*DC: We continue our feature spotlighting the tabloid-sized Treasury etc editions from DC & Marvel this week with two Superman goodies. Famous First Edition C61 reprints Superman #1 including inner covers which are a faithful reproduction. The whole thing is so faithful in fact (apart from the size!) that I have heard of the outer covers being removed and the remainder marketed as an original. Limited Collectors’ Edition C31 reprints several classic Superman stories from the Golden, Silver & Bronze Ages, together with a whole host of special features.
PICTURED: BOTH SOLD
FAMOUS FIRST EDITION C61 FN £15
LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION C31 VG+ £10

*Marvel: One of the more tragic entries in Spider-Man’s Rogue’s Gallery is the Lizard, a.k.a. Dr. Curt Connors, a dedicated scientist and devoted husband and father whose research into a regenerative serum, to help himself and other amputees, went horribly wrong when the lizard-like properties of tissue regeneration ran rampant, turning him into a humanoid reptile. The Lizard debuted in the sixth issue of Spider-Man, and we are delighted to have in stock an outstanding copy, pence printed, in a superior grade. Glossy, virtually flat, sharp corners, tight staples and a vivid, unmarked cover scene; the page quality is superb, very close to white pages. There are only the smallest flaws: a small dink at the top corner of the masthead (does not break colour), a very tiny scuff at the base of the Lizard’s lower claw (which you really have to look hard to see) and a couple of very soft, short creases towards the bottom of the spine, which do not break colour and again can barely be seen. We hardly ever see such an early issue of Amazing Spider-Man is such fantastic condition. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #6 FN/VF p £1,500

*Marvel: In the fourth issue of Marvel’s Avengers series, the already formidable team of Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man and the Wasp was augmented by one of the legendary heroes from the past. Captain America returned to action after years in Post-WWII suspended animation, and rapidly became the acknowledged heart and soul of the Avengers, who have never flourished for long without him! This copy from the Good Doctor Collection is pence printed and very low grade. It has additional staples near the top and bottom of the spine; the spine itself is very worn, with many small tears. Two interiors pages are loose and separated. Significant wear to all edges, with chipping at top and right, colour-breaking creases at bottom, but the central cover image is unmarked. Page quality is a little cream, but not too bad. It does look as if those extra staples are holding the comic together though. At least it’s complete and readable, and at a price you seldom see this major key issue for!
PICTURED: AVENGERS #4 PR/FA p £400 SOLD

*Marvel: In this week’s Marvel #1 slot, we have not just #1, but also #2-7 of the TV spin-off series Man From Atlantis, the complete series. The Man From Atlantis was a mildly successful TV series in the 1970s starring Patrick Duffy in the titular role as an amnesiac believed to be the last survivor of Atlantis and possessed of undersea powers. The comic series from 1978 was also mildly successful, but, like the TV show, was cancelled before it really got going. We got the TV show over here, but not the comic, so this series doesn’t turn up too often. Alas that although Patrick Duffy had an underwater resurrection scene as Bobby Ewing in the infamous shower scene in Dallas, there was no second life for him as Mark Harris, the Man From Atlantis.
PICTURED: THE MAN FROM ATLANTIS #1; COMPLETE SET #1-7 AV. VF £50 SOLD

*Miscellaneous 1940-1959: The Fighting Yank (Nedor) and Spy Smasher (Fawcett) were two costumed heroes originating during WWII and created to help the war effort; two of many such characters from that time. Fighting Yank, his costume inspired by the Spirit of ’76, had superhuman powers and devices. Spy Smasher was more of a Batman clone-type detective. They both took on the Japs (and others), both home and around the world. The Bute Collection affords us one comic of each.
PICTURED: BOTH SOLD
FIGHTING YANK #9 GD- £150 Alex Schomburg cover. Solid cover with decent spine and single central staple as published. 4 cm x 3 cm corner torn off bottom right cover. Back cover edge and corner ragged. Small pieces of tape on inner covers. Nice pages, although some have bottom right corners missing in margin only.
SPY SMASHER #6 VG+ £200 Mac Raboy cover. No significant flaws, just light edge, spine and handling wear. Firm staples, good pages. A nice example.

*Marvel UK: Two #1 issues here this week, both with their original bound-in posters. Dracula Lives #1 reprints Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf By Night and Monster of Frankenstein. Titans reprints Captains America & Marvel, Sub-Mariner and Inhumans.
PICTURED: BOTH SOLD
DRACULA LIVES #1 VG/FN £13.50 With bound in poster (VF). A little cover creasing to right edge.
TITANS #1 FN £15 With bound-in poster (VF) Landscape printed.

*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: We’re continuing to introduce the new layout for our books categories, with an image for each book. This week, we return to our Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror category for the first of several updates spotlighting the Master of Adventure Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs was very prolific, and wrote in several series, in addition to his most famous creation Tarzan of the Apes. His style and settings set the tone for a whole library full of imitators/homagists in jungle, interplanetary and exotic locales. We shall be covering our ERB stock in a number of updates over the coming weeks, starting here with his Mars adventures (my personal favourite), plus a quick visit to the land of Pellucidar, at the Earth’s core. We have five Mars hardcovers, published by Methuen in the 1950s with dust jackets depicting the first edition classic illustrations (these are really beautiful books), plus another UK 1950s paperback, plus a US Pellucidar novel which is new in stock. The Mars series ran to eleven volumes, Pellucidar to seven. Watch for the next ERB update coming soon.
PICTURED: ALL BY EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS (All DJs in removable archival film)
MARS #1: A PRINCESS OF MARS Methuen 1952 13th UK HC VG/FN £30 With DJ (GD) SOLD
MARS #2: THE GODS OF MARS Methuen 1952 7th UK HC GD/VG £20 With DJ (GD)
MARS #4: THUVIA, MAID OF MARS Methuen 1951 7th UK HC VG £15 With DJ (VG)
MARS #4: THUVIA, MAID OF MARS Pinnacle 1950s UK PB VG £8
MARS #5: THE CHESSMEN OF MARS Methuen 1951 5th UK HC VG £20 With DJ (GD)
MARS #6: THE MASTER MIND OF MARS Methuen 1952 2nd UK HC VG £25 With DJ (GD/VG)
PELLUCIDAR #3: TANAR OF PELLUCIDAR Ace 1st US PB VG/FN £5

*DC: We unusually turn to DC for a Pre-Code Horror update, with the premiere DC horror title House Of Mystery: Issue #9 from 1952. With art by Ruben Moreira (inc cover), Leonard Starr, Win Mortimer, Jerry Grandenetti and more, these clever horror/mystery stories are of a standard you expect from such a noted publisher. We don’t see these early issues too often. 
PICTURED: HOUSE OF MYSTERY #9 GD/VG £69 Bright colours, some fading to spine and bottom edge. Faint subscription crease. Small chip loose top centre. Firm staples, nice off-white pages. SOLD

*Marvel: If you’re looking for really nice copies of Amazing Spider-Man for your collection, then look no further than the Totally Amazing Spider-Man Collection. All high grade; even the few that fall below VF (and most are above) are really good-looking copies – no duds here, and nearly all cents copies. Many folks say – with justification – that Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat, was a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for DC’s Catwoman, created to give Spider-Man a ‘beloved enemy’ vibe and increase the romantic tension in the series. Probably true; but nevertheless, the Black Cat rapidly stepped away from her derivative roots, primarily owing to her low level probability manipulation – subconsciously causing ‘bad luck’ for people who opposed her – and the fact that although she’s frequently done heroic and noble things, she’s never completely shed her criminal ways. This copy of the Black Cat’s debut in Amazing Spider-Man #194 comes from the non-distributed ‘wilderness years’, so there are no pence variants of this issue; it is however, a rarer newsstand variant. A lovely copy, typical of this collection, with great colour and gloss and just the tiniest signs of handling wear at spine and edges. Sharp corners, no colour breaks. Tight, firm staples and supple white to off-white pages.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #194 VF+ £275

*Marvel: In our Marvel #1 slot this week, an old favourite that remains a classic. Having made his mark on the SHIELD strip in Strange Tales, Jaunty Jim Steranko took the brakes off and went all-out when Nick Fury’s Pals n’ Gals got their own full-length series, with cinematic storytelling and psychedelic designs, particularly on the cover and splash pages, that utilised the full potential of the medium with an imagination seldom seen since the heyday of Eisner. Nick Fury #1, ‘Who Is Scorpio?’, is the definitive example, with the popular espionage tropes of the day cranked up to 11, and a striking cover image which still resonates in the fandom psyche half a century plus later. Our newest Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #1 is a lower graded copy, pence stamped, with quite a bit of edge wear, spine ticks and diagonal colour-breaking creases across the bottom right corner. But great value for such an iconic item.
PICTURED: NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD #1 VG- p £35

*Horror 1940-1959: From the Bute Collection this week, two early copies of one of Atlas’s premier horror titles, Journey Into Mystery #7 & #9 from 1953 in superior shape and with great covers by Bill Everett.
PICTURED: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY
#7 FN £600 (below) Pre-Code. Cover by Everett, art by Harry Anderson, Jack Abel and others. Clean, fresh and glossy cover with great colour. Only minor edge wear and corner blunting. Supple off-white pages and firm staples at spine and centrefold. Some chipping to the back cover edge prevents a higher grade. High resolution images are available on request. SOLD
#9 VG/FN £400 (left) Pre-code. Cover by Everett, art by Robinson, Forte and others. Clean, fresh and glossy cover with great colour. Some spine wear but only moderate, also at top edge with minor handling wear. Staples tight at centrefold and reasonably tight at spine; nice supple off-white pages. 

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: It was common practise in UK comics for decades to create intentionally short-run ‘Feeder’ titles, with the express purpose of providing ‘new blood’ to refresh longer-running titles. One such was Thunder, which launched in 1970. Thunder developed several popular features, including time-stopping musician ‘Phil the Fluter’ (don’t ask), WWII robot ‘The Steel Commando’, junior Doctor Doolittle ‘Fury’s Family’, crime-fighting whiz-kids ‘The Jet Skaters’, and lovable mad scientist ‘Black Max’. Star of the show, however, was ‘Adam Eterno’, cursed to wander the Earth forever until killed by a weapon of gold – unfortunately for our hero, whenever he looked like being able to end his interminable existence, Circumstances Intervened. Despite a strong line-up, Thunder folded after 22 issues, and all of the above strips leapt into Lion, with, appropriately, Adam Eterno dodging death again when Lion was absorbed by Valiant! A lowish grade #1 new in this week, plus 13 subsequent issues, including one duplicate (20/2/71), all in reasonable condition. See our catalogue for details.
PICTURED: THUNDER #1 GD £15

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: We’re delighted this week to add nine novels by the prolific Carter Brown, all new to our listings. Alan Geoffrey Yates was a British born Australian who wrote under that pseudonym between 1954 and 1984. He was extremely prolific in this and other genres, turning out over 300 novels in his career. His work was hard-boiled in the style of Raymond Chandler, without the plot complexity, but with an entertaining sense of humour and laconic noir feel. The novels were written in the first person in the guise of one of several detective protagonists he used, examples being Lt Al Wheeler, tough cop, Rick Holman, Hollywood trouble-shooter to the stars and Mavis Seidlitz, whose IQ was lower than her bust size (allegedly). (We have detailed which detective features in which novel in our listings). Originally published in Australia (but all set in America, because “his readers preferred it”), Brown became internationally famous when they were published in first the USA and then the UK. The earlier American Signets were cover-illustrated by Barye Phillips and the later ones by Robert McGinnis, two highly talented artists who captured the spirit of the books beautifully. Most scenes featured sexy women, but inside the sex was always suggested rather than explicit. Our new intake features several American versions, a couple of Australian and one British. All the regular detective protagonists are represented, and we’re particularly pleased that there are four Mavis Seidlitz novels this time. Some are shown here; full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: All by Carter Brown
THE LOVING AND THE DEAD Signet 1959 1st US PB GD £6 SOLD
MURDER PARIS FASHION Horwitz 1960 3rd Aus PB GD £7
NUDE – WITH A VIEW Four Square 1966 1at UK PB GD £4
TERROR COMES CREEPING Signet 1959 1st US PB VG/FN £9
TOMORROW IS MURDER Signet 1960 1st US PB VG £8
THE WAYWARD WAHINE Signet 1960 1st US PB GD/VG £6

We’d like to take this opportunity to remind you how ordering from us works.

All orders from our website are filled on a strict first come, first served basis, EXCEPT those placed in response to our Newsletter/What’s New Page updates. Our Newsletter is usually sent around 10 am on Saturday mornings, immediately followed by the What’s New Page and Catalogue being updated. In order to give you the chance to properly review and consider the week’s new stock, plus to be fair to overseas customers in different time zones, we allow a period up to 4 pm that day, when we will consider all orders placed. If you’re the only person ordering that item, you’ll get it. If multiple orders for the same item are received before 4 pm, we will draw lots and advise the potential buyers of the result as soon after 4 as is practical. All orders after 4 pm revert to the first come, first served basis.

We think this gives you the fairest chance of getting what you want, at the same time removing the pressure for you to order in a hurry and thus make mistakes or change your mind. The vast majority of items we sell don’t get multiple orders on Newsletter days, so most orders will be successful. But please remember that in nearly all cases, we will only have one copy of any given item and inevitably, when it’s one in high demand, you may be unlucky.

*DC: Three issues of Action Comics from 1959, each one with a distinctive minor key quality to it. #248 (pre-Supergirl), features the back-up story where famed explorer Congo Bill first transforms into Congorilla – the Amazing Man-Ape. #253 has the second ever Supergirl story, and #254 has both the first meeting of Bizarro and Superman and the 3rd Supergirl story. All pre-UK distribution and uncommon over here.
PICTURED: ACTION COMICS
#248 FA/GD £29 Glued spine. Wear, creases and tears with minor cover graffiti. Centrefold almost loose. 
#253 GD- £65 Spine roll with long piece white tape at spine inside cover. Back cover stains. Good staples and decent pages.
#254 FA/GD £50 Spine glued, coupon out (does not affect stories). Looks good, with reasonable staple. SOLD
 

*DC/Marvel: We’re starting two new features this week, spotlighting some recent finds. The first, which we’re calling ‘Tabloid Headlines’, will showcase many of the much loved Treasury Sized editions published by DC and Marvel in the 1970s/80s. In 1976, after some delicate negotiations, Marvel and DC decided to create a team-up between their two iconic characters which proved too big for a regular-sized comic – so the tabloid-sized format, as seen in Marvel’s Treasury Editions and DC’s Limited Collectors’ Editions, was co-opted for this event! Superman and Spider-Man (as well as guest-villains Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus) are note-perfect in this mega-sized saga. This triggered a series of cross-overs between the two companies, with DC and Marvel alternating on the publishing chores, and Marvel was at the production helm by 1981, when Marvel Treasury Edition #28 was released, with the follow-up Superman and Spider-Man team-up, this time co-featuring Wonder Woman and the Hulk and the villainy of Doctor Doom and the Parasite! We are delighted to have both these epic editions back in stock.
PICTURED:
SUPERMAN VS THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FN/VF p £80 A nice undamaged pence-printed copy with square corners, solid spine and staples, lovely white to off-white pages. Just minor handling wear, a faint reading crease and a couple of small spine ticks which just break colour. 
MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #28: SUPERMAN & SPIDER-MAN VF- £65 SOLD Rich cover colour, square corners, tight binding, beautiful white to off-white pages. Just a small mark (which looks like a faint thumb mark) centre spine, which is barely visible.

*Marvel: If you’re looking for really nice copies of Amazing Spider-Man for your collection, then look no further than the Totally Amazing Spider-Man Collection. All high grade; even the few that fall below VF (and most are above) are really good-looking copies – no duds here, and nearly all cents copies. Something a little special this week, as we feature six CGC graded copies of Amazing Spider-Man from 1977-79, each one a 9.6 (NM+), universal unrestored blue labels, perfect cases and either white or off-white to white pages. Full details of course are in our catalogue.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
#165 £135
#183 £70
#186 £100
#188 £90 SOLD
#189 £80
#190 £85

*Marvel: From the Good Doctor Collection this week, two early X-Men issues from Lee & Kirby, as the merry mutants come up against some new foes. Issue #8 features the debut of Unus the Untouchable, the invulnerable wrestler-cum-super-villain. In #11, we meet the Stranger for the first time, a being of cosmic power and blurred origins, who has appeared throughout the MU ever since. Magneto and his BEMs are involved in both issues.
PICTURED: X-MEN BOTH SOLD
#8 VG+ p £140 Pence stamped. Decent copy with unmarred white background. A small lower right corner crease does not break colour. Minor edge and spine wear and corner blunting, good staples, nice off-white to cream pages.
#11 VG+ £140 Solid copy with just minor edge and spine wear and corner blunting. A few short spine ticks break colour. Unmarred cover image, good staples, nice off-white to cream pages. 

*Marvel: We turn to the distaff side of the Marvel Arachnid universe this update with a chunky update to the first run of the Spider-Woman title, most issues between #3 and the final issue #50. Always a dark and moody title, Jessica Drew has her own unique corner of the Marvel Universe. Highlights include guest shots by Werewolf By Night (#32 with universal monsters photo cover, Spider-Man, X-Men, the first appearance of X-Force’s Siryn in #37 (newsstand edition)  and the distinctive photo cover on #50 which rounded out the series. Check out our catalogue for full details.

*Horror/Mystery 1960-1980s: Some seldom seen issues from Gold Key’s Horror/Mystery range of the 1960s/70s this week, including half a dozen issues of Boris Karloff Tales Of Mystery (I bet he wrote them all himself), three Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (‘true ghost stories’), and a couple of the TV tie-in Twilight Zone (a great TV series, BTW). All feature well-executed stories in the right vein with great painted covers. Please see the full listings in our catalogue.
PICTURED: BORIS KARLOFF TALES OF MYSTERY #59 VF p £6.25

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: In the early 1950s, a small number of horror comics (around 40) were produced by a variety of UK publishers reprinting US pre-code horror stories in black and white. Just as in the USA, these became notorious and subject to censorship which led to their discontinuation. There’s a lot of information online about the banning of UK horror comics if you want to know more, and I particularly recommend a youtube video by Canadian Dave Dustin on the subject (see the Links page in our Extras section for more information). These UK horror comics have become both extremely rare and much sought after in recent years, and we’re delighted to have issues #1 & #2 of Eerie from Thorpe & Porter/Jenson from 1951/52, reprinting the Avon US originals. Plus, since these were double the size of an original Eerie, an issue of Avon’s Strange Worlds as well. Each issue is graded by CGC and encased in their sealed plastic case.
PICTURED: EERIE ALL SOLD
#1 CGC 5.0 VG/FN £600 Universal unrestored blue label, case perfect, off-white pages. Reprints US Eerie #1 plus Strange Worlds #2
#2 CGC 5.5 FN- £600 Universal unrestored blue label, case perfect, off-white pages. Reprints US Eerie #2 plus Strange Worlds #3
SPECIAL OFFER: We also have a copy of Eerie #3 (third and final in the series) which is not CGC. It is in poor shape (ragged, torn and heavily taped) and incomplete, with one of the Strange Worlds stories removed. We shall be offering this free to anyone who successfully orders and pays for #1 & #2 at the same time. If they don’t sell together, after a short time, we will offer this copy of #3 on its own at a fairly nominal value. 
ALSO PICTURED: EERIE #3 Poor and incomplete; only offered as a bundle, free with #1 & #2 at this time.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: 14 issues of the long-lived Boys’ weekly Tiger from 1966, from 17th September until the end of the year, an almost consecutive run with just a couple missing. Includes both the Christmas issue for 1966 and the New Year issue for 1967 (dated 31st December 1966).  Throughout its history, Tiger (original home to Roy of the Rovers) always had strong sporting associations and indeed in later decades, virtually became a comic of sport-related strips, but here in 1966, Roy, Skid Solo, Johnny Cougar and other sporting stars rubbed shoulders with war and adventure strips such as the Robot Builders, Nelson Lord TIGER Agent, the Black Archer, Typhoon Tracy, Saber King Of The Jungle and many more. A classic British comic at its best! Mostly £2-£3.50 each. As always, please see our catalogue for details.

*DC: Introduced as a last-minute afterthought in the Batman Animated TV Show, a curvaceous minion of the Joker brainstormed to do a task thought inappropriate for ‘Mr. J’ himself, Harley Quinn caught on like wildfire, and after several reappearances in the show, crossed over into the comic books with Batman Adventures #12 in 1993. Since then, of course, she’s transferred from the DC Comics Animated Universe to the main DCU, had her own series and several spin-offs, cracked the big time of movie success and is now regarded as one of the big-earning ‘pillars’ of the DCU, alongside Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Whilst high grade copies of this gem are not rare, this is one of the nicest we’ve ever seen. In virtually every respect, this is as nice as new (nicer even than some new comics you see on the racks). Flat, tight, glossy, vibrant, white pages, firm staples, sharp corners etc. There are just the tiniest signs of a couple of stress marks at the spine (no hint of a colour break), but you have to look really hard to see them. We debated long and hard on the grade to award this, and settled on a very conservative VF/NM. 
PICTURED: BATMAN ADVENTURES #12 VF/NM £450 SOLD

*DC: Six excellent issues of Strange Adventures, DC’s longest running science fiction series of the Golden, Silver & Bronze Ages. Consecutive between #142 & #147; three recurring features alternate in the spotlight each issue: Star Hawkins, Interplanetary Detective and his robot secretary Ilda, Space Museum, with tales of exhibits and Atomic Knights, post-apocalyptic adventures of Earth’s last armoured defenders. Take it from me, all wonderful stuff backed up by lovely little stories from DC’s best creators. All three features will be found in these mixed grade issues, plus the (slightly) recurring menace of the Faceless Creature. Issue #144 notably features the only Atomic Knights cover.
IN THIS UPDATE: STRANGE ADVENTURES ALL SOLD
#142 GD/VG p £12.25 Lower staple area restapled
#143 GD £7.50 Cover detached
#144 VG/FN p £26 (PICTURED) Atomic Knights cover
#145 GD/VG p £10
#146 GD p £6.75 Restapled
#147 VG- p £15.25

*Marvel:  From the Good Doctor Collection this week: Created in a cocoon by scientists in Fantastic Four, the supernaturally gifted being known only as ‘Him’ made a couple of cameo appearances in previous issues of Thor, but #165 featured the first full appearance of the character, and the earliest inkling of the extent of his powers. Eventually, re-named Warlock, ‘Him’ would become a mainstay of Marvel’s cosmic sagas in the 1970s and beyond, but here was the first full outing, in a two-part battle with Thor for the hand (and other parts) of the warrior-maiden Sif, Thor’s main squeeze.
PICTURED: THOR
#165 VG/FN p £120 Decent black background copy with vibrant colour and gloss. Tight, firm staples, supple white to off-white pages. Pence stamped. Minor edge wear with short colour breaking stress mark around upper staple. There is a faint vertical crease down the left side of the cover which just breaks colour for a couple of cms.
#166 VG+ £55 Great colour and gloss. Tight, firm staples, supple white to off-white pages. Some stress marks at spine; small arrival date in biro in mast-head box. There is a slight dingy patch to the right of the logo, which, from its regularity, looks as though a label has been removed, but it has no residue of that.