*Girls’ Picture Libraries: From 1962-64, when the Beatles were rising to fame and London was just beginning to swing, 30 issues of True Life Library added to our catalogue in the above number range. The standard of art by mainly European illustrators is very accomplished. These are lovely items, their appeal enhanced by the fact that they are from a newsagent’s reserve stock, never sold or circulated, with white pages, bright covers and not too much rust in the staple areas; mostly nice grades, many towards VF, variations due to the amount of rust. Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: TRUE LIFE LIBRARY #405 FN £6 SOLD

*DC: A mix of sundry DC issues mostly from the Bronze Age this week. Titles include: Action Comics (#533), Brave & Bold (#119 & #122), Claw (#1 x2), Jack Kirby’s Demon #5, #9, #12 & #14), Jimmy Olsen #135 (3rd Darkseid cameo by Kirby), Rima the Jungle Girl (#3), Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (#73), Shadow (#3), Shazam (#1 VG p £30), Strange Adventures (#211 with Adams’ Deadman) & Sword of Sorcery (#1). Full details as always in our catalogue.

*Marvel: The first and second appearances of one of Spidey’s perennial foes in Amazing Spider-Man #28 and #35.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
#28 VG- p £125 1st Molten Man. Iconic but notoriously infamous black background cover which traditionally shows up every imperfection. In that respect, this copy isn’t too bad. There is only minor wear at top, bottom and right edges, and although the spine has some reading wear where the black colour is broken, this is fairly unobtrusive. There is also a 4 cm fairly soft crease across bottom right cover edge which only slightly breaks colour. Staples are good and tight. Pages are off-white, turning slightly cream at the margin edges. The inside covers have tanned edges but are not brittle.
#35 GD/VG p £48 2nd Molten Man. Some imprecise finishing on this one, with a slightly wonky spine, with the result that the left edge of the cover image is wrapped around the back of the cover at an angle, although you wouldn’t really spot that just from the front cover. It may appear trimmed at the right edge, but we’re sure it hasn’t been, just folded wrong in production. Bright colours, little wear other than a couple of tiny nicks at right edge. Staples are good and tight. Small tear at centrefold in margin. Pages are off-white, turning slightly cream at the margin edges. The inside covers have tanned edges but are not brittle. SOLD

*Marvel: From a passing appearance as an antagonist in Werewolf By Night, the character of Moon Knight, a.k.a. Marc Spector, eccentric billionaire, compulsive role-player and nocturnal crimefighter (Hmm… where’ve we heard that description before?) wormed his way rapidly into the readers’ hearts, and the clamour triggered his first solo foray, a two-parter in Marvel Spotlight #28 & #29, by his WBN co-creators Doug Moench and Don Perlin. It’s every bit as good as you’d expect.
PICTURED: MARVEL SPOTLIGHT
#28 VF- p £120 Flat, tight and glossy with firm staples and supple off-white pages. Very minor reading wear at spine and very slight creasing at extreme bottom right corner, where the small marks barely break colour.
#29 VF p £50 Flat, tight and glossy with firm staples and supple white pages. Square corners, just very minor wear at spine.

*Miscellaneous 1940-1959: Leading off this week’s selections from the prestigious Bute Collection, the final two issues of the Atlas 1950s revival of the Human Torch, #37 and #38 from 1954. As well as three Human Torch & Toro stories per issue, many with a horror edge to them, you also get a Sub-Mariner story, drawn by Bill Everett, no less, with Namora also appearing in #37. As with all Timelys and 1950s super-hero Atlases, these are pretty rare, particularly in the UK. 
PICTURED: HUMAN TORCH
#37 VG £300 A solid copy with good spine, some minor edge and corner wear and a back cover crease. Partial bookshop stamp over logo. A couple of short sealed tears at top and right edges. Tight staples and off-white pages. There is some ballast ink-type marking along the top pages edge and down the first few cms of the pages, but this intrudes only into the margins on a few pages. There is about a 6 cm tear to the right edge of the Sub-Mariner story splash. SOLD
#38 VG+ £400 Nice bright copy with good colours and gloss. Solid spine with minor edge and corner wear. Great staples and excellent off-white pages. Short crease that only very faintly breaks colour across first ‘H’ in logo. SOLD

*Modern Reprints: A complete set of all seven issues of the deluxe reprints of the classic sequence of Green Lantern/Green Arrow by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams from Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76-89.  Widely regarded as the series that defined the Bronze Age of comics with its ‘relevant’ storylines, including the Speedy drugs issues and the 1st appearance of John Stewart. Beautifully presented in glorious colour stiff covers and thick stock paper. All in NM and a nice bargain complete set.
PICTURED: GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW #1 NM; Complete Set #1-7 NM £25

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: A dozen issues of the long-lived Boys’ weekly Tiger, all from 1968, including the Christmas issue. Throughout its history, Tiger (original home to Roy of the Rovers) always had strong sporting associations and indeed in later decades, virtually became a comic of sport-related strips, but here in 1968, Roy, Johnny Cougar, The Slogger From Down Under, Men Of Steel, Runaway Reb and Skid Solo were joined by such adventure & comedy strips as Typhoon Tracy, Peg-Leg’s Flying Penguins, Saber King of the Jungle and more. Most issues average VG/FN grade; full details in our catalogue.
PICTURED: TIGER 21/12/69 FN £8 Christmas issue SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: A small selection of pre and post decimal war and western themed Picture Libraries this week, all at very affordable prices from the following titles: Conflict (#172 & #308), Cowboy (#271), Cowboy Adventure (#306), Lion (#39 & #105), Pocket War (#156) & Sabre (#157, #160 & #164). Full details as always in our catalogue. 

*Teen Humour/Funny Girls: From the same stable that brought you Millie, Patsy and Hedy etc, another  funny girl who had a rather shorter tenure of 27 issues from 1959-1964. The Bute Collection has yielded both first and last issues, from the inimitable creative talents of Stan Lee & Stan Goldberg.
PICTURED: KATHY
#1 VG+ £65 SOLD
#27 VG/FN £30

*Alan Class Reprints: Dozens of pre and post decimal Alan Class issues added to our inventory this week in our regular stock sub-category. Titles include Astounding, Creepy Worlds, Out Of This World (2nd series), Secrets Of The Unknown, Sinister Tales, Suspense & Uncanny Tales. Many issues feature Marvel reprints, such as Astounding #50 (Dr Droom), Secrets Of The Unknown #72 (Captain America), Suspense #31 (Iron Man), Suspense #49 (Spider-Man), Uncanny Tales #6 (Human Torch & Dr Strange), Uncanny Tales #31 (Captain America) & Uncanny Tales #76 (Daredevil). At prices starting as cheap as £1.75, you can’t go wrong with these! Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: SUSPENSE #31 GD £16

*TV & Film Related Comics: In 1967, Mick Anglo (formerly the brains behind Marvelman), who had made his name in faux-American comic books, drew inspiration from the success of TV Century 21, and launched a weekly comic starring other characters from TV and movies: Batman, Superman, Tarzan, the Green Hornet, Bonanza, the Phantom and the Man From UNCLE, a mixture of new stories, reprints, and text, which had a respectable two-year run, and is still well-remembered today. This new copy of the debut issue is a lovely high grade example with white pages and almost no wear.
PICTURED: TV TORNADO #1 FN/VF £75 SOLD

*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: Something rather special in our book update this week. Michael Moorcock’s most famous creation is Elric, the albino adventurer, who both owned and was possessed by the living sword Stormbringer, from which he derived his vitality. Many volumes have been devoted to his story, but this is by far the rarest. In 1973, the famous Brighton bookshop, Unicorn, published a limited edition of 500 copies of this over-sized (28 x 40 cm) unique Elric tale: The Return To Melnibone, twenty pages of sumptuous illustrations by Philip Druillet in purple and white ink, with text by Moorcock. Although there was a reprint edition in the late 90s, this copy is from the original run, and copies in Very Good to Fine (the very few copies that we’ve seen come up for sale) change hands for around £300. Our copy has cover marks and creases, but is structurally sound and the interiors are nice. (As a footnote, the Unicorn Bookshop is a story in itself. Run by an eccentric American in Brighton from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, it specialised in underground material and was raided by police and subjected to obscenity trials. Unicorn also published original works, such as here. The bookshop is still legendary and a famous mural in Brighton celebrates its history). We’re somewhat chuffed to have one issue of that 500 issue print run of Moorcock’s rarest piece in stock.
PICTURED: ELRIC: THE RETURN TO MELNIBONE by Michael Moorcock. 1st Edition 1973; Unicorn Bookshop Press GD/VG £150 

*Alan Class Reprints: For many years now, we’ve been scouring the personal archives of legendary publisher Alan Class (who is still very much with us) and with his full co-operation, releasing for sale sets of the original printing plates that were used to print the covers of his comics from 1959-1989. We have now reached the final phase of these plate set releases, which will last us throughout 2022. These sets are time-consuming to prepare, so our release schedule will be staggered. But the good news is that all the sets we have left are among the best, either featuring a classic Marvel comic reprint, or else a very early fantasy/mystery issue. So, this final phase represents your last opportunity to add one or more of these unique pieces to your collection. Each set comprises the lead printing plates used in the original comic’s colour printing, a copy of the comic printed with these plates and a signed certificate of authenticity signed by Alan Class himself. These are packaged in a special protective presentation case. Several sets (as noted) have additional historical artefacts such as colour proofs, interior page plates, printers’ photostats etc. (Please be aware that these weigh a lot and postage will be expensive. Also note that due to the onerous paperwork required for customs declarations following Brexit, we can no longer post these Plate Sets outside the UK.) Two new sets this week as follows: BOTH SOLD
CREEPY WORLDS #112 £75 Comic FA/GD;  Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #62 plus cover, Dr Strange story from Strange Tales #118, Charlton.  NB Comic has tears and creases at spine, long crease across cover. 1st page loose but present. Extra: Colour cover proof, torn with some loss.
UNCANNY #79 £70 Comic FN/VF; Reprints Daredevil #57 (inc cover,), #58, ACG. Extra: Colour cover proof.

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Following the demise of the original Captain Marvel & Family in the 1950s, UK Publisher Len Miller, who had been lucratively reprinting the adventures of the hero now known as Shazam!, decided to produce his own look-alike version, with the aid of Mick Anglo studios. Marvelman was born – and in his turn begat Young Marvelman and Marvelman Family, other all-new spin-offs ‘homaging’ the Marvel Family. We have five issues new in of these gentle* fantasies this week, 1 Marvelman & 4 Young Marvelman. (*although we note that in YM #357, YM busts an opium den!). Details as follows:
IN THIS UPDATE:
MARVELMAN #338 VG/FN £9 (PICTURED)
YOUNG MARVELMAN
#333 GD/VG £7
#352 VG £8
#356 FN £10
#357 FN/VF £11 (PICTURED)

*Childrens’ Books: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. Last year we had in a reasonable quantity of ‘Blitz Books’, which proved highly popular and were all snapped up very quickly, with the strange exception of three of them. ‘Blitz Books’ is a generic name for various publishers’ series of miniature books (approx 8.5 x 12 cm, usually around 16-32 pages, and published 1940-1944); these booklets helped distract children in air-raid shelters and Underground stations during bombing raids over London. They became known as ‘Blitz Books’, and, like many publications from the years of World War II, are quite scarce, particularly in as nice condition as the examples we have here (although there is some staple rust on these). Three from the unnumbered Tuck’s Better Little Books series, illustrated text stories with colourful, evocative covers.
PICTURED:
BIG BOY’S BOW VG £6
THE KILLER OF CARRICKBURN VG £6
TRUE SON VG £6

*DC: Like all the early Silver Age DCs edited by Julius Schwartz, the Atom remains a favourite series here at 30th Century. With sumptuous art by Gil Kane, inked by either Murphy Anderson or Sid Greene, the stories penned by Gardner Fox are ingenious with imaginative use of the Atom’s shrinking powers including adventures on micro-worlds and the fabulous time travel Time Pool stories. A run added from #6-15 complete, including the superb #7 crossover with Hawkman, almost all in a very respectable VG or VG+ grade. Full details as always in our catalogue. Highly recommended.
PICTURED: ATOM #7 VG+ p £55 SOLD

*Marvel: If you’re looking for really nice copies of Amazing Spider-Man for your collection, then look no further than this Collection. All high grade; even the few that fall below VF (and most are above) are really good-looking copies – no duds here, and nearly all cents copies. This week, Amazing Spider-Man #71-75 complete, featuring the saga of the Petrified Tablet and the debut of Silvermane. A fine sequence, ending in the classic cover to #75.
PICTURED: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
#71 VF+ £160 Guest-starring Quicksilver. Splendid copy with great cover colour and gloss. Staples tight at spine and centrefold. Supple white to off-white pages. Just the tiniest bit of edge wear and corner blunting. SOLD
#72 VF+ £180 Vs the Shocker. Great glossy copy with shiny black background. Staples tight at spine and centrefold. Supple white to off-white pages. Square corners. Very minor signs of reading wear at spine (we’re being ultra-picky), but no colour breaks. SOLD
#73 VF- £100 1st Silvermane. Excellent copy with rich cover colour and shiny brilliant white background. Staples tight at spine and centrefold. Supple off-white pages. Square corners. A couple of very small non-colour breaking creases at base of spine; the spine is printed very slightly off true, resulting in a tiny diagonal look to it (see scan).
#74 VF+ £110 Unverified John Romita signature on bottom of splash page margin. A shiny, glossy cover with rich colour. Staples tight at spine and centrefold. Supple white to off-white pages. Very, very minor signs of reading wear at spine (we’re being picky again), but no colour breaks. SOLD
#75 VF+ £175 Glossy, dark cover with classic scene. Staples tight at spine and centrefold. Supple white to off-white pages. Square corners. Just a couple of tiny bits of edge wear and a miniscule crease across top right corner of about 1 cm which is very soft and does not break colour.