*Marvel: Continuing our ‘Avengers Very Finest’ event, in which we release a high-grade cents collection of Captain America’s Pals n’ Gals, this week’s release is issues #13 (debut of Count Nefaria), #14 (the Wasp’s life hangs in the balance!), #19 & #20 (the two-part story introducing the Swordsman) #21 and ##22 (in which the Enchantress creates the first Power Man – no, not the “Sweet Christmas!” one), #25 (a notoriously low-distribution issue in the UK, where Cap’s Kookie Quartet rather carelessly visits Latveria and falls foul of its evil leader Donald Trump – er, Dr. Doom), and finally #28, with the premiere of the ever-cosmic Collector, as immortalised in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies! Selected images below; visit our catalogue for full grading and pricing information.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: For the ‘Cowboy’ segment of our CSD (Cowboy/Schoolgirls/Detective) Picture Library event, we open with the range-ridin’ daddy of ’em all – Cowboy Picture Library! Starting life as ‘Cowboy Comics’ in 1950, this series ran 468 issues through to late 1962. After an initial ‘throw it at the wall and see what sticks’ phase, it settled down into most of its run with a strict rotation of featured stars – Buck Jones, Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson and the Kansas Kid –  though towards the end of its lengthy life occasional interlopers such as Billy the Kid and Davy Crockett popped up. Never commonplace, we’re pleased to add more than 70  new copies to our stock, ranging from issue #94 through to #403, in a variety of grades from Poor to Fine, though leaning on average to VG/FN range.

DC: In our ongoing Batmania Max event this week, a complete run of Detective Comics from #300-326, the last issue of the ‘old look’ before Julius Schwartz took over the editorial reins with #327. In this wild and wacky selection, Batman comes up against some of his strangest foes, including the Polka-Dot Man, Professor Hugo, Alpha The Experimental Man, The Flame Master, the Jungle Man, Dr. Double X, Dr. No-Face, the Terrible Trio, the Zodiac Master, and, more famously Clayface and in his debut (#311 FN £40) Cat-Man. That same issue also features the debut of the Martian Manhunter’s alien chum Zook, and this run concludes J’Onn J’Onzz’s appearances in the title. All cents copies, mostly nice grades. Full details as always in our catalogue and more from Batmania Max next week!

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A small update to the ‘alternative’ Boy’s comic from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Crisis (from #1), by the cream of British contemporary talent, featuring Third World War by Mills/Ezquerra, New Statesmen by Smith/Baikie and many others.

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/British section:
*Undergrounds
and in our British section:
*Magazines/Books About Vintage UK Comics
As of the time of writing, these categories are bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: …had better get his skates on and place his order, because we have the most significant update of the UK’s adventure weekly Valiant that we have had for a while! From an original owner collection comprising most issues from 1962 to early 1967, this extraordinary run (minus a handful of missing or damaged numbers) significantly augments our stock of this A-list title! The issue one, alas, was too badly damaged to sell – though it is included as a ‘bonus’ with issue #2  – but highlights of this selection include the one-off debut of ‘Charlie Peace’, before his departure for a lengthy run in Buster, the simultaneous premieres of ‘Legg’s Eleven’ and ‘Mytek the Mighty’, the (separate) first appearances of ‘Jason Hyde’ and ‘Jack Justice’, and – the most significant of this update – the February 23rd, 1963 issue, which saw the merger of Valiant with the venerable Knockout, and resulted in the addition of ‘Kelly’s Eye’, ‘Battler Britton’, ‘Prof. Kraken’, ‘Sporty’ and ‘Billy Bunter’ to an already star-studded line-up! All this plus Christmas, New Year, Fireworks and Easter issues galore!

*Marvel: Yes. it’s Marvel’s adaptation of the famous science-fiction blockbuster Star Wars, from 1977 onwards. All 107 of the series regular issues are new in, in a bewildering variety of grades – this is from one collector, who acquired what copies he could of this series – almost totally non-distributed in the UK – so conditions range from Poor (but stories complete) all the way through to NM, with most averaging FN/VF. This run also includes all three of the US Star Wars Annuals, and the complete four-issue mini-series Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, from 1983. We seldom see Star Wars from Marvel, as the folks who’ve acquired them tend to hang on like Darth Vader’s death-grip, and a complete sequential run (with occasional duplicate issues) is a virtually unprecedented event!

*Horror/Mystery 1960-1980’s: Just stylishly late for Halloween, we have an update to this hugely popular section, from the three most sought-after publishers. From Charlton, just a quartet of additions to the titles Ghostly Tales, Ghost Manor, Midnight Tales, and Scary Tales. With DC, out in front (appropriately) is Elvira’s House of Mystery #1, with a striking Bolland cover, classic House of Mystery from the 100-Page #228 to #319, House of Secrets from #144 to #152, Secrets of Haunted House #14 (a scarce ‘DC explosion’ issue) to #41, Unexpected from #174-217, and Witching Hour between #34-79. And finishing it all off, Marvel’s classy and atmospheric Tomb of Dracula series by Wolfman and Colan, with new additions from issue#4 through to issue #62, including A Blade appearance in #24, 1st Hannibal King in #25, and a Blade solo issue in #58. (NB: Number ranges are not unbroken, just the lower to upper ends of additions) Most of these items newly listed are in mid to low grades – especially in the DC and Charlton sections – so your appetite for Code-approved gore and terror may be slaked very affordably!

*TV & Film Related Comics: 20 new copies in of Look-In, mostly from 1971, the first year of publication (with a couple tagging into ’72). We begin from the second-ever issue, with covers featuring a plethora of stars of the day, many of whom haven’t yet been retroactively convicted of anything! What interests you lot most, of course, is the comic strip content, and 1971’s comic strips included some very lovely Mike Noble artwork on “Timeslip”, with Modesty Blaise illustrator Enrique Badia Romero contributing ‘Freewheelers’. ‘Please Sir!’, ‘Wreckers At Dead Eye’, and ‘Crowther In Trouble’ were also present, for them as likes ’em. By 1972, Noble was also illustrating ‘Follyfoot’ (but fear not, ‘Timeslip’ was still present) and the line-up had changed to include ‘Catweazle’, ‘Doctor In Charge’ and ‘The Fenn Street Gang’. This selection of seldom-seen issues averages VG.

*Classics Illustrated: A further instalment of our UK Classics overhaul, with all issues identified by HRN, filled-in number, country of origin and edition number. This time we update issues from #116-125.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: This week, we focus on the ‘D’ in CSD: Putney, our newly-acquired premium collection of mostly high-grade vintage Picture Libraries, and feature issues from the first 100 of Super-Detective Library. This classy series from Amalgamated commenced in 1953 and lasted 188 issues until 1960, and showcased the art of the best of British contemporary artists, plus American newspaper strip reprints. In this selection (commencing with #5 and finishing with #98, several dozen in all) we see such recurring favourite detectives as The Saint, Lesley Shane, Paul Darrow, Vic Terry, Inspector Chafik and more, plus one-off mysteries from the pens of Edgar Wallace, Victor Canning and others. Most sought-after perhaps are Rick Random (many issues included) and Sherlock Holmes, starring in #78, available in two grades and prices. See our catalogue for full details.

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 British section:
*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries
As of the time of writing, this category is bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Girls’ Comics: A small but highly desirable scattering of one of the most enduringly popular girls’ weeklies, June (during its School Friend amalgam phase). A selection of regular weekly issues between 1965 and 1970, starring Bessie Bunter, Vanessa From Venus, Lucky’s Living Doll, Zanna the Jungle Girl, and all the regulars – including the first appearance of Glory Knight, Time-Travel Courier, of whom we have spoken in the past. As a further enticement, the 1970 Holiday Special is also new in, in Good condition (structurally sound and clean, but the cover has at some time been removed and reattached). Girls’ Holiday Specials tend to be scarce, and June particularly so.

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: Our special Halloween 2016 event continues with the cream of vintage UK pre-code horror reprints. This week, another extremely rare item, the one-off Black Magic Album featuring 160 pages of pre-code horror, some of it from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, founders of the imprint, but also including Atlas and other publishers. There had already been a successful run of squarebound reprints of Black Magic in the UK (contributing to the furore about ‘horror comics’ which we commented on earlier), and this compilation edition, of a lower print run than the ongoing series, is seldom seen – we’ve had maybe three through our hands during our years of trading. This is a respectable VG-, with the card cover lightly creased at the corners and spine as one might expect, but the cover scene is unimpaired, the interior pages clean and off-white, and most critically for this extra-thick ‘whopper’, the spine is in very good shape, with only minimal wear at the very top & bottom. Yours for £75.

*Marvel: Frank Miller’s interpretation of the Daredevil villain, Bullseye, made such an impact that, to this day, many people still don’t realise he wasn’t, in fact, a Miller creation, but had premiered a while earlier, under the auspices of writer Marv Wolfman, and artists Bob Brown and Klaus Janson. In Daredevil #131, March 1976, the Man Without Fear met the Man Who Never Misses for the first time, with the latter’s origin and secret identity then unrevealed (hint: It wasn’t Jim Bowen…). This is a Fine+ copy, but that grade belies its eye-appeal, as it would easily make VF or better except for the fact that some enterprising soul has in the past written ’15-‘ (neatly, but still…) in black magic marker in the upper right cover corner — see the picture. Ratbag. In every other respect, as noted, it’s a superior copy, and at £55, a more affordable one than most you’ll find on sale.

*Alan Class Reprints: As our regular customers will know, we have an exclusive arrangement with Alan Class to market the contents of his personal archives, and he has now released to us the final instalment of his file copies and Printing Plate sets, several hundred of the former and several dozen of the latter. Cataloguing these is a gargantuan task, which we shall be tackling in instalments over the months ahead. For the inaugural salvo of this procedure, which we’re terming ‘Alan Class Reprints Redux’, we have the publisher’s original file copies of a selection of short-run series – Tales of the Underworld (crime stories), Amazing Stories and Outer Space (classic sci-fi including some Ditko stories), and Just Dennis (the American ‘Dennis the Menace’, strategically renamed for the UK market). These are enhanced by a number of one-off publications – Astonishing Stories, Eerie Tales, Race Into Space, and Space Trip To The Moon, some of which were ‘pilot’ issues for later ongoing series (‘Astonishing’, for example, became the long-running ‘Astounding Stories’.). Each of these comes with a hand-signed Certificate of Authenticity from Mr. Class himself, affirming its provenance as part of the publisher’s original archives, as shown below with some sample issues.

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: We’re very pleased to have acquired possibly the best collection of vintage Boys’ & Girls’ Picture Libraries that we’ve ever seen, close on a thousand items, characterised both by high grade and rarity. We’ll be sharing these with you in the months to come as fast as we can process them in our new feature we’ve called CSD: Putney, since the vast majority of these fall into the category of either Cowboy, Schoolgirls or Detectives.
We’re commencing this week with part of the Schoolgirls element to this collection. From Autumn 1963, Micron, a small publisher of picture libraries and story magazines, put out Schoolgirls’ Adventure Library, the content, format, title and even logo of which were strikingly familiar to readers of Fleetway’s popular series, Schoolgirls’ Picture Library. We are, of course, sure this resemblance was entirely coincidental and in no way intended to mislead hasty consumers. Ahem. We don’t know when S.A.L. (as it was abbreviated to in its own advertising) finished, as we’ve only ever seen a handful previously in our almost quarter-century of trading – but now, we know it ran to at least 61 issues, thanks to our recent acquisition! This selection commences with the very first issue, and ends with #61, in between supplying 25+ unique issues to our inventory, and a scattering of duplicated numbers. With titles like “Joyce and the Golden Medallion”, “Adventure In Amsterdam”, “Cave of Secrets”, “Tom and the Big Top” (what’s he doing there?), and “Elissa and the Shaft of Silence”, the familiar themes of sports, school comradeship, mystery and travel in exotic foreign climes are well represented. This selection is characterised by phenomenally high grades for the vintage, with many VF/NM and even a couple that are legitimately NM – even issues with the back cover missing, but the story intact (of which there are just a few) achieve a Fair grade, because of their remarkable preservation in every other aspect. Don’t expect too much of the ‘Magazine Supplement’ trailed across several covers, though – it’s a bodged-up four pages of the usual cooking, pets, and fashion tips. The appeal here is of the rarity and high grade of these seldom-seen items. Picture Libraries from 1963 never turn up in as nice condition as these! Pictured below: #1 VF/NM £75, #3 VF/NM £30, #24 VF/NM £25
Look out for much more from CSD: Putney in the coming weeks!

*EC: We’re always glad to receive new EC issues into stock, no more so than Weird Fantasy, being big fans of EC’s science-fiction line ourselves. Three consecutive issues of this title new in: #10 (FA £23), #11 (a nice sound FN £110 as pictured), and #12 (GD £36). As you would expect, outstanding art from the likes of Wood, Williamson, Orlando & Kamen.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Small updates to a variety of these favourite Boys’ titles from the years shown: Action (1977), Battle (1975, 1980, 1986), Crunch (1979), Lion (1971/72), Tiger (1974) & Valiant (1973).

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: For this year’s Halloween celebration, in the vanguard of our latest variation on the Pre-Code Horror theme, we are proud to present three 1950’s British reprints of the American EC horror comics, which caused such a furore (along with their legion of imitators), that they actually resulted in a specific Act of Parliament limiting the sale of ‘Horror Comics’! These three are the UK Haunt of Fear #1, VG+ £85, Tales From The Crypt #1 GD- £60 and Tales From the Crypt #2 FN/VF £125, the only three EC reprint issues. The subject of much controversy at the time, and destroyed in their droves, these seldom appear at all on the retail market, let alone in such attractive conditions as this trinity of terror! More from these 1950’s UK horror reprints, the ‘Evil Twin’ of their American originals, in the coming weeks…

*Marvel: From our new Avengers Very Finest collection, vintage issues characterised by unusually high grades, we present the first two appearances of the Vision, from Avengers #57 and #58. Those of us old enough to remember this the first time around have indelible memories of the impact Vizh made on his debut, as something genuinely out of the ordinary in the field of super-heroics, and these two issues, his debut and then his and induction into the Avengers, represent the work of Roy Thomas and John Buscema at their peak. With the increasing prominence of the Vision in Marvel’s cinematic universe, demand for his earlier appearances has spiked – and if you’re going to have two, these are the two to get! Both are cents copies, and both graded at VF+; the #57 is £375, and the #58, £100.

*Girls’ Comics: The extra-thick Holiday editions of Jinty weekly are new to our lists this week, 80-page compilations of “Dora Dogsbody”, “The Jinx From St. Jonah’s”, “The Snobs and the Scruffs”, “Bird-Girl Brenda”, and many other favourites. 1974’s Summer Special is GD/VG at £30, generally in very nice shape, but with a small (and insignificant) upper corner missing from 16 interior pages, otherwise it would be graded Fine; the 1975 Holiday Special has no such flaw, and is an unabashed VG at £35.

*Classics Illustrated: Our latest instalment of our updated information to the UK versions of this famous series runs from #76-100, now readily identifiable (to the best of our knowledge) by edition. We’ve also added many issues new in, including #79 (Cyrano De Bergerac – line drawn cover), #94 (David Balfour) & #98 (The Red Badge Of Courage). A further update soon.

*Annuals: Eight annuals fresh in related to cult TV from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Gerry Anderson material includes Captain Scarlet & UFO, as well as Countdown, which in addition to UFO, Captain Scarlet & Thunderbirds also features Dr Who, who may also be found in his very first annual from 1965. The ever-popular Planet Of The Apes is featured in a 1975 annual, but stars of this show are two Danger Man less common items from 1965. First up is the World Distributors Danger Man Annual in a very respectable VG/FN at £30, and secondly the TOP TV Series publication Danger Man Against the Mafia (a worn but not bad GD/VG at £20), which we’ve never seen before.