*Miscellaneous 1940-1959: In case you didn’t know, Buster Crabbe was a real person, Olympic swimming champion and film and television star. Most famously, he was the original Flash Gordon in the famous movie serials from 1936-1940, but he also appeared in over a hundred cowboy and jungle films, and here in his own comic from Famous Funnies in 1951. He is presented as a cowboy, with sci-fi adventures with aliens, plus humour stories and straight cowboy tales in a hybrid of genres. 2 issues available this update; great covers.
PICTURED: BUSTER CRABBE BOTH SOLD
#3 GD- £30 Long spine splits
#9 GD/VG £25 Long spine split

*Alan Class Reprints: For this update, we’re concentrating in our regular stock section on some new-in issues that reprint Silver Age Marvel Classics. In addition to those pictured below, we also have Astounding #81 (Reprints Daredevil #59 inc cover), Secrets Of The Unknown #103 (Reprints Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD#3 with art and cover by Steranko) and Suspense #115 (Reprints Daredevil #60 inc cover) — plus these gems:
PICTURED:
ASTOUNDING #67 VG/FN £20 Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #58 inc cover
ASTOUNDING #83 GD £10 Reprints Daredevil #61 inc cover
ASTOUNDING #120 FN+ £11.75 Reprints Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD by Steranko inc cover SOLD
SINISTER TALES #101 VG- £17.25 Reprints Amazing Spider-Man #68 & #69 inc cover
UNCANNY TALES #29 GD £14.50 Reprints Thor & Tales Of Asgard from Journey Into Mystery #98, Tales of the Wasp from Tales To Astonish #51

*Collected Editions: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. Ken Reid: The Complete Wham! Smash! and Pow! Strips is a handsome two-volume hardcover collection of the works of Ken Reid, co-creator of Frankie Stein, Jasper the Grasper, The Nervs, Queen of the Seas and Dare-A-Day Davy. In addition to all the Ken Reid-illustrated stories from Power Comics, the volumes feature previously-unseen artwork and reproductions of original scripts, a treasure trove for fans and historians alike. The brand new volumes are sold as a set.
PICTURED: KEN REID: THE COMPLETE WHAM! SMASH1 AND POW! STRIPS 2 VOLUME SET NEW/MINT £52

*Humour Comics: 3 nice condition copies of the large format Beano Summer Specials from 1972, 1973 & 1975. All flat unfolded copies, with just a hint of tanning at the inside cover edges. All FN at £20 each.

*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: Often dubbed ‘the poor man’s Sherlock Holmes’, there’s still no doubting the popularity of Sexton Blake, who has probably had far more fiction written of him than the world’s greatest detective. In the Crime, Spies and Sleaze category of our Books section, we have added six digests from the famous Sexton Blake Library. These are picture library sized, but mainly text. The series ran from 1915 to 1968, and these date from 1947/48 and all feature covers painted by master Sexton Blake illustrator Eric Parker (we think).
PICTURED: SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY ALL SOLD
#147 VG £7 The Yellow Terror by Rex Hardinge
#155 GD £5 The Night Of The 23rd by Lewis Jackson (cover detached)
#158 VG/FN £8 The Mystery Of The Whitehall Bomb by Anthony Parsons
#164 FN £9 The Loot Of Pakistan by Anthony Parsons
#167 VG £7 The Mystery Of The Red Cockatoo by Anthony Parsons
#171 VG £7 The Man Who Blacked Out by Anthony Parsons

*Clearance Corner: When we buy in book collections, there are often some books that aren’t just up to snuff condition-wise to add to our stock, so here we’re giving you the opportunity to acquire lots of quality reading for a next-to-nothing price. This second lot consists of 11 TV/Film Tie-Ins, as listed below. These are all reading copies, worn but complete. All yours for just £10 post free (UK only).
THE CROSS AND THE SWITCHBLADE (Film Tie-In – street gangs, sex parties, fixes etc)
DIXON OF DOCK GREEN
DR KILDARE’S SECRET ROMANCE
GRANGE HILL GOES WILD
GRANGE HILL RULES OK?
GRANGE HILL TUCKER & CO
THE MAN FROM UNCLE #4: THE STONE-COLD DEAD IN THE MARKET AFFAIR
THE MAN FROM UNCLE #6: THE DAGGER AFFAIR
THE MAN FROM UNCLE #10 THE DIVING DAMES AFFAIR
SHAFT AMONG THE JEWS
CYBORG: HIGH CRYSTAL (the series that became the Six Million Dollar Man)

*Marvel: This early Lee/Kirby (with a dash of help from Steve Ditko on the cover inking) pits the Sub-Mariner, once again, against the men of the Fantastic Four (Sue, typically, is rather on the fence in the matter… how many times does a gal have to get kidnapped before she makes up her mind?), provoked by the behind-the-scenes machinations of the perfidious Puppet Master! This pence printed copy is nice and colourful with an unmarked cover scene; excellent staples and nice off-white pages. Minor spine wear and just a small amount of Marvel chipping to right edge centre. One or two very short creases across bottom right corner which just break colour, but overall a very presentable copy.
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR #14 VG+ p £175

*Marvel: Two science-fiction based super-teams long associated with the X-Men are the Imperial Guard and the Starjammers, and both, oddly, were the result of artist Dave Cockrum’s impatience. Cockrum had illustrated a critically acclaimed and successful run of DC’s Legion of Super-heroes, but following altercations with editor Murray Boltinoff, Cockrum quit the Legion and DC to co-create the ‘New’ X-Men. By way of cocking a snook at DC, Dave came up with a suspiciously similar team of alien super-heroes, the Imperial Guard, each one of which was a (just barely) non-litigious clone of a Legionnaire. Similarly, the Starjammers had been created by Cockrum for a solo tryout in Marvel Premiere or Marvel Spotlight, but on being told those books’ schedules were filled years in advance, Cockrum offered the band of space pirates to X-Men scripter Chris Claremont, who bolted on a retconned relationship to an X-Man and threw them into the mix. Issue #107 saw the first full appearance of both teams (the Starjammers having done the ‘enigmatic cameo’ bit since #104), taking the cast list – never forgetting our mutant heroes – to around 50, for a full-on free-for-all! This is a lovely VF cents copy, tight, flat and glossy, with just very minor spine and edge wear.
PICTURED: X-MEN #107 VF £125 SOLD

*Marvel: The long-running horror/mystery title Strange Tales provided the vehicle for the Human Torch’s solo adventures, commencing in #101. In #110 Doctor Strange started featuring, initially intermittently, and later the Torch was joined by the Thing before giving way to Nick Fury in #135. This update runs between #112 and #134, and features a nice blend of super-heroics and the mystic arts. The Torch had some wacky villains, such as the Eel and the Beetle, both debuting here, and this was a period when much of Dr. Strange’s mythos was established at the masterful hands of Lee & Ditko. Guest stars galore include Spider-Man, Iceman, Thor, Loki, Sub-Mariner, Quicksilver & the Scarlet Witch, the Watcher and others. Full details in our catalogue. 

*Gold Key/Whitman: The Planet of the Apes franchise has been hugely popular and successful ever since the original film in 1968 (which I can remember seeing at the cinema when it came out). Beneath the Planet of the Apes was the second movie and in 1970, Gold Key produced their one-off adaptation, with glossy photo cover and giant photo poster bound-in, included in this nice copy in a very presentable grade with just minor spine ticks and small, non-colour breaking creases. ‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!’
PICTURED: BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES FN+ £50 SOLD

*Boys’ Adventure & War Picture Libraries: The first of the long-running war-themed Picture Libraries, War started in 1958 with the #1 story ‘Fight Back To Dunkirk’, presented here. Sadly, not a great copy, but complete except for a small corner off the back cover. Heavy wear and cover creasing and a spine severely split but hanging on, with signs of historical tape (now removed) all along it. Nevertheless, an affordable copy of a significant item. 
PICTURED: WAR PICTURE LIBRARY #1 FA £30 SOLD

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: Just one item in this popular category this week, an early Bunty; #26 in fact ‘The Girl who Knew Too Much’. Suffers a bit from glue puckering, and there is a small corner off the back cover, but it’s a bright copy that presents well.
PICTURED: BUNTY PICTURE LIBRARY #26 GD/VG £15

*DC: What’s Old is our feature where we highlight stuff from our catalogue that you may have missed. A delight this week is one of the great Silver Age Catwoman covers on Batman #197, where she fights it out with Batgirl over Batman. A cover beautifully executed by Carmine Infantino, and glowing with the rich colours that DC seemed to do so well, from the deep purple background to the orange spotlight foreground and the vibrant colours on the costumes. It’s dynamic and full of inherent action with a clever cover title box. A lovely high grade pence stamped copy, with good cover gloss, white to off-white pages and excellent tight staples. Handling wear is minimal, with just tiny non-colour breaking creases at lower spine and a miniscule crease across the bottom right cover. A gem. 
PICTURED: BATMAN #197 VF p £125

*Marvel: This week, the concluding two parts of the Galactus/Silver Surfer trilogy. Fantastic Four #49 features the only Galactus cover and the first (minor) Surfer cover, whereas #50 has the Surfer large front and centre. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t need me to fill you in on the significance of these issues in Marvel’s history. Let me just say that this trilogy is growing in importance and value all the time, and we have seen some dramatic rises in value in recent years, which seem likely to continue.
PICTURED: FANTASTIC FOUR
#49 GD+ p £400 Pence printed. A lot of fine creasing along the right edge and at the bottom corner with corner blunting; one more major colour-breaking crease across the top right corner (see scan); spine worn, staples firm, bottom edge of back cover a little ragged. Decent cover image; pages are off-white to slightly tan at edges. SOLD
#50 VG- £225 A relatively solid cents copy; fine creasing along the spine as a result of reading wear and around bottom staple, which is still firmly attached; tiny crease at bottom right cover edge. Good colour and off-white pages; some corner blunting. A figure ’10’ has been written in biro on the Surfer’s arm below the ‘F’ in ‘Four’ of the logo. SOLD

*Marvel: The 87th issue of New Mutants featured the first full appearance (he had made a fleeting walk-on in the previous) of Cable, a 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 a perma-grumpy Mary Poppins, he’s a super-powered nanny with metal limbs. Confusing back history and ambiguous abilities or not, his co-starring role in the record-breaking second Deadpool film has caused interest in the character’s early appearances to peak. This copy of the mulleted marvel’s debut is a CGC 9.0 (VF/NM) Universal unrestored blue label. As you may gather, we don’t have to like everything we sell, and Cable remains hugely popular, so maybe we’re missing something…
PICTURED: NEW MUTANTS #87 CGC 9.0 £120

*Marvel: I always liked it when at the end of the Hulk’s strip in Tales To Astonish, the caption ‘To Be Hulkinued’ was used, so I thought it was time to revive it for this selection of the Hulk’s own title between #150 & #197, featuring among other stories the Beast and the death of the Mimic in #161, the Gremlin, Captain Omen, Aquon the Man-Fish, It The Thing from the Dynamo, Modok, a death of Warlock in #178, the Mole Man, the Shaper, the Lurker Beneath Loch Fear, the Abomination in #195, Man-Thing and the Collector in #197 and, in  particular, the debut of Wendigo in #162. The latter is a nice solid pence printed copy, with excellent cover colour and gloss and nice staples and page quality, just minor handling and edge wear. Monsters aplenty in this update!
PICTURED: HULK #162 FN p £80

*Horror 1940-1959: It’s very rare for us to be able to present a complete run of a classic pre-code horror series, but that’s just what we have this week: all six issues of Avon’s classic Witchcraft series from 1952-53. All the iconic bits are here: the classic Skull cover on #2, the Spider-Woman cover on #3, the people cooked alive cover and story on #4, the fabulous Kelly Freas painted cover on #5, art by Kubert, Kintsler, Check, Hollingsworth etc. Fortunately for your budgets, most issues are in lowish grades; details follow:
PICTURED: WITCHCRAFT ALL SOLD
#1 FA+ £100 Spine splits; minor water damage upper spine; glued
#2 FA+ £290 Upper and lower spine splits; weak spine but held at staples
#3 GD+ £150 Taped tear inside front cover; 4 small taped tears back cover
#4 FA+ £180 Back cover tear; off top staple; bottom staple very loose
#5 FA £125 Covers detached and separated
#6 VG £250 No specific defects

*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: From 1976, the well-beloved weekly which was the home of cuddly man-eating shark Hookjaw and several other strips of remarkable controversy and violence! Pre-dating its longer-lived stablemate 2000 AD, and serving to ‘incubate’ much of 2000 AD’s talent, Action paved the way for a darker, bloodier and more cynical trend in boys’ adventure weeklies, with even the traditional genres of sport and war strips getting a nihilistic veneer – to the point where it was eventually banned from the newsstands, to re-emerge months later as a soft-serve shadow of its former self. We have the first issue (no free gift, sorry) in GD fresh into stock, plus most other issues up to the ban in October 1976, plus the last few issues of 1976 when the comic returned from its ban in December. All listed in our catalogue.

*Girls’ Picture Libraries: From the late 1960s, twenty more consecutive issues of True Life Library (All In Pictures), between #546-565. Released right in the middle of ‘Swingin’ London’, the usual nurses, models and actresses are bolstered by somewhat more liberated heroines, including aviatrixes, monarchs and spies – oh my! With very accomplished art from mainly European illustrators, 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 minimal or no discolouration in the staple areas, most are VF with just a few dipping below. Full details as always in our catalogue.
PICTURED: TRUE LIFE LIBRARY #547 VF £8 SOLD

*DC: The scientist/leader. His best friend (who’s big and strong). His girlfriend. Her kid brother. Sound familiar? Yes, of course, that’s the format of the team in Rip Hunter, Time Master… Before this tried and tested line-up was borrowed by Stan & Jack to usher in the Marvel Age of Comics with Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961), DC debuted Rip Hunter, Time Master in the try-out title Showcase in May 1959, four and a half years before a certain time-travelling Time Lord (there are similarities in that Rip’s Time Sphere travelled in time and occasionally space, combining historical settings with science-fiction themes from time to time). Rip was a scientist who invented said Time Sphere and persuaded his friends to accompany him on various adventures in which they encountered Hitler, George Washington and Cleopatra, among many others; aliens and magical adversaries were also not uncommon. Rip’s companions comprised Jeff Smith, his strong best friend, Bonnie Baxter, his girlfriend, and Corky Baxter, her kid brother. They first appeared dressed in ‘civvies’ but later adopted a team costume. Created by writer Jack Miller and artist Ruben Moreira, the concept was popular enough to get four try-outs in Showcase before being promoted to its own series which lasted 29 issues. Time travel stories are always engaging, with a different setting each issue, and although the writing and art was sometimes patchy, there is imagination, adventure and humour within the pages of this fine series. Here we have #1 of the ongoing series, illustrated by Ross Andru. Pence stamped and sadly not a great copy, off both staples with an almost detached spine and plenty of edge wear with small tears to the back cover. Still, it’s an affordable #1 from 1961 and will fill a gap until a better copy comes along.
PICTURED: RIP HUNTER, TIME MASTER #1 FA p £25 SOLD

*Marvel: Always in high profile due to being Iron Man’s arch-nemesis (his Dr. Doom, if you like), the Mandarin has risen now to even more to prominence due to the upcoming Master of Kung Fu film, where Mandy is the Big Bad. The Mandarin, a master of science, martial arts, and controller of an international network of operatives, whose ruthlessness is outmatched only by his ingenuity. And he’s got the bling, too! Famously, each of Mandy’s digits carries a ring (“More than Zsa Zsa Gabor”, as Ben Grimm once remarked) with its own unique powers, at their master’s deadly disposal. Our new copy of his debut in Tales Of Suspense #50 is pence printed, with nice colour, okay staples and pages and some corner blunting. Wear is restricted to the edges, where fine creases break colour, except for one long vertical crease down the centre which is quite faint and does not significantly break colour. There is the beginning of a small tear midway down the right cover edge. But it presents reasonably well and is an issue which is rising in price.
PICTURED: TALES OF SUSPENSE #50 VG- p £320

*Marvel: The Scarlet Centurion is one of what are becoming known as the ‘Kang Variants’, alternate versions of the villainous Master of Time set to be the next Biggest Bad in the MCU. He first appeared in Avengers Annual #2 from 1968, where he pitted the original Avengers against their then current counterparts by means of his powers of time manipulation. This lower-graded pence stamped copy has a great squarebound spine and is generally in nice condition except for some long colour-breaking vertical creases down the left side of the cover towards the spine.
PICTURED: AVENGERS ANNUAL #2 GD/VG p £40 SOLD

*Marvel: A grab bag of Spidey collectable issues this week. First up, a low grade copy of Amazing #252, first black costume in title – only a FA+ copy with the top right corner worn away on the cover and to a lesser extent on the first few pages and creasing and wear to the bottom right corner, with a small stain below Spidey’s foot centre lower cover. Next, two copies of Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 both NM and still sealed in original poly-bags, both silver and green editions. Then #46 of the same series, also NM in original polybag complete with 16 page preview of Spidey cartoon series. Finally, the rarer Gold Edition of Maximum Clonage Alpha, commencing that epic storyline with fancy acetate overlay cover. 
PICTURED:
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #252 FA+ £20 SOLD
SPIDER-MAN #1 SILVER NM £25 SOLD
SPIDER-MAN #1 GREEN NM £25 SOLD
SPIDER-MAN #46 NM £20
SPIDER-MAN MAXIMUM CLONAGE ALPHA GOLD EDITION NM £25

*Marvel: Six cheap and cheerful Bronze Age Marvel #1 issues in low grade for you this week. Flaws are generally wear and creasing. All pence copies as listed below:
ALL SOLD
BLACK GOLIATH #1 GD p £10
CHAMPIONS #1 FA/GD p £5
HOWARD THE DUCK #1 FA/GD p £10
INHUMANS #1 GD/VG p £12
MARVEL PRESENTS (BLOODSTONE) #1  GD p £5
NOVA #1 GD p £15

*Miscellaneous 1940-1959: Our Atomic Sci-Fi feature is back this week, where we showcase those wonderful ‘retro futures’ from the Atomic Age, late 1940s into the 1950s. A rarity kicks us off. Fox were not known for their science fiction output, but Rocket Ship X #1 (and only) from 1951 is an exception, with its outer space and earthbound future stories executed in the inimitable Fox style, as well as numerous themed feature pages. A nice enough copy, structurally solid, with good colour, good staples and nice page quality (especially for Fox, who were known to use the cheapest pulp paper available). Apart from some spine and minor edge wear, the only other defect is small letters in pen over some of the logo. I’ve certainly not seen this one come up for sale very often. 
PICTURED: ROCKET SHIP X #1 VG £165 SOLD