*DC: A short run of Detective Comics in the early #200’s graces our shelves this week, from #207 to 215 – sans #211, which was in our earlier Catwoman update a couple of weeks ago. Characterised by some new foes – the Puppet Master, the Mirror-Man, and the Brain That Ruled Gotham City – and some old friends – the Knight and the Squire, Britain’s Batman and Robin, who team up with other heroes to form “The Batmen of All Nations!”, a noble association trashed, er, updated by Grant Morrison in recent decades. Rotating back-ups involve Captain Compass, Roy Raymond, and Mysto, Magician Detective, but the enduring appeal of the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder conquers all! A range of grades, from an unattractive (but cheap!) Poor right through to a sparkling FN/VF. Sample issues pictured below.

*Marvel: Another run through sundry Marvel titles from the 1960’s and 1970’s, with issues of the following added to our listings: Astonishing Tales, Avengers (inc Annual #7 Starlin Thanos), Black Goliath, Daredevil (#10), Howard The Duck, Ka-Zar (#3 1st series 1970 with new Angel story), Marvel Chillers with Tigra, Marvel Premiere (1st series with Dr. Strange & Iron Fist), Marvel Two-In-One (Annual #2 with Starlin Thanos), Nova, Star Wars (#2 & #3), Sub-Mariner & 2001.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A substantial update to our stocks for Tiger from 1971, all issues previously missing from our listings, which builds up our inventory to virtually complete for that year. Quality features abound with sport dominated themes, including Roy Of the Rovers (of course), Johnny Cougar, Skid Solo and many others. We’ve seen a great upswing in popularity of this title from the 1970’s of late.

*TV & Film Related Comics: Yes, it’s the return of our Free Gift Farrago feature! With the ever-increasing popularity of the Star Wars franchise, folks are looking back with nostalgia even to the UK Star Wars Weekly, the format in which a lot of fans had their first exposure to Luke, Leia, Han, and all the other characters. We’ve been short of early issues of Star Wars Weekly for far too long, but that void is filled – temporarily – by this week’s addition of the first 9 issues (plus an errant #13), mostly in mid to high grades, and with the first two issues still possessed of their original Free Gifts – a cut-out Star Wars X-Fighter and a T.I.E. Fighter, to be specific! Almost universally punched out of the flimsy cardboard and assembled for, ooh, seconds of fun before disintegration, it’s rare to find any surviving copies of these gifts, but we’ve managed it! Issue 1 is FN/VF (Gift NM) at £35, issue 2 is FN with NM gift at £25; the others will set you back from £1.50 to £4, depending. Let the Wookie win, Luke!

*Marvel: Again, an exception in our listings for its period, the 87th issue of New Mutants featured the first full appearance (he had made a fleeting walk-on in the previous) of the man named Cable, the man from an apocalyptic near-future, son of Scott Summers and a cloned replica of Jean Grey, who came back in time to prevent his own future from coming to pass. Or something like that. His powers include metal bits, a strappy costume, really big guns, and glaring a lot. With a shiny eye, for no very good reason. Anyway, he took over the stewardship of the New Mutants from Magneto, and eventually honed the survivors into X-Force, a dubious achievement for which no-one should thank him. He’s since bobbed back between ‘now’ and the future, interfering with his own and the world’s time stream, and accosting various mutant children to become the Hope of the World. Kind of like Mary Poppins, he’s a super-powered nanny with metal limbs. Confusing back history and ambiguous abilities or not, he’s scheduled to be appearing in the next Deadpool movie, incarnated by one of an interesting range of possibilities (our money’s on Kiera Knightley…), so interest in the character’s early appearances has skyrocketed. This NM/M Pence copy is in excellent condition, and believe me, the time will come when you’ll look back upon this as a snip at £85.

*Marvel: A beautiful item for this spotlight, the seventh issue of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear! After a little artistic floundering in his early issues, the Sightless Swashbuckler lucked out when the superlative Wally Wood took over illustrating his adventures, and this is probably the finest Wood issue, marked not only by the premiere of the red Daredevil costume which became his definitive uniform, but also by a genuinely gripping and harrowing battle in which Daredevil, hopelessly outgunned by the vastly superior might of the Sub-Mariner, nevertheless shows such courage and determination that even Namor’s scaly heart is moved to compassion. A beautiful piece of work – and, in this instance, a beautiful copy, cents, graded FN/VF, with flat, white interior pages, tight staples, vibrant cover colour and gloss, and only two very minor flaws- a tiny diagonal crease in the upper right cover, and the faintest of ‘stacking’ smudges at the logo – precluding a still higher grade for this outstanding item. Offered at £275.

*Humour Comics: We don’t often see early issues of D C Thomson’s Sparky, so we’re particularly pleased to have several dozen in from Sparky’s early years 1965-1969, including 6 from the first year of publication as early as #32. There are about 20 new issues listed from 1966, 10 from 1967 and most of 1968, where previously we only had 3 issues listed for all four years! We imagine collector interest will be high on these, which come in a mixture of grades from FA to FN.

*Girls’ Comics: It’s a rare event indeed when we can feature a new publication in any of our British categories, but particularly so in Girls’ Comics. Here we have, hot off the presses, a Misty Graphic Novel, reprinting two classic stories from early Misty issues: Moonchild and The Four Faces Of Eve, beautifully reproduced under a stunning Shirley Bellwood cover. Pat Mills, whose brainchild Misty mostly was, writes both a new intro and the first story, and there are also a few Misty spooky feature reprints as well, plus biographies of the creators. We salute this bold new venture into reprinting an absolute classic series, and hope it sells well enough to be the first of many! Priced at £15.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Although they’re not in our basement any more, it’s bargain time with Commando Picture Library as we add a new wide selection of relatively recent issues between #2702 and #4477, all at the very affordable price of £1.25 each!

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: From the 1950’s to the 1970’s, a big new selection of original British titles in an American-Sized format. Lots of titles in this considerable update: Biggles, Broncho Bill, Buffalo Bill, Colorado Kid, El Lobo, Jim Bowie, Kalgan The Golden (Ron Turner art), Kid Dynamite, Little Sheriff, Lone Star (with Space Ace by Turner), Mark Tyme, Marvelman, Nick Hazard (Turner), Pecos Bill, Phantom Ranger, Purple Hood, Rocky Mountain King, Steve Samson, Western Super Thriller (with Ace Hart) & Young Marvelman.

*Marvel: One of the most sought after Spidey key issues adorns our new listings this week. #129 features the first appearance of everyone’s favourite urban vigilante the Punisher. This nice FN cents copy (there are no pence copies, of course) has good cover colour and gloss and page quality. Flat with tight staples; minor spine and corner wear. It weighs in at £375; we need to say no more!

*Horror/Mystery 1960-1980’s: Another visit to Marvel’s strong horror output from the 1970’s. This update features Chamber of Darkness (early issues from #1 onwards), Creatures On The Loose (with Gulliver Jones, Thongor complete and Man-Wolf), Monsters On The Prowl and Tower Of Shadows #1 & #2 (#1 with classic Steranko story VF- cents £30).

*Marvel: Yes, it’s another one of our hugely popular Bronze Age Marvel #1 updates. This time we feature the following #1 issues: Champions, Devil Dinosaur, Doc Savage, Howard The Duck, Ka-Zar, Marvel Presents (Bloodstone), Ms Marvel, Skull The Slayer, Spider-Woman, 2001 A Space Odyssey & What If. Check out our catalogue for grades and prices on these, but better move fast, as these don’t hang around for long!

*Humour Comics: A small update to our Buster stocks, with comics from 1965 and 1966, plus the Holiday Fun special from 1970 and the Buster & Monster Fun Holiday Special from 1977.

*Girls’ Comics: More than a touch of the Poptastic about this week’s Girls’ Comics update as we feature a small amount of Romeo from 1958, 1968, 1971 & 1974 and just one issue of Mirabelle from 1972, but it is the New Year issue! Faberoonie!

On a regular cycle, we sweep through our entire stock to delete sold items and keep our listing as up to date as possible. We’ve just finished deleting sold items from the following files in our Books Section:
*Crime, Spies & Sleaze
*Pulp Fiction
*Childrens’ Books
*Comic Strip Books
As of the time of writing, these categories are bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Marvel: We conclude our Slab Happy summer event with the first appearance of the Master of the Mystic Arts, Dr. Strange, soon to be portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch on the big screen. The good doctor first appeared as a back-up feature by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko in Strange Tales #110, the first in a regular series of clever little mystic mystery adventures before graduating to the bigger stage of several of his own series from the late 1960’s to date. This copy is graded by CBCS as 5.5 (FN-) and priced at £1500, which represents a good investment potential for a major Marvel character and impending movie franchise! (It’s a shame they didn’t think to feature Dr Strange on the cover — I doubt Paste-Pot Pete will ever get his own movie!). Thus ends our Slab Happy event, but we’re sure to come across more third party graded books in the future for those that have to have ’em!

*TV & Film Related Comics: One of the rarest and quirkiest of all British comic titles was Solo, which ran for 31 issues only in 1967 before being subsumed into TV Tornado. Later issues featured Gerry Anderson material (notably the Mysterons and the unfilmed Project SWORD) alongside the other TV and film related fare such as Disney Gold Key reprints and the Man From Uncle which had been there from the beginning. All issues are vanishingly scarce and we seldom see them, so we count ourselves particularly fortunate to have the very first issue in a nice VG grade fresh in (£75), alongside an even nicer VG/FN copy of #3 (£37.50) which has an incomplete free copy of #4 bundled in with it as a bonus.

*DC: From 1976, we’re very pleased to present an original printing of the first ever DC/Marvel crossover story Superman Vs The Amazing Spider-Man Treasury-sized edition. This milestone has been reprinted many times in many different formats, but this is the original, a very nice FN/VF pence copy at £35. Also in Treasury size, Limited Collectors’ Edition C35 complete with cheesy Shazam photo cover.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: One of the most bizarre experiments in the annals of British Comics publishing was Amalgamated Press’s Top Spot, which ran for 58 issues from the end of 1958 to the beginning of 1960, after which it merged into Film Fun. An unusual mix of pin-ups, features, text stories, cartoon gags and top quality comic strips, it was in theory aimed at a 16-17 year old school leavers’ audience. Early issues featured glamour pin-ups on the cover; in later issues comic strips took over the cover, although the pin-ups remained inside. Examples of both types of cover are shown here. We now have a great selection of most issues in stock, ranging from £4-£10 each, depending on grade. Rarely seen and quite unique, assured of their place in UK comics history, if only as a fascinating backwater.

On a regular cycle, we sweep through our entire stock to delete sold items and keep our listing as up to date as possible. We’ve just finished deleting sold items from the following files in our Books Section:
*TV/Film Tie-Ins
*Mad Books
As of the time of writing, these categories are bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Humour Comics: Most issues new in of Krazy, the irreverent humour title that ran from 1976-1978. Previously only a handful of these were in stock, but we’ve now added the majority of the run, including the first three issues and the Special from 1977.