*Marvel: We do love those Big Panty Monsters here at 30th C., and we’re not alone, as our valued customers eagerly snap up these (mostly) Lee & Kirby tales of giant monsters bestriding a (nearly) defeated Earth, sensibly attired in sturdy M&S knickers from the ‘Ample Matron’ range. We’re chuffed to welcome several new entries in this sub-genre into stock. Journey Into Mystery #58 brings us ‘Rro!’, a superb VG, vivid red cover, only a bit of ‘flakiness’ around lower right corner belying a higher grade. We have not one, but two copies of Tales of Suspense #25, with ‘The Death of Monstrollo’, one in VG- (moderate spine and slight lower right cover creasing), and one in GD+, with a bit more creasing (including a light vertical crease bisecting Monstrollo’s head – as if he didn’t have enough problems!), but both clean and sound copies. Tales of Suspense #35 brings us the ‘Challenge of Zarkorr’, a spiffy VG+ with light lower cover wear, featuring an alleged Watcher prototype, while #38 steps away from the BPM tropes to give us the Genie-empowered ‘Teenager Who Ruled the World!’. Last but far from least, Tales to Astonish #16 brings us ‘Thorr!’ a menace who is not only one letter away from Marvel’s later God of Thunder, but is actually the model for his first opponents, the Stone Men. This, again, is a lovely VG with lustrous cover colour and only very faint discolouration at staple area. In addition to the cover-featured BPMs, of course, most of these lovelies also feature a Lee & Ditko twist-ending thriller, and other mystery tales from Don Heck, Gene Colan and other classic Bullpen artists.
PICTURED:
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #58 VG P £75
TALES OF SUSPENSE
#25 VG- p £65
#35 VG+ p £50
TALES TO ASTONISH #16 VG p £90

*Horror 1940-1959: Two stunners this week from Avon’s short-lived, but long-remembered, series Witchcraft, a horror anthology featuring the talents of Hollingsworth, Meskin, Roussos, Kinstler, Lazarus, Fawcette and more. In stories such as ‘Diary of a Monster!’ ‘The Man Who Bribed Death!’ and ‘Mystery of the Venus Flyer’, our beleaguered protagonists face beheadings, hangings and the good old threat of being cooked alive – and these being Pre-Code terror tales, there’s no guarantee that anyone makes it to story’s end alive! Both these issues have eye-catching and imaginative cover scenes, though if pushed, we’d have to give the nod to #4’s ‘Cannibal Death’ cover. Neither has any flaws other than the general age-related wear indicated by the grade – perhaps a bit more corner and edge wear on the #6 than the #4, but both are sound and strong copies for their years.
PICTURED: WITCHCRAFT
#4 VG £350
#6 GD/VG £80

*Vintage Magazine-Sized Comics: In 1974, Marvel’s burgeoning black & white magazine line tapped into a lucrative franchise, the Planet of the Apes movies, which, at that time, were still being produced on a regular basis. While obviously leading with a comic strip adaptation of the first Apes movie, the Bullpen filled in the history of the series with ‘continuity implants’ taking place off-screen in the world of the movies. Although many talented people – Moench, Ploog, Simonson, Alcala – contributed to the interior stories, what sticks in many readers’ minds are the stunning painted covers by Bob Larkin, Earl Norem and others, each of which would readily serve as a movie poster on its own. We have 23 of the 29 issues in the series, including the very first issue signed (on the splash page) by Stan Lee! Averaging FN, with several VF in the mix, this is a rare significant selection of a highly sought after series which appeals to Marvel and movie collectors alike.
PICTURED: PLANET OF THE APES #1 FN+ £40 (SIGNED BY STAN LEE) SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: One of the earliest attempts to coherently re-present the Fleetway/IPC classic adventure series was 1975’s Vulcan, an experimental weekly which was smaller than usual – closer to American comic-book size – contained many colour pages, and reprinted in sequence several much-loved series from the past: The Spider, Kelly’s Eye, Trigan Empire, Robot Archie, Sabre, Mytek the Mighty and the Steel Claw. Launched successfully as a trial in Scotland, a national edition was rolled out in late ’75, and ironically lasted fewer issues than the trial run! The slick paper was a bit fragile, and copies of the short-lived series don’t survive damage well, so we’re delighted to have a FN copy of issue #2 of the National edition in this week, with the free gift – Magical Numbers Card Game – in VF! The game was originally presented in a punch-out card, and this copy is completely unpunched, all pieces firmly in situ.
PICTURED: VULCAN 4/10/75 (#2) FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £45 SOLD

*TV & Film Related Comics: For more seaside summer fun (appropriately, as we type this on a torrential March afternoon), we offer TV Comic Holiday Specials from 1968 and 1969. While these are not the earliest Holiday Specials of the long-running Polystyle publication, they are among the most in-demand, as in addition to the regular funny features – Diddymen, Mighty Moth, Basil Brush, TV Terrors, Popeye – both featured TV’s ‘Doctor Who’, (the Patrick Troughton iteration, in comic strip form) and the 1969 edition also has a text story of TV’s ‘Avengers’, John Steed and Tara King! These uncommon items are in exceptionally nice nick – the 1968 is FN/VF, marred only by slight weakness at the upper staple area, and the 1969 is an unchallenged VF.
PICTURED TV COMIC HOLIDAY SPECIAL
1968 FN/VF £80 SOLD
1969 VF £65 SOLD

*Girls’ Comics: A glossy big sister to Romeo aimed at a slightly trendier demographic, Jackie helped delight and inform (or brainwash, depending on your viewpoint) a generation of teenage girls and young women, with pop features and pin-ups, fashion and makeup tips, the ever-popular Problem Page, and scores of often beautifully illustrated romance comics stories. Free Gift issues of Jackie are uncommon, as the gifts were usually eagerly ripped away and consulted or applied in the hopes of snagging the Dream Boy, but these two are from a Newsagent’s uncirculated stock, and remain ‘gifted’. Issue #244, September 7th 1968, is GD/VG, light edge foxing, but the ‘Starscope’ booklet of astrological advice is pristine VF. Issue #296, September 6th 1969, is in nicer shape, though with a bit of a ‘bump’ on the covers caused by the phial of ‘Gorgeous Jackie Perfume’ having been stuck inside for a long time. (We also can’t promise how ‘Gorgeous’ it’ll be after more than half a century in storage, so really don’t try it out!)
PICTURED: JACKIE
#244 GD/VG WITH FREE GIFT VF £25
#296 FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £30 SOLD

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: Doc Savage and his amazing co-adventurers have had more escapades than most people have hot dinners. Here are five more tales of derring-do to entertain and mystify you: Pirate Of The Pacific, The Awful Egg, The Magic Island, The Purple Dragon and Tunnel Terror. All are in the 1970s Bantam edition, with cover art by James Bama (Pirate Of The Pacific) or Bob Larkin (all the rest).
PICTURED:
THE PURPLE DRAGON VG/FN £3 SOLD

*Clearance Corner: Our second clearance lot of the venerable Schoolgirls’ Own Library of text stories featuring plucky young misses. 32 issues from the second series which ran from 1946 to 1963, featuring tales of daring and justice in boarding schools at home and abroad. Numbers range from #246 to #291 and average VG, generally sound and clean with occasional rusty staples. Just to spell it out once again: these are text stories with illustrations, not comics. This cornucopia of prototypical Girl Power is yours for a mere £25 – UK postage, if required, a further £5.

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 section:
*Marvel T – Z
As of the time of writing, this file is bang up to date, with every item listed available.

*Marvel: Thor having handed his brother a sound defeat in #85, Loki’s first appearance, Marvel’s God of Mischief returned for another bout in #88, a Lee/Kirby classic clash taking sibling rivalry to the megaton level! Backed up by a Lee/Ditko twist-ending tale, ‘Behind Locked Doors’, and the Don Heck-illustrated ‘Long Live The Queen’, this early appearance of one of Marvel’s most enduring, and perversely endearing, villains is FN+, with great page quality and only a slight Marvel ‘chipping’ at the cover’s edge preventing a higher condition, typical of the superior standard of the Square Mile Collection.
PICTURED: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #88 FN+ p £225

*DC: Early Justice League of America issues are dear to our hearts here at 30th Century, and few more so than #7, ‘The Cosmic Fun-House’, wherein several JLA’ers are transformed into distorted mirror images of themselves. How does this come about? You’ll have to read it to find out, but we suspect this is one of those cases where, as legend has it, editor Julius Schwarz would come up with a cover idea and present it to writer Gardner Fox as a challenge: ‘Write a story to fit that!’ And he certainly did! This rather lovely VG+ copy has a few tiny flecks at the spine, and a minute corner ‘chip’ at the lower right corner, but is bright and vivid and generally much better presenting than the unadorned grade would suggest.
PICTURED: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #7 VG+ p £75

More from the Square Mile Collection next week!

*DC: Four early issues of Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, from near the beginning of his career! Having relaunched with #105, continuing the numbering of the 1940s Flash Comics, issue #110 saw the double debut of Wally West, Kid Flash, the super-fast youth who would one day take over the mantle of the Flash himself, and of the Weather Wizard, the climate-changing crook who would be an integral part of Flash’s Rogue’s Gallery! A couple of issues later, the Vizier of Velocity encountered the Stretchable Sleuth – Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man! Ralph became a character who broke all the super-hero rules of the day; he rapidly abandoned any pretence at a secret identity, he married early during an age of bachelor heroes, and he and his wife Sue became the Nick and Nora Charles of the super-set, solving crimes with charm and wit. All that was in the future, of course – but it started here! Both our #110 and #112 are graded FA+: the #110 has an approx. 2″ lower spine split, and moderate corner and spine wear, but is clean and sound with an unimpaired cover image. The #112 has vivid cover colour, excellent page quality, with only a tiny strip of colour fading (less than 1mm) at the top cover edge, and rusty staples. In addition, we have two other issues from the early days of UK distribution: #111, ‘Invasion of the Cloud Creatures!’, and #115, another in DC’s seemingly endless parade of ‘fat heroes are funny’ covers, ‘The Day Flash Weighed 1,000 Pounds!’ All magnificent work from John Broome, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson and Joe Giella.
PICTURED: FLASH
#110 FA+ p £150 SOLD
#112 FA+ p £70 SOLD

*Marvel: The 100th Anniversary issue of Marvel’s solo super-star, the Amazing Spider-Man! Dated September 1971, this Stan Lee/Gil Kane epic features – behind an iconic John Romita cover – our tortured hero debating his roles in life, and endeavouring to choose, as the title suggests, between ‘The Spider… Or The Man?’ Ironically, the issue ends with him becoming an eerie amalgam of both! This copy of an early Marvel centenary is VG+ pence, with light creasing in lower right cover corner, slight spine roll but firm staples and good cover colour with unmarred image.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #100 VG+ p £60

*Marvel: Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars, the brainchild of then Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter, was the first of the mega-crossovers in 1984, pre-dating even DC’s more famous Crisis On Infinite Earths, and setting a company-wide precedent for decades to come. The key issue of this series is of course #8, with the first in-timeline appearance of the black alien symbiote Spider-Man costume which would, eventually become Venom. (Its first chronological appearance was in ASM #252, but this flashback explained how Pete got it). However, other events this series included the first appearance of new heroine Spider-Woman II (Julia Carpenter, later Arachne) the premiere of two villainesses, Titania and Volcana, and the death of the Wasp! (It’s okay; she was only gone for a minute.) We have the entire original series fresh into stock, pence copies in attractive high grades, and being sold as a set of 12.
PICTURED: SECRET WARS #8 VF+ p; COMPLETE SET #1-12 AV. VF/NM £140

*Marvel: Strange Tales from the 1960s is sought after for myriad reasons, most often because of the dynamic, cinematic artwork of Jim Steranko, who brought a freshness to spy saga Nick Fury and The Agents of SHIELD which tapped perfectly into the zeitgeist of the era. But that doesn’t apply in this instance. No, the hoo and the hah this time is for the Marie Severin illustrated Doctor Strange co-feature, and more specifically for the Living Tribunal, a cosmic entity whose power outstrips the Watcher and may even match that of Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet! For years a relatively small part of Marvel’s cosmic tapestry, the Tribunal’s prominence has increased with his (its?) greater involvement in sundry cosmic sagas, to the point where interest in his early appearances is at its keenest. Strange Tales #157, with a last page Living Tribunal cameo, is FN, with light to moderate vertical creasing at spine area. #158, with the first full Tribunal and his first cover appearance, is FN-, still very presentable, with vivid red unfaded cover colour, but a few spine ‘ticks’ and one small (less than 1mm) nick at the lower cover edge.
PICTURED: STRANGE TALES
#157 FN p £75 SOLD
#158 FN- p £90 SOLD

*Marvel: We welcome the King of Wakanda back to our listings at the hands of Jack ‘King’ Kirby’s 1977 series, the first 14 of this 15 issue run. Full of Kirby’s pyrotechnics and brainstorming ideas, which seemed, to be frank, a little barmy at the time, but which hold up surprisingly well by today’s standards. 

*Marvel: Marvel’s Armoured Avenger takes the spotlight this update, with issues from the first 50 (and okay, just a bit over) newly listed! We open with #12, debut of the ever-captivatin’ Controller, and this selection also includes #33’s premier appearance of the Spymaster, and a guest-villain shot by Princess Python in #50, as well as some less frequent visitors to Tony Stark’s Rogue’s Gallery – Demon-Queen, White Dragon or Raga Son of Fire, anyone? The first couple of issues in this new wave are low grade, but things rapidly improve to VG/FN average, with a couple of FN/VF grades to tickle your tastebuds. 15 new numbers of vintage Iron Man action for your delectation!

*Marvel: A selection from the classic X-Men run by Claremont & Byrne; this update, issues between #120 & #142, with famous stories such as the debut of Alpha Flight, the White Queen & the Black Queen from the Hellfire Club, and the Days Of Future Passed two-parter. The ‘new’ X-Men were never better!

*Western: A chunky update to our Marvel 1960s/70s Western stock from the following titles: Ghost Rider (inc #1), Kid Colt, Mighty Marvel Western (#1), Rawhide Kid, Red Wolf (from #1, the series that spanned the Old West to the then-modern day), Two-Gun Kid and Western Gunfighters.

*Magazines/Books About Vintage US Comics: From the 1970s through to the 1990s, a selection of the ‘zines which defined a generation of UK fandom, including Chain Reaction, Comics Forum, Comics Unlimited, Direct Currents, Fantasy Advertiser, the Panelhouse, and Worlds Collide! These are from the archive (well, disorganized storage boxes!) of 30th Century’s own Will Morgan, who under his ‘maiden name’ of Howard Stangroom, was a prominent contributor to all of these ‘zines and scores more. Subjects of the articles and interviews in these issues include Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, Sergio Aragones, Moebius, Alex Toth, Hugo Pratt, the Brothers Hernandez, Alex Ross, Gil Kane, Colleeen Doran, and Bryan Talbot. With extremely limited print runs (seldom exceeding 500, and sometimes fewer than 100), these are increasingly rare items, featuring art and text by many people who went on to professional careers.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: A new selection of high grade Commando Picture Libraries fresh into stock in the number range from #479 to #529. Almost every issue present and nearly all VF, with just a handful falling lower. There’s no doubt that Commando is the most famous and longest lasting Picture Library of them all (still going strong today, nearly 60 years after issue #1!)

*Girls’ Comics: Two consecutive 1969 issues of Bunty with Free Gifts, in one of the perennial attempts to revitalise the readership. Issue #615 is in Fine condition, clean and flat, with the ‘Book of Me and My Friends’ gift in generally excellent shape but with sadly rusty staples, so we’ve compromised on FN. Issue #616 is VG – there’s a bit of cover distortion from the Free Gift – the frankly creepy ‘Jolly Dolly’ – having been stored inside its pages for decades – but the gift itself is VF, still in original polythene envelope.
PICTURED: BUNTY
#615 FN WITH FREE GIFT FN £40 SOLD
#616 VG WITH FREE GIFT VF £40 SOLD

*Comic Strip Books: We’re very pleased to offer three books collecting classic Stan Lee Marvel stories. Doctor Strange has a Frank Brunner cover and Steve Ditko interior art, reprinting the first 18 original Doctor Strange stories from Strange Tales. The Amazing Spider-Man has Ditko art throughout and reprints the Web-slinger’s debut from Amazing Fantasy #15 and stories from Amazing Spider-Man #1 – 6. Finally, The Fantastic Four has Jack Kirby interior art and reprints Fantastic Four #1 – 6. All three have introductions from Stan Lee and are in VG/FN condition; full colour throughout.
PICTURED:
DOCTOR STRANGE VG/FN £18 SOLD
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VG/FN £10 SOLD
THE FANTASTIC FOUR VG/FN £10 SOLD

*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: Short story collections are always popular, so we’ve added more than a dozen examples of collections by some of the best SF authors. James Blish contributes Galactic Cluster, James Gunn Future Imperfect and Clifford Simak provides Aliens For Neighbours. Thera are three from John Brunner (No Future In It, Now Then and Out Of My Mind), four from Keith Laumer (Nine By Laumer, Galactic Diplomat, Retief: Emissary To The Stars and Retief Of The CDT) and six from Robert Silverberg (Born With The Dead, Earth’s Other Shadow, Needle In A Timestack, The Best Of Robert Silverberg, To Worlds Beyond and Unfamiliar Territory). With reviews including ‘Blish’s starkly realistic stories mirror the perils of the world of the future .. – where scientists can master the intricacies of space travel … yet cannot control man’s worst instincts’ (Galactic Cluster), ‘9 dazzling short stories’ (Nine By Laumer), ‘rich in that engaging ingenuity which Simak’s innumerable fans know so well’ (Aliens For Neighbours) and a brilliantly grudging endorsement of Robert Silverberg from Isaac Asimov (To Worlds Beyond), these all come highly recommended.
PICTURED:
JOHN BRUNNER  NOW THEN VG £4
KEITH LAUMER  RETIEF: EMISSARY TO THE STARS VG £5
ROBERT SILVERBERG  TO WORLDS BEYOND VG/FN £7
CLIFFORD D SIMAK ALIENS FOR NEIGHBOURS VG £7

This is an early Silver Age Collection from an original owner notable for the freshness and vibrancy of the cover colours and page quality; even those with minor reading and handling wear are vastly superior to the majority of comics that have been in circulation since the 1960s. The average grade is well above Fine, with many much nicer.

We’ll be adding selections from this collection for sale here each week across the range of titles represented. These will be over a range of prices each week to suit most budgets, so that all interested collectors have an opportunity to purchase something from this special collection. Each comic will come branded with a special label and certificate of authenticity verifying it as part of the Square Mile Collection. Here’s this week’s: