*Romance: Also from the Bute Collection this week, four vintage romance comics dating between 1949-1955. Nice to be able to add some love to our listings.
IN THIS UPDATE:
DEARLY BELOVED #1 FA/GD £15 (Ziff Davis) Photo cover. Fingernail-sized chip out top cover, diagonal creases from tear at right edge.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT #2 VG £30 (PICTURED) (Ace) Photo cover.
SECRET HEARTS #4  VG+ £65 (PICTURED) (National/DC) Photo cover. With DC’s high standards for romance titles.
YOUNG LOVE #64 GD+ £5 (Prize) Volume 6 #10
 

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: In the early 1950s, a small number of horror comics (around 40) were produced by a variety of UK publishers reprinting US pre-code horror stories in black and white. Just as in the USA, these became notorious and subject to censorship which led to their discontinuation. There’s a lot of information online about the banning of UK horror comics if you want to know more, and I particularly recommend a youtube video by Canadian Dave Dustin on the subject (see the Links page in our Extras section for more information). These UK horror comics have become both extremely rare and much sought after in recent years, and we’re delighted to have issue #1 (and only) of Comics To Hold You Spellbound from Thorpe & Porter from 1953, reprinting the cover and contents of Atlas’s Spellbound #3. Plus, since this comic is double the size of a standard US comic, there are also stories from Astonishing #13 and Adventures Into Weird Worlds #6, also from Atlas. Cover by Russ Heath, art by Ogden Whitney, Fred Kida, Sol Brodsky, Manny Stallman, Mike Sekowsky, Bernie Krigstein, Joe Sinnott, Ross Andru and others.
PICTURED: COMICS TO HOLD YOU SPELLBOUND #1 GD+ £175 Solid cover image with great colour. Wear at spine with short split at top and 3 cm split at bottom. A couple of short horizontal tears at spine. Back cover looks like it has had tape applied, which has now been removed with a line of brown residue, but no damage. Minor edge wear to right, slight creasing at bottom right corner. Decent staples and pages, all firmly attached. SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Super-Detective Library (Told In Pictures), originally published by Amalgamated (later Fleetway) from 1953, concentrated in its early issues on stories of established detectives from across literature, radio and film. We have added issues #2 to #5 this week, in low to mid grades, with rusty staples to varying degrees, but okay conditions with a couple with loose bits. 
PICTURED: SUPER-DETECTIVE LIBRARY
#2 GD £30 Ernest Dudley, the Armchair Detective: The Riddle Of The Frensham Will.
#3 GD/VG £35 Bulldog Drummond.
#4 FA £20 The Return Of The Third Man. Cover loose.
#5 FA £20 The Saint: The Great Flying Saucer Mystery. FA £20 Loose pages. SOLD

*Comic Strip Books: Two volumes reprinting classic Batman stories from the 1950s in black and white this week. The first, from 1966, features Batman stories; the second a 1988 reprint of an original 1966 volume with Batman vs the Joker stories.
PICTURED: BOTH SOLD
BATMAN Four Square 1966 1st UK PB GD £15 Red colour touch central cover, presumably covering label scuff
BATMAN VS THE JOKER Titan 1988 UK PB VG £5

*DC: A gem from the Bute Collection this week. From 1943/44, Batman #20, featuring the first cover appearance of the Batmobile plus a classic Joker story. A dynamic cover by Dick Spang has the Batmobile bursting through it. Jack Burnley illustrates a classic Joker story The Centuries of Crime with an iconic splash page (shown below). And there’s more classic work from famous Batman creators Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson within. A copy that presents well. The spine is neatly taped with magic tape and extra staples have skilfully been added at top, middle and bottom, making the comic tightly and firmly bound. The cover image is unmarked, and wear is restricted to the edges. with a very small chip out at top edge below the date, slight chipping at bottom right corner and a small tear centre right edge; both these latter defects have been sealed by small pieces of magic tape on the inside cover. Page quality is excellent and off-white, with a hint of cream. Early Batmans are quite a rarity for us (and most dealers!), and although we’ve had a handful of single digit Issues through our hands many years ago (from a storage unit find in New York), we’ve never had a copy of this milestone issue before. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: BATMAN #20 GD- £775 SOLD

*DC: Two Bronze Age launch issues for new characters in the DCU of the Bronze Age: From 1977, Black Lightning #1, and from 1978, Steel, The Indestructible Man #1. 
IN THIS UPDATE: BOTH SOLD
BLACK LIGHNING #1 FN  £25 (PICTURED)
STEEL #1 FN+ p £10

*Marvel: The Black Panther’s series in Jungle Action, which attracted a lot of acclaim at the time, was known for being verbose, introspective, reflective and philosophical. When the character’s co-creator, Jack Kirby, took over as writer and artist on T’Challa’s follow-up solo series, the results were… a considerable contrast. Shouting! Explosions! Aliens! Time-Travel! Implausibly-muscled ladies with black lipstick! Cosmic critters! All were here, and all playing at full volume all the time, in the crazed kinetic frenzy that Kirby was renowned for. Since the major movie franchise, the King of Wakanda’s star is ever-ascendant, and this issue especially always sells very briskly because of its – frankly – high loopiness quotient. So, if you want this tale of ‘King Solomon’s Frog’, you’d better hop to it (sorry…). This is a superior pence-printed copy, with great cover colour and gloss, firm, tight staples and supple white pages. Just the faintest signs of handling wear at spine and lower edge.
PICTURED: BLACK PANTHER #1 VF+ p £95 SOLD

*Marvel: On offer this week, three complete mini-series from 1989, 1997 and 1990. First up, the prestige format two-parter: She-Hulk: Ceremony, a tale of native American mysticism with Wyatt Wingfoot. Secondly the three part Spider-Man: Hobgoblin Lives (or does he? – a mystery for Spidey to solve). Finally, X-Men Spotlight on Starjammers, a prestige format two-parter starring that interplanetary band of brigands and guesting just about everybody in the X-Men universe. Each sold as a complete set only, and all in a pristine condition.
PICTURED: ALL SOLD
SHE-HULK CEREMONY #1; SOLD AS SET1-2 Av NM £12
SPIDER-MAN: HOBGOBLIN LIVES #1; SOLD AS SET 1-3 Av NM £12
X-MEN SPOTLIGHT ON STARJAMMERS #1; SOLD AS SET 1-2 Av NM £10

*Horror 1940-1959: One of the most famous Pre-Code Horror comics was Avon’s Eerie which ran for 17 issues from 1951. (In fact, it had a predecessor, Eerie Comics from 1947, just one issue, but a strong contender for the first real horror comic). Two issues of the 1950s series for your consideration.
PICTURED: EERIE
#3 FA+ £100 Pre-code. Cover, contents page and lead story by Wally Wood. Plus Joe Orlando, Sid Check, Joe Kubert and others. Structurally sound but with mild ‘rippling’ and very faint cover image erosion from historical moisture exposure. SOLD
#6 GD £105 Pre-code. Sid Check, Carmine Infantino and others. Quite a worn spine, but okay in other respects. SOLD

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: Brick Bradford was a science-fiction adventurer in the manner of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, originating in a comic strip in America in the 1930s. He was arguably more successful around the world than in his native country, perhaps as attested by a British #1 here, published by World Distributors circa 1959; plus we also have two editions published in New Zealand in the 1940s by Feature Productions.
IN THIS UPDATE:
BRICK BRADFORD #1 GD/VG £15 (PICTURED) 68 Pages SOLD
BRICK BRADFORD, ADVENTURES OF
#14 VG £8
#41 FA/GD £5

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: From 1962-64, a further selection of Fleetway’s long-running True Life Library between #341 & #440. Superficially in lovely condition with few marks and great cover colour and page quality, these are marred only by varying degrees of staple rust, from average to minimal in most cases. Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: TRUE LIFE LIBRARY #344 VG/FN £6

*Mad Books: This week, reinforcements for our Mad Books category, celebrating those fondly remembered paperback books featuring the best of Mad. Wit, sarcasm, parody and irony never go out of style. Five more volumes new in as follows:
PICTURED: ALL SOLD
BURNING MAD Signet 3rd US PB GD £4
HOPPING MAD Signet 1969 1st US PB GD £4
THE INVISIBLE MAD Warner 1975 2nd US PB GD/VG £5
MAD AS THE DEVIL, SERGIO ARAGONES Warner 1975 2nd US PB GD/VG £4
SING ALONG WITH MAD Signet 1970 1st US PB VG £5

*DC: Back in the heady Silver Age days, just about the only way you could get to read the older stories of DC’s premier characters was in the 80 Page Giant Annuals they released for each series once per year. Then, in 1964, buoyed by the success of these annuals, DC turned the 80 Page Giant idea into a regular series of rotating characters, thus enabling us to catch up with a much bigger selection of these early stories than hitherto. After 15 issues, they broadened the concept again to include the Giants in the regular numbering of the series concerned. So this week we present two classic issues from that 15 issue run known as 80 Page Giant, including #1 (which would have been Superman Annual #9) featuring classic stories of the Superman family, and #9, reprinting ‘Flash Of Two Worlds’, and debuts or early appearances of The Pied Piper, Dr Alchemy, Gorilla Grodd and Captain Boomerang.
IN THIS UPDATE: 80 PAGE GIANT
#1 GD+ p £30
#9 VG- p £15.25 SOLD

*Marvel: In 1964, the adventures of Iron Man were enlivened in Tales Of Suspense #52 by the appearance of the lovely but lethal Natasha Romanoff, code-named the Black Widow, one of the Kremlin’s deadliest operatives. Originally an appealing but unoriginal femme fatale in civvies, inspired by Caniff’s Dragon Lady and other Mata Hari wannabes, Natasha proved surprisingly adaptable, allying herself first with the second Crimson Dynamo (also premiering in this issue) and later Hawkeye, and trading her cocktail dress and veil for the first of many costumed ‘looks’ as she switchbacked from villainess to heroine, culminating, of course, in her live-action embodiment by Scarlett Johansson in the Avengers and other Marvel movies – and in a big-screen feature of her very own! This issue is where ‘Tasha’s career kicked off, and is a lower grade pence printed copy with much wear and some colour-breaking creasing at the spine and edges, but with a mostly unspoilt central cover image. Three extra staples have been added (two near the originals), although it is unclear to what extent they are necessary. There is a very small chip out of the top edge and a tiny upper spine split. Page quality is quite decent.
PICTURED: TALES OF SUSPENSE #52 GD- p £225

*Marvel: Three of our ongoing features roll into one post with three issues of the Marvel Treasury Edition starring Spider-Man. #1 features some classic Spidey tales: the debut of the Green Goblin, 1st proper Mary Jane, death of Captain Stacy and more, including loads of special features; #14 reprints the six-armed Spidey/Morbius saga from Amazing Spider-Man #100-102; #18 features some of Spidey’s greatest team-ups with the X-Men, Iron Fist, Werewolf By Night, Ghost Rider and more. These over-sized issues are always hugely popular.
PICTURED: MARVEL TREASURY EDITION ALL SOLD
#1 VG/FN £15
#14 NM- p £20
#18 VF- £15 

*Horror 1940-1959: Also from the Bute Collection this week, issue #10 of Stanley Morse’s Mister Mystery, one of the most notorious of all the Pre-Code Horror titles with many infamous covers. The masked and cloaked (and top-hatted!) Mister Mystery himself is our host to a mix of ghost and spooky stories, with body modifications and other gruesome shocks. The cover is by Bernard Bailey, with atmospheric interior art by Ross Andru and many others. This is sadly a very low grade copy, with covers detached and separated. The front and back covers have small chips out at spine and small book shop stamps. Pages are a quite reasonable off-white to tan and also have book shop stamps in some margins.
PICTURED: MISTER MYSTERY #10 PR £50 Pre-Code. SOLD

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: Len Miller was the premier UK publisher of ‘faux’ American-sized British comics in the 1950s and early 1960s. He published a wide range of material, both original and US reprint, perhaps most famously Marvelman and Young Marvelman. Although succeeded by Alan Class, there was a period in the early 1960s where both publishers overlapped and some of Miller’s titles (Mystic, Spellbound, Voodoo and Zombie) closely resembled the type of content also being used by Alan Class, reprinting Atlas, pre-hero Marvel and other early horror, with occasional forays into the Marvel Super-Hero Universe. For some reason (possibly page count?), in reprinting Avengers #8 in Mystic #56, (debut of Kang), Miller chose not to use the original, more dynamic cover and instead substituted the splash page on the cover, giving this version a unique look. Kang, in all his various incarnations, has gone on to be an evil cornerstone of the MU. This is a gorgeous copy of this rarity, clean with vibrant colour cover, sharp, crisp white pages, no marks, squareish corners, with several horror and war back-ups in its 68 pages. These Miller Marvel reprints have become highly collectable in recent years.
PICTURED: MYSTIC #56 VF £350 SOLD

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: Like Superman and Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes is a household name, one of the literary iconic characters. Though not the first example of a literary ‘consulting detective’, Holmes is undoubtedly the most famous. These days we know him from countless film, TV and radio versions, and it is perhaps strange to realise that there were just four novels and fifty-six short stories penned by his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, over a hundred years ago. In our inventory we have a mix of editions including two novels (A Study in Scarlet, the first, and The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the most famous), two paperback story collections (The Case-Book Of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes), one handsome dust-jacketed hardcover collection (His Last Bow) and, new in, The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes: short plays, jottings, ‘sensational strategems’, parodies and self-parodies gathered in one volume as the perfect companion to the stories. If you’ve never read these ask yourself ‘should you?’ The answer is, of course, rather elementary… 
PICTURED: ALL BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE ALL SOLD
A STUDY IN SCARLET John Murray 1969 UK PB VG £3
THE CASE-BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Penguin 1987 23rd UK PB VG £2.50
HIS LAST BOW Murray/Cape UK HC VG £10
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES John Murray 1961 UK PB GD £3
THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Penguin 1981 UK PB FN £4
THE UNCOLLECTED SHERLOCK HOLMES Penguin 1983 1st UK PB VF £6

Our Half Price Sale of selected British Comics continues, featuring many of the larger, tabloid ‘Giant’ issues. Throughout July, the following titles are now available at HALF the listed prices. 

Boys’ Adventure & War:
Boys’ World
Eagle (1st series)
Express
Ranger
Swift
Treasure

TV & Film Related:
TV Fun

Humour:
Beano Summer Special (from 1986 onwards)
Beezer (inc Summer Specials)*
Buzz*
Dandy Summer Specials (from 1981 onwards)
Topper*
*These titles may, at our discretion, be sold unbagged and unboarded, but will be well packaged

Girls’:
Diana
Girl
Jackie

All these titles are now marked as Giant Summer Sizzling Sale items in our catalogue in red and bold italic. You pay half the prices listed for these titles.

*DC: When Flash was relaunched in 1959, with Barry Allen now in the lead role, the artistic duties fell to Carmine Infantino, who pencilled every issue from #105 to #174. If ever an artist was made for a tire, it was here. His speeding hero, fabulous cityscapes, gorgeous women, dynamic and colourful villains characterised the Silver Age Flash. We have six issues new in from towards the end of his run.
IN THIS UPDATE: FLASH ALL SOLD
#155 VG p £14.75
#163 VG+ p £13.25
#165 GD+ p £8.50 Wedding of Barry & Iris
#166 GD/VG p £9
#172 GD p £5.25
#174 GD p £5.25 Final Infantino issue

*Marvel: Spidey’s second encounter with the Lizard had to wait until Amazing Spider-Man #44 & 45 with Jazzy John Romita at the artistic helm. Superb covers on this two-parter, with taut story-telling by Stan the Man. We present these nice grade extracts from the Good Doctor Collection, in memory of the recently departed John Romita Sr, a legend at Marvel, as a master of design and layout. 
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
#44 FN/VF £185 Great cover with strong colour and dark background. Firm staples and supple off-white pages; nice and flat. Just very minor corner blunting and minor edge wear.
#45 FN/VF £120 Great cover with strong colour and bright background. Firm staples and supple off-white pages; nice and flat. Minor corner blunting and a few stress marks at spine just break colour.

 

*Marvel: Greer Grant Nelson was originally the costumed vigilante known as the Cat. In her final adventure in that identity, she was mortally wounded but the mysterious cat people saved her life by transforming her into one of them (Giant-Size Creatures #1). After that, she went on to star in her own brief five issue series in Marvel Chillers #3-7, all now in stock. Despite a hotch-potch of artists of varying merit (NB John Byrne art in #6), Tigra has gone on to be a regular in the MU. 
IN THIS UPDATE: MARVEL CHILLERS ALL SOLD
3 VG p £10 Start of Tigra series
4 VF+ p £10 Tigra vs Kraven the Hunter
5 FN/VF p £6.50 With Red Wolf & Lobo
6 VF £11.50 John Byrne art
7 FN+ £6 Tigra vs the Super Skrull

*Alan Class Reprints: For many years now, we’ve been scouring the personal archives of legendary publisher Alan Class and with his full co-operation, releasing for sale sets of the original printing plates that were used to print the covers of his comics from 1959-1989. We’ve now reached the very end of these sets, and this is the final set in our possession (but see our note further below), comprising the lead printing plates used in the original comic’s colour printing, a copy of the comic printed with these plates and a signed certificate of authenticity signed by Alan Class himself. These are packaged in a special protective presentation case. (Please be aware that these weigh a lot and postage will be expensive. Also note that due to the onerous paperwork required for customs declarations following Brexit, we can no longer post these Plate Sets outside the UK.) But we’ve saved the best for last! Marvel’s Journey Into Mystery #85, reprinted here in Alan Class’s Suspense #29, featured not just the third appearance of Thor, but also the first appearance of Balder, Heimdall, Asgard, 1st cameo of Odin, and, most significantly, the first appearance of Thor’s arch nemesis Loki, God of Mischief, who has gone on to play huge roles in both the MU and the MCU. So a chance here to own the first British reprint of this huge key issue, together with the plates used to print its cover. A totally unique opportunity! 
PICTURED: SUSPENSE #29 Cover, Splash, Certificate and all four Colour Plates £1,000
Suspense #29 reprints the cover and content of the Thor story from Journey Into Mystery #85, the debut of Loki.
Comic FN+ with brilliant colour, square corners, unmarked, slight spine glue puckering, a lovely copy. The Plates are among the best, in excellent clear condition.
Remember: there’s only one of these in the world!

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: We’re continuing to introduce the new layout for our books categories, with an image for each book. This week, we return to our Crime, Spies & Sleaze category for authors from Clarke to Della. Donald Henderson Clarke features with a very vintage paperback from 1940, a rare edition of Impatient Virgin, which would have bene very risque in its day; great good girl cover art on this by Merlin. There are three Solar Pons collections by Basil Copper, the second author to tackle this excellent Sherlock Holmes homage after August Derleth. Just one Gervase Fen Mystery from Edmund Crispin, but a good one: The Case Of The Gilded Fly; Fen is a great eccentric and one of the greatest creations of 20th Century British detective fiction (wish we had more!). Finally, Lew Della contributes an American edition of a British gangster pulp: Ladies Sleep Alone. 
PICTURED:
IMPATIENT VIRGIN by DONALD HENDERSON CLARKE John Long 1940 1st UK PB VG £30
SOLAR PONS #9: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SOLAR PONS by BASIL COPPER Pinnacle 1979 1st US PB FN/VF £11
SOLAR PONS #10: THE SECRET FILES OF SOLAR PONS by BASIL COPPER Pinnacle 1979 1st US PB FN/VF £11 SOLD
SOLAR PONS #11: THE UNCOLLECTED CASES OF SOLAR PONS by BASIL COPPER Pinnacle 1980 1st US PB VG £8
THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY by EDMUND CRISPIN Penguin UK PB VG £3 SOLD
LADIES SLEEP ALONE by LEW DELLA Archer 1951 1st US PB VG/FN £20