*Horror 1940-1959: L B Cole was one of the most famous of Golden/Atomic Age cover artists. He drew in a variety of genres, and was artistic director at Star, illustrating 95% of the company’s covers; his lurid, feverish style, almost hallucinogenic, graced horror, science-fiction, jungle and romance alike. Star took over the venerable title Blue Bolt in 1949 (previously it had been a classic anthology title starring the titular character, with much work by Simon & Kirby, Everett etc, lasting throughout the war years and beyond). By the time we got to the #114, Blue Bolt himself was long gone and the emphasis of the series had changed to horror, according to the zeitgeist of the time. Indeed, the title was rebranded as Ghostly Weird Stories from #120 onwards. Contents include three stylish horror shorts by Jay Disbrow plus three reprints of Fox horror tales including ‘The Mummy’. But it’s the wonderful L B Cole cover for which this issue is prized, showing a zombie-like denizen underwater in the swamp. A reasonable copy with a little spine white, front cover off top staple with the upper spine partially split for top 5 cm. Gruesome cover scene unimpaired (small arrival date stamped on ‘R’ in logo), with just tiny creasing to bottom right cover corner. Edge wear is minimal and page quality a decent off-white to cream. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: BLUE BOLT WEIRD TALES #114 GD/VG £650 SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: One of the icons of British comics’ history, Eagle started up in 1950; every issue of its twenty year run starred Dan Dare, its most famous son. We’re always selling lots of Eagles, and we’re delighted to have added a smattering of issues from Volumes 11 and 12 this week, all in VG or FN grade. Consult our catalogue to fill your gaps!

*TV & Film Related Comics: Released in 1967, Solo, the companion paper to TV Tornado, featured a line-up of film and TV tie ins with guaranteed star power -‘Sgt Bilko’, ‘Mary Poppins’, and the hugely popular ‘Man From UNCLE’. Oddly, the powers-that-be decided to go with Disney’s ‘Scarecrow of Romney Marsh’ as the lead cover feature. Nevertheless, these leads plus lesser lights – ‘Seaspray’? ‘Run, Buddy, Run’? – provided ample entertainment, though it could be argued that the multitude of Disney cartoon strips brought the reading age down a bit. Despite its quality, Solo never achieved very wide circulation, and copies are seldom seen. Our latest copy of Solo #1 is in lovely shape, with white pages, firm staples and little to no wear. Sadly without the Free Gift, but still the nicest copy we’ve seen.
PICTURED: SOLO #1 FN £95 SOLD

*DC: We’re very pleased to have back in stock one of the most significant DC Silver Age issues. When Barry Allen took over the mantle of the Flash, he acknowledged the original, Jay Garrick, as his inspiration – but only by the medium of comic books he’d read in childhood! It wasn’t until Flash #123, when Barry’s heroic career was well established, that he, and the readers, discovered Jay Garrick wasn’t mere fiction, but was the hero of a parallel world, along with his comrades in the Justice Society of America! This was the first historic meeting between the two Scarlet Speedsters, and opened the interdimensional door to the entire Earth 2 legend, with the Justice Society of America and in due course their heirs and imitators, brought to new generations of readers! Writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine Infantino were at their respective peaks, and this is one of the most sought-after DC landmarks of the Silver Age. Not so much a debut for Jay Garrick, of course, but certainly one for the Earth 2 concept, which features fundamentally in DC’s heritage. This copy is pence stamped, but otherwise with a clean, unmarked cover (tiny bit of grubbiness near spine); wear is restricted to very few stress marks at the spine and staple area; corners are only slightly blunted and there are no cover creases, apart from very faint reading wear along the spine. Staples are tight and flat at spine and centrefold and the page quality is remarkable, supple and almost white. A copy that would grace your collection. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: FLASH #123 VG/FN p £850 SOLD

*DC: Just a small dose of Batmania this week with three issues from the 70s, including two Giants, as follows:
IN THIS UPDATE: BATMAN
#216 VG p £8
#218 FN- p £18.25 Giant; Batman’s Crime File
#258 FN- p £16.25 100 Pages; 1st mention of Arkham SOLD

*Marvel: Leading off the selections from the Good Doctor Collection this week are all seven issues of Daredevil drawn by Wally Wood, surely one of the all-time great comic artists. Wally didn’t hang around on Daredevil for too long, but it was his time on the title that truly defined the character, co-creating many of DD’s most famous foes (and the Matador!), as well as designing the red costume by which DD would become known ever since in the epic classic that pitted DD up against the Sub-Mariner. This selection completes all the releases of issues of Daredevil from the Good Doctor Collection.
PICTURED: DAREDEVIL
#5 FN £200 (ABOVE) 1st Matador. Vibrant cover colour and gloss. Minor spine and edge wear, very faint suggestion of subscription crease. Tight staples, nice white pages. SOLD
#6 FN+ £165 1st Mr Fear. Tight and glossy, with excellent white to off-white pages. A couple of small, soft, non-colour breaking creases at top left and bottom right cover. A minimum of wear. SOLD
#7 VG p £250 (ABOVE) Classic battle with the Sub-Mariner; debut of red costume. Pence stamped, with unspoilt cover image, staples tight at spine and centrefold and excellent white to off-white pages. A few colour breaking spine ticks and a reading crease, also colour breaking, along most of the length of the spine. A couple of colour-breaking creases across the logo top right corner and a tiny one across bottom right corner. But a solid enough, presentable copy. SOLD
#8 VG+ p £70 1st Stilt Man. Pence stamped, but otherwise unmarked cover. Minor wear at staples, tiny lower spine split, tight, firmly attached staples. Horizontal crease across part of bottom edge just breaks colour. Nice off-white pages; soft crease top corner back cover. SOLD
#9 FN- £65 Solid ‘Pop Art’ copy, with only minor handling wear. Staples firm at spine and centrefold, nice off-white pages. SOLD
ALSO IN THIS UPDATE:
#10 App VG- p £30 1st Organizer & Ani-Men. Ad page out; story OK
#11 App VG- p £16.25 Ad page out; story OK.

*Marvel: After a one-off black & white magazine in 1975, Legion of Monsters, used up a rag-bag of separate inventory stories starring Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, Manphibian and other horror heroes, someone at Marvel decided that the title was nifty enough to merit a further outing, and therefore the bizarre and otherwise inexplicable Marvel Premiere #28 came about. Unlike the Legion of Monsters one-shot, which featured unrelated stories, Marvel Premiere #28 brought Ghost Rider, Man-Thing, Werewolf By Night and Morbius the Living Vampire together as an actual team, albeit one even more mismatched than the Champions! From the team of Bill Mantlo and Frank Robbins, it’s… everything you might expect! For decades discarded in bargain boxes everywhere, this issue has acquired white-hot collector’s status in the last decade. Our latest copy is pence printed, glossy, sharp and colourful, with staples tight at spine and centrefold and off-white to creamy pages. There is one tiny colour-breaking crease across the bottom right cover corner extremity and a few minor stress marks along the spine, but a superior copy with an unmarked cover.
PICTURED: MARVEL PREMIERE #28 VF- p £185 SOLD

*Horror 1940-1959: Just a couple of entries this week for Uncanny Tales from Atlas, the Marvel forerunner which had a consistent standard for horror in the 1950s, with many fine artists. #19 has Dick Briefer, Mort Lawrence and many others; #23 has Bob Forgione, Mort Lawrence and again, many others. Lots of clever little stories in both of these. 
IN THIS UPDATE: UNCANNY TALES
#19 GD/VG £75 (PICTURED) Pre-code. 2 cm top spine split, off top staple. Moderate wear and small tears to cover edges.
#23 PR £13 Pre-code. Covers detached and separated, with chips out.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Micron’s Cowboy Adventure Library lasted a whopping 1026 issues from 1964 to 1985. Despite this, they don’t seem to turn up very often, and we suspect the print runs may have been small. After a long spell without any in stock, we’re delighted to welcome this week a huge batch of more than 80 issues fresh in between #190 and #333, dating from the 1960s. With colourful, glossy covers, each with distinctive lettering, these are eye-catching yet inexpensive. All now listed in our catalogue. Examples shown below.
PICTURED: COWBOY ADVENTURE LIBRARY
#307 VG £2 SOLD
#308 GD/VG £1.75 SOLD

*Girls’ Comics: A further update to our stocks of the long-lived (1957-1974) Valentine comic this week, with most of the issues from the first half of 1963 added, including the Valentine’s Day special issue for that year. A delightful mix of romance strips and pop music content, typified nowhere better than the cover stories which portrayed a comic strip based on a hit song from the pop charts of the time. Mixed condition on these; inevitable rusty staples abound, but generally decent. Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: VALENTINE 16/2/63 GD £9 Valentine’s Day issue.

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: Often dubbed ‘the poor man’s Sherlock Holmes’, there’s still no doubting the popularity of Sexton Blake, who has probably had far more fiction written of him than the world’s greatest detective. This week, we have added six digests from the famous Sexton Blake Library. These are picture library sized, but mainly text. The series ran from 1915 to 1968. These six are from the early 1960s.
IN THIS UPDATE: SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY ALL SOLD
#490 GD £5 Hunt The Lady by Desmond Reid
#495 GD/VG £6 Dead On Cue by Desmond Reid
#502 GD/VG £6 The Weak And The Strong by Arthur Kent
#503 GD £5 (PICTURED) High Summer Homicide by Arthur Kirby
#505 GD/VG £6 White Mercenary by Peter Saxon
#507 VG £7 Killer Pack by Wilfred McNeilly

*Marvel: By the time of Spider-Man’s 50th issue, ‘new’ artist John Romita had made the series his own, and this milestone number was marked with the debut of a new villain, the Kingpin – so long associated with Daredevil, in the post-Miller years, that younger readers are unaware that he originated in Spider-Man’s Rogues’ Gallery! The cover of #50, with Peter temporarily abandoning his Spider-Man identity, has become etched in the minds of a generation, endlessly imitated and ‘homaged’, in comics and other media. The Good Doctor Collection copy is towards mid-grade, pence printed, with a strong cover image, great colour and some residual gloss. The staples are firm at spine and centrefold, and the pages are a nice off-white. There is some corner blunting, including a tiny colour-breaking crease at the extremity of the bottom right cover corner. Edge wear is minor except for a tiny chip out central top. Some signs of reading and handling wear, but nothing too serious. High resolution images are available on request. 
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50 VG p £525

*EC: Recognising quality when we see it, we’re always pleased to welcome original ECs to our catalogue (they usually don’t hang around for long!). This week, three issues from the Haunt Of Fear, one nice mid-grade plus a couple of cheapies. Art by Graham Ingels, George Evans, Jack Davis, Jack Kamen and others from EC’s stable of the best contemporary talent. EC set the benchmark for Pre-Code Horror.
IN THIS UPDATE: HAUNT OF FEAR ALL SOLD
#16 (2nd #16 1952) VG £165 (PICTURED) Pre-Code; reasonably colourful and glossy cover, firm, tight staples, minor cover creasing which does not break colour., nice off-white to cream pages, tiny chip out bottom spine, small nick above lower staple with no loss.
#23 PR £18 Pre-code; all content there (just about), but brittle spine is crumbling apart with several chips missing. 
#24 PR/FA £25 Pre-code; tatty spine split down to upper staple and at bottom. Chips out top edge.

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: In 1963, Micron (publishers of Combat Picture Library, among many others) entered the schoolgirl market with Schoolgirls’ Adventure Library, which ran for a very respectable 63 issues to 1965. Here we have the very first issue: ‘Penny, Pop-Star Pupil’, catching the zeitgeist of the day. A decent enough copy, with some spine roll and edge and corner wear, and a small scuff over the story title, but solid and integral.
PICTURED: SCHOOLGIRLS’ ADVENTURE LIBRARY #1 GD/VG £30

*DC: Lois Lane has had many mad moments – wacky bodily transformations, marrying random aliens/robots/villains, and convoluted and extreme schemes to entrap the Man of Steel into matrimony – but one of the maddest was her 106th issue – and the thing is, the creators weren’t even trying for the crazy! By this point, the writers were trying to make Lois more socially relevant, so she started embracing ‘issues’, and the issue here was racial tension. Now, younger readers won’t recall that in 1970, there was a controversial and sexually explicit film on release called ‘I Am Curious (Yellow)’ – writer Bob Kanigher, having apparently heard the title without grasping the context, stole this for the story’s title, ‘I Am Curious (Black)’, thereby bewildering, disappointing and offending multiple factions at once. Lois, having become suddenly aware of racial disparity – (precisely zero black people having appeared in her book until this point) uses Kryptonian ‘Transformoflux-Mold’ technology to turn herself into a black woman, and investigates Metropolis’ ‘Little Africa’ ghetto – from the inside! To be fair, the intentions were benign, and there are actually a couple of good points and good lines buried in there, but the overwhelming ham-fisted and cringe-making patronage of the issue has made it a bit of a cult item among connoisseurs of bad comics. This mid-grade pence-stamped copy has great colour cover and gloss, nice pages and little wear with two notable exceptions: it’s off top staple (although the centrefold is firmly attached), and the edges of the bottom right cover corner are a little crumpled with multiple colour-breaking creases  A… classic of its kind?
PICTURED: LOIS LANE #106 VG p £100 SOLD

*Marvel: One of the highlights of the Good Doctor Collection leads off our Marvel updates for this week. With the fifth issue of the flagship title of the Marvel Universe, the FF met the Big Bad: Victor Von Doom, Monarch of Latveria, a scientific genius who had to hide his disfigured features behind a metal mask (and went in for a whole suit of armour to boot). Doom started out here, and went on to become not only the FF’s arch-nemesis, but arguably the major villain of the entire MU. This low grade cents copy presents reasonably well, with a largely unspoilt cover with good colour, staples attached at spine and top centrefold (off bottom centrefold) and decent off-white to creamy pages. The spine is worn with colour-breaking nicks becoming tiny holes, and there are very small and unobtrusive pieces of tape at top, middle and bottom spine. Edge wear along the bottom and right edges with small colour-breaking creases. Small sealed tear middle right edge sealed with tape on inside cover, and what I assume is the previous owner’s name in (small) pen close to the right edge. There is a small corner off upper left back cover and a small stain lower left back cover. The same name (plus one other) appears in biro in the upper margin of the splash page. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR #5 GD- £4,450

*Marvel: X-Men #5 marked the very swift return of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (now, there’s a slick bit of nominative determinism for you), following their debut in the previous issue. The Scarlet Witch however was still suffering from the same bout of colour blindness that afflicted her on the cover of #4, where she was also dressed in emerald. You’d have thought that the clue was in her name… Anyway, a merry romp ensues between Prof X’s mutant band and Magneto’s misfits. This is a lower-graded cents copy, with a couple of small chips out of the spine and edges, and a fair amount of both colour breaking and non-colour breaking creasing, but the colours are reasonably bright, the staples firm at spine and centrefold and the cover image unmarked. Pages are a reasonable creamy colour.
PICTURED: X-MEN #5 GD £165 SOLD

*Marvel: We turn again this week to the Totally Amazing Spider-Man Collection for our dose of Spider-Mania. The TASM Collection is devoted exclusively to Amazing Spider-Man and covers almost every issue of Amazing from as early as #12 right up to around #800, which we are working through and releasing as quickly as we can. The notable feature of the TASM Collection is that all issues are high grade, averaging VF/VF+. In Amazing Spider-Man #24, Spidey is again threatened by the master of illusion and trickery Mysterio, in a tale of madness and hallucination. A lovely cents copy with great cover colour and gloss, sharp corners, tight firm staples and off-white to white pages. Just the slightest wear along the bottom edge with a slight nick precludes an even higher grade.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #24 VF £350 SOLD

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: The US Planet Comics is probably the most famous and iconic science-fiction comic from the 1940s and 1950s. In the early 1960s, the UK Atlas publishers produced the quarterly Planet Stories, reprinting material from Planet Comics in crisp black and white within original UK colour covers. Strips such as Star Pirate, Auro Lord of Jupiter, Mysta of the Moon, Gale Allen and many more reached a whole new audience. The companion title Red Comet, with much the same idea, is rarer still. We have 5 Planet and 1 Red Comet fresh in this week in lovely condition, as detailed below:
PICTURED: PLANET STORIES ALL SOLD
#2 FN/VF £25
#3 FN £20
#4 FN/VF £25
#6 FN/VF £25
#9 FN £20
RED COMET #5 FN £25 SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: A smallish update for one of Fleetway’s Big Three war titles, War Picture Library, with about 20 issues added between #8 all the way up to #1631, including many previously missing from our catalogue.
PICTURED: WAR PICTURE LIBRARY #8 GD £12

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: After 400+ issues of Picture Romance Library, Pearson’s hung up their publishing spurs and passed the reins to Newnes, who, following on the numbering, continued for a further 100+ issues into the late 1960s, with a slight name change from Picture Romance Library to Picture Romances. We’ve added about 20 Newnes issues to our catalogue this week between #442 and #544. After Newnes flurry, Fleetway took over, but that’s a story for another update…
PICTURED: PICTURE ROMANCES #441 VF £6

*DC: Three of the earliest distributed in the UK issues of Batman, when the title was full of Batman family lore, aliens and monsters, in those glorious wacky years before the ‘new look’. #128 has aliens and Kathy (Batwoman) Kane, #129 Batwoman again and the origin of Robin retold, #131 has Ace the Bat-Hound and the first ‘imaginary’ story penned by Alfred portraying the second Batman & Robin team, a grown Dick Grayson as Batman and the son of Bruce & Kathy as Robin. Iconic stuff.
PICTURED: BATMAN
#128 GD p £40 Some handling wear and creasing, but not too bad. SOLD
#129 GD/VG p £75 Spine and edge wear, light subscription crease, colourful and glossy with good staples.
#131 VG+ p £75 A sound copy that presents well, with just minor edge wear. Good pages, nice staples. SOLD

*Marvel: After a long hiatus in reprint limbo, the X-Men, with a new international line-up, made a spectacular return in Giant-Size X-Men #1, and #94 of the ongoing X-Men title marked the return to all-new stories. Scripter Len Wein handed over to Chris Claremont, and Dave Cockrum’s superb illustrations continued to impress. This issue is notoriously hard to find in the UK, being the first New X-Men in the previously reprint title, and its scarcity is compounded here in the Old Country by the fact that it wasn’t distributed in the UK at all (the distributors in their wisdom bringing in Tomb of Parsnips #47 or somesuch instead, because all of those ‘Yankee Horror Comics’ are alike, right?). Our first copy in for a few years is a decent mid-grade cents copy (there are no pence copies, of course), with a nice glossy cover, supple off-white pages and good staples tight at spine and centrefold. There are very small colour breaking creases at top edge, plus across upper and lower right cover corners, and centrefold. Spine wear and corner blunting is minimal, with additional soft and non-colour breaking creasing slightly further in at the top corner. A copy that presents well. 
PICTURED: X-MEN #94 VG+ £400 SOLD

*Marvel: Also from the Good Doctor Collection this week, Daredevil #4, in which DD met the Purple Man, a.k.a. Killgrave, who was destined to become a major thorn in the side of the Marvel Universe in general. Structurally an outstanding cents copy, if lacking a little freshness, but with a totally unmarked cover, flat and tight with great staples firmly attached, lovely supple off-white to white pages, and virtually no wear beyond minimal corner blunting, and no creases. 
PICTURED: DAREDEVIL #4 VF- £385 SOLD

*Marvel: Not a lot of people know this: Mar-Vell, agent of the Kree Empire, began his career as a copyright-saving device when another 1960s publisher put out a ‘Captain Marvel’ comic which appeared to threaten the entire Marvel trademark. A new character was rapidly created, and after test appearances in Marvel Super-Heroes #12 and #13, launched into his own magazine in 1968, the year of the great Marvel expansion. This is a low grade copy which, judging from the problems with it, has been tied in a string bundle at some point in its life. Apart from spine and right edge wear, the bottom edge had an indentation of binding, while the top edge has a 3 cm central tear which goes right through the comic. Nevertheless, good cover gloss maintained and decent tight staples. 
PICTURED: CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 GD- £25