*TV & Film Related Comics: The long-running Mickey Mouse Weekly was a delightful title and we have several dozen fresh in this week from 1951-1957. As well as the rather fun and exciting adventures of Mickey & Donald (often just as full of mystery and adventure as humour), many other Disney favourites were also featured, such as Peter Pan, Dumbo and Alice In Wonderland. In addition, there were many strips which would have more than graced Boys’ Adventure comics of the time, such as Robin Hood, the Pied Piper, Davy Crockett, Strongbow the Mighty, Don Conquest and the Visitor from Space, Pecos Bill and Nemo and the Nautilus. As if this wasn’t enough, there were also schoolboy (and girl) adventures with the likes of Billy Brave, Monty Carstairs and Malcolm Savile’s Lone Pine Five. The comic was printed on superior paper and the glorious colour used for the covers and centrefold rivalled the technicolour of Disney’s films. Truly a classic, and at £2.25 for a GD copy up to £4 for a FN, wonderful value.
PICTURED: MICKEY MOUSE WEEKLY 3/5/52 VG £3

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: Some odds and ends added this week, left over from collections we’ve recently bought in. Many favourite titles included such as June & School Friend (inc 2 Holiday Specials), Princess, Schoolgirls’ Adventure Library and Star Love Stories. See our catalogue listings for full details.
PICTURED: JUNE & SCHOOL FRIEND PICTURE LIBRARY HOLIDAY SPECIAL 1969 VG £15

*DC: Here’s a nice set of poly-bagged Collector’s Editions telling the story of the Death & Rebirth of Superman, all sealed in their original bags. Headlined by the Superman #75 Platinum Edition, numbered 6982 in NM condition. The Platinum Edtions were distributed one per retailer and are keenly sought after when they come up for sale. It is accompanied here by the black poly-bagged Superman #75 Collectors’ Edition in NM- (due to a small patch of label residue on the poly-bag); both Platinum & Collector’s Editions come complete with the same extras: comic with fold out splash back cover, memorial poster, commemorative stamps, Daily Planet obituary, black mourning armband and trading card. Finally, Superman is back in Adventures of Superman #500 (NM) in its white poly-bag, complete with 64 page comic with removable translucent cover, 8 extra story pages and trading card. These were hugely hyped and popular when they were published — I can remember Superman #75 selling out in no time flat in every London comic shop the day it came out in 1993.
PICTURED:
SUPERMAN #75 PLATINUM EDITION NM £135 SOLD
SUPERMAN #75 COLLECTOR’S EDITION NM- £30 SOLD
ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 COLLECTOR’S EDITION #500 NM £25 SOLD

*DC: We start a long series of updates to the comic that gave DC its name, with a dozen issues of Detective Comics between #303 & #326, the last years before the ‘new look’ was launched with #327. As well as the regulation aliens and monsters, villains featured include Dr. Double X, Cat-Man, Dr. No Face, the Terrible Trio & the Zodiac Master. And J’Onn J’Onzz back-ups, of course — mostly mid-grade and higher. More Detectives soon.

*DC/Marvel: In 1976, after some delicate negotiations, the two major publishers decided to pool their talents and create a team-up between their two iconic characters which proved too big for a regular-sized comic – so the tabloid-sized format, as seen in Marvel’s Treasury Editions and DC’s Limited Collectors’ Editions, was co-opted for this epic event! While Wizard of Oz is technically the first Marvel/DC co-production, that’s really just DC piggybacking onto a project Marvel had already produced, to avoid litigation (long story, Google it if you’re bothered). This was the first true collaboration between the titans of the comics industry, and it’s a tribute to the organisation involved that Superman and Spider-Man (as well as guest villains Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus) are note perfect in this mega-sized saga. This pence printed copy is for the budget conscious; the spine is okay apart from a small split at the bottom, but there are multiple creases to front and back covers; the pages are okay except for one tear and a paint stain in one page margin, and the cover image largely unspoilt. The most affordable copy we’ve had in many a year. 
PICTURED: SUPERMAN VS THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN GD+ p £35 

*Marvel: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. When the Ant-Man name was unclaimed in the late 1970s, a brainier-than-average sneak-thief, Scott Lang, stole Hank Pym’s old apparatus and became the second bearer of that title! But it’s okay – he did bad things for good reasons, specifically to find a cure for his dying daughter, as was revealed in Marvel Premiere #47, the tale which (after a non-costumed cameo in Avengers #181) was Scott’s first full appearance. John Byrne and David Michelinie created this different take on the hero, and since then, Scott has had his ups and downs – been in jail a few times, been dead a few more, been a love-slave of the Purple Man (No, really. Google it. Better yet, don’t) – but he’s fought his way back to respectability, and has achieved cinematic stardom in two eponymous movie hits, plus pivotal roles in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’. This lovely high grade pence printed copy has just very tiny stress marks at spine, but is otherwise as good as new.
PICTURED: MARVEL PREMIERE #47 VF/NM p £90

*Marvel: Three significant issues of X-Men from the 1980s this week. We have the two-part encounter between Wolverine and Sabretooth from #212 & #213, the latter drawn by Alan Davies, and #256, drawn by Jim Lee, featuring the debut of Psylocke as a Ninja warrior. All are high grade copies.
PICTURED: X-MEN
#212 VF/NM £30
#213 NM- £35
#256 NM £25

*Horror 1940-1959: Witchcraft is a classic 6 issue pre-code horror series from Avon in 1952/53, and issue #2 has a classic skull cover much coveted by pre-code horror collectors. Interior art and inside front cover preview by Sid Check, Joe Kubert, Norman Nodel and others. But it is the cover art (by artist unknown) that draws the eye to this issue. It presents well here, with an unmarked cover, remarkably retaining some gloss after all these years, with nice colours, unmarked but for a small pencil arrival date below the logo. There is a tiny chip out top cover edge, a tiny split at the bottom of the spine, and some spine wear with the staples off at the front cover only (see splash photo), firmly attached at the rear and centrefold. This issue doesn’t come cheap, but it is one of the iconic pre-code horror covers. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: WITCHCRAFT #2 VG- £630 SOLD

*Modern Reprints: Long out of print and difficult to get, we’re very pleased to have a nice copy of Volume 4 of the Dr. Strange Marvel Masterworks fresh into stock. This reprints the last few issues of the Doctor’s original series, a couple of guest shots, the solo story from Marvel Feature #1 and the earliest stories from Marvel Premiere #3-8. Featuring the work of Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, Gardner Fox, Stan Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith and many others, this lovely copy has only the slightest signs of having been read.
PICTURED: MARVEL MASTERWORKS DR. STRANGE VOL 4 VF/NM £60 SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A diverse selection of material in this category this week: a vintage Australian Biggles, the Dan Dare Holiday Special from 1990, from Miller two uncommon issues of Marvelman with WW2 themes, and the esoteric Super Thriller Comic from World Distributors (#29 from 1950), featuring Ace Hart The Atom Man in an interplanetary adventure, as well as Western and crime stories. 
PICTURED:
DAN DARE HOLIDAY SPECIAL 1990 FN £8
MARVELMAN #228 VG/FN £17.50 SOLD
SUPER THRILLER COMIC #29 VG/FN £20 SOLD

*Humour Comics: Half a dozen issues of Dandy new in from 1953, including #624, that year’s Fireworks issue (it has a small hole in the cover, but this does not impinge on story enjoyment). Low grade copies but great value.
PICTURED: DANDY #624 FA £7.50 Fireworks issue SOLD

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: Dozens of Bunty new in, all the way from #28 right up to #451, featuring a large range towards the end of this series’ run in the late 1990s. Inexpensive and fun reads.
PICTURED: BUNTY PICTURE STORY LIBRARY #48 VG £6

Comic book artist Steve Lightle, long associated with the Legion of Super-Heroes, passed away on the morning of 8th January 2021 of a Covid-related cardiac arrest. He was 61.

His death was reported on his Facebook account by his son, Matthew:

“This is Matthew Lightle, Steve Lightle’s son. This morning my father passed away from Cardiac Arrest. I wished to thank you all for your friendship to my father, and also to ask that if you are a Patreon follower, please cancel your account as we are just beginning to take care of his affairs.”

Born November 19th 1959 in Kansas, his first professional comics work was a story in Americomics’ Black Diamond #4. That same year, he illustrated the story ‘Ekko’ for DC’s New Talent Showcase,  after which he briefly drew World’s Finest Comics before succeeding Keith Giffen as the illustrator on the Baxter format Legion of Super-Heroes; his idealised and heroic illustrative style providing a considerable contrast to the increasingly exaggerated and cartoonish Giffen art.  

One ‘first’ during his tenure was that he and writer Paul Levitz co-created new Legionnaires Tellus and Quislet, the first members of the interplanetary team to have non-humanoid physiologies – prior to that, it had often been noted that for a team made up of the inhabitants of multiple worlds, the Legion was uniformly human in composition, with only a handful of variations in skin colour.

Leaving the LSH as interior artist after two years, he departed the book to relaunch the Doom Patrol series in 1987, though he continued to be the regular cover artist on LSH until 1988.

Despite his relatively short stay  on the Legion, he always described it as his ‘dream assignment’, and revisited the group – then being published under the title The Legion – for a couple of issues in the early part of this century. He continued to draw many Legion-related pieces, either as commission works or for his own enjoyment, over the ensuing decades.

His artwork also appeared in numerous other series from DC and Marvel, including Flash, Outsiders, Marvel Comics Presents, Classic X-Men and Quasar.

As Legion of Super-Heroes fans ourselves, he will always have a place in our hearts.

*DC: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. This week, a rare opportunity to acquire one of the Jack Kirby issues of Challengers of the Unknown. Jolly Jack drew the Challengers’ earliest adventures, including their four try-out issues in Showcase and the first eight issues of their own series. In this issue, #5, he was joined on inks by the wonderful Wally Wood for a truly dynamic package. An action-packed full-length tale of a super-powered villain, featuring the ‘honorary’ female Challenger June. This superior copy from 1958, pre UK distribution, is bright, tight and flat, with good cover colour, firmly attached staples and nice off white pages. Just minor edge wear brings the grade down, with narrow, barely colour-breaking creasing faintly at the top edge.
PICTURED: CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN #5 FN £105 SOLD

*Marvel: 1965’s Fantastic Four #45 saw the culmination of a long-running subplot – and the introduction of a whole new family of supporting super-stars. Since #36, the mysterious Madame Medusa had been a thorn in the side of the FF, and latterly, from #44, she had been pursued by the equally mysterious Gorgon. Now, the pair’s true origin, and their royal heritage, was revealed, as the monarchs of the Inhumans made their debut in these two issues. Black Bolt, Crystal, Triton, Karnak and Lockjaw rounded out the Royal Family tree, and became long-running allies of the Fantastic Four. This pence printed copy has excellent cover colour and gloss, nice tight staples and off-white pages; there are no cover markings. Edge wear and corner blunting are not too bad; there are thin white reading creases next to the spine and one colour-breaking crease across the bottom right corner (see scan), but a solid copy that holds together and presents well, with one of the FF’s most appealing cover scenes. 
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR #45 VG+ p £125 SOLD

*Marvel: The polymath skill-pilferer Taskmaster has proved one of the more popular characters from the later 20th Century Marvel Universe, achieving the status of reluctant anti-hero through nuanced and well-written stints in the series Avengers: The Initiative and Avengers Academy. Now announced as the villain in the forthcoming Black Widow film, Taskmaster’s star is rising, and we have his first appearances in stock: Avengers #195 (NM- p £25), in which he makes a suitably menacing last-page cameo having overcome both Hank Pym and Scott Lang, and #196, in which he makes his full nefarious debut. 
PICTURED: AVENGERS #196 VF+ p £100

*Marvel: Altough Alex Summers (brother of Scott) had been around since issue #54 of the X-Men, it wasn’t until #58 that he adopted both his costume and the name Havok and we saw his true mutant heritage. This issue is one of the run drawn by Neal Adams, and, inked by Tom Palmer, this sequence forms my favourite work by Adams. This is a nice flat copy with tight staples, good colour, residual gloss and white to off-white pages. Little signs of handling wear at spine and edges, but nothing breaks colour.
PICTURED: X-MEN #58 FN+ p £75 SOLD

*Marvel: A very large update to our catalogue for Marvel titles beginning with A: namely, John Byrne’s Alpha Flight, Amazing Adventures with Killraven and dozens of issues of Avengers between #100-300; many issues previously missing from our listings.

*Western: We’ve corralled a whole herd of Western comic adventures for your delectation over the coming weeks, starting this week with a small number of Atlas titles from the 1950s: Frontier Western, Kid Colt Outlaw, Outlaw Kid and Two Gun Western (2nd series). Full details as always in our catalogue and look out for much more from the Big Western Round-Up in the weeks ahead.

*Marvel UK: Well, Betsy Braddock, sister to Captain Britain, has become a bit of a thing in collecting circles. Probably it’s down to her joining the X-Men as Psylocke, before taking up the mantle of Captain Britain relatively recently. Her key early appearances are spiralling upwards in price all the time, as in these two examples from Captain Britain Monthly: #12 featuring her 1st cameo appearance in the role of Captain Britain, and #13 with her first full appearance in that guise.
PICTURED: CAPTAIN BRITAIN
#12 VF £35
#13 VG £40

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: A small update to our stock of Valiant Picture Library, with half a dozen issues new in between #32 & #86.

*Girls’ Comics: Sally, which ran from 1969 to 1971, is one of the most popular and elusive girls’ comics of the period. You can read all about the series and its famous stories in Will’s definitive lockdown article here. We’re particularly delighted to have new in this week a few dozen issues, many superior issues graded FN or VG/FN, with the emphasis on the first year of 1969. Whenever we get a run of Sally through our hands, we are usually swamped with a flood of orders as soon as they hit our catalogue, so you need to order as quickly as possible to maximise your chances of getting the issues you’re after.
PICTURED: 27/12/69 GD/VG £9 CHRISTMAS ISSUE SOLD

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: In the late 1950s, the publisher Alexander Moring took over the Hank Janson novels series, with their distinctive red and yellow striped livery. Unfortunately, they did not take with them the covers by Reginald Heade which had adorned earlier Jansons (with a couple of notable exceptions), but the Moring (unknown) cover artists attempted very much to portray covers in the style of Heade, to varying degrees of competence. Readers would have found the same hard-boied thrills as before, however. New in this week, we have seven of these volumes circa 1957: Bewitched, Cactus, Flight From Fear, Sweet Fury, Too Soon To Die, Torrid Temptress and Untamed. Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED:
CACTUS 1ST UK PB GD/VG £8
FLIGHT FROM FEAR 1ST UK PB FN £10
UNTAMED 1ST UK PB VG/FN £10

*DC: Roy Thomas’s love affair with Golden Age heroes continued in the 1985 mini America Vs The Justice Society, available now as a complete set of 4 (#1 FN, #2-4 VF). An epic tale of WW2 ramifications in a contemporary setting, with a huge and colourful cast of heroes and villains.
PICTURED: AMERICA VS THE JUSTICE SOCIETY #1 FN; COMPLETE SET #1-4 (AV. VF-) £20 SOLD

*Marvel: By the time of Spider-Man’s 50th issue, ‘new’ artist John Romita had made the series his own, and this milestone number was marked with the debut of a new villain, the Kingpin – so long associated with Daredevil, in the post-Miller years, that younger readers are unaware that he originated in Spider-Man’s Rogues’ Gallery! The cover of #50, with Peter temporarily abandoning his Spider-Man identity, has become etched in the minds of a generation, endlessly imitated and ‘homaged’, in comics and other media. Our latest copy, pence printed, is a low grade and has seen better days. The spine is very worn and there are chips out of the top right cover corner and bottom spine. The cover right edge has a 2.5 cm tear and there are many small colour breaking creases around the edges. Nevertheless, the staples are okay (bottom one a little loose) and the page quality is a decent off-white. The quality of the cover image shines through the defects.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50 GD- p £150 SOLD