*Marvel: One of the later breakout characters of Marvel, Frank Castle, aka bereaved urban vigilante the Punisher, became one of the company’s super-stars in the 1990s, but had spent most of the previous two decades ‘bubbling under’ as a guest-starring anti-hero. His media presence – and commercial appeal – has been heightened by numerous film and TV appearances. The Punisher’s first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #129, February 1974, is particularly rare in the UK, where, owing to the presence of Spider-Man Comics Weekly, the US title was embargoed for distribution for several years. Our latest copy is a nice, bright example, with bright colours, square corners, flat, tight staples and supple, off-white pages (there is some shallow margin creasing along the right edge of some internal pages, not evident on the cover.) As with many copies of this issue which turn up in the UK, we suspect that this is a copy that came over as ship’s ballast, though the evidence for that here is a lot less than we normally see on such, which are often quite ‘wavy’. The cover has three short indentation marks in the region of Spidey’s right hand which do not break colour and a very shallow waviness in the top right corner, only discernable by touch and with no colour breaks. Without these defects, this copy would grade and price much higher. since its overall quality and appearance are far superior to anything to which we normally award this grade. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #129 VG/FN £700