the definitive EC Archives series continues with the release of Shock SuspenStories Vol. 1, large-format full-colour hardcovers of some of comics’ defining stories.

Posted by Rob | 03:04 p.m. GMT | 31 December 2006

27 December 2006

Star Collections Update (American) - Subby & Marvel Myserty from Timely

*Miscellaneous 1940-1959: A brace of vintage Timelys this update, with Marvel Mystery Comics #85, starring the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Namora by Everett, Miss America by Pauline Loth, and the slinky Blonde Phantom! In GD/VG, this nice mid-grade copy has never had a top staple, and has a loose centrefold, but is generally a very collectible item with several of Timely’s stars in one issue. And if you didn’t have enough of the aquatic avengers, there’s also Sub-Mariner Comics #26 in VG, with two Namor & Namora stories (one by Everett), and a bonus Blonde Phantom tale. This has very minute patches of tape on the inside front cover at staple area, and a sealed half-inch tear at the top of the back cover, but is a tight, firm copy with unimpaired cover scene, remarkable page quality and considerable eye appeal.

Posted by Rob | 11:23 a.m. GMT | 27 December 2006

British Update - Mid-late 60's Eagles, Tarkan, Masters Of The Universe & She-Ra!

*Boys' Adventure & War Comics: Three decades of adventure this update, beginning with Eagle from Vols. 15-17, 18 & 19, (1964-1969) towards the end of the veteran title’s run, but still with many highlights, including the last original Dan Dare stories, never reprinted and featuring outstanding Keith Watson artwork. Also feature din this run were sci-fi strips, 'The Guinea Pig', robot adventurer 'Iron Man', 'Heros the Spartan', 'Blackbow the Cheyenne' and Jack Kirby’s 'Tales of Asgard'. From 1973, two dozen issues of Tarkan, in which our Attilla-alike conquering outlaw wages war against the old Roman Empire, in an unusual action series possibly translated from a European original. And from 1986 – by the power of Grayskull - Masters of the Universe and She-Ra, both titles new to our lists. 30th Century’s own Will Morgan got one of his earliest writing gigs scribing the sibling heroes of Etheria and Eternia’s adventures, but swears he’ll never reveal which stories were his fault – buy ‘em all and have a guess!

Posted by Rob | 11:21 a.m. GMT | 27 December 2006

20 December 2006

British Update - Rare UK/Aus reprints, plus Commando & Jackpot with free gifts!

A wide range of goodies in this week's British stock update in the following categories:

*Vintage UK/Aus Reprints of Vintage US Material: Marvel Tales, Weird Worlds, and a touch of Venus!Many additions to this always-eclectic category, highlights being the 1950’s Adventures Into Weird Worlds # 1 from Thorpe & Porter and the scarce Marvel Tales Digest # 3 from Miller, both with Pre-Code Atlas reprints galore; also Gordon & Gotch’s (Aus.) Venus # 1, reprinting the all-Everett issue 14 in crisp black & white behind an admittedly muddy colour cover. The Other Worlds Album, whose publisher we can’t identify, features new material and late-50s Charlton reprints including several Ditko “Tales of the Mysterious Traveller”; and other new stock entries include Batman, Blackhawk (Boardman and Strato), Girl From UNCLE, Kid Eternity, Lone Ranger, Mandrake, Mystic, Race For The Moon, Rip Kirby, Robin Hood, Space Adventures, Theo Drake Detective, and Western Bumper Album, plus ‘bootleg’ copies of the 1950’s Plastic Man and Two-Fisted Tales UK editions. (Sssh! Don’t tell anyone!)

*Boys' Adventure & War Picture Libraries: The last survivor of the War Picture Library genre, and still going strong at four issues a month, Commando has achieved iconic status, and we have boxes of them waiting to be processed. We’re kicking off a long series of forthcoming Commando updates by adding approximately 100 numbers from the post-decimal years, spanning the mid-70’s up to approximately the turn of the century. Many more to come – keep watching the website!

*Humour Comics & Picture Libraries: Face it tiger, you just hit the Jackpot! Jackpot, the 1979-launched humour weekly with “the big prizes”, joins us with most of its first hundred issues being added to the website this week, including the first three issues with original free gifts. While originality wasn’t a high point on Jackpot’s agenda, (“Angel’s Charlies”, “Teeny Sweeny”, “Little and Large Lenny” and “Incredible Sulk” being some of the subtler rip-offs), it had an infectious verve and energy that places it a cut above the standard Fleetway funnies of the time, with such diverse sources as Popeye (“Full O’Beans”) and Fawcett’s Marvel Family (“The Amazing Three”) being among the ‘homaged’. Mostly, though, it appealed to the greed of its audience with substantial prizes, including all the toys/sweets/crisps you can carry, visits to Concorde, the opportunity to be bathed in lemonade by a pro footballer (which would entail a visit by the Child Protection folks nowadays..), and a crateload of baked beans. Hmm. The delirious winners were always rendered in unflattering caricature on the covers, and have doubtless been given new identities by MI5 for their own protection. Those who haven’t become hopeless diabetics or farted themselves into a coma by now. What? Oh, yeah. Anyway; lots of lovely Jackpot! They’re fun! Buy ‘em now!

Posted by Rob | 09:37 a.m. GMT | 20 December 2006

American update -- IW/Super & Westerns

Many American esoteric rarities this week in the following categories:

*IW/Super: This high-profile series of ‘bootleg’ comics from 1958-1964, which reprinted the inventory of discontinued Golden Age publishers in a more or less random order, has been completely updated for this listing, with new additions to our stock of Firehair, Strange Mysteries, Eerie Tales, Foxhole, and the highlight, Daring Adventures with Matt Baker’s classic Good Girl Art adventuress, the Phantom Lady, from Fox’s notorious series!

*Western: Substantial amendments to our listings for DC’s grim n’ gritty spaghetti-western outlaws this time; Jonah Hex lists new issues ranging from 11 to his penultimate issue 91, and the Weird Western Tales run starring Scalphunter is greatly expanded. With both these series featuring regular back-up stories or guest appearances by other western stars such as Bat Lash and El Diablo, these series reward fans of DC’s range-roamin’ renaissance. In addition, we have further listings for Marvel’s Western Gunfighters, Dell westerns (including Davy Crockett and Gene Autry’s Champion), a Two-Gun Kid 57 with stunning John Severin and Kirby art, and the rare Avon Wild Bill Hickok #1 from the 1940’s – in ropey grade, but all there!

Posted by Rob | 09:29 a.m. GMT | 20 December 2006

18 December 2006

Merry Christmas To All Our Readers!

We'd like to take the opportunity to wish all our customers the compliments of the season and all the best for a peaceful, happy and prosperous New Year.

Over the holiday period, our shop will be open normal hours with the following exceptions: we shall be closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. On Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve we shall be closing about an hour early (i.e. around 4 p.m. as these are Sundays). At all other times, we shall be open as usual (mince pies, alcohol, chocolate etc. gratefully received and consumed), but please note that our office will be closed more than usual and it may take a day or two to reply to emails.

Today (Monday 18th) is our last scheduled day for posting out orders until 3rd January 2007.

New comics will be arriving on Thursday 21st December as usual, and after that on Friday 29th December and Friday 5th January. Please remember that we can't guarantee to have standing orders ready or new comics on the racks before 4 p.m. on those days.

During the festive period, we shall be continuing to update our website with incoming vintage stock. We have thousands of items craving your attention which we're preparing at the moment, and the new year looks to be as full of superb collectibles as the old one has been. We hope we can continue to help you fill the gaps in your collection.

Thanks for your custom and interest!

Rob, Will, Sandy and all at 30th Century

Posted by Rob | 11:34 a.m. GMT | 18 December 2006

11 December 2006

Technical update - Improvements to catalogue presentation

Regular visitors to our online catalogue will now notice that our listings look somewhat better. Our stock is now listed on regular HTML web pages rather than the Word documents we have been previously using, so everyone should be able to access them. The old crowded columns are gone and the comics are shown in larger font. This means that it should be easier to look at and less confusingly presented, since almost all data relating to each comic will be shown on one line. You'll have to scroll up and down a bit more to browse the listings, but all titles are shown in bold, and in the British comics titles, the year of publication is also bold where appropriate and the comic title repeated each year for long-running titles, to enable you to keep track of which title you're viewing. The categories and their contents remain the same.

We hope this new format makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

In the very near future, we'll be adding a search facility to the site which should make things a lot quicker for those of you searching for specifics rather than just wanting to browse.

Posted by Rob | 04:44 p.m. GMT | 11 December 2006

10 December 2006

British Update - We're Nutty about Buzz, and we have free gifts AND Spider-Man

Some rare humour and the most popular Marvel UK title this week:

*Marvel UK: A hefty run-through on Marvel UK this time, predominantly Spider-Man Comics Weekly and its various incarnations, from # 43 (1973) through to #200 (1976). Other titles refreshed include Captain Britain, Conan (Savage Sword), Fantastic Four (regular and Pocketbook), Marvel Super Adventures, Mighty World of Marvel, Rampage, 1st and 2nd), and Thundercats, plus Summer/Winter/Holiday Specials for Frantic, Marvel Super-Heroes and Star Trek.

*Humour Comics & Picture Libraries: Two significant DC Thomson humour runs in this update: Buzz, 1973’s large-format companion to Beezer and Topper, with the adventures of 'Hop, Skip and Jock', 'The Twitz at the Ritz', 'Sammy’s Scribbles' and more. Most of the first 41 issues are here, with the early ones in very affordable low grade. Also a big chunk of Nutty, the 1980 late entry in the traditional comic field, with 'Dick Turban', 'The Ding-Dong Belles', 'The Wild Rovers'” and others. First three issues have free gifts attached, but we strongly caution you against using or consuming them - particularly since #1’s is a packet of Space Dust candy! Other titles replenished in this selection from Dundee’s finest are Beezer (1969-1971), Sparky (1970-71), and Topper (two lovely condition issues from 1960, and a selection from 1969).

Posted by Rob | 03:19 p.m. GMT | 10 December 2006

Car Booty Collection Update - Marvel's Scintillating 70's! (Part 2)

*Marvel: Our sensational Seventies sweep through the Car Booty collection concludes with the second half of the alphabet; highlights are a lengthy run including the early ND issues of Spider-Woman, currently a sensation in the New Avengers; Ms. Marvel, including early Mystique appearances; and updates to Marvel Chillers, Marvel Feature, Marvel Premiere, Marvel Presents, Marvel Team-Up, scarce tabloid Marvel Treasury editions, Master of Kung Fu, Nova, Omega, Red Sonja, Super-Villain Team-Up and What If?. See the early work of John Byrne, Frank Miller, Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr., the much-missed Dave Cockrum (RIP) and other superstars in the making.

Posted by Rob | 03:12 p.m. GMT | 10 December 2006

4 December 2006

British Update: Summer Specials, Picture Libraries, a miscellany of girls', Cheeky with free gifts, Cracker & more humour!

*A bumper update to our British stock this week across the following categories:

*Boys' Adventure & War: A splendid selection of Summer Specials, in the great British tradition of producing extra-large editions to keep the kids happy (and car sick!) on the annual jaunt to Margate. Battle, Lion, Tiger, Victor (from 1968), Valiant (from 1967) and Warlord are all well-represented, as well as a couple of oddball later experiments, All-War Monthly and Super Mags For Boys. So join Morgyn the Mighty, Kelly’s Eye, Skid Solo, Robot Archie and the gang for extra-length holiday adventures! Anyone for candy floss and whelks?

*Boys' Adventure & War Picture Libraries: We’ve been a bit battle-heavy with the last few updates in this section, so this week, we 'Make War No More', and instead offer you western adventures in Cowboy Adventure, Pocket Western (1st and 2nd series), Sabre Western, Sundance Western, Western Holiday Special, and Wild West, crime and espionage in Action, Pocket Detective, and Undercover, sports thrills in Football, swashbuckling in TV Picture Stories, sci-fi in Space Holiday Special and Starblazer, and the usual diverse adventurers in Thriller, ranging from Robin Hood and Dick Turpin through secret agent John Steel to outer space with Jet-Ace Logan! But don’t worry – there are many more Commando and company in our future….

*Humour Comics & Picture Libraries: 'Where do frogs hang up their coats? – In a croakroom!' Believe it or not, that’s one of the better jokes from Cracker, D.C.Thomson’s 1975 humour comic, which also features the adventures of 'Joe Soap', 'Slojak', 'Rip Van Tinkle', 'Wonder Wellies', and 'Young Foo', the latter of which demonstrates that, apparently, it was still ‘okay’ to be racist about the Chinese in the 1970’s. Strange, strange stuff, and most of the first seventy issues now on sale. We also have the first eight issues of Fleetway’s Cheeky, in which our hero wanders in and out of everybody else’s strips in a very post-modern manner; the first three issues come with the original free gifts. Plus, Cor from 1970, Beano from 1964 and 1969, and Dandy from 1969 to 1971.

*Girls' Comics & Picture Libraries: Lightly running over several old favourites this time, and a couple of previously unseen titles; Judy from 1960’s issue #8 (with Nannette and the Busy Beavers!) in FN+, and a Judy run from the early 80’s with the return of Bobby Dazzler and Wee Slavey. The spooksome Misty gets another half-dozen early issues, there’s a low-grade and very affordable selection of Tammy from 1972, and School Friend, Mandy and Mandy Picture Library get token top-ups. We’ve also got a couple of Pocket Romance Library, a handful of Marvel UK’s Sindy (by newly-cool artist Barry Kitson – embarrass him at a signing by offering him these!), and – the greatest oddity – Valentine from 1962/3 and 1969, featuring one-off romance stories ‘inspired’ by pop hits of the day. Must be seen to be disbelieved.

Posted by Rob | 08:48 a.m. GMT | 4 December 2006

Star Collections Update (American) - Harvey Pre-Code Horror

*Horror 1940-1959: Continuing our recent acquisitions from one of the UK’s leading collectors of Pre-Code Horror, here’s more of Harvey Comics’ finest. Tomb of Terror (from # 1) and Witches’ Tales, two gore-fests with a higher degree of skill and craft than the majority of the field, with excellent work from Powell, Nostrand, Elias and others. Coupling high-splatter tension with a penchant for ghoulish humour, the Harvey line are distinctive within a genre that lends itself to formulaic repetition, and this batch includes some particularly shameless swipes from their arch-rivals EC.

Posted by Rob | 08:37 a.m. GMT | 4 December 2006

Car Booty Collection Update - Marvel's Scintillating 70's! (Part 1)

*Marvel: From our as-seen-on-TV “Car Booty” collection comes a sizzling Seventies sweep, as we go through the short-run series which launched the careers of some of today’s superstars. Keynote is a virtually complete run of the World War II-set Invaders, in which Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner and their chums battled the Axis, in what will undoubtedly be listed as a ‘prototype’ for J. Michael Stracynski’s forthcoming 2007 series. Includes the ND first three (lovely NM #1) and final issues, plus the equally ND Annual and Giant-Size issues. Top-ups also on Kirby’s Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Champions, Conan the Barbarian, Dazzler, Doc Savage, Dr. Strange (including the rare # 1 by Brunner), Godzilla, Human Fly, Kull the Conqueror, Logan’s Run and Machine Man – so much stock, in fact, that we’re having to split the Seventies over two weeks! So switch on your lava lamps and join us next week for more titles from the Decade That Restraint Forgot….

Posted by Rob | 08:36 a.m. GMT | 4 December 2006