CGC certified: F/VF (7.0). Off-white to white pages. Steve Ditko cover. All-Ditko extravaganza with five Ditko stories, full pencils and inks.
Classic cover, one of Ditko's best, featuring a big drooling worm destroying an American city. It's a great pen and ink job, pure Ditko, and the colors are incredible.
Steve Ditko was just 27 years old and had been a comics pro for under a year and a half when this mag hit the stands, yet his talent was already fully evident. Ditko's giant worm illustration appears on the cover of Jim Trombetta's pre-Code horror anthology "The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read!" [Abrams: 2010]. The author opines: "In some cases sexuality burgeons to a degree that allows human genitals to grow huge and even threaten whole cities. Steve Ditko presents us with a [giant] phallus, shiny, moist at the tip, mean as hell... this worm fulfills its nature as a dragon (Old English wyrm) by the... fires that it has caused to break out in the city." Maybe, but to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a worm is just a worm (until it sets your city on fire - then it's an arsehole).
CGC census: 5 copies graded 7.0 (13 copies graded higher). Top 20 copy. Comparable CGC sales: 7.0: $1701 (Dec. 2018). 6.0: $2100 (Nov. 2019).
Consignments Accepted for PBA's Next Comic Book Auction. Golden Age, Silver Age, Pre-Code, Original Art, Interesting Ephemera Sought. Contact [email protected] for details.
PBA COMICS March 26th Comic Book Sale catalogues available. Supplies Limited. Softcover catalogue limited to 200 copies ($45 + $5 postage/handling). Hardcover limited to 26 lettered copies, dust jacket, special limitation plate ($150). Contact [email protected].