*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: We’re continuing to introduce the new layout for our books categories, with an image for each book. This week, we return to our Crime, Spies & Sleaze category and the thrillers of English author Peter Cheyney, who flourished between 1936 and 1951. Cheyney’s works can be divided into three main series: Lemmy Caution, ersatz American detective mysteries, Slim Callaghan, a British detective based in London, and the Dark series, espionage fiction, with a more realistic approach to casual brutality and general grubbiness, these seem to have foreshadowed much of the Cold War fiction of the mid to late 1960s. All three series will be featured in our Cheyney listings, where our stock is extensive enough to split into two parts. Some of this update’s books are featured here; full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: ALL BY PETER CHEYNEY ALL SOLD
DAMES DON’T CARE Great Pan 1960 UK PB VG £5 A Lemmy Caution Adventure
DANGEROUS CURVES Fontana 1957 UK PB GD £6 A Slim Callaghan Adventure
DARK BAHAMA Pan 1956 UK PB GD/VG £4 Dark series
DARK DUET Great Pan 1958 UK PB VG £6 Dark Series
DARK STREET MURDERS Avon 1950s 1st US PB VG £5 Dark Series
DARK WANTON Great Pan 1959 UK PB VG £4 Dark Series
DON’T GET ME WRONG Fontana 1957 UK PB GD £3 A Lemmy Caution Adventure

*DC: A run of the best of Superman (in my opinion), almost complete from #138 to #149, mostly reading copies which represent a chance to get the classics at a bargain price. Issue #147 though is a decent mid-grade copy and features the debut of the Legion of Super-Villains, Saturn Queen, Lightning Lord and Cosmic King, with the Legion of Super-Heroes appearing too. Cover is an homage to the first Legion appearance in Adventure #247. A milestone in Legion lore.
PICTURED: SUPERMAN #147 VG p £125 Nice clean copy with bright, unmarred cover image. Minor wear to spine and right edge, pence stamped, faint creasing to bottom right corner breaking colour.

*Marvel: You know the one, right, where in Fantastic Four #57-60, Doctor Doom steals the Silver Surfer’s cosmic powers and uses them to defeat the FF in one of THE classic adventures of Marvel’s first family? Oh, and somewhere in there the Inhumans break free of the Great Refuge. The Bute Collection offers us four excellent high grade cents copies. These really are amongst the nicest copies of these issues we’ve ever seen. Lee & Kirby at their finest.
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR
#57 VF £295 Iconic Dr Doom cover. Rich colour cover, with only very minimal signs of wear and no marks. Strong spine with firm, tight staples. Tiny dink at bottom right corner. Superb white to off-white pages. A fresh example.
#58 FN £75 A beautiful copy, with vibrant colour cover. Strong spine with firm, tight staples. Tiny dink at top of spine, but no other creases. Superb white to off-white pages. Marred only slightly by a tiny line of chipping at the bottom right edge.
#59 VF £85 A glossy, bright, colourful example with minimal wear at corners only. Ghost of a crease across bottom corner of spine. Great off-white pages and firm, tight staples.
#60 VF £115 A really lovely copy with pure white cover background. Fresh, glossy and colourful, with minimal corner blunting at spine. Firm, tight staples and supple off-white to white pages. Virtually no wear. 

*Marvel: 3 early Avengers issues from the Good Doctor Collection this week. In #14, the classic Avengers line-up battle for the life of the Wasp. #17 & #18 feature the inaugural adventures of Cap’s kooky quartet as they try to track down the Hulk and then come up against the Commissar behind the Bamboo Curtain.
IN THIS UPDATE: AVENGERS
#14 VG p £40 (PICTURED) Pence stamped. Decent copy with rich colour; some colour-breaking creasing across top edge and corners. 
#17 VG/FN £70 (PICTURED) Nice supple copy with tight staples, good colour and gloss and very little wear. Spine slightly off centre. Faint colour-breaking crease across bottom right corner.
#18 App FN £30 Nice clean copy with short colour-breaking crease across number box. Good staples and pages. Ad page out; story complete.

*Marvel: A sweep through the Marvel Universe of the 70s and 80s, with the following titles: Avengers (#221, #240, #241), Marvel Comics Presents (#18 with prelude by Byrne to Sensational She-Hulk), Marvel Team Up (#97, #107, #109, #123 & Annual #4), Marvel Two-In-One (#88), Moon Knight (#13), Rom (#20), Sensational She-Hulk (#2), Amazing Spider-Man (#203, 3rd Dazzler), Vision & Scarlet Witch (#1 of 1982 mini), Wolverine (#2 of 1988 ongoing) and X-Factor (#38 & #39, Inferno issues). As always, full details are in our catalogue. 

*Horror 1940-1959: From the Bute Collection, the first issue of one of the more notorious series from the Pre-Code horror years. Dark Mysteries was originally published by Master Comics and had a number of infamous issues. Beneath a striking cover by Joe Orlando and Wally Wood, the art standards on #1 were maintained by Wood, Lou Cameron and others. Ghouls, ghosts and corpses aplenty. A really nice copy, with square corners (tiny dink at top of spine), no significant creases (small non-colour-breaking one across extremity of top right corner), very little wear and strong cover colour. Lovely white to off-white pages. Staples are tight at spine, if a tiny bit rusty at centre, with centrefold at top staple just coming loose. There are signs that some pencil markings above the logo have been erased. A small crayon letter remains. An outstanding copy from 1951. 
PICTURED: DARK MYSTERIES #1 VG/FN £425 SOLD

*Annuals: 3 UK Superboy Annuals from 1954/55, 1956/57 and 1967, published by Atlas/Top Sellers, mostly reasonable shape reprinting DC classics in black and white.
IN THIS UPDATE: SUPERBOY ANNUAL
1954/55 VG £15 (PICTURED) 2nd such annual. All Superboy stories
1956/57 FA/GD £8 Superboy, Aquaman, Congo Bill etc. Spine torn; top 5 cm spine missing
1967 VG £15 Superboy, Detective Chimp. Some strips partial colour, some full, some b&w.

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: This week’s release of Love Story Picture Library, the longest running romance picture library from Fleetway, comprises 18 issues from 1969, a consecutive run from #713 to #730. The series always maintained a high standard and the very accomplished art reflected the fashions and mood of the times. These new additions are in excellent condition, with little wear or creasing, all either FN/VF at £6 or VF at £7. Full details as always in our catalogue.

*Pulp Fiction: Four wonderful pulps added to this category this week, three Astounding from 1934, 1939 and 1940 and a Famous Fantastic Mysteries from 1943. Great evocative covers in this medium. Wirters featured include E E Smith, L Ron Hubbard, John Russell Fearn and many more, plus the fantastic art of Virgil Finlay in this Golden Age science fiction fest. More details in our catalogue listing.
PICTURED: ALL SOLD
ASTOUNDING MARCH 1934 PR £10
ASTOUNDING NOVEMBER 1939 FA £10
ASTOUNDING APRIL 1940 PR £5
FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES SEPTEMBER 1943 FA/GD £15

*DC: Continuing DC’s ‘revival’ of their Golden Age super-heroes in new guises for the Silver Age, the Atom debuted in Showcase #34-36 (1961-62) before graduating to his own series. Unlike his Golden Age counterpart, who was a non-super-powered slugger, Ray Palmer was a scientist who developed a fragment of white dwarf star to be able to shrink (as you do). The one thing that strikes me on reviewing these issues for this write-up is how wonderfully well-crafted they are by Gardner Fox, Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson. Fox was obviously having a ball, using all his skills and ingenuity to come up with plots and situations to suit the modus operandi of the Tiny Titan. Kane’s pencils are dynamic, flowing and action-packed, while Anderson’s exquisite inking adds mood and atmosphere. From these initial appearances, the Atom has gone on to have a lengthy and distinguished career in the DCU. These copies are from an original owner collection, new to the marketplace.
PICTURED: SHOWCASE
#34 VG p £230 1st Atom. Bright copy with nice colours, supple off-white pages and firm staples, although there are tiny tears around the lower one. Cover virtually unmarked but for pence stamps (there are two, one below the other in the logo area, the lower one not complete). Some corner blunting, spine and edge wear, but creasing is restricted only to the edges and is unobtrusive. Approx 1 cm upper spine split. Presents well.
#35 VG- p £65 Bright copy with nice colours, supple off-white pages and attached staples, although the spine has a bit of wear in that area and all along, with many tiny spine ticks that break colour. Otherwise unmarked cover scene with some corner blunting. 
#36 GD+ p £35 Bright copy with nice colours and supple off-white pages. Two sets of staples (we suspect one is a later addition), with one set off both upper and lower. 2 cm upper spine split, with spine quite worn. Otherwise unmarked cover scene with some corner blunting. SOLD
   

*Marvel: She-Hulk is a great favourite of ours here at 30th Century. In her first series, the Savage She-Hulk from 1980, we were presented with competent if somewhat standard Marvel fare of the time, where Jen was little more than a female equivalent of her illustrious cousin and a lot of fans asked: ‘What’s next? Hulk Hound?’ But in the hands of John Byrne, she was revitalised into a character of both warmth and comedy, first in the pages of Fantastic Four and then in her second ongoing series, the Sensational She-Hulk in 1989. Byrne messed with convention, breaking the 4th wall and having fun with many of Marvel’s lamest villains, but all with great charm. Although he sadly left after just a few issues, he later returned for a longer run. The title just wasn’t the same without him, and folded after 60 issues, over twice the length of the Savage run. Shulkie, as she is affectionately known, has gone from strength to strength since then, and is a firm favourite in the MU & MCU for many fans. We have both Savage and Sensational first issues freshly in this week.
PICTURED:
SAVAGE SHE-HULK #1 VF+ £70 A lovely fresh copy with great cover colour and gloss, firm staples, white pages. Just a couple of very short, shallow creases at the edge of the masthead box, not breaking colour. SOLD
SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK #1 NM- £50 A beautiful near perfect copy with just the tiniest speck of discolouratipon at the top right edge. Glossy, vibrant, tight, flat, supple and all those other adjectives you’re looking for in this grade.  

*Marvel: Also from the Good Doctor Collection this week, we present issues #92 and #94-101, being the last issues of Tales To Astonish. A title shared between Sub-Mariner and the Hulk, with many fine creators at work: Stan Lee, Marie Severin, Gene Colan, Dan Adkins etc. Plus some memorable storylines, from the dramatic last page appearance of the Silver Surfer in #92, through to the full length Subby & Hulk clash in #100 and the Hulk in Asgard in #101. Full details as always in our catalogue.

*Horror 1940-1959: Just one item in our American Pre-Code Horror Fest this week, but it’s a rarity from the Bute Collection. William Ekgren’s entire comics output was three covers for St John in the 1950s, but what covers they were, among the most distinctive in the genre, if not the medium with their hallucinogenic imagery. This one is Strange Terrors #4, and the insides aren’t too shabby either with accomplished art by Joe Kubert, George Tuska and others. This is a lowish graded copy, chiefly due to water damage at the base of the spine and along the bottom edge, which permeates through the comic, with a resulting 4 cm lower spine split. However, this is mostly restricted to the page margins and does not spoil the enjoyment of reading the issue. Other than that, an intact copy with good pages and staples, and only minor edge wear. Possibly the cover colours are a little muted, but on a cover as weird as this, it’s hard to tell! 
PICTURED: STRANGE TERRORS #4 FA/GD £250

*Alan Class Reprints: From the personal archives of Alan Class, we’re delighted to present another selection of copies certificated by Alan himself. Creepy Worlds was the (joint) first of his publications and probably the most famous. More than a dozen copies between #76 and #106, nearly all in nice shape are available in the certificated section of this category. This selection prominently features famous characters such as Captain Atom, THUNDER Agents, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, the Jaguar, the Fly etc. A reminder that you can view some detail of the contents in our Rough Guide to Alan Class Reprints. 

*TV/Film Tie-Ins: Before the Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan starred on our small screens as  John Drake, Danger Man, from the early to late sixties, with a break between 1st and 2nd series. Drake was an agent for either a NATO-like organisation or the British Secret Service (depending on the series). A handful of Danger Man novels were published, mostly around 1965/66, and we have three of them fresh in this week. They’re perfectly readable copies, with some wear, which is described in our catalogue.
PICTURED: DANGER MAN ALL SOLD
DEPARTURE DEFERRED by W HOWARD BAKER Consul 1965 1st UK PB GD £10
THE EXTERMINATOR by W A BALLINGER Consul 1966 1st UK PB GD £10
STORM OVER ROCKALL by W HOWARD BAKER Consul 1965 1st UK PB GD/VG £12
 

*DC: We don’t get enough of the Golden Age Superman through our hands, so here’s a nice early issue, albeit in low grade. Superman #38 (Jan/Feb 1946) has an amusing Jack Burnley cover of Superman reading a Batman comic in a barber’s chair whilst the barber works fruitlessly. Interior stories are The Battle of the Atoms (with Luthor), The Bad Old Knights, a Lois Lane solo and The Man of Stone. Not in the best of conditions: cover detached from contents, with very worn and torn spine. Small piece of tape seals tear right logo. Ragged right edge of cover. Small corner off bottom right cover. Centrefold loose and with ragged edges. All complete and readable. 
PICTURED: SUPERMAN #38 PR/FA £80 SOLD

*Marvel: From The Good Doctor Collection this week: With Jolly Jack Kirby leaving the art chores of the X-Men after issue #11 (although he did provide layouts for Alex Toth’s pencils on #12 and for Jay Gavin’s [Werner Roth] on #13, Stan Lee realised he had to crank up the excitement to keep readers’ attention, and he certainly achieved it with this dynamic two-parter which introduced one of the X-Men’s (and the broader Marvel Universe’s) most powerful opponents, the Juggernaut! Cain Marko, the hitherto unsuspected step-brother of the X-Men’s mentor Professor Xavier, dabbled with arcane forces and was transformed into the embodiment of an irresistible force – giving him the power to crush his hated step-sibling, and his super-powered students! This two-parter reveals the origins of Professor X and the Juggernaut, and reveals some of the reasons why Xavier set about training the new generation of mutants. #12 is a bright cents copy with rich cover colours, staples firm at spine and centrefold and supple white to off-white pages. Minimal edge wear, mostly at the spine around the staples and a tiny crease in the upper right cover corner, just breaking colour. A little corner blunting. Pictured below. #13 is pence printed and also stamped in another currency; it has vibrant colour, firm staples and nice off-white to white pages. There is a reading crease breaking colour along the spine, some spine ticks and minor edge wear. Pictured to the left. High resolution images of #12 are available on request.
PICTURED: X-MEN
#12 FN- £650
#13 VG/FN p £160

*Marvel: Three issues of Amazing Spider-Man from 1970 featuring arrivals and departures. #83 has the debut of the Schemer who (spoiler alert) turns out to be the son of the Kingpin, in #86 ‘Tasha adopts the Black Widow costume that we have come to know her by and #90 features the tragic death of Captain Stacy, father of Gwen. All reasonable mid-grade copies.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
#83 VG/FN p £42 Pence stamped. Solid copy with minor edge wear.
#86 VG p £40 Pence printed. A couple of long diagonal creases across Black Widow figure  softly break colour. 
#90 GD/VG p £28 Pence stamped. A little worn; tiny ‘spotting’ effect across cover.

*Miscellaneous 1960 Onwards: Well, they certainly don’t come much quirkier than this one… Written and drawn by Al Hartley for Spire Christian comics, the story was loosely based on the autobiography of  a Czechoslavakian girl who grew up adoring the Nazis after they ‘liberated’ her country. After surviving the war, she moved to America where she discovered both God and truth, justice and the American way. Yes, it’s even more cringeworthy than it sounds. Guest-starring Hitler. This is the 1976 printing, a nice (?) copy flat, colourful and glossy with good staples and near white pages. Small tear at top of spine and minor creasing at upper and lower right cover corners. 
PICTURED: HANSI, THE GIRL WHO LOVED THE SWASTIKA VG £115 SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Something of a rarity in this week’s #1 slot. Courage and Pluck were two monthly story papers launched by the publisher L Miller in 1956. Both lasted just three issues, their lack of popularity due to their infrequency and/or their 6d price tag. Rarely seen and virtually forgotten today, we have a Pluck #1 for sale this week in very respectable condition, with just some minor age marking to the spine and cover margin, and a short horizontal tear to the right cover edge margin only. Sporting a great war full colour cover believed to be by Mick Anglo, this contains illustrated text stories with western, sports, school and historical adventure themes with one short war picture strip. There can’t be many of these around — we’ve never seen one before!
PICTURED: PLUCK #1 VG £30 SOLD

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: From 1959/60, a further selection of Fleetway’s long-running True Life Library between #204 & #243. Superficially in lovely condition with few marks and great cover colour and page quality, these are marred only by varying degrees of staple rust, and range in grade from GD/VG (quite a bit of rust) up to FN/VF (only very minimal rust).
PICTURED: TRUE LIFE LIBRARY #231 FN/VF £8

*Children’s Books: We’re continuing to introduce the new layout for our books categories, with an image for each book. This week, we return to our Children’s Books category with three very different volumes: Kemlo and the Martian Ghosts is a juvenile science fiction adventure from 1959 by E C Eliott; The Player’s Boy is a rare first edition hardcover with DJ by Antonia Forest, celebrated children’s author for her stories of the contemporary Marlow family, this volume being about their ancestors set in the age of Elizabethan theatre; the Pomegranate Seeds by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a rare, slender volume featuring two of his stories from The Wonder Book for Girls & Boys and Tanglewood Tales.
PICTURED:
KEMLO AND THE MARTIAN GHOSTS by E C ELLIOTT Nelson Juniors 1959 1st UK PB GD/VG £15
THE PLAYER’S BOY by ANTONIA FOREST Faber & Faber 1970 1st UK HC VG £80 With DJ (VG) in removable archival film. More details in our catalogue.
THE POMEGRANATE SEEDS by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE Mellifont Press Undated – 1950s/60s? UK PB VG £10

*DC: From 1960, one of the most important and significant comics of the Silver Age this week. The Justice League Of America, teaming up all of DC’s then current key heroes, debuted in The Brave & The Bold #28, and thus a legend was born. In these early stories, the roles of Superman & Batman were kept pretty much to cameos (presumably because DC felt they had enough exposure elsewhere), but the JLA kept up the tradition of reviving Golden Age concepts for this new Silver Age (in this case the Justice Society). The baddie in this inaugural outing was Starro the Conqueror. In a manner of speaking, this comic was also responsible for launching the Marvel Age of Comics, since Stan Lee’s response to the success of the JLA was to create the Fantastic Four.
This latest copy is only a Poor. Most noticeably, it has a heavily taped spine and is missing the back cover. The staples are good at the centrefold, but it is difficult to think they have any effect on the cover. The colours on the front cover are a bit muted, but not too bad. Lots of wear beneath the spine tape and lots of edge ‘nibbles’, with the cover quite worn and thin. Pence stamped. Page quality is okay, a little grubby here and there with small horizontal tear centre right edge of last two pages. All pages are present. The cheapest copy I can see around at the time of listing. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: BRAVE & BOLD #28 PR p £750

*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. Following his explosive debut in #41, the rampaging Rhino returned to face up to Spidey again two issues later in #43. I can remember that this issue is one of the two of each Marvel title that weren’t regularly distributed in the UK in 1967 due to a dock strike and thus were very difficult to obtain here at the time, and have remained so to some extent since. A beautiful issue, flat and tight with excellent staples, supple off-white pages; miniscule corner off bottom back cover. No marks or creases, virtually no wear. 
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #43 VF+ £465 SOLD

*Marvel: Tony Stark always had a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man. As far back as Iron Man’s 5th and 6th appearances in Tales Of Suspense #43 & #44, when he was still in the original golden armour, he was flirting with first Kala, Queen of the Netherworld, (must be mighty crowded down there) and then Cleopatra, Siren of the Nile. Two nice mid-grade copies from the dawn of the Marvel Age.
PICTURED: TALES OF SUSPENSE
#43 VG+ p £165 Iron Man by Kirby. Back-ups by Leiber & Ditko. Great black background. Flat with nice staples and only very minor edge wear. Off-white to light tan pages. Some tanning to edges of inside covers; no brittleness. 
#44 VG p £180 Iron Man by Heck. Back-ups by Leiber & Ditko. Decent deep blue background. Great staples. Minor edge wear, mainly at spine and top and bottom right corners; colour breaks at a minimum. Off-white to light tan pages. Some tanning to edges of inside covers; no brittleness. SOLD