*Marvel: Another sweep through the Marvel Silver & Bronze ages, adding this time from the following titles: Astonishing Tales, Avengers, Captain America (Annual #4 by Kirby), Captain Marvel (#17 1st full app new costume), Conan (#5), Daredevil (1st Jester #42 and Annual #1), Dr Strange (1st series), Hulk (inc #141 1st Doc Samson), Iron Man (#100), lots of Spider-Man (mostly between #51 & #90), Strange Tales (#151 1st Steranko at Marvel), Tales Of Suspense and lots of X-Men (a couple of Neal Adams issues inc #58 1st Havok, then a conscutive run from #129 to #138, with several key issues: 1st Emma Frost, 1st Kitty Pryde, 1st Dazzler and the Death of Phoenix).

*Horror/Mystery 1960-1980s: Another classic 1970s title from Charlton extensively updated this week, with over 20 issues of Ghostly Haunts added to our listings, starting with #27 (series commenced with #20) right up to the final issue #58. First rate artists were let loose on Charlton’s horror line allegedly without much editorial rein in place, so a great chance to experience at relatively modest prices the unfettered artistry of Steve Ditko, Tom Sutton, Don Newton, Joe Staton and many other famous names whose work appear in the pages of this title.

*Western: New back issues added this week of the popular and long-running series Gunsmoke Western, which bridged the gap between Atlas and its transition into Marvel Comics. Co-starring Kid Colt Outlaw, and Wyatt Earp, the series welcomed a third hero in #57, when another of Marvel’s famous western ‘Kids’, the Two-Gun Kid, made his premier appearance in a John Severin-drawn adventure – though in a greatly altered form his later iteration! With mostly Kirby covers (and occasional interior art) and illustrations by Severin, Jack Keller, Matt Baker, and Joe Maneely, the series kept up a high artistic standard, and has gained in popularity in recent years as completists realise its connectivity to the greater Marvel Universe. Issue #57 (pictured) is FN+ at £40; for details of the rest, see the Western section of our online catalogue.

*Collected Editions: Following his departure from the famous ‘Trigan Empire’ strip in 1976, illustrator Don Lawrence looked for new worlds to conquer – and found them in Europe, where his work had long had a huge fanbase. Liaising with a Dutch publisher, he started the sprawling saga ‘Storm’, about an eponymous astronaut who, in the best tradition of John Carter and myriad other heroes, finds himself marooned in a strange fantasy world, and has to make his way through it with only the aid of a gorgeous redheaded warrior woman and a chunky red-skinned alien prince. The ‘Storm’ series continued for decades, but not in English (save for a single paperback volume in 1982 and two Titan albums in the late ’80s), leaving fans frustrated. But at the beginning of this century, a determined collective started issuing sumptuous large-format, full-colour hardcovers reprinting not only all 22 Don Lawrence ‘Storm’ adventures, (two to a book) in English, but also sketches, designs, and a huge amount of ‘behind-the-scenes’ material. Produced in extremely limited numbers, these volumes are now vanishingly scarce, and we are fortunate enough to have a series of all twelve (including a couple of duplicate numbers) in stock. For details on price, please see the Collected Editions series of our online catalogue.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A small update to the hugely popular Comet title, 4 issues from 1957 inc. the Christmas issue and 6 from 1958, a year previously unrepresented in our listings.

*Girls’ Comics: In the real world, summer may be drawing to a close, but here at 30th Century our Long Hot Summer rolls on! More from Princess Tina, the pan-European girls’ anthology which, in a spirit of egalitarianism circa 1971, dropped its royal title and became plain ‘Tina’ for its final couple of years. Two more new entires in the Special stakes – Princess Tina Summer Extra 1971, GD/VG £40 and Tina Holiday Special 1979 VG/FN £45, the latter with a free bonus – an incomplete copy of the 1978 Holiday Special! Among the features are Sue Day and the ‘Happy Days’, ‘Alona the Wild One’, ‘Chairman Cherry’, ‘Milly the Merry Mermaid’, peripatetic popstress ‘Jackie and the Wild Boys’, and, a personal favourite here at 30th Century, ‘Jane Bond’, the curvaceous blonde secret agent for ‘Worldpol’ whose main method of combat seems to be rugby-tackling her foes and then rolling around on them; astonishingly, very few ever seem to raise an objection! SORRY, THESE HAVE 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 files in our American section:
*Miscellaneous 1960 Onwards
and in our British section:
*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics (H-K)
and in our Books Section:
*Crime, Spies & Sleaze
As of the time of writing, these categories are bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: The most poetic of SF writers has just been restocked, with gems such as Fahrenheit 451, Machineries Of Joy (the The went missing for this edition), R Is For Rocket, The Golden Apples Of The Sun and The Silver Locusts (also known as The Martian Chronicles). Most are in the Corgi edition with the stylish cover shown by Something Wicked This Way Comes. Who can resist a story set in space that begins with ‘ “South”, said the captain.’?

*DC: “What?” we hear you gasp, “A twenty-first century comic in the listings?” Well, even though we’re famous for crumbly old comics, we do sometimes admit a deserving modern item to the catalogue, and 2002’s Y The Last Man #1 is such an exception. After a devastating event which eliminates all men – and all male mammals – from planet Earth, society must restructure itself with an all-female paradigm. But not quite all-female. Two males survive: Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand. Some factions of the surviving women want to rescue Yorick, some to study him, some to use him, some to eradicate him; but with literally all the women in the world seeking him, Yorick wants only one woman: his girlfriend, who was across the globe when the cataclysm hit. Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi series was a huge hit for DC/Vertigo, winning shedloads of awards, and is being adapted into a TV series, so interest will only climb. This first issue is NM at £150. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Marvel: From 1984, a little later than most fare in our catalogue, the famous Marvel series which launched a sequence of crossover ‘events’ that still reverberate through the Marvel Universe today. Secret Wars was the first of its kind, and featured many landmarks, but most famously the origin of Spidey’s black costume (later revealed to be the alien symbiote Venom) in #8. Cuddly brain-eating symbiotes remaining eternally popular with the kiddies, this origin issue is keenly sought-after, and our incoming Secret Wars #8 is a highly attractive NM/M p copy at £75. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Marvel: The 1972-launched Marvel Team-Up paired Spidey (and occasionally the Human Torch) with a different one of Marvel’s best and boldest each issue, providing readers with a chance to be exposed to new and unfamiliar characters – and, by happy coincidence, enable Marvel to retain copyright on heroes who didn’t currently have their own series! We have around twenty issues of MTU newly listed, from #1 (VG £20 pictured) to #100 (1st Karma – later of the New Mutants – by Frank Miller), but primarily focused on the first 23 issues – prior to the series’ distribution in the UK.

*Marvel: With the ongoing popularity of the Marvel Conan the Barbarian series, we’ve now, rather than just listing the first hundred as previously, elevated our entire stock of the first run into our catalogue stock. In addition, we’re now listing the 1980 spin-off King Conan, dealing with our hero’s more mature years (though his only concessions to his regal status seem to have been getting a Prince Valiant ‘do and putting a vest on, otherwise it’s mighty-thewed barbarian hijinx as usual.). Buy them all, by Crom!

*Teen Humour/Funny Girls: From the Timely/Atlas/Marvel stable of funny girls, My Friend Irma, the comics adaptation of the popular B-movie and radio series from the 1940s starring Marie Windsor as possibly the dumbest ‘dumb blonde’ ever. What brought the Irma comic out of the crowd of similar titles, though, was the artwork by Dan DeCarlo, delightful and engaging, establishing his reputation as the definitive ‘funny girl’ artist. Half a dozen new issues of Irma, all complete, but in very affordable low to mid grades, are new to our stock, as well as a handful of fellow-travellers: Cindy Smith, Nellie the Nurse, and a relative latecomer at the beginnings of the Marvel Universe, Kathy the Teen-Age Tornado!

*Mad & Other Parody: Mad Magazine, the parody anthology founded by William Gaines, has become a byword in satirical commentary, and we are delighted, after too long a gap, to announce a significant influx of new stock. We have a scattering of the American edition, between 1975 and 2016, and a soupcon of Sick, one of Mad’s many imitators, but the main thrust of this update is close to 100 copies of early UK Mads, beginning with #4 (illustrated VG £30) and ending with #202. Dave Berg, Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Wally Wood, Mort Drucker and a plethora of parody stars can be found in these issues at various points, and the satirical targets range from politicians, world leaders and public figures to popular media hits of years agone, including ‘2001’, ‘Peanuts’, and an obscure thing you may not have heard of called ‘Star Wars’. Check out the ‘Mad & other Parody’ section of our online catalogue for all the details!

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Three unusual Specials for 2000 AD, the galaxy’s greatest science-fiction comic! From 1977, the very first 2000 AD Summer Special, featuring several of the iconic series and – because the weekly hadn’t been going that long – some other features that looked decidedly quaint to the discerning reader. From 1992, the 2000 AD Action Special, in which some of Britain’s most outlandish comic talents turned their hands to reinventing classic series like the Spider, Kelly’s Eye, the Steel Claw and Mytek – many of which the publishers didn’t actually own, oops, so this puppy’s never going to be reprinted! And finally, the 1988 Winter Special, featuring, among others, the cult slacker superhero strip ‘Zenith’, by Grant Morrison. The 1977 Summer Special ‘Supercomic’ – to give it its full title – is VG at £15; for details of the others, see our online catalogue. SORRY, 1977 SPECIAL NOW SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A massive update to our stock of the long running story paper Wizard, with lots of issues of the first series from 1949-60 and lots of the second series from 1970-76 (from #3). First series features include the Boyhood of Desperate Dan and the story of Charles Darwin; the second series is much more football orientated. Christmas and New Year issues included, with many gaps filled in our stock for both series.

*Humour Comics: Taking a break from our ‘Bring on the Buster’ marathon, we bring you a cornucopia of chuckles from three decades, with new stock in for Beano (from 1962), Buster (a small run from 1976), the Cor! Christmas issue from 1973, Dandy from 1976 to 1979, Magic (a facsimile of the first issue of Dandy and Beano’s forgotten sibling, launched in 1939), Nutty from #1 (first Bananaman!) to #71, Shiver and Shake from 1973, Whoopee #1 in PR/FA, a dash of Whizzer & Chips from 1972, and two publications oriented towards the older-but-immature: Oink! from 1988, with that year’s Summer Special, and Viz, restocked between #34 and #54. Biffo, Korky, Buster, Gus Gorilla, Tom Thug, Pete and His Pimple, Bananaman and the Fat Slags – all present for a cavacade of fun, frolics, and occasional filth!

Our previously-listed spotlight this week falls on a Marvel landmark! An unassuming back-up story in Strange Tales #110 saw the debut of Doctor Strange, a man of mystery and master of magic who was probably not originally conceived as a series star. After all, just a short while prior, the very-similar, though lesser-powered, Doctor Droom had crashed and burned in the first Marvel series of Amazing Adventures. But Doctor Strange had a secret ingredient that Doctor Droom had not: the illustrative powers of Steve Ditko, who conferred upon the Doctor and his environs a genuinely otherworldly quality, eerie and evocative, which kept the readers coming back for more. Rising to the challenge, scripter Stan Lee soon developed the Doctor’s adventures from short twist-ending one-offs to phantasmagorical sagas, and the Doctor has been the mystic nexus of the Marvel Universe, culminating in the hugely successful film starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Not that you could have predicted any of that from this issue’s cover, which doesn’t even mention Doctor Strange, but focuses solely on the Human Torch battling the Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete, in their pre-Frightful Four days! Never mind, we do promise you it’s in there! This copy of a landmark issue is a CBCS slabbed copy, graded at 5.5 (FN-), with minimal corner and edge wear, and deep vivid cover colour and gloss. On sale at £1,500.

*Clearance Corner: The most famous name in the post-war boom in British gangster ‘pulps’ (curiously, mostly set in the both seedy and glamorous USA) was Hank Janson. Written by ‘Hank’ and telling his adventures as a journalist and later general adventurer, these were in reality written by Stephen D Frances, although by the late 1950s and early 60s, Hank Janson was very much a house name and his novels were written by myriad hands. We have on offer a selection of later Hank Janson novels published by Compact, with titles like ‘Visit From A Broad’, ‘Voodoo Violence’, ‘Dateline Debbie’ etc; these are hard-boiled examples of the genre, with covers featuring scantily clad women drawn with varying degrees of quality. We got rather more of these in from a huge collection than we have room for on our shelves, so we’re clearing them in a great opportunity for bulk reading. 32 books (with one duplicate) for just £10; mostly Good condition, with some Fair and some Poor. (UK postage if required would be an additional £13.50 — these fit in a box weighing 4.5 kg).      

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: The latest in our sequence featuring the best of British Comics! A huge pride of Lions joins our stock this week for the years 1959-1963 (from the end of ’59 to the beginning of ’63). 169 issues fresh into our boxes, with just a few gaps in numbers, and in nice shape, the vast majority being nice VG or even FN grades, with just a handful of GD. Paddy Payne, Warrior of the Skies, cover-starred throughout this period, and familiar favourites such as Robot Archie, Captain Condor, Karl the Viking (by Don Lawrence), Rory Macduff & Bruce Kent awaited the reader inside (I was such a reader, having the Lion delivered at the time!). One of the best of British Boys’ Adventure Comics, and very welcome additions to years previously under-represented in our stock. Illustrated are 24/10/59 (1st Lion & Sun, 1st Rory Macduff) and 29/10/60 (1st Karl the Viking as Sword Of Eingar).

*DC: Continuing our trip through the DC Golden Age of Comics! Following his successful run in the anthology Flash Comics, Jay Garrick – the first Fastest Man Alive – gained his own solo quarterly, rather awkwardly entitled All-Flash, bringing more hyper-speed adventures to an eager public. We have two of these rarities new in. Issue #21 from 1945 is VG- at £110, with the only significant flaws being a small corner off the upper right cover, and a tiny bit of rodent damage immediately below that – see picture – which does not encroach upon the stories. Issue #23 from 1946 is an unabashed FN, with clean unimpaired cover scene, minimal corner and edge wear, and attractive undamaged interiors for £165.

*Marvel: The second appearances of three iconic Marvel characters are the focus of this update: Journey Into Mystery #84 pits the newly-minted God of Thunder against the Executioner (not that Executioner, but obviously Stan & Co. liked the name so much they recycled it soon thereafter); Tales of Suspense #40 has the Armoured Avenger become the Golden Avenger for the very first time, blinging up his formerly leaden-grey armour and up against Gargantus (who?) and Tales to Astonish #35 features the return of Hank Pym (who in TTA #27 was merely a nerdy scientist) as the costumed adventurer Ant-Man for the very first time! All three of these classics are illustrated below; JIM #84 is VG cents £350, but with a possible very slight trim at the right edge – we are not conclusive on the issue; TOS #40 is an attractive VG+ cents copy at £335, with very minimal chipping at the cover edge; the first ‘proper’ Ant-Man in TTA #35, is a VG+ pence copy at £440. SORRY, TALES OF SUSPENSE #40 & JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #84 HAVE NOW SOLD

*Marvel: The Merc-With-A-Mouth struck such a chord with readers in the 1990s that, following his New Mutants #98 debut and a mini-series, he gained his own ongoing book in 1997 – having transmuted from a frankly rather dull and bog-standard Guy-With-A-Gun to the wisecracking multiple-personality-psychotic we all know today. This is what may be regarded as the start of the ‘real’ Deadpool – the one beloved by movie fans worldwide. Our copy of the 1997 #1 issue is VF- at £25, and to back it up, we also bring you #2 NM £15. These won’t stick around for long, so maximum effort, people! SORRY, THESE HAVE NOW SOLD

*Teen Humour/Funny Girls: Amongst fans of the ‘funny career girl’ sub-genre of comics (and there’s more of us around than you’d imagine), Sherry the Showgirl is acknowledged as one of the hardest to find. This story of an aspiring singer/dancer and her wacky friends is cut from the same template as Millie, Nellie, Tessie and the gang, but its short run and confusing publication history (it ran three issues, became ‘Showgirls’ with #4, reverted to Sherry for #4-7, then became Showgirls series II, #1 & #2) bewilders even the most diligent pursuer. However, we’re very pleased to have acquired #7, the final ‘Sherry’ solo issue, in an attractive VG with minimal corner and edge wear. Insanely rare anywhere, and with very few copies known in the UK, you can pick her up for £100.

*Modesty Blaise: We’ve finally reached the end of Titan’s sequential printing of all the Modesty Blaise strips from the Evening Standard, with Volume 30 in the series: The Killing Game. This last volume also features The Last Aristocrat and the final Modesty newspaper strip tale The Zombie. It’s taken years to get here, but finally, we Modesty devotees can have all the stories complete in one uniform volume (although some of the earlier volumes in the series are now out of print, we do have a selection of these available alongside this final volume). See our listings for details.