From Cents to Pence! - 2020 update: a story (now) told in 36 chapters!

Since returning to work on From Cents to Pence! with a vengeance in 2018, various discoveries have lead to the expansion of several chapters, and in some cases where they were becoming too unwieldy - and as noted in an earlier post here - sometimes cleaved them in two (or more). In the past year this has happened several times again, increasing the previous of 34 chapters up to 46 in all. As you can imagine, this alone has it made it a busy year, so this has been the first opportunity I've found to finally fill you on what I've been up to over the past year or so.

Oh, and there was also an article on the secret history of Transworld, and its connection to Marvel, that Roy Thomas kindly ran in the Stan Lee tribute edition of Alter Ego (#161) a month or so ago, itself a prequel to an earlier piece that appeared in Back Issue (#63) a few years ago (both from the ever-expanding TwoMorrows Publishing stable). I've included links to the sale pages for both of these issues, should you wish to get a taster for what's to come in From Cents to Pence!

The most recent cause for a further, more modest, expansion in the number of chapters - after those caused by Captain Britain updates and a huge development of the Overkill era - was the discovery of an on-line archive for the entire run of The Real Ghostbusters. I'd been previously unable to say much about the comic, as it wasn't a title that I'd bought at the time, mainly because it contained no mainstream Marvel Universe material unlike the supporting strips in the Transformers and Thundercats etc., and of course I had no idea that I'd start working on any such book until a few years later, and by then it was far too late.

I've almost finished slotting in all of the TRG material now - from a considered overview of the comic's changing contents, its creators, and some previously published extracted interview material - so I should soon be able to return to the final two outstanding areas: the most recent Panini chapters at that end (which need tidying up and extending to a conclusion reaching the end of 2019), and an overhaul of the Doctor Who content to introduce some more personal research on another less-written about side of the magazine (the results of a year-and-a-half-long on-and-off analysis of the title and all the Specials).

For now, here's how the 46 chapters fall, still replete with newly uncovered information from personal archives and copious interviews with the personnel involved with the British division from its origins in both the New York and High Holborn/Sevenoaks Bullpens (and then back to London again through the Kentish Town/Redan Place/Arundel House years before heading back to Kent again)...

1-4: A brief history of Marvel in America; Marvel in British comics up to 1970.

5-19: The secret origin of British Marvel; The confluence of initially unrelated business decisions that led to the formation of the UK wing, and how Stan Lee, Albert Landau and (yes) Chip Goodman became involved; a tale of two cities - how it was all run under the watchful gaze of Sol Brodsky and Ray Wergan; the backstory behind all the comics they produced from 1972-9.

20-26: The Marvel Revolution!; The inside line on the whys and wherefores of the re-shaping of the UK line in 1979 and the comics they produced.

27-43: Title-by-title, from Paul Neary's post-'Revolution' publishing explosion to the 'Marvel UK'-branded years, and from Captain Britain right through to the last knockings of the Overkill-era of UK created American colour comics (which also includes an in-depth title-by-title look at many of the titles that didn't quite happen during that period).

44-46: The Panini years - the story to date.

Anyway, that's the outline of the history portion of the book as it now stands (and apologies again for the lack of any images here). Hopefully I'll have more news soon... and well before the end of 2020 at that!