*Teen Humour/Funny Girls: We celebrate the conclusion of our long-running ‘Date With Patsy’ event with a selection of Patsy & Hedy, which ran for 110 issues between 1952 and 1967. All things Patsy Walker have come through our hands this past year or two, and this long-running series showcased her friendly rivalry with Hedy Wolfe (all Betty & Veronica-like if you ask me). It’s fascinating to look through these and see how times, moods and fashions changed in the 15 years of the series duration, ending up as ‘Gals On The Go-Go’ in ‘Beach-Party Bombshells’. It’s been a delight sharing this corner of the Marvel Universe with you. Goodbye Patsy, until you cross our path again!   
PICTURED: PATSY & HEDY #108 VF £21

*Marvel/Memorabilia & Esoterica: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. On instruction from our consignment client, we’re now offering our one remaining piece of original comic art by long-serving Spidey artist Ross Andru at a reduced price, down from £1500. This is page 12 of Marvel-Team-Up #3 featuring the Human Torch and Peter Parker changing into Spider-Man. Ross Andru was THE prominent Spider-Man artist of the 1970s, drawing many famous issues including the deaths of Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin, the debut of the Punisher and the whole clone saga, among many others. This represents a very rare opportunity to grab a piece of original art from the most popular comic character of them all, seldom if ever offered for sale from a UK dealer. High resolution images are available on request. 
PICTURED: MARVEL TEAM-UP #3 PAGE 12 £1,250

*Annuals: If you’re like me, you just love these imagined futures from the 50s and 60s, when spaceships had rivets, saucers were flying, women were princesses and aliens were green. Four great examples in this update. The All Worlds Album (softcover), had a mixture of sci-fi, western, adventure, funnies and features, the star attraction being Swift Morgan and the Feathered Serpent by Dennis McLoughlin. The one-off Planet Adventure Book from Atlas 1962 (card covers) reprinted classic sci-fi from the pages of Fiction House’s Planet Comics, the leading US science-fiction comic of the 40s and 50s. Space Kingley and the Secret Squadron (hardcover 1954) had a mix of illustrated text and picture strips, on superior paper with many glossy colour plates and stylish art from R W Jobson. Little is known about Whopper Space Stories (hardcover), another mix of illustrated text and picture strip, but it has a very evocative cover.   
PICTURED: ALL SOLD
ALL WORLDS ALBUM GD/VG £15
PLANET ADVENTURE BOOK FN £35
SPACE KINGLEY AND THE SECRET SQUADRON VG/FN £22.50
WHOPPER SPACE STORIES GD/VG £10

*Humour Comics: More than half a year of Dandy new in from 1955, including the Easter, Christmas & New Year issues. From a time when the comic was in its prime with a heady mix of humour and adventure stories. On average, decent copies, coming in a little above GD/VG overall. 
PICTURED: DANDY BOTH SOLD
#735 VG £20 Christmas issue
#736 VG £15 New Year issue

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: The early issues of Princess Picture Library alternated between Sally (heroine of the ballet) and Sue (wacky adventuress). Almost all of the issues in this update (between #6 and #30) are even-numbered and thus feature Sally and ballet – On TV, The Golden Cockerel, The Ice Ballet, Christmas Ballet, Ballet in the Big Top, At The Rose Chateau, Highland Dancer, In Venice, Fiesta Ballet, In Switzerland… you get the picture.     
PICTURED: PRINCESS PICTURE LIBRARY #14 GD/VG £8

*DC: Although it seems like only yesterday, John Constantine aka Hellblazer, occult troubleshooter, has ‘haunted’ the DCU for about 35 years now, star of multiple ongoing titles of his own and numerous guest appearances. It all started here, in the pages of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing in 1984 and 1985. JC first made a cameo appearance in Swamp Thing #25, followed up by his first full appearance a year later in #37. #25 is VF+, with just minor handling wear at top and bottom edges; #37 is a sensational NM-, flat, glossy, fresh, tight staples, great pages and just the most minute stress marks very occasionally at the spine.
PICTURED: SWAMP THING
#25 VF+ £35
#37 NM- £225 SOLD

*Marvel: It’s not every day we get the first appearance of a major Marvel hero! Ghost Rider had been the title of a short-lived Western series of the 1960s, and in 1972, writer Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog reinterpreted the cowboy trope with the nearest modern equivalent – a motorbike rider! In the wake of ‘Easy Rider’ and adding in lashings of the then-popular Satanic possession movies, they came up with Johnny Blaze, stunt-rider turned emissary of Satan, having sacrificed his soul to save his loved ones. But this being a Code Approved Marvel comic, Johnny’s battle of wills with his demonic master usually led to his actions coming down on the side of good, despite Old Nick’s best efforts. Ghost Rider went on to 80+ issues of his original series after a successful run in Marvel Spotlight, and despite two truly execrable Nicolas Cage movies, remains a mainstay of the Marvel Universe today. This copy of Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider’s very first appearance in tryout title Marvel Spotlight #5 is a beautiful FN copy with great colour cover and gloss, tight and flat with firmly attached staples and lovely white to off-white pages. The corners have a minimum of blunting, with a tiny crease of less than 1 cm to the top right which just breaks colour. There are a few minor stress marks along the spine, with only a suspicion of the colour being broken and a small 1 cm tear at the base of the spine; these prevent a higher grade. High resolution images are available on request.
PICTURED: MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #5 FN £775

*Marvel: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. During the lean years of the mid-1950s to early 1960s, the company that would become Marvel ran a moderately successful sci-fi/suspense line built around two tropes: one, the famous ‘Big Panty Monsters’ by Lee & Kirby lauded in many previous updates, and the other, quieter, but even more chilling, twist-ending tales reminiscent of (and often ripped off by) TV shows such as ‘The Outer Limits’ and ‘The Twilight Zone’. The latter proved so popular that the fledgling Marvel devoted an entire series just to them, Amazing Adult Fantasy, taking over the numbering of Amazing Adventures from #7 and rebranding as ‘The Magazine That Respects Your Intelligence!’, with wall-to-wall Ditko art. Lovely though they were, it didn’t catch the mass market’s eye, and the series finished with #14 (with #15, of course, it became simply ‘Amazing Fantasy’ and featured an upstart hero called Spider-Man). These low-circulation, high-quality issues are now greatly in demand, and we have #14, the final ‘Adult’ issue, a pence printed copy featuring a Professor X/Marvel mutant prototype, with slight chipping at right cover edge.
PICTURED: AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #14 VG p £110 SOLD

*Marvel: Walt Simonson revitalized the Thor series with his epic take on heroic storytelling from 1983 onwards. Calling on the richness of Norse myth, but with a subversive humour element, his stories were fresh and exciting, his art vibrant and dynamic. He also added many new characters to the mythos, such as Lorelei, Malekith and Beta-Ray Bill. A classic run of one of Marvel’s oldest, most iconic characters, with many issues new in from #339 (third Simonson issue) onwards; see our catalogue for details.

*Horror 1940-1959: Superior was a Canadian publisher active from 1945-1956 who mostly reprinted American comics from the same time period. They also published a number of original series that were distributed in the United States. Among these were three horror titles famous for their hallucinogenic covers and accomplished Fiction House style interior art. When you see a lot of these together, they have an almost hypnotic and uncomfortable effect. This week we feature Journey Into Fear #4-6, three of the nicest copies we have in the run, all mid-grade without specific defects other than general wear.
PICTURED: JOURNEY INTO FEAR ALL SOLD
#4 VG+ £255
#5 VG+ £220
#6 VG £195

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: In the 1950s, as well as reprinting US comics, several British companies produced original comics in the US size and style, and we have four such examples this week. Captain Vigour (1952) was an olympic strongman turned adventurer with an emphasis on body image and fitness; Charles Rand (a later entry from 1966) appeared in just one comic, with Mick Anglo art — he was the man from S.U.N.D.A.Y. (Special United Nations Defence Agents, Y section — you could tell it was the sixties!); Space Comics (1958) featured the science fiction hero Captain Valiant of the Interplanetary Police Patrol (also with Mick Anglo art); Miller’s TV Heroes (1959), did exactly what it said on the tin: ‘picture stories of historical characters who have become TV Heroes’. Full details of all in our catalogue as always.
PICTURED: SPACE COMICS #77 VG/FN £25 SOLD

*Girls’ Comics: Three excellent Free Gifts with 1969 issues of Diana this week; all three comics are in FN condition, with all gifts in almost as new VF. #310 has the ‘Sunshine Bracelet’ in its sealed transparent bag (originally, this was glued to the margin of page 5, so the margin and the bag edge each have a tiny hole where it was removed); #360 has a ‘Dainty Wrist Purse’, presented in its original unsealed brown envelope, but sealed inside it in plastic and in pristine unused condition; #361 has the ‘Pretty Pearly Mermaid Ring’ still sealed in its original brown envelope. Competition for these gifted issues is usually very fierce and they get snapped up very quickly.
PICTURED: DIANA ALL SOLD
#310 FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £40
#360 FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £40
#361 FN WITH FREE GIFT VF £40

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: Mike Shayne was a hard-boiled private detective in the vein of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade etc. He was created by writer Brett Halliday in the 1930s, and starred in 77 novels and over 300 short stories. As well as the character having a magazine in his name for over 30 years, a dozen films of Mike Shayne were made in the 1940s and 1950s, plus a radio series and a TV series in the 1960s; he was a popular chap back then! From 1958 onwards, Shayne’s adventures were ghost-written. Our selection of Dell paperbacks new in this week features some written by Halliday in later printings, as well as many of the later ones by other hands. What is really nice about them is that they all feature covers by the famous artist Robert McGinnis, known for his film poster work on Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Barbarella and several James Bond films, among many others. At 94, McGinnis is still around and has illustrated over 1200 paperback books with his distinctive style featuring sexy women. Several examples from this update are pictured here — our catalogue lists the entire 15 books in this update.
PICTURED: (all by Brett Halliday)
GUILTY AS HELL 1st US PB 1967 FN £5
MURDER BY PROXY 1st US PB 1963 FN/VF £5
SO LUSH, SO DEADLY 1st US PB 1968 VG/FN £5
THE HOMICIDAL VIRGIN 1st New Edition US PB VG/FN £6

*DC: In 1989, Neil Gaiman, not yet the superstar author he would later become, took the venerable DC superhero the Sandman and completely refurbished the concept – revamping the titular hero as an immortal embodiment of the Dreamworld, Gaiman opened the door to a myriad of adventurous possibilities, modernising the concept without invalidating or discarding either previous Sandman series (the 1940s and 1970s strips), but instead enfolding them into a larger meta-narrative. The Neil Gaiman Sandman series ran for 75 issues and a Special, and won an insane array of awards. This is where it all began, in this instance a lovely high grade copy with miniscule handling wear, a very tiny dink at the base of the spine and a ‘dot’ of label scuff close to the ‘N’ in the title. Excellent pages, tight staples.
PICTURED: SANDMAN #1 VF £85 SOLD

*DC: We reach the letter ‘E’ in our alphabetical round-up of the DCU this week. Just one title: 80 Page Giant. The history of publication of DC Annuals and Giants in the Silver Age can be a confusing one. Originally in the early 1960s, DC published a once a year Annual of their most popular characters: Superman, Batman, Flash etc, reprinting many of their earlier classic adventures. Since these proved very popular, they started upping the frequency, until in 1964, they integrated these into a regular series called 80 Page Giant, which is what concerns us here.  (Subsequently, with even more popularity for this format, they ended this series after 15 issues and started running the Giants in the regular numbering of the characters’ series, which led to even great frequency.) We’ve topped up all 15 issues of 80 Page Giant in our listing (except #7, peculiarly), so that they’re all available in a choice of grades and prices: Superman, Batman, Flash, World’s Finest, Secret Origins, Superboy, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. These fondly remembered volumes represent great reading value and entertainment. Back when they were published, when I were a lad, with no comic shops or back issue market, this was the only way to read these lovely old stories.

*Marvel: A Lee/Romita co-creation, the Shocker – a.k.a. Herman Schultz, career criminal and part-time scientist – created a special insulated suit which generated electrical waves that could open safes and incapacitate the police. Outsmarted by Spider-Man on their first clash, he has returned many times to battle the Web-Slinger and many other Marvel heroes, making his big screen debut in ‘Spider-Man Homecoming’ in 2017. This is a decent copy of his first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #46, pence printed with a clean cover image, good staples and reasonable pages. There is some corner blunting, edge and handling wear and a 1 cm spine split at the top of the spine, but not at all bad.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #46 GD/VG p £60

*Marvel: One of Marvel’s long-running and more beloved villains, Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man, premiered in this issue, with his ability to absorb and replicate the properties of any person, object or substance causing quite a headache for our favourite Thunder God! Despite his surly mien, many folks feel that Crusher Creel is, to quote the Shangri-Las, ‘Good-bad, but not evil‘, and he has quite the fan-base, especially in latter decades since he married Titania. This first appearance of an enduring villain is a decent pence stamped copy with strong, deep colours and some cover gloss; there is some corner blunting and minor edge wear with a couple of colour-breaking creases across the bottom right corner; nice off-white pages and good staples.
PICTURED: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #114 VG+ p £70 SOLD

*Marvel: Carrying on with our alphabetical tour of the Marvel Universe, the letter ‘D’ yields just two titles with new stock: Daredevil and Defenders, the former between #17 & #177, the latter between #16 & #92. Significant chunks of both titles now added to our catalogue.

*Horror 1940-1959: Atlas’s Journey Into Unknown Worlds started out, as you might imagine from its title, as a series which featured horrific science-fiction stories, in much the same mode as some of the work of writers such as C L Moore and Clark Ashton Smith, for example. In this update, we have two such early issues. #6 features the work of Colan & Heath among others and is a lovely FN+ copy, with great cover colour and gloss, tight, firm staples and really nice off-white pages. Edge wear is at a minimum but for a small 1 cm tear to the right cover edge. #7 is an Apparent VG/FN and features Colan, Maneeley (an electric chair story) and the Wolverton story ‘The Planet Of Terror’; a decent copy with good cover colour and gloss, nice staples and pages and a few nicks at the edges; the Maneeley story has one panel cut out due to a coupon on the reverse, but included are a high quality photo-copy of the complete affected story page as well as a small black and white copy of the affected panel (double-sided). Due to this defect, the comic is half the price it otherwise would be in this grade. Our third new listing is for one of the last pre-code issues of this title, #31 GD- £27, by which time it had mutated into more ‘traditional’ Atlas horror fare. 
PICTURED: JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS
#6 FN+ £165
#7 App. VG/FN £95

*Vintage UK/Australian Reprints of US Material: Some classic DC & Fawcett material in this category this week: From K. G. Murray (Aus), two issues of Batman (#45 & #71) one Super-Adventure (#59, featuring Superman & Batman) and one Superboy (#94 in full colour throughout); plus a large format Marvel Family #64 from Miller. Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: BATMAN #45 VG+ £45

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: Just one item in this category this week, but a great one: Thriller Comics # 1 from 1951. This digest-sized comics series, most famous under its later title of Thriller Picture Library, ran for 450 issues until 1963, and while it featured a plethora of characters during its lengthy run, the trend for the early years was for historical swashbucklers based on fictional (but serendipitously copyright-free) characters such as Robin Hood, Rob Roy, and so on. One such was the Three Musketeers, who were chosen to lead off the series in this volume. The artists were all accomplished Fleetway professionals, and readers thrived on these beautifully-illustrated pocket adventures. This copy of #1 is FA/GD, structurally sound but with considerable spine wear, including long splits at top and bottom and the habitual rusty staples, which haven’t bled too badly; interior pages clean and flexible.
PICTURED: THRILLER COMICS #1 FA/GD £60

*Girls’ Comics: Misty is today just about the top-selling Girls’ title. The original run of 101 issues is keenly collected, but are not rare. Much less common is the Best of Misty revival from 1986, 8 bumper issues compiling complete stories from the original run. We have 7 of these new in this week (missing just #3) and whilst not in tip-top shape (cover creases and edge wear), they’re priced to reflect that and are not torn or defaced. Fabulous Shirley Bellwood covers on each. Accompanying them is the one-off Souvenir issue from 2009. Misty may be gone, but not forgotten, and she always seems to find her way back through the mists…
PICTURED: BEST OF MISTY
#1 GD £25 SOLD
#2 GD/VG £25 SOLD
#4 GD/VG £25 SOLD
#5 GD £20 SOLD
#6 GD/VG £25 SOLD
#7 VG £30 SOLD
#8 GD/VG £25 SOLD
SPECIAL SOUVENIR ISSUE 2009 VG £15

*TV/Film Tie-Ins: Just one book this week, but it’s a cult favourite: Thunderbirds Are Go, the novelization of the Thunderbirds film from 1966. Cover credited to Gerry & Sylvia Anderson, inside it is credited as ‘Story by Angus P Allan, based on the film by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson,’ this Armada 1966 first edition paperback is also from 1966 and has illustrations by James Watson. All the usuals are involved in this thrilling space adventure — all five Tracy Brothers, Lady Penelope and Parker, Brains and the Hood. A nice glossy cover, if a little worn, with a short back cover tear; the spine is a little sunned and split by about 2 cm at bottom front.
PICTURED: THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO 1st UK PB GD £7.50 SOLD

*DC: After try-out issues in Brave & Bold and Showcase, the ‘Junior Justice League’ graduated to their own title in 1966, which lasted a very respectable 53 issues into the 1970s, with the estimable Nick Cardy often at the artistic helm, as here in Teen Titans #1. This copy is a solid mid-grade pence stamped example, with bright colours, tight staples and minimal edge wear and corner blunting; nice page quality. There is a very small colour-breaking crease across the bottom right corner and a tiny score mark top right cover with is replicated on the first few pages, but overall a glossy, nice copy. 
PICTURED: TEEN TITANS #1 FN p £100

*Marvel: How do you follow up the introduction of an enormously popular brain-sucking symbiote? Well, a few years after Venom, the House of Ideas came up with the spawn of Venom, and thus Carnage was created in Amazing Spider-Man #361. Our latest issue of this modern classic is a delightful NM, as good as new with no flaws or defects, and is accompanied by #362, the second Carnage appearance in the same condition (NM £35).
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #361 NM £140 SOLD