*Marvel: We lead off this week’s selections from the Bute Collection with a real gem. In the earliest days of the Fantastic Four, when Marvel Comics were still a well-kept cult secret, Stan Lee, having previously resisted his publisher’s request to combine the company’s Golden Age heroes into a Justice League clone, decided to plunder the company’s history anyway, but in a distinctive manner. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, finds in a Bowery flophouse a homeless derelict who turns out to be the long-lost and amnesiac Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, ruler of Atlantis (and star of his own comic book back in the 1940s). Impulsive but well-intentioned, Johnny ‘shocks’ Namor back into awareness, but when the Sub-Mariner returns to his undersea kingdom, he finds it devastated by the weapons testing of the surface world. Enraged, Sub-Mariner swears revenge on the land-dwellers – though he’s willing to make an exception for Johnny’s shapely sister Sue, the Invisible Girl – and thus began one of the most dramatic ongoing conflicts of the series, as Namor flipped from enemy to ally as the plots demanded. Eventually Sub-Mariner’s status as anti-hero earned him a series in Tales to Astonish, then the first of many ongoing solo series, and he remains a major figure in the MU to this day.
The Bute copy is pence-printed and an Apparent Fair due to the Mr Fantastic pin-up page missing (story complete). The spine and part of the top edge have been taped at some time in their history; tape now removed leaving brown residue. Thumbnail-sized chip out right edge, which is also jagged with Marvel chipping. Lots of cover creases and wear. Bottom staple off at spine, centre okay. Pages are tired with slightly ragged edges in places, not affecting story. Small water stain lower back cover. There is also a vertical tear halfway down the splash page. The missing pin-up page means this is priced as a Poor. 
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR #4 App FA p £450