*Marvel: Now, our ‘Mighty Marvel Firsts’ sub-heading is normally reserved for persons rather than artefacts, but this is kind of a special case; in this issue’s Captain America story, the Red Skull gains possession of the Cosmic Cube, an artefact so powerful it can bend reality to his will. This was the first appearance of the Cube, which gained greater prominence in Marvel Lore over the decades, before being swept up into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as (let’s see if I have this right) the ‘Tesseract’, a.k.a. the Reality Stone of the Infinity Gems, which ties into the whole big Thanos brouhaha, which frankly is so complicated it makes my brain ache. But anyway, that’s the reason for the sudden ‘spiking’ of this otherwise perfectly lovely issue in the series. This is a cents copy, no pence stamp or overprint, and is a remarkable VF+, on sale at £65. SOLD