*DC: We commence a new round of Batmania with a Golden Age classic! The Clown Prince of Crime rides again in this lovely item, a superb copy from 1947 featuring bright yellow cover with no scribbling, staining or creasing, tight centrefold and cover staples, only the faintest corner ‘blunting’, barely perceptible, and only very slightly ‘tanned’ pages, off-white and flexible. The content is prime: the lead, ‘The 13 Club’, sees the Joker apparently becoming the butt of the joke when his fortunes abruptly reverse – or do they? In ‘The Case of Batman II’, the Boy Wonder seemingly has to ‘play a Sub’, recruiting and training a fill-in Batman when the original is out of action and the tense thriller ‘The Grand Opera Murders’ is, well, pretty much what it says on the tin. A truly lovely item, with only the faintest dustshadow reining it in to a VG/FN grade. On sale at £475.

*Marvel: Lee & Kirby’s Fantastic Four added to its many innovations in 1966’s FF #52, when they introduced the first black super-hero in comics. The Black Panther was the head of a highly sophisticated and technologically advanced African nation, Wakanda, and was in time to become not only one of the FF’s greatest allies, but a mainstay of their fellow heroes, the Avengers. Following his spectacular big-screen success, T’Challa’s earliest appearances have never been in higher demand, and we have a remarkable FN+ copy, cents, with no UK price stamp or overprint, new in stock. Tight at staples, sharp corners, with strong, largely unbroken black cover background, only a few very faint corner creases, very tricky to find in high grade; considerable gloss, but a very slight central ‘wave’ where the item has been subjected to some pressure in the past. This central vertical curve does not crease the book, nor break the cover colour, and might possibly be alleviated with time and pressure, if you’re one of the folks who does that sort of thing. As it stands, it’s by a large degree the nicest copy to pass through our hands in the last decade or so. This FN+ key debut is on sale at £450.

*Marvel: A second bite at the cherry for our Mighty Marvel Firsts feature this week! A surprising breakout character from the 1990s was Gambit, the Cajun adventurer who aided Storm when she was running around de-aged to a powerless child (as you do), and quickly became a mainstay of the team, mainly due to his Doomed Romance with the untouchable Rogue. Uncanny X-Men #266 presented the first full appearance of Gambit, and we have a very affordable VG/FN pence copy of this highly-sought issue new in at £45. Rumours of a Gambit cinematic feature have been on and off for a couple of years now, but appear to be back ‘on’, so buy this now before the speculators get it!

*Vintage Magazine-Sized Comics: We reach the Grand Finale of our Hither Came Conan event this week. Marvel’s comic book interpretation of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian warrior had proved so popular that by 1974, Marvel decided to have Conan as a lynchpin of its fledgling black & white magazine range. Savage Sword of Conan, as a magazine, was exempt from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, and therefore could present more ‘mature’ stories and themes (translation: ‘giblets n’ boobies), though, to be fair, very few of the creators took this to excess, and most of the stories from SSOC could have been reprinted in the colour comic with minimal changes – in fact, a few actually were, When Deadlines Crunched! SSOC was also the longest-lived Marvel Magazine by far, running until 1995 and its 235th issue, when all of its stablemates were but a distant memory. We are chuffed to have acquired a substantial run of Savage Sword of Conan – not a full run, by any means, but closing in on 200 copies (allowing for a few duplicate issues in differing grades) of mighty-thewed barbarian fantasy action, including the scarce first issue, and, if anything, the even scarcer final issue. Pictured are Savage Sword of Conan #1 FN £30 and the final issue #235 VF £25. The others, in a variety of grades to suit all budgets, are listed in our online catalogue. 

*TV & Film Related Comics: Incorporating our Long Hot Summer, First Quenchers & Free Gift Farrago features, we present a plethora of newly added media-derived comics, with Marvel UK’s Indiana Jones Including first, final and free gift issues, Dr. Who Magazine in the 300’s, the 1987 Supernaturals ‘prequel’ issue, with bonus free gift, and a selection of Transformers Specials/Collected Comics to delight Trans-Fans everywhere! We suspect, though, that the most popular addition will be substantial runs of Action Force and Action Force Monthly, the European adaptation of the hugely popular G I Joe franchise which featured, in addition to reprints, a massive amount of new material not available elsewhere (a smattering of it was repackaged for the US as GI Joe European Missions, but by no means all). We have the first issues of both Action Force and Action Force Monthly, and a major selection of both titles, including free gift issues.

*Girls’ Comics: “But wait,” you ask, “didn’t Princess weekly hang up her tiara in 1967, to merge with the upstart Tina?”  Well, yes, but in 1983/84, in the full frenzy of Dianamania, a short-lived revival was launched optimistically by Fleetway/IPC, and when it didn’t catch on, like so many of its stablemates, it was gobbled up by one of its stronger littermates, in this case the omnivorous Tammy. We have acquired a short selection of Tammy from the first ‘Princess II’ merger issue, 7th April 1984, through to 23rd June that same year, when the weekly shook off the last remnants of Princess and reverted to her own name again.  These were previously unrepresented in our stock, so fans of gymnast ‘Bella’ and the other Tammy regulars, place your requests quickly!

*Clearance Corner: This week’s bargain in Clearance Corner is another of our irresistible Marvel reprint job lots from the 1960s — those (mostly) giant issues featuring classic tales from the dawn of the Marvel Age (or even earlier, in some cases). 16 issues in this lot: Fantasy Masterpieces x 4 (#2, #6, #9 & #10), Marvel Collector’s Item Classics x 6 (#1, #3, #4, #7, #13 & #20), Marvel Super-Heroes x 2 (#21 & #22) and Marvel Tales x 4 (#4, #5, #6 & #7). All in reasonable condition (except back cover missing from Marvel Tales #7). These always sell very fast indeed, so get your order in early! (UK postage, if required, will be an extra £4.50). SORRY, THIS LOT HAS NOW SOLD

On a regular cycle, we sweep through our entire stock to delete sold items and keep our listing as up to date as possible. We’ve just finished deleting sold items from the following file in our American section:
*DC
As of the time of writing, this category is bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Marvel: One of the more popular sub-genres we’ve observed in the last couple of decades is the Marvel ‘Big Panty Monsters’ – huge invading aliens who seek to subjugate Earth’s teeming masses (while bedraped for the sake of decency in enormous knickers!). These were usually the lead feature in anthology titles such as Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales and Tales of Suspense, and we’re delighted to welcome a sensational septet of such issues back into stock. We open with the short lived series Amazing Adventures (1961), which introduced the first super-hero of the Marvel Age – yes, even before the Fantastic Four! Doctor Droom (no, not ‘Doom’, not ‘Strange’, either) gained amazing abilities in Tibet and fought supernatural and alien incursions for a very short time, before the reading public decided that his powers of hypnosis and, er, yoga, weren’t really all that much cop. He fared better when revived in the Seventies as Doctor Druid. Two of his early appearances are here in Amazing Adventures #2 and #4, though neither is cover-featured. In Strange Tales #95, the ever-cuddly ‘Two-Headed Thing’ (no relation to Ben Grimm) makes an appearance, and Tales of Suspense #13 brings us ‘Elektro’, who as a robot, was exempt from the panty-wearing requirement. Continuing with Tales of Suspense, issue #34 goes more for quiet drama with ‘Inside the Blue Glass Bottle’, but by #37 we’re back to form with the gigantic Hagg, Hunter of Helpless Humans! Tales to Astonish #31, with ‘The Mummy’s Secret’, wraps up (ha ha) this instalment of monstrous tomfoolery and hullabaloo. Illustrated are Amazing Adventures #2 VG £75, Strange Tales #95 FN p £68 and Tales of Suspense #37, an extraordinary VF- at £170. For details of the rest, please see our online catalogue.

*Marvel: A new addition to our catalogued stock is the hugely popular third series (following the 1968 original 18-issue run and the 1982 one-shot) of the Silver Surfer, Marvel’s Sentinel of the Spaceways. Norrin Radd had been a supporting character for many years, but despite highly-acclaimed work on his original run, his solo flights had never seemed to previously ‘catch’ – but this series, initially helmed by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, soared, lasting 146 issues – of which we have the majority up to #134, including the enhanced 50th, 75th and 100th issues, plus issue #44 – first appearance of the Infinity Gauntlet – which has become the single most sought-after issue of the series since Thanos’ starring roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most recently in Infinity Wars. Issue #44 is VF+ p at £40; details on the myriad other issues may be found in our online catalogue.

*Annuals: A nice new batch of annuals in this week. We have just one in the TV & Film Related sub-category: TV Comic Annual 1984 and two in Humour: Whoopee Book of Frankie Stein 1976 & 1977. The main event is in Boys’ Adventure, where we add the Dan Dare Space Annual 1963 (pictured GD £40), Phantom 1968 (pictured VG £12), Roy Of The Rovers 1994, Speed 1981 & 1982, Star Lord 1980, 1981 & 1982, Tornado 1980 & 1981 and Wham 1970 (pictured FN £20).

 

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: With its 1,197th issue, dated 17th October 1959, the venerable D.C. Thomson story paper, Hotspur, breathed its last – but regular readers didn’t have time to mourn, as the very next week, the New Hotspur debuted as a comic (or ‘picture-paper’, as they called it). The reason for the relaunch may have been the spectacular success of the girls’ comic Bunty, launched the previous year, as it’s noticeable that with the early issues of the ‘New’ Hotspur, there’s a decided family resemblance – colour scheme, logo, eponymous host (‘Harry Hotspur’, who, like Bunty, had cover-featured adventures in rhyming couplets in later issues), and so on. The new line-up included western adventurers ‘Randy Walker’ and ‘Dakota Jim’, ‘Johnny Jett the Super Boy’, token humour page ‘Scruffy’, and the obligatory classics adaptation, ‘Coral Island’, with a few text stories so that old-school readers didn’t get too excited. Harry Hotspur was jettisoned early on, and the title settled down into the comfortable formula of adventure war n’ football, but had a very respectable run of 1,110 issues before being absorbed by Victor in 1981. This copy of Hotspur #1 is GD/VG, the only drawback being a small interior page tear affecting the margin of the ‘Dakota Jim’ strip, where some glue has been misapplied in the printing/collation process. It doesn’t affect the story, and in every other respect this is a superior mid-grade copy of a significant UK debut. GD/VG at £60. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Clearance Corner: Too good to throw away, this week’s clearance bundle comprises 25 issues of the iconic Lady Penelope title from the 1960s (10 issues are following the name change to Penelope). Each copy is flawed with something missing, usually just a panel or two backing on to an ad/coupon, but occasionally a page or two. Many strips complete and hours of reading pleasure for the punter lucky enough to bag these for just £25 (if complete, these would sell for closer to £250!). Issue numbers are: 13, 19, 24, 36, 38, 39, 60, 84, 92, 93, 97, 105, 110, 114, 117, 125, 131, 138, 151, 158, 162, 177, 181, 201, 204 (final issue). UK postage on these if required would be an extra £6.50 (medium parcel). SORRY, THIS LOT HAS NOW SOLD

*Collected Editions: Admit it – narratively speaking, who doesn’t love a mad scientist? Especially one with a habit of enlarging animals to many times their natural size for nefarious purposes? Well, the readers of the short-lived weekly Jet in 1971 certainly did, as Nazi genius Von Hoffman, following a 25-year imprisonment, sent his super-sized animal accomplices out to wreak vengeful destruction on national monuments, military encampments and… church fetes? Hm. Anyway, even though Jet lasted a scant 22 issues, ‘Von Hoffman’s Invasion’ carried on into the merged Buster & Jet for a much longer stint, with writer Tom Tully and artist Eric Bradbury clearly enjoying coming up with ever more outlandish variations on the ‘unfeasibly embiggened’ theme. This paperback volume is brand new at £13.

*DC: The oldest issue of DC’s Detective Comics we’ve ever had – and probably the oldest American comic we’ve ever stocked – this pre-Batman issue of Detective is cover-dated August 1938, and is a packed 64 pages of crimebusting thrills, starring Slam Bradley by Siegel & Shuster, Speed Saunders by Gardner Fox and Fred Gardineer, Bart Regan – Spy, Cosmo Master of Disguise, Bruce Nelson, Steve Malone and the cover-featured ‘Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu’, a comic-strip adaptation of the famous character written, it is believed, by Sax Rohmer himself! The good (well, bad) Doctor stars on the striking cover. Well, we said 64 pages – in fact, the first two pages of ‘Larry Steele’ are absent, having met an unknown fate sometime in the book’s history, but given that it’s a barely-remembered black & white strip – sorry if there are any ‘Larry Steele’ groupies reading this – it’s not the worst thing that could have happened. That specific defect aside, the copy is an Apparent Good, sound and clean, some rust at staples but cover still firmly attached, light wear to edges and corners, cover scene, as may be seen in our illustration, still colourful and vibrant. Pre-Batman issues of Detective Comics are a true rarity – this is the first one to pass through our hands in our quarter of a century in business – and this is a lovely example, priced lower than its apparent grade, owing to the missing pages, at £700. Front and back cover scans shown below; high resolution scans are available on request. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*DC: Almost simultaneously with the debut of the X-Men at Marvel, DC made their moribund title My Greatest Adventure the home of the ‘Doom Patrol’, created by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani, another assembly of misfits with strange powers, hated and feared by the world they protect, led by a paraplegic genius in a wheelchair. Believe it or not, this appears to have been purely coincidental, and in many people’s eyes, the Doom Patrol was the more mature and enjoyable title. After a brief period, the team took over the series in name as well as in effect, and My Greatest Adventure, while keeping its numbering, was officially rechristened the Doom Patrol. We have a classic selection of the DP’s adventures against some of the world’s wildest villains – the Brotherhood of Evil (no, not Evil Mutants – that was the other lot), Dr. Tyme, Mr. 103, and the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, as well as guest-appearances by Mento and the Challengers of the Unknown. From #87 to #107, a cavalcade of superheroics and soap-opera, soon to be reimagined as a live-action TV show.

*Marvel: We commence a new season of our highly popular Mighty Marvel Firsts event with a very timely twosome. What better time than the present, with the newly-released ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ film doing great business, to release the first appearances of both size-shifting super-stars? In Tales to Astonish #27, scientist Henry Pym became ‘The Man In The Ant-Hill’, in a slight variation on the usual ‘big-panty monster’ tropes which bore no foreshadowing of his heroic future. Nevertheless, Hank came back in costume in TTA #35, and embarked on a long career as Ant-Man, then Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, and possibly a couple more identities we forget. By #44, it was decided that Hank needed someone to talk to who was a little more cuddly than an ant, and Janet Van Dyne was introduced as Hank’s partner in life and love, the Wonderful Wasp! These two premier issues have, to put it mildly, seen better days. The #27 in particular suffers from (deep breath): a 1” tear mid-spine, through the entire body of the book, scribble on head of middle ant on cover (that’s a description, not an instruction!), spine glued at cover and first & final pages, also glued at centrefold, interior pages frayed at edges, with some small margin corners missing, but all pages present, all stories complete. Generally a very tired and ‘limp’ copy, but a complete low-grade key issue. Tales to Astonish #44’s faults are more limited – it has no cover. Otherwise, it’s a complete Fair/Good copy of Janet Van Dyne/the Wasp’s debut and origin. Tales to Astonish #27 is PR p £325 (front and back covers shown below and high resolution scans available on request); #44 coverless is on sale at £50. More Mighty Marvel Firsts on an occasional basis as we go through the remainder of the summer into autumn. 

*Marvel: The second instalment of our mammoth Conan event features complete sets of both the Conan Annuals (#1-12) and Giant-Size issues (#1-5), mostly in nice grades. More sword and sorcery action from the house of Marvel!

*Marvel: The 1971 series of Marvel Feature, having successfully repackaged three of its solo acts as ‘The Defenders’ for its first three issues, looked around for a new feature when the Defenders got their own book – and the editorial eye fell upon Hank Pym, size-shifitng founder of the Avengers, currently doing a whole lot of nothing. With Marvel Feature #4, Hank was returned to his Ant-Man role, but with a twist – he was trapped in tiny form, and effectively marooned in his own backyard! Needless to say, Hank’s wife, the wonderful Wasp, soon came along for the ride, and their battles against some oddball villains, including the Para-Man and Dr. Nemesis, were orchestrated by writer Mike Friedrich and illustrated by Herb Trimpe, Mike Trimpe, and an early effort by P. Craig Russell. Sadly, the off-beat focus didn’t catch with a mass market, and after issue #10, Hank & Jan went back into limbo (though not for long), to be replaced by Thing team-ups which were the ‘stealth pilot’ for Marvel Two-In-One. We have the entire Ant-Man run from issues #4 to #10 of Marvel Feature new in – small heroes! Big Adventures!

*Marvel: In 1977, Marvel began a series called What If?, which explored how the Marvel Universe might have unfolded, if key moments in its history had not occurred as they did in mainstream continuity. Uatu, the Marvel Universe’s omniscient Watcher, was the host of these extra-thick tomes, usually kicking off by narrating the events as they happened in the ‘real’ MU, then introducing the tipping point at which things changed – occasionally for the better, but generally very much not. The original series of stand-alone tales ran for 47 issues, and had enough enduring popularity that it’s been revived many times since. We have added 14 issues of the original What If? series to our stock, from the third issue to the final issue of that volume #47. Some of them are stunning, many ingenious, a couple flat-out bonkers (‘What If Sgt. Fury Fought World War II In Outer Space?’), but most are entertaining.

*Annuals: Anyone for adventures in Time And Relative Dimensions In Space? Doctor Who Annuals have been a festive standby for many years, since the William Hartnell days, but Annuals featuring the Jon Pertwee iteration of the Doctor (onscreen from 1970-1974) are less common than those starring other Doctors (except perhaps the Patrick Troughton ones). We’re delighted to have two of the Pertwee Doctor Who Annuals back in stock. 1973 is VG, generally excellent condition but with a detached (but present) flyleaf at £20. 1975, still less common, is FN- at £25, with only 1/2″ lower spine wear preventing a nicer grade. SORRY, THESE HAVE NOW SOLD

*Girls’ Comics: As the tradition of weekly comics waned in the UK during the last years of the 20th Century, so too did the extra-sized Summer/Holiday Specials – once ubiquitous, they became less and less commonplace as print runs dropped. This, from 1984, is the antepenultimate Tammy Special, published in the same year as the final weekly issues, and is in an extraordinary state of preservation, graded at FN/VF, a grade we rarely append to British items. Gymnast ‘Bella’, ‘Pam of Pond Hill’, and all the regulars are there, pluckily performing just as if their extinction were not imminent! This high-grade and uncommon item is on sale at £45. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Clearance Corner: This week’s bargain lot comprises 5 complete Batman mini-series from the 1990s and 2000s: Batman Gotham Knights (1992) 4 issues by John Ostrander & Mary Mitchell; Batman Gotham Knights II (1995) 4 issues by the same team; Batman Dark Detective (2005) 6 issues by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers (the sequel to the Silver St Cloud sequence from the 1970s); Batman It’s Joker Time (2000) 3 issues by Bob Hall (prestige format); and Batman GCPD (1996) 4 issues by Chuck Dixon & Jim Aparo. All yours for just £20 (UK postage if required will be an extra £3.50), but better move fast for your fix of Bat-Action!  SORRY, THIS LOT HAS NOW SOLD

*Marvel: Over the next few weeks, we’ll be spotlighting Robert E. Howard’s immortal creation Conan the Barbarian in a series of updates to various titles starring the famous Cimmerian adventurer. We kick off with the first and most notable Conan series, Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian which debuted in 1970 and lasted 275 issues, ending in 1993. Art by first of all Barry Smith, then John Buscema before the art duties passed to other hands. We have almost the whole series fresh into stock, including #1 (VG+ £60 pictured) the first appearance of Conan in comics, and then from #8 up to the end, including the very final issue #275. Along the way we take in both the first and first full appearances of Red Sonja in #23 (VF £37 pictured) and #24 (VG/FN £30 pictured). We seldom see much of this long run — certainly those issues from the late 1980s and 1990s don’t turn up for us very often and we have several regular Conan customers, so early enquiries for these are expected. More from Conan very soon!