*Marvel: Spidey Ditko collectors should not overlook the two superb annuals he did whilst at Spidey’s artistic helm. The second of these, whilst not featuring the giant-length blockbuster of #1, nevertheless features a lovely 20 page new story co-starring Ditko’s other co-creation Dr Strange (and reprints of early Spidey stories and a Rogues’ Gallery pin-up section). Steve Ditko was given full rein on his two major Marvel co-creations and was equally at home in moody cityscapes and fantastic mystical realms. A real treat. This is a decent pence stamped copy, virtually intact squarebound spine with tiny tear at bottom front and 2 cm tear top rear, some reading and handling wear, some faint-ish writing imprints on the cover and a vestige of a central vertical crease. But good staples and pages and a solid copy. 
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #2 VG p £60 SOLD

*Marvel: A small update to the Fantastic Four from their classic Lee/Kirby period, this time between issues #38 & #78 plus Annual #5, featuring the debut of Psycho-Man, as well as appearances by Black Panther, Silver Surfer and the Inhumans. See our catalogue for details.

*Horror/Mystery 1960-1980s: After a few issues in Marvel Spotlight, unfortunate lycanthropic teen Jack Russell (yes, we know) proved such a hit that he launched into his own series with fine scriptwork from Doug Moench and superlatively evocative illustrations by Mike Ploog. This happy alchemy continued until the late teens, when it all went a bit Don Perlin on the visual front, and the series never really recovered, although it did continue until #43 despite Mr. Perlin’s blocky figurework. We have a couple of dozen issues new in, between #11 and #39, mostly in nice shape. See our catalogue for details.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Following on from previous releases of earlier numbers, we now have most issues between #30 & #40 of Commando War Stories In Pictures from the same source. A previous owner at some point decided to place two to four reinforcing staples through the spine, quite skilfully so as to not hamper the opening of the item nor hide any of the content; there is minimal bleed from these staples and the page quality is really rather nice. As we move up the numbers, the overall condition quality improves, so in most cases, the grade is assigned through wear rather than specific defects. A selection of the issues now available is shown below; please consult our catalogue for full details.
PICTURED: COMMANDO ALL SOLD
#33 VG £30
#36 VG £30
#38 VG+ £32.50
#40 VG £30

*Girls’ Comics: Although we’ve had Tina #1, gifted with her ‘gold-plated’ troll, in once or twice over the years, I don’t recall us ever having seen a copy of #2 with its Free Gift before, so this is a rare treat. From 1967, Tina, launched in multiple language editions across Europe, was so heavily pre-sold prior to its launch that it could legitimately claim, even on the front of its debut issue, ‘More copies sold than any other girl’s paper in the world!’ With a strong adventure-oriented line-up, curvaceous secret agent ‘Jane Bond’ illustrated by Michael Hubbard, was the lead, and the ‘Space Girls’ (in colour, by Dan Dare illustrator Keith Watson) added a sci-fi touch. Other features which debuted here were ‘Moira – Slave Girl of Rome’, exotic island drama with Brenda Burn and ‘My Chum Yum-Yum’, peripatetic pop group ‘Jackie and the Wild Boys’, western adventuress ‘Glory Gold’ and ‘Barbie’. Yep, that Barbie. After thirty issues, Tina merged with Princess and lived a long and happy life as Princess Tina, but the issues prior to Tina’s ‘coronation’ remain scarce. #2 is a VG copy, sound enough with handling wear and slight tanning to right cover edge; the unused Free Gift is immaculate and for once, it comes in an envelope that’s never been sealed, so we’re able to take it out for photography purposes and display the ‘lovely floral bracelet’ in all its virgin glory.
PICTURED: TINA #2 VG WITH FREE GIFT VF £90 SOLD

*Childrens’ Books: Lewis Carroll’s Alice books have woven a spell of enchantment over both children and adults now for over 150 years, and she’s a firm favourite here at 30th Century as well. Added new to our Alice inventory this week is a slender volume comprising an abridged version of Alice Through the Looking Glass published in the 1950s by Mellifont Press and illustrated by an uncredited artist after Tenniel; in solid, very good condition with a dot-to-dot on inside front cover and crossword on rear partially completed in pencil. Already on our shelves are a handsome 1933 Oxford University Press hardback edition of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland with pictorial boards and colour plates by A E Jackson, and the 1974 Puffin paperback of both Alice books which reproduces all the original classic Tenniel illustrations.
PICTURED: By LEWIS CARROLL
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (PB 1950s) Mellifont Press VG £10
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (HC 1933) Oxford University Press VG £30
ALICE IN WONDERLAND/THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (PB 1974) Puffin GD £4

*Marvel: ‘A Special Once-In-A-Lifetime Issue’, the cover of this one-shot boasted, and its unique position is simply a result of a scheduling tangle which arose when Marvel was finally allowed by its distributors to increase its range of titles. The Hulk took over the numbering of Tales to Astonish and Captain America the numbering of Tales of Suspense, but that left ‘orphaned’ chapters of the Iron Man and Sub-Mariner serials languishing, so they were used in this oddball one-off so that both Iron Man and the Sub-Mariner could start off their #1 issues with clear storylines. Nevertheless is has found ‘fame’ in recent years as a Marvel #1! Joyfully, both strips were pencilled by the superb Gene Colan. This new addition is an above average cents copy, clean & bright, sound firmly-attached staples, good cover colour and minimal edge & corner wear, apart from some creasing across a small bottom right corner of the cover. One of the easiest Silver Age Marvel titles to complete – buy one and you’ve got the set!
PICTURED: IRON MAN & SUB-MARINER #1 VG/FN £110

*Marvel: Let’s be honest, on the face of it, the She-Hulk sounded like a really lame idea when we first heard of her — what was to follow? Hulk-Hound, the Hulkmobile, Planet Hulk? But intermittently chartreuse lawyer Jen Walters has gone on to become one of the most enduring and endearing characters in the Marvel Universe, with creators such as John Byrne and Dan Slott providing charm, wit and (mostly) intelligent humour in her own series and during tenures with the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. There wasn’t too much trace of that in Jen’s first series, the Savage She-Hulk, when it saw the light of day back in 1980 and she was as angry as her cousin (though didn’t burst out of quite as much of her clothing, thanks to the exigencies of the Comics Code Authority) but Savage She-Hulk #1 – by the legendary creators Stan Lee and John Buscema – is where Jen’s illustrious career got its start. Non-distributed in the UK, so there are no pence copies. This is a lovely high grade copy, tight and flat with excellent staples, white to off-white pages, square corners and virtually no wear.
PICTURED: SHE-HULK #1 VF+ £120 SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Sometimes it seems like Victor was the home of football-themed Free Gifts, as we have three more for your consideration this week, from consecutive issues in 1973. #625 has ‘Stars On Stick-Pix’ sticky badges to ‘peel off and apply to your anorak, jacket or cap’; #626 has ‘The Football Special’, a ‘smashing’ booklet and ‘a big collection of full colour pictures of famous footballers to stick in it’; #627 has ‘another 29 full colour pictures of famous footballers to stick in your Victor Football Special’. These are our last Victor Free Gift issues for the time being.
PICTURED: VICTOR ALL SOLD
#625 VG WITH FREE GIFT VF £30
#626 FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £30
#627 FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £30

*Girls’ Comics: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. The definitive British Girls’ comic, Bunty was not the first such, but it was the most enduring, lasting for 2249 weekly issues from 1958 to 2001. It is remembered fondly by generations of followers of the Four Marys, Lorna Drake, Moira Kent, and our eponymous tomboy heroine. Bunty was the first of the D.C. Thomson girls’ titles to get her own oversized Summer Special, and the first of these, released in 1963, is believed to be one of the rarest, if not the rarest, Summer Special.

We have acquired several Bunty Summer Specials, in an extraordinary state of preservation, given their vintage and the fact that these large-format magazines were often creased, folded or damaged either on display or in the possession of eager young readers.

We begin with 1963, the first Bunty Summer Special released; then we progress to 1965, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972 (the original, not the smaller facsimile souvenir released in 2009) and 1973. From 1974 to 1979, there were no ‘solo’ Bunty Specials released; instead, our heroine teamed up with stablemate Judy for the Bunty/Judy Summer Special, featuring popular series from both weeklies, and our final entry in this listing is the 1975 Bunty/Judy edition. 

All of these remarkably preserved items have tight staples with no rust or discolouration; clean, bright, vibrant colours with minimal fading or occasional slight dustshadows at edges; sharp corners, glossy interior pages with absolutely no stains, scribbles or other markings. The provenance of this selection is from a newsagent’s former stock, archived for decades, and we suspect that not only were they never sold, they were never even opened prior to our assessment of them. We confidently predict that these are the nicest examples you’ll find – and in several cases, the only ones you’ll find!

PICTURED: BUNTY SUMMER SPECIAL:
TOP ROW
1963 FN+ £400
1965 FN+ £175
1968 FN+ £100 SOLD
BOTTOM ROW
1970 VF £100 SOLD
1971 FN+ £60
1972 VF £85
1973 FN £50
BUNTY & JUDY 1975 VF £85

*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: Lin Carter was a busy man. As well as science fiction, fantasy and horror novels and short stories, he was also a noted critic, anthologist and editor. His passion was fantasy, and he is possibly best remembered today as the editor of the Pan Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in the 1970s. There is no doubting his predilection for sword and sorcery of the Robert E Howard type, and this is very evident in the World’s End series, where in the far future all the Earth’s land masses have joined together into a super-continent called Gondwane. Carter uses this as a setting for familiar sword and sorcery archetypes. Three of the six novels in this sequence are included in this update: #2 The Enchantress Of World’s End, #3 The Immortal Of World’s End, #4 The Barbarian Of World’s End. All are 1st US paperback printings; Enchantress is a decent VG, the others are reading copies, a bit battered.
PICTURED: THE ENCHANTRESS OF WORLD’S END by LIN CARTER VG 1st US PB £4

*Marvel: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. A personal favourite from the distant childhoods of the 30th Century team, these classic issues pit the Green Goliath against Marvel’s First Family in a long-promised but oft-deferred fight to the finish. When three of the Four rapidly succumb to the Hulk’s irresistible force, it falls to the Thing, outclassed despite his own formidable strength, to hold the line in an epic, desperate struggle to protect the city. And when the combined powers of the FF fail, who better to step up to help out than the Hulk’s former teammates, the ever-Assembling Avengers? Powerful and gripping, this remains, decades later, one of the best-remembered battles of the early Marvel Age! FF #25 is a solid VG pence printed copy with moderate spine and edge wear and corner blunting, but nice unmarred cover image with deep purple background, tight, firmly attached staples and creamy-white pages. FF #26 has a few creases, but also an unmarred cover image, spine wear and corner blunting; very slight looseness of the staples at cover, and a slight dinginess at cover edges on the white background; decent pages, also pence printed.
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR
#25 VG p £135
#26 GD/VG p £70

*Marvel: One of Marvel’s long-running and more beloved villains, Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man, premiered in this issue, with his ability to absorb and replicate the properties of any person, object or substance causing quite a headache for our favourite Thunder God! Despite his surly mien, many folks feel that Crusher Creel is, to quote the Shangri-Las, ‘Good-bad, but not evil‘, and he has quite the fan-base, especially in latter decades since he married Titania. This first appearance of an enduring villain is a classy Fine, pence stamp in upper corner, minimal edge wear, unfaded red background, tight staples.
PICTURED: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #114 FN p £115 SOLD

*Annuals: Another selection of these wonderful science fiction compendiums. If you’re like me, you just love these imagined futures from the 50s and 60s, when spaceships had rivets, saucers were flying, women were princesses and aliens were green. Four great examples in this update. The All Worlds Album (softcover), has a mixture of sci-fi, western, adventure, funnies and features, the star attraction being Swift Morgan and the Feathered Serpent by Dennis McLoughlin. The Other Worlds Album (softcover) has a mixture of science fiction, horror, mystery and adventure and features a lot of Ditko stories, as well as other US and UK strips. Under a Ditko cover, Mysteries of the Unexplored (softcover) is all sc-ifi and all British strips, with work by Norman Light and Ron Turner on Captain Future, the Buccaneers of Space etc. Finally, Outer Space (softcover) is more of the same with the same creators and characters.
PICTURED: ALL SOLD
ALL WORLDS ALBUM GD £12.50
OTHER WORLDS ALBUM VG £20
MYSTERIES OF THE UNEXPLORED FN £25
OUTER SPACE FN £25

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Following on from previous releases of earlier numbers, we now have issues #8, #9, #13, #15 & #16 of Commando War Stories In Pictures from the same source. A previous owner at some point decided to place two to four reinforcing staples through the spine, quite skilfully so as to not hamper the opening of the item nor hide any of the content; there is minimal bleed from these staples and the page quality is really rather nice. As we move up the numbers, the overall condition quality improves, so in most cases, the grade is assigned through wear rather than specific defects.
PICTURED: COMMANDO
#8 FA/GD £35 Once this had a heavily taped spine, but now tape removed with some marks left
#9 GD+ £70
#13 VG- £55 SOLD
#15 VG- £55 SOLD
#16 VG £60 SOLD

*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: Philip K Dick is one of our best-selling authors. I guess his themes of religion, drugs, counter culture and destructive relationships appeal. So we’re pleased to present five of his works this week in paperback. A Maze Of Death is a surrealistic murder mystery on a mysterious alien world; the classic Martian Time-Slip is about the material and mental struggle for survival in the Martian colony; Radio Free Albemuth (his last posthumous novel) touches on paranoia, political repression, the decay of American society and the plastic nature of reality (I guess you could call these his themes too); The Divine Invasion has at its centre the Second Coming; and The Golden Man is a collection of 15 short stories. Full details of all in our catalogue.  
PICTURED:
A MAZE OF DEATH VF £15 2nd UK PB
MARTIAN TIME-SLIP VG/FN £10 1st UK PB

*DC: Joker appearances are always highly prized and collected, and here in Detective #341, we have a rare depiction of him by Carmine Infantino, who captures his wildness in a way perhaps few former artists had done in ‘The Joker’s Comedy Capers’. There’s also a lovely Elongated Man back-up, also by Infantino. A lovely superior-graded copy, pence stamped, great cover colour and gloss, white to off-white pages, tight and firmly-attached staples. Edge and handling wear are minor; there are a couple of small stamped numbers above the logo, which do not detract from the cover image.
PICTURED: DETECTIVE COMICS #341 FN/VF p £55 SOLD

*Marvel: X-Men issue #129 introduced not one, but two, characters who were to become major players in the lives of the X-Men. Kitty Pryde, the young immaterial ingenue, made her debut as a pupil at Xavier’s school, and went on to become a central part of the series, eventually becoming the leader of the team, while Emma Frost, White Queen of the Hellfire Club, dedicated her telepathic prowess to the X-Men’s destruction – though that dedication hasn’t prevented her from occasionally joining the group herself, and seducing Cyclops whenever Jean Grey happens to be dead for a while! Our latest #129 is a fabulous cents copy, looks as good as new; extremely minor stress marks to the bottom of the spine (I’m being really picky here) and a small faint crease at the top left back cover are the only signs this has ever been handled and read.
PICTURED: X-MEN #129 VF+ £120 SOLD

*Marvel: Issues #86-88 of New Mutants featured the earliest appearances of Cable, a man from an apocalyptic near-future, son of Scott Summers by 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 a perma-grumpy Mary Poppins, he’s a super-powered nanny with metal limbs. Confusing back history and ambiguous abilities or not, his co-starring role in the record-breaking second Deadpool film has caused interest in the character’s early appearances to peak. #86 is a cameo appearance, #87 his first full appearance and #88 his second. All nice copies as you might expect of this vintage, the #87 has minor stress marks at the spine and a little handling wear at the right edge. See our catalogue for full details.
PICTURED: NEW MUTANTS #87 VF- £70 SOLD

*Horror 1940-1959: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. This week, one of the most famous horror titles of the 1950s. Confident of the success of their horror showcase, Avon Publishing followed up their 1951 debut issue with an ongoing series. Always a quality title, showcasing the work of Wally Wood & Joe Kubert, among many others, with evocative preludes in moody black and white on the inner front covers. Issue #3 is structurally sound but with mild ‘rippling’ and very faint cover image erosion from historical moisture exposure. Issue #4 has a chip missing at top of spine and a few chips out upper edge. Issue #6 #6 has quite a worn spine, but okay in other respects. Despite these flaws, the striking quality of the work remains undiminished.
PICTURED: EERIE
#3 FA/GD £150
#4 FA/GD £120 SOLD
#6 GD/VG £200

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: In the years before Alan Class got going, Len Miller was the big name in ‘faux’ American comics in the UK, reprinting much material that would otherwise not have seen the light of day on our shores. Prominent among his offerings were four horror titles, reprinting Atlas and early Marvel horror/mystery tales: Mystic, Spellbound, Voodoo & Zombie, all keenly collected these days. We have two #1 issues in this update: Spellbound & Voodoo, plus a smattering of Mystic (#30), Voodoo (#3) and Zombie (#2) all in decent shape.
PICTURED:
SPELLBOUND #1 VG/FN £80 SOLD
VOODOO #1 VG+ £40

*TV & Film Related Comics: When the first series of TV Century 21 faltered, competitors Polystyle were quick to generate a successor in ‘Countdown’, featuring many of the most popular Gerry Anderson TV shows in comic strip form. Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, Stingray all graced its pages, plus a brand-new sci-fi strip ‘Countdown’, illustrated rather spiffily by John M. Burns, and the star power of a Doctor Who comic series imported from TV Comic! This classy, slick package is fondly remembered and avidly collected today. Our latest copy of Countdown #1 is an exceptional VF, a high grade for a British comic only possible because of the superior paper quality, tight staples, flat white pages, vibrant colour, sharp corners; minor stress marks at the spine. Please note this copy does not come with Free Gift.
PICTURED: COUNTDOWN #1 VF £70 SOLD

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: Aimed at the adult female reader (or older adolescent), these often beautifully drawn romance comics from Amalgamated Press (later Fleetway) dealt with slightly more mature themes such as infidelity, divorce, or marital discord — though always discreetly alluded to, and with the inevitable happy ending! We have nearly 50 new issues this week, from #151 up to #199, almost complete. While these are overall in a remarkable state of preservation for their age, with mostly glossy covers and bright interior pages; staple rust has unfortunately affected most of them to some degree, and we have adjusted the grades accordingly. In general, they’re averaging VG, with several FN and a few dropping to GD, though it must be observed that, staple rust aside, most of them would achieve a full grade higher.
PICTURED: TRUE LIFE LIBRARY #167 VG £7 SOLD

*DC: It’s a funny old game, this hobby. You can have a perfectly good issue of Batman, featuring a tussle with one of his major foes (Two-Face) which has been around for 40 years and only accumulated a modest value, then suddenly, overnight, DC announce that a hitherto minor character incidentally introduced in that very issue is to become the new Batman in their current Future State storyline, and the collectors and speculators go wild. So, we offer a chance to get a decent copy of the first appearance of Tim Fox (#313) in lovely condition, with just a tiny amount of edge wear, plus his second appearance (#323 FN/VF p £28), minor creasing to back cover and minor handling wear, at the current market values. Are they good investments? Well, the last copy we had of #313, just three weeks ago, sold instantly…
PICTURED: BATMAN #313 VF £150

*DC: The tabloid-sized DC Limited Collectors’ Editions from the 1970s are all uncommon in the UK, but we’re lucky enough to have a find of several new in, including many duplicates in a choice of grades. See our catalogue for full details — a selection of our stock is shown here:
PICTURED: LIMITED COLLECTORS’ EDITION
C21 VG+ £15 SHAZAM SOLD OTHER COPIES AVAILABLE
C37 VF+ £50 BATMAN ALL-VILLAIN SPECIAL SOLD
C38 VF £25 SUPERMAN SOLD OTHER COPIES AVAILABLE
C39 VF/NM £40 SECRET ORIGINS OF SUPER-VILLAINS SOLD
C47 VF £20 SUPERMAN SALUTES THE BICENTENNIAL SOLD OTHER COPIES AVAILABLE