*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Another comprehensive batch of Eagles fresh in, this time Volumes 4, 5 & 13 virtually complete, including Christmas issues, mostly around a very respectable GD/VG grade and filling lots of gaps in our stock listings.

*Humour Comics: We continue our massive restock of IPC/Fleetway’s longest-running humour weekly with around 70 copies from the year 1971 (most of the years’ numbers, plus additional copies in varying grades for more buying choices) and – alert readers remembering we already did ’72 and ’73 previously – we then skip over to 1974, in which former Cor! stars such as ‘Ivor Lott and Tony Broke’, ‘Val’s Vanishing Cream’, ‘Chalky’ and ‘Tomboy’ considerably up the humour quotient, while the heartrending and Kafkaesque ‘Marney the Fox’ is a superior new adventure addition by the team of Scott Goodall and John Stokes. More to come as we wend our way through the decades!

We’ve been very fortunate over the years to have had through our hands hundreds, if not thousands of issues of Pre-Code Horror, that very infamous genre that corrupted the youth of America in the 1940s and 50s. Vigourously sought after by collectors these days, we still have a very intense turnover of these controversial comics, although in recent years the supply s drying up. Fortunately, still a box and a half full of stock remains in our vaults, including these couple of examples: The Thing #17, a beautiful and uncommon VF copy sporting a Ditko cover and Powell art, the final issue of this Charlton series at £450; and Weird Tales Of The Future #1 from Morse (Key), with Wolverton partial cover and Andru art FN at £290. Take a look through our Horror 1940-1959 category for lots more gruesome specimens!

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:
*Tarzan/E R Burroughs
*Phantom
*Flash Gordon
*Spirit
*Modesty Blaise
and in our British section:
*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics (A – D)
As of the time of writing, these categories are bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*DC: Our latest third-party graded acquisition is the twelfth issue of the original Justice League of America, the World’s Mightiest Heroes, wherein they squared off against the Villain of the Visible Spectrum, Dr. Light! This issue, by the classic team of Fox, Sekowsky and Sachs, launched the career of one of the League’s most enduring villains, who went on to many battles with the team en masse and individually, as well as lengthy spells as a villain in New Teen Titans and a reluctant hero in Suicide Squad. This copy is a CGC Blue Label (indicating no repair or restoration), 6.5  (equivalent FN+) at £100.

*DC/Marvel: A key entry in our new category with the first ever DC/Marvel joint effort. From 1976, the ground-breaking cross-company crossover as the two greatest solo stars of DC and Marvel met for the first time in Superman Vs. the Amazing Spider-Man! This tabloid-size event united the creative teams of the two companies, and set a precedent for a number of subsequent, very lucrative, collaborations between the opposing bullpens! This is a VG+ pence copy at £30, and we anticipate it will sell just as rapidly as every other one we’ve ever had in stock, so don’t dilly-dally – order today! SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Marvel: The 87th issue of the ‘junior X-Men’ series, New Mutants, featured the first full appearance (he had made a fleeting walk-on in the previous) of the man named Cable, the man from an apocalyptic near-future, son of Scott Summers by a cloned replica of Jean Grey, who came back in time to prevent his own future from coming to pass. Or something like that. His powers include metal bits, a strappy costume, really big guns, and glaring a lot. With a shiny eye, for no very good reason. Anyway, he took over the stewardship of the New Mutants from Magneto, and eventually honed the survivors into X-Force, a dubious achievement for which no-one should thank him. He’s since bobbed back between ‘now’ and the future, interfering with his own and the world’s time stream, and accosting various mutant children to become the Hope of the World. Kind of like Mary Poppins, he’s a super-powered nanny with metal limbs. Confusing back history and ambiguous abilities or not, he’s scheduled to be appearing in the next Deadpool movie, so interest in the character’s early appearances has skyrocketed. This VF/NM Pence copy is in excellent condition, and believe me, the time will come when you’ll look back upon this as a snip at £95. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Teen Humour/Funny Girls: Having had the good fortune to have just acquired a significant amount of the 1940’s and 1950’s “Teen Humour/Funny Girls” comics, we will be releasing these over the next several weeks as fast as we can prepare them – so brace yourself for a barrage of beauty and buffoonery! We begin with Timely/Atlas’ Hedy DeVine, actress and blonde bombshell, whose series title was changed to Hedy of Hollywood for the hard of thinking, but featured the same star throughout. Issue #30 of Hedy’s own series is a highly-attractive VG at £55. (Pictured) Not only starring Hedy, Millie the Model and Tessie the Typist (those girls hung out in each other’s books a lot), but also featuring two of Harvey Kurtzman’s eclectic ‘Hey Look!’ strips, it has a two-pronged fanbase. We also offer a later issue of Hedy of Hollywood, #46, at a more pocket-money price for folks who’re interested in sampling. Look for many more entries in this category: Millie, Irma, Patsy & Hedy (different Hedy), and many more lovelies looming in your future…

*Collected Editions: Three handsome additions to this popular category: firstly, Hawk Books’ deluxe reissue of Dan Dare in oversized colour hardcovers. This fourth volume, reprinting the entire Prisoner of Space story, is VG £30. Hawk also produced a series of ‘Eagle Classics’ paperbacks, including the well-remembered western ‘Riders of the Range’, large-format full-colour in VF at £10. And from Hamlyn in 1978, the first attempt at a sequential reprint of the acclaimed Don Lawrence-illustrated space saga, The Trigan Empire; this copy is Fine at £50.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A huge army of Warlord comics have bivouacked in the Boy’s section in our basement, reinforcing those already present. From #8 (1974) to #223 (1978), including the 1st issue of Warlord & Bullet (#220) and filling many gaps in our listings.

*Girls’ Comics: Our latest British #1 comes with a whole lot of successive issues! The venerable but faltering Princess weekly had, by 1967, seen better days, but its editors had a cunning plan: Tina, the weekly comic launched earlier that year, was a rollicking success, with translated iterations all over Europe and hundreds of thousands of girls rejoicing in the antics of ‘Jackie and the Wild Boys’, ‘Jane Bond’, ‘Super-Girl Sandra’ and ‘Moira – Slave Girl of Ancient Rome’, not to mention fashion-doll ‘Barbie’. So in the last few days of Princess, they had Tina stalwarts ‘guest’ in order to lull the readership for the upcoming ‘great news, chums!’ announcement, wherein Princess combined with Tina – but this was no ordinary merger, more a virtual relaunch as ‘Princess Tina’, with Princess stalwarts ‘Sue Day’ and ‘Alona’ taking prime positions. The re-branded Princess Tina ran on happily, in one form or another, until 1972, and we have the first issue from 1967, as well as a scattering from 1968 & 1969, and then a reasonable selection from 1970, the year in which Princess T. absorbed the faltering Penelope – though Penny’s own series was the only one to make that jump! Illustrated are the first Princess Tina issue from 23rd September 1967 (VG at £25), and 17th October 1970, just because it’s a very nice cover!

*Marvel: Something very special this update. Spidey squares off against the Sinister Six in his first annual from 1964 in a 41 page Lee/Ditko masterpiece. Dr Octopus, Electro, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, the Vulture and the Sandman team up to take on the webspinner in what is arguably Steve Ditko’s finest work on his co-creation. Nowhere is this more exemplified than in the glorious full page panels of Spidey fighting each of his foes in turn. The remainder of this 72 page annual is chock-full of pin-ups and superb features, also all illustrated by Ditko. In VF+ grade at £1350. An extraordinarily well-preserved copy, exceptional in this high grade. Virtually no spine wear, tight and flat, perfect staples, lovely off white pages. Great cover gloss and colour with vivid white background. A couple of tiny marks at spine edge and across bottom of cover stop it being NM. The nicest copy we’ve ever seen of this rare item, which would grace the most prestigious of Spider-Man collections. High resolution scans of front and back covers are available on request. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*DC: Having spotlit Superman in our previous Golden Age DC Greats alert, we turn our attention this week to the Guardian of Gotham City. Batman #32 features not only a Joker story, but the origin of Robin retold (for the first time at some length), and a time-twisting tale in which our Dynamic Duo team up with the Three Musketeers! This copy is GD-; superficially nicer, but with  spine splits at top and botom up to the staples marring the profile of what would otherwise be a very nice mid-grade copy. Bargainaceous at £115! We then have a brace of Detective Comics – issues #111 GD £75 and 138 VG+ £225 (invisible Joker cover and story), co-starring Batman & Robin with Air Wave, Slam Bradley, Robotman, Slam Bradley and the Boy Commandos, among various others. Finally, a lovely copy of an early World’s Finest Comics, #18 dated Summer 1945. This 100-page squarebound extravaganza stars not only Batman & Robin, but Superman, Green Arrow, Star-Spangled Kid, Zatara, the Boy Commandos and others. For its vintage, this is an extraordinarily attractive copy, with an unmarred white cover background, tight binding, and remarkably well-preserved tight interiors, with none of the rolling or sliding normally associated with glued squarebound spines. Its only flaw is that at some point in the intervening decades, the lowest 1/2″ of the spine has somehow been cleanly removed, but still, a thing of beauty; FN- at £320.

*DC: Another sweep through the Silver & Bronze Ages of the DCU to fill gaps in our catalogue for the following titles: Adventure Comics, All-Star Comics, Brave & Bold, Eighty Page Giant, Flash, Green Lantern, Jimmy Olsen and Justice League of America.

*Marvel: Fantastic Four #48 presented what is regarded by many as the apex of the FF’s cosmic adventures, as they, and we, met for the first time not only the planet-devouring entity known as Galactus, but also the Silver Surfer, Galactus’ herald, who announced the imminent doom of the planets on Galctus’ platter. Both characters became hugely popular, with Galactus becoming a synonym for cosmic threat, and the Silver Surfer going on to many highly-acclaimed series of his of title, commencing with his Lee/Buscema 1968 series and continuing to the present day with Slott and Allred, with Moebius, Englehart, Rogers, Starlin and numerous other legendary creators along the way. It all started here! This copy of #48 is a cents issue, with no pence stamp, though it does have a small pence price hand-written just above the ‘A’ of Galactus. Several interior pages have narrow margins, we suspect owing to an initial press misalignment, but the story itself is unmarred, and there is a tiny chip off the bottom right cover corner. However, the cover colour is deep and vivid, and the overall appeal of the book is considerably greater than the VG grade implies. This epochal issue is VG at £175. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD

*Marvel: After almost a decade in limbo, Captain America was famously returned to the modern-day Marvel Universe in Avengers #4, and proved such a hit that not only did he become the heart of the Avengers, but became once again the star of his own series. In Tales of Suspense #58, through a series of contrivances we won’t go into here, Iron Man, previously the solo star, battled Captain America, and in the very next issue, with an admirable spirit of forgiveness, Shell-Head welcomed Wing-Head as his co-star in what was now one of Marvel’s ‘split’ books. We have both these historic issues back in stock in extremely appealing grades. Both are cents copies, with no UK price stamp or overprint, and both have deep, vibrant cover colour, tight corners and staples, and flexible, off-white interior pages. The #58 is VG/FN £100, and the #59, a truly remarkable FN/VF, is £165.

*Marvel: A large update to our Marvel Silver/Bronze stocks, featuring Daredevil from #124-199, Doc Savage, Dr. Strange (both first and second series) and Fantastic Four between #56 & #183. Dozens of new issues added, mostly in nice grade. 

*Marvel UK: Our #1 issue event rolls on with a quartet of debut issues from the House of (Repurposed) Ideas! From 1975, the first issue of Titans, the ‘landscape’ weekly (which was cancelled when it dawned on the editors that that format ate up the reprint material twice as fast!) in FN at £15, with its original Free Gift Poster, also FN. And from the 1980s a trio of later launches: Marvel Action #1 FN £12, with Thor sticker also FN (and a new cover by then-newbie Alan Davis!); Marvel Super Adventure #1 FN £12, with Daredevil Iron-On Transfer also FN and finally, Valour #1 GD £8, with free gift – wait for it – Devil Dinosaur jigsaw, in FN!

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Victor, the premier war comic, is freshly restocked this week for the years 1972-74, with virtually every issue for those years now available in a choice of grades and prices.

*TV & Film Related Comics: Small updates to two of the most popular titles in this category. Just 3 issues of Look-In, but including an issue each from 1971 and 1972, the first two years and the very final issue (pictured) from 1994 (VF £15). 7 issues of TV Comic, starting with the Christmas issue from 1970 with Dr Who & the Avengers, then the remainder from 1978/79, all with Dr Who, including the first TV Comic & Target (#1393) and the Christmas issue for 1978. Check our catalogue for full details.  

*Humour Comics: Several dozen Beanos added to our listings, mostly from 1979-1983, inc the 2000th Anniversary issue, plus a few later special issues: #2402 (1988 50th Birthday issue with Free Gift Poster), #2423 (Christmas issue 1988), #2632 (Christmas issue 1992), #2684 (Christmas issue 1993) & #2692 (1994 40th Anniversary Bash Street Kids). 

*Girl’s Picture Libraries: The big four of D C Thomson’s Girls’ Picture Libraries significantly updated this week: Bunty between  #226-266, Debbie between #4-88, Judy between #73-266 and Mandy between #4-84. These great value ‘done-in-one’ publications remain constantly popular and now we have dozens more to choose from. 

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: The latest in our series of high profile British updates! In 1975, Fleetway/IPC tried to cash in on its fondly-remembered adventure series by launching a new anthology, Vulcan, in an unusual slick-paper format with dimensions approximating those of the American comic book, rather than the customary magazine size of UK comics. Gleaning features from across its vast inventory, they ran “The Trigan Empire” from Look and Learn, as the lead, with “Kelly’s Eye”, “Mytek the Mighty” and “The Steel Claw” from Valiant, “The Spider” and “Robot Archie” from Lion, and “Saber, King of the Jungle” from Tiger, for a cross-section of top talent, including Don Lawrence, Reg Bunn, Solano Lopez, Joe Colquhoun and Jesus Blasco – an A-list roster for a Z-List budget, as IPC paid no reprint royalties at the time! Vulcan was tried out in a Scottish-only edition with the first issue released in March 1975, and after a successful 30-issue run, re-launched with a national edition in September that year. Any issues of Vulcan are scarce these days – the relative flimsiness of the slick paper stock means that copies are rather too easily damaged, unless stored carefully – but most elusive are the Scottish editions, which had a proportionately restricted print run. We are very happy to have acquired a complete run of the Scottish editions, all 30 issues. Most of these are around VG grade, some higher, some lower, although the #1 issue is Poor only with the back cover missing, affecting the Robot Archie story. Prices on them are high, but we believe they’re justified by the scarcity of the items; in 2015, we had almost two complete sets in at the same time, which completely amazed us, and they flew out again very rapidly – in our near 25 years of trading, we had only ever seen half-a-dozen Scottish Vulcans before then, and we really have no clue when, if ever, we’ll see them again. Pictured below: #1-3 and #30, the final issue. All issues are illustrated in our catalogue, where full grading and pricing information may be seen.