Frank Hampson’s highly detailed artwork was strongly evident as The Mekon holds Sir Hubert, Digby and professor Peabody hostage to flush colonel Dare out into the Venusian Flame Belt but Dan, too, has a plan…(but it certainly didn’t include the £2250 hammer price).

Painted and signed by Frank Bellamy, Dan’s rocket ship, Anastasia, zooms down to attack the mound city of the fearsome Nagrebs. The board zoomed up to £2650.

Illustrated here are the first two of four consecutive artworks of Charley’s War by Joe Colquhoun and scripted by Pat Mills for Battle-Action 263 in 1979.
‘October 1916. ”Operation Wotan” raged on with the British trying to retake ‘”Wormwood Scrubs” and German reinforcements hurling them back to “Old Kent Road.” A record price of £1920 repatriated the images.

Beano war issues often create very strong bidding depending on their propaganda content. The key issues here was No 86 where Prime Minister Churchill was illustrated thanking Lord Snooty for chasing Herr Hitler back to Germany. £450 won the day.

Dandy war issues here showed Desperate Dan bringing down a Luftwaffe fighter, Freddy the Fearless Fly tattooing a Nazi spy and Korky capturing a U-Boat on the front cover. £195 was a small price to pay.

Magic, the third comic from the DC Thomson stable is genuinely scarce as it only ran for 80 issues, ceasing production in January 1941. Illustrated here is No 24 in [fn/vfn] grade selling at £140. Please keep your eyes peeled for our next auction in May where we have been promised a run of early issues to savour.

Beano and Dandy annuals have reduced in auction value from 10 or 20 years ago Here was a very nice copy of The Dandy Monster Comic from 1944 which sold for £580 and would have made the high hundreds back then. At that time war years annuals were much more strongly contested but as more and more copies came on to the market their perceived ‘rarity’ has diminished.

The large format Beezer comics usually show a horizontal centre-crease where folding for storage was the norm. Not so our continuing collection of bound volumes where the original owner kept them in large storage containers down the years before binding them into volumes. Illustrated here is the year for 1958 which sold for £720

From the same vendor, here is The Topper bound volume for 1960 with Mickey The Monkey and The Three Musketeers by Dudley Watkins and a colourful ad for the first Judy comic on the opposite page. £980 took them away.

Fleetway Super Library’s 1967 Stupendous series featured The Spider and Steel Claw action adventures where £210 clawed the 17 issues away.

A complete bound volume year of Beano featured the first appearance of Dennis’s retiring pet, Gnasher and bashed the street kids with £440.

This Black Knight original artwork with pencils by Paul Neary and inks by John Stokes tasked the Black Knight with recovering the body of Captain Britain, killed in battle, and borne away by the Nethergood Mandrac – Lord of the Slain. Then borne away for £520.

Look-in was a huge pop paper from the 1980s and this complete year of 1981 starred Madness, Adam and the Ants, Abba, Sapphire and Steel, Debbie Harry, the Beatles, Elvis AND Charles and Di’s Wedding centre-page poster! An AdamAnt fiver each for the 52 issues.

 

This Batman #108 from 1957 was a CGC Restored Grade ‘apparent 9.0’ and took £420.

Amazing Spider-Man #14-17 were offered here with missing ad pages and letter page cut-outs. Not affecting the story pages the quartet gathered £360.

Prices for this ‘hot’ book are beginning to stabilise and this [fn-] cents copy made £340

This Avengers #57 cents copy with full cover gloss graded at [fn/vfn]. A £300 Vision.

The first nine Silver Age Cap Americas in nice grades shielded £165.

Daredevil #1 is a trophy item and this price stamped, pence copy in [vg] grade made £1740

F F #48 [fn/vfn] and #49 [vfn+] did extremely well at £1560 and £1540. Almost price-matched (but not to Aldi).

 

But not as high as our star price Black Panther issue speeding to £1820.

Classic cover Silver Surfer #4 in [vfn/nm]. An absolute beauty at £1120.

Werewolves By the Knight of the silvery Moon singing £490.

Here’s X-Men #13 [vfn+] at £290 and #50 [vfn/nm] at £300. Super high grades.

Four early 1970s Batman comics in [fn-vfn] grades at £660.

Another classic cover with Batman 251 in Very Fine grade and The Joker in the pack. Aced at £400.

Showcase #34’s Silver Age Aquaman origin CGC 5.0 at £320 next to a low grade CGC Suicide Squad Brave and the Bold #25 still finding £410.

The first five Blue Beetles are jolly hard to find in one lot and this complete run with an odd early issue winged £260.

 

 

In a recent newspaper article, The Beano has been called “incredibly irresponsible” for featuring online quizzes that promote junk food and calling vegetables "vile”. The BMJ, a medical trade journal published by the British Medical Association, said the comic’s website, viewed by millions of children and described to parents as a “safe place for kids to play” pushed content about brands such as McDonalds and Nandos. “Forknite”, a game on the comic’s website, also asked children to help Minnie the Minx triumph over a “plate of vile veg”. The more vegetables “defeated” in a single turn, the louder a farting noise is played to amuse readers.

 

A spokesperson for The Beano said: “We take enormous care in what we present to children. We strongly feel that the BMJ opinion piece does not give a representative or balanced picture of the content of The Beano website, choosing instead to cite selective examples out of context to suit the authors’ line of argument.” When Comic Book Auctions asked for his reaction, a Mr G Nasher responded, “I hope I’ll be given the opportunity to have an intuitive and balanced discussion with their research team.”