Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

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booksandcomics
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Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

Post by booksandcomics »

Hello all,

Just a random query on "Adventure Comic" by DC Thomson. I picked up a copy from 1958 (No. 1740 May 24th) recently as I have never seen an "Adventure Comic" before.

More of a curisosity buy as sadly a bit too much text for my taste, there's barely any comic strips inside at all! What I cannot understand though is the page numbering.

I'm used to there either being no page numbers in the comic or straight forward sequential numers starting from 1. In this instance from opening the comic, we have following number sequence,

Front cover, blank, blank, 52, 53, 54, blank, 56, blank, 58, 59, blank, blank, blank, 63, blank, 65, 66, blank, 68, 69, 70, blank, Back cover.

As far as I can tell there are no pages missing but still a bit confused as to what it starts at 50 rather than 1?

Anyone know why a comic would start off in the 50s? Does the "5" reflect the month?

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George Shiers
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Re: Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

Post by George Shiers »

Many publications list numbers from the first page in a volume - i.e. the first page of vol. 2 would be page 1, and then the first page of the second issue (let's say each issue is 8 pages) would be page 9 etc... this could be what this is? I'm not too sure though but that's my guess.
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Re: Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

Post by Phoenix »

booksandcomics wrote:Just a random query on "Adventure Comic" by DC Thomson. I picked up a copy from 1958 (No. 1740 May 24th) recently as I have never seen an "Adventure Comic" before..../....What I cannot understand though is the page numbering. I'm used to there either being no page numbers in the comic or straight forward sequential numers starting from 1. In this instance from opening the comic, we have following number sequence, Front cover, blank, blank, 52, 53, 54, blank, 56, blank, 58, 59, blank, blank, blank, 63, blank, 65, 66, blank, 68, 69, 70, blank, Back cover. As far as I can tell there are no pages missing but still a bit confused as to what it starts at 50 rather than 1? Anyone know why a comic would start off in the 50s? Does the "5" reflect the month?
I've known about this procedure for years, but without ever querying it. It is purely a numerical pagination sequence, Adam, so the 5 and May is just a coincidence. This particular Adventure sequence starts at 1, that being the front cover of issue 1738 (May 10 1958), and ends at 200 with the rear cover of issue 1746 (July 5 1958). 1737 (May 3 1958), the issue immediately preceding this run, also ended with page 200. The procedure actually started with issue 1 of Adventure (Sep. 17 1921), and that first sequence ended at 448, the back page of issue 16 (Dec. 31 1921), the final issue of the year obviously. The next sequence ended at page 364, that being the last page of issue 29 (Apr. 1 1922). For comparison purposes the first sequence of The Rover ended at page 560, the last page of issue 20 (July 15 1922), that of The Wizard at page 420, the last page of issue 15 (Dec. 30 1922), that of The Skipper at page 364, the last page of issue 13 (Nov. 29 1930), and that of The Hotspur at page 504, the last page of issue 18 (Dec. 30 1933).

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Re: Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

Post by booksandcomics »

Ah ok that does make alot of sense then! Thanks for clearing it up.

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Re: Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

Post by colcool007 »

Does anyone know why this pagination system was used?
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Re: Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

Post by felneymike »

In the late 19th to early 20th century, it was apparently quite common for magazines, comics and story papers to be bound into books by their owners (some, such as Chums and Boys' Own, were later sold as books by the publishers). I suppose this numbering helped readers to get their issues in order for binding, and 'suggested' a suitable 'size' for the resulting book to be.

I sold a load of bound DCT papers a while ago... though most of those ignored this page numbering and just bound them by Jan-Dec years instead.

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Re: Adventure Comic - Help with numbers?!

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felneymike wrote:In the late 19th to early 20th century, it was apparently quite common for magazines, comics and story papers to be bound into books by their owners (some, such as Chums and Boys' Own, were later sold as books by the publishers). I suppose this numbering helped readers to get their issues in order for binding, and 'suggested' a suitable 'size' for the resulting book to be. I sold a load of bound DCT papers a while ago... though most of those ignored this page numbering and just bound them by Jan-Dec years instead.
I don't have enough of these bound volumes to be able to reach any sort of conclusion, but in support of the points Mike is making, I have the publisher's bound volume of Chatterbox for 1917, which starts at number 1 of what it calls New Series and ends with issue 52. Each issue has eight sides, and paginates to 412. Immediately following on is Chatterbox News Box (Vol. IV) numbers I to XII. The content is articles of general interest with a fair smattering of what we used to call Nature Study at primary school. These were also eight pages in length, and paginated from 1 to 96.

I also have the publisher's bound volume of The Boy's Own Paper for 1914, which they are calling The Boy's Own Annual. It is the 36th annual volume. To avoid the possibility of having to have some toes amputated I am very careful not to drop this volume as it contains 760 pages followed by 64 more for the Special Extra Christmas Number.

I've just checked some bound volumes of The Champion from the thirties, and their pagination method is similar to Thomsons, but makes more sense as it's every twenty-six issues, a pattern they had been using from issue 1, as the last page of issue 26 (July 22 1922) is numbered 728. For example, in 1934 a run starts with page 1 in issue 625 (Jan. 20 1934) and ends in issue 650 (July 14 1934) with page 628. Under those circumstances it makes more sense to me, where future binding is concerned, to ignore the pagination altogether and concentrate on getting all the issue numbers in any year or half-year of your choice. Others may beg to differ. My choice, as I've said before on one or other of these forums, is not to go down the binding road at all with my Thomson papers.

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