*Marvel: So successful was the launch of the Fantastic Four that Marvel soon set about populating their remaining long-running horror/big panty monster series with honest-to-gosh super-heroes. Tales Of Suspense, Tales To Astonish, Journey Into Mystery and Strange Tales were all changed. In Strange Tales, rather than come up with a new hero, they chose to run solo adventures of the youngest member of the FF, to capture the teenage reading market, no doubt. Thus with issue #101, and ‘by permission of the Fantastic Four Magazine’, the Human Torch debuted in his solo series, here tackling the Destroyer (a fairly nondescript masked wrecker) in a story that also recapped the FF origin. Art by jack Kirby, with still room for fantasy back-ups by Heck and Ditko. This Bute Collection cents copy is fairly nice, with excellent colour and reflectivity, relatively minor wear at the spine and edges and one or two shallow handling wear creases that don’t break colour. Some corner blunting, strong, firm staples and supple white to off-white pages.
PICTURED: STRANGE TALES #101 VG/FN £200