*Marvel: From 1959, the Pre-Dawn of the Marvel Universe, the second issue of Tales of Suspense, which, with its ‘twin’ Tales to Astonish, brought the surviving remnant of Atlas’ horror line back in tune with the space age. The science-fiction twist-ending stories in this issue offer stellar art by Russ Heath, Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott and Steve Ditko. This copy has considerable upper edge & right corner wear and creasing, but all story pages are clean & complete. As an additional curiosity, this very copy is the one that was borrowed by Marvel themselves when they needed one to reprint in their Marvel Masterworks Tales of Suspense volume – the original owner is given a ‘thank you’ in the credits of the volume in question! This FA+ copy of an iconic early Suspense can be yours for £55. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Classics Illustrated: Well, not quite Classics Illustrated, but in this category because they appeal to the same collectors – A Classic In Pictures. This series (12 in all) was originally produced by the Amex corporation in the 1940s and 1950s and the artwork is in a very stylish red and black with a stiff card cover. All feature vivid and glorious full colour covers. We have four new in stock this week (the first we’ve ever had!) with grades ranging from VG+ to FN and prices from £20 – £30 each. An interesting complement/alternative to Classics Illustrated. 

*Annuals: A chunky update to our Annuals category this week, with several addtions to our Boys’ Adventure & War and Girls’ sub-categories. Boys’: Batman from the 1980s and 1990s, Roy Of The Rovers from the 1980s through to 2000, Smash from the 1970s and Thunder 1972. Girls’: June from the 1970s and 1980s, Kim from 1983, Sandie from 1976 and School Friend from the 1970s and 1980s.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Top-ups to the ‘Big Four’ of DC Thomson’s vintage story papers. A few Hotspur and Rover from 1946 and 1947, and larger selections from Adventure (1946-1947) and Wizard (1944-1947). Popular series from these titles include wonder-athlete ‘Wilson’, ‘The Iron Teacher’, ‘Bullwhip Hank’, ‘Savage Head of St. Jude’s’ (an evil Tarzan-clone becomes head of a boys’ boarding school – and why not?), ‘The Human Eagle’, the lads of the ‘Red Circle’, ‘The Green Crown’, ‘The Black Beam’, and the politically-insensitive natives of ‘Spadger Island’. This selection includes both Fireworks and Christmas numbers for Wizard from 1946.

*Girls’ Comics: In 1964, Jackie was launched to bridge female readers between Bunty and Woman’s Own, a brief playtime with the ‘England Swings’ zeitgeist of the day, before girls were expected to settle into consumerist conformism. This debut issue, 11 Jan 1964, features Pin-Ups of Cliff, Elvis and the Beatles, Perfume Tips for a More Kissable You, Dreamy Picture Love Stories and Way-Out Exclusives on all the Popsters – for pity’s sake, what more could you want? Well, how about the original Free Gift – a ‘Twin Heart’ Love Ring – still sealed in its original packaging, never having had a chance to turn anyone’s finger green in the intervening decades? Plus – the Power! The Fury! The senses-shattering debut of Cathy and Claire, Jackie’s indefatigable advice page oracles, dispensing wisdom on bras, boys, and (hushed voice) ladyproblems. Jackie became a watchword for a generation, not bowing out until 1993 with number #1539 (also still in stock, kids!), and is well-remembered today. This Jackie #1 is FN+, just falling short of a higher grade on account of a tiny amount of upper right soft corner creasing. The Free Gift, never opened, is NM. Together, comic and gift can be yours for £250.

*Clearance Corner: Our latest rock bottom price bargain is 98 issues of Bimbo dating from the very first issue in 1961 to #511 in 1970, with just two duplicates; nearly all FA or GD, a few VG or FN. Designed for younger readers, Bimbo featured the star power of Tom Thumb (usually cover featured on these), Snow White and other nursery tale characters; interestingly, it also featured a more wholesome and innocent version of Baby Crockett, star of the Beezer, drawn by the same artist Bill Ritchie. This charming bargain bundle is on offer for just £20. They fit into a medium box weighing in at 4.4 kg and UK postage if required would be a further £13.50. SORRY, THIS LOT HAS NOW SOLD 

In honour of both our recent haul of works by and about the Master of Horror, H P Lovecraft and the Bookshop Crawl weekend, Dr. Evilla, who herself knows all about slithery tentacled ‘Lurkers on the Threshold’ (or as we call them, customers trying to get in before opening time), has confected a window celebrating Lovecraft’s works and featuring images of many of his most gruesome creations. Those of you too terrified to come to the shop to see the window in person may get a glimpse of it right here from the safety of your PC or mobile device. Must go now — I hear something scratching at the door…

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 files in our American/British section:
*Mad & Other Parody
As of the time of writing, this category is bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Collected Editions: One trend we’ve been delighted to see in recent years has been the effort to archive the comics strips of the UK in affordable collections. Two such tomes grace our shelves this week: Ken Reid’s ‘Faceache’, from the pages of Jet and Buster, gathers all the first wave of the shapeshifting scruffian in the hardcover “Vol.1: The First Hundred Scrunges”, New/Mint at £15. By way of contrast, “The Beatles Story”, by Angus Allan and Arthur Ranson, collects the entire biographical strip of the legendary group as originally serialised in the pages of “Look-In”. While necessarily sanitised for the younger readership, the narrative is accurate, and Ranson’s knack for capturing the likenesses of the Fab Four is remarkable. New/Mint hardcover on sale at £13.

*DC: Our Batmania event continues with another double dose this week! DC’s most famous and most popular hero (sorry, Supes), the Gotham Guardian always sells briskly, and we are pleased, after significant recent sales, to add in the region of 75 issues of Batman to our listings, commencing with #230 from 1971 and wrapping up with Annual #11 in 1987! Along the way, we have 100-Pagers galore, two team-ups with the Shadow, a parade of classic dastardly villains – Catwoman, Riddler, Scarecrow, Ra’s Al Ghul, Two-Face, Penguin, the Joker, and, ahem, Kite-Man, plus some new faces that didn’t prove … quite so classic – anyone remember the Silver Sari? Skull Dugger? The Sheikh? The Spook? No? There is a plethora of talent on show in this run, but creative highlights must include #255, a Neal Adams-drawn supernatural shocker; 300, “The Last Batman Story” (until the next one) illustrated by Walt Simonson; 366, the first Jason Todd in a Robin costume, but actually noteworthy for a stunning Eisneresque Joker cover by Don Newton and the aforementioned Annual #11, with an often-overlooked villain spotlight by multiple award-winning author Alan Moore.

*Marvel: While we of course favour crumbly old comics for crumbly old folks like ourselves, we do spotlight more modern titles or issues of importance and popularity, and the ‘Venom Trilogy’, Amazing Spider-Man #298-300, leading up to the first full appearance of Venom, is one such example. Having debuted in Secret Wars #8 as a semi-sentient blob which configured itself into Spider-Man’s new costume, the ‘symbiote’ became a regular feature in Spidey’s own series before being revealed as a malevolent alien parasite which disclosed its true agenda in these very issues! #298, with the first brief appearance of Eddie Brock (the man who would become Venom) and the beginning of Todd MacFarlane’s run as artist, is VF+ p £28; #299, with the first cameo of Venom himself, is NM- p at £25 and the big one, #300 – the first ‘Full Venom’ – is VF- p at £125. SORRY, SPIDEY #300 NOW SOLD

*Marvel: Issue #42 of Marvel’s always popular Star Wars series featured the first comic book appearance of Boba Fett, with our bounty hunting hero centrally featured on the cover, despite being only seen on the splash page and a couple of interior panels as Marvel continued its comics adaptation of “The Empire Strikes Back”. Fett-o-philes have driven the cost of this issue up over the last decade or so, so even a superior mid-grade example – such as this FN+ cents copy – clocks in at £40. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Western: More than thirty new issues in our Western section, all from the same publisher. A couple in the late 1940s – and technically Timely – through to a whole passel from the 1950s, when the Western genre was at its most popular, and Atlas (the company that would become Marvel) was its main supplier! Titles updated include The Kid From Texas (#1 FN £32 pictured), Kid Slade Gunfighter, Matt Slade Gunfighter, Outlaw Kid, Quick-Trigger Western, Ringo Kid, Six-Gun Western, Texas Kid, Tex Morgan, Two Gun Western (1st and 2nd series), Western Gunfighters, Western Kid, Western Outlaws and Western Trails. Stellar artists such as Joe Maneely, John Severin, Syd Shores, Matt Baker and Bill Everett are represented, as well as a whole rip-roarin’ rodeo of other talents – with many debut and other early issues in this selection, this is a regular Gold Rush for cowboy aficionados!

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: In the Palaeozoic Era, back when your chums at 30th Century were young, we didn’t have the DVDs or Videos or Laser Discs that you urchins have these days, oh no… If we wanted a copy of a movie to keep and experience again, we had to buy the comic book version of it! Several companies, particularly Dell, traded on this, with a large part of their output being movie adaptations, which the British company World Distributors re-packaged as a series titled ‘Movie Classics’. Unusually for UK reprints, these were reprinted in full-colour rather than black & white, and were popular in the comic-starved days of the pre- and early-distribution 1950’s. Titles new to our lists this time include Animal World, Big Circus, Brave One, Buckskin, Circus Boy, FBI Story, Last Hunter, Man In Space, White Wilderness, Wings of Eagles, and Zorro – the last with some very tasty Alex Toth art. All of these are under the film’s title rather than the series title of Movie Classics, so you’ll find Animal World listed under A rather than M.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A sporty theme this week, with Scorcher Holiday Special from 1975, starring ‘Nipper’, ‘Sub’, and ‘Billy’s Boots’, in a cornucopia of soccer action (VG/FN £17.50, pictured). Then, a pair of Tiger Holiday Specials starring ‘Johnny Cougar’, ‘Topps on Two Wheels’, and, er, ‘Billy’s Boots’, the latter having made the jump after Scorcher’s cancellation. 1981 is GD at £10; 1982 (pictured) VG £15. SORRY, THESE HAVE NOW SOLD

*Humour Comics: This huge, over-sized experiment from Fleetway only lasted 19 issues (into early 1965) before it was merged with Buster. Measuring approx. 14″ x 22″, we suspect this was a real nightmare for newsagents, and that this comic was stored and sold – when it was put on display at all, as it would have occupied a huge amount of space – horizontally folded like broadsheet newspapers. We’ve never seen a copy without such a fold, and indeed we store and sell them that way. This new collection is just three issues short of the complete run, and includes first, last, Fireworks, Christmas, and New Year issues. #1 (pictured) is FA/GD £30, complete and readable but having been folded in four at some point, so there are both vertical and horizontal stress lines resulting in central wear. For prices on the rest, please see the catalogue listing.

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:
*Marvel
As of the time of writing, this category is bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*DC: A double dose of Batmania this week. This bit features a long run of Detective Comics between #438 and #527. Starting off with the much lauded 100 page issues between #438 & #444, this run moves on through some of the Marshall Rogers illustrated issues in the 460’s and 470’s before culminating in both the 500th Anniversary issue and the 500th Appearance of Batman in Detective Comics in #527. Mostly nice grades, a mixture of cents and pence copies. 

*Marvel: A personal favourite from the distant childhood of the 30th C. team, this pits 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. Powerful and gripping, this remains, decades later, one of the best-remembered battles of the early Marvel Age! This copy is an attractive VG- p at £80.

*Marvel: … And a generation of lame jokes about television reception was launched. Issue #87 of the ‘junior X-Men’ series, New Mutants, saw the first full appearance (he’d stuck his face in for a foreboding panel or two the issue previously) of Cable, the time-travelling man of mystery. Who was he, really? What was his agenda? What the hell were his powers, again? Some of these questions would be answered more promptly than others (apart from the Big Gun & Mullet ensemble, I still to this day don’t know what his skill set comprised…), but he stuck around to become the leader of the New Mutants, then, after that series’ cancellation, honcho of X-Force, and star of several solo series. Currently, he’s co-starring in the second Deadpool movie (rumours of Jennifer Saunders interpreting the role are sadly exaggerated…), so his star is ever-rising! This lovely VF+ p copy of New Mutants #87 is on sale at £85.

*EC: A fresh batch of lowish grade ECs in this week, mainly science fiction but with a dash of crime and satire. We have three out of the four issues of Incredible Science Fiction (which carried on from Weird Science-Fantasy): #30 (1st issue, pictured GD+ £50), #32 AND #33; the only issue of International Crime Patrol (formerly International Comics, subsequently Crime Patrol) #6 with a Moon Girl and the Prince story; a single issue of Panic (#6) and three issues of Weird Science-Fantasy itself: #27, #28 (pictured, GD+ £50) and #29, the final issue with classic Frazetta cover, sadly only in PR at £39. 

*Marvel UK: Marvel UK’s unprecedented and experimental attempt to broaden their readership by generating a new British hero, Captain Britain, was the subject of much controversy, not least because he was created by two Americans (Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe) who, from the evidence presented here, had never met an English person, and whose interpretation of the UK’s manners and mores made the Austin Powers films look like documentaries. Be that as it may, the character endured to become a respected icon of the medium, and these issues are now attracting keen collector attention, primarily because of early appearances by characters who have become, as the young people say, ‘hot’ in the media. This is a complete run of all 39 weekly issues. Other than the first two issues – with free gifts, in this instance – the most wanted numbers are #8 (1st Betsy Braddock, who turned Japanese and became the X-Men’s scantily-clad ninja mind-warrior Psylocke. As you do.), #9 (2nd Betsy B.) and #19 (1st Lance Hunter, aka ‘Mr. Mockingbird’ from Marvels ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ television series.) After a long stretch of a CB TV series being ‘on’ and then ‘off’ production schedules, Rumour Central reports that it’s ‘on’ again – so buy now! Captain Britain Weekly #1 VF with NM Free Gift is £50; #2 FN with NM Free Gift is £35; #8 FN/VF is £80 and #19 FN is £12. For the price and condition of all other issues, see our catalogue pages. SORRY, #1 & #2 NOW SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Continuing our First Quenchers event featuring UK #1 issues! In the 1960s, IPC/Fleetway launched not one, but two weekly adventure comics that were heavily promoted as “Companion papers to Valiant”, neither of which, peculiarly, ended up merging with Valiant; one such was Hurricane, which merged with Tiger and the other was Champion. 1966’s Champion #1 looked a bit odd to contemporary audiences, because more than half its content (though the readers had no way of knowing it at the time) was reprinted from European sources. Among the new material, though, was some imaginative stuff, including ‘Return of the Stormtroopers’, ‘School for Spacemen’, and a bona-fide superhero, ‘The Phantom Viking’. Readers didn’t take to the imports, though and after only fifteen issues, the title folded into Lion, with ‘Phantom Viking’, ‘Stormtroopers’ and a couple of humour strips making the leap across. This debut issue of a now-collectible short run is a respectable GD at £30, marred only by some small tears at the centre front cover where the free gift has been too-eagerly removed in years gone by. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD