*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: The D.C. Thomson story paper Wizard, launched in 1922, was laid to rest in 1963 – but after a decent interval the Powers-That-Be tried Wizard again, this time in comic strip format. Launching with a centre 16 pages devoted exclusively to soccer-themed strips, including factoid/biographical and fiction such as ‘The Voice That Ran The Rangers;’ non-football series included pressurised pugilism in ‘Slave of the Ring’, plucky wandering orphan in ‘Scrappy: A Boy All Alone’ and futuristic peace-keepers in ‘Soldiers of the Jet Age’. We welcome back into stock the first three issues of the ‘reboot’, each with their original (and surprisingly scarce) Free Gifts. Issue #1 comes with ‘The Sure-Shot Shooter’, a plastic weapon which would get you banged up under today’s Zero Tolerance policies. Still sealed in its original envelope and glued into the comic, the gift is VF, but its decades-long presence has caused some cover creasing and ‘bumps’, meaning that the comic itself is only VG. Issue #2 is the biggie – the comic is only GD (perfectly sound, but with some foxing and corner wear), but the Free Gift is a plastic wallet containing glossy photographs of eight soccer stars. According to every source we can find, this is a very scarce item intact (the flimsy wallet often goes astray), let alone in this high grade of VF. Lastly, #3 features eight more full-colour cards to cut up and stick in your wallet from the previous issue. The comic is Fine, the cards uncut and VF – and by ‘eck, judging by these mugshots, footballers were a lot less pretty in the 1970s! Issue #1 VG with Gift VF is £35; Issue #2 GD with Gift VF is £50 and issue #3 FN with Gift VF £25. SOLD