THE ILLUSTRATED WARRIOR #4

Cover shows light corner wear at top left and bottom right, with a faint diagonal crease visible near the upper left corner of the cover. Surface gloss appears mostly intact with no major stains or tears visible; slight bend at the top edge is noted. Interior and back cover were not assessed, so grade reflects front cover only.

The Illustrated Warrior #4 is part of a short-lived comic series published by Ultimate Creations, the self-publishing venture of professional wrestler Jim Hellwig, who performed under the ring name Ultimate Warrior. The comic recast Hellwig's wrestling persona as a costumed adventurer, following a mid-1990s trend of wrestlers and other entertainment figures launching branded comic tie-ins outside the mainstream Marvel and DC pipelines. Issue #4, cover-dated 1997, continues that run without any notable creative shift or crossover event tied to it.

As a self-published, low-distribution title, The Illustrated Warrior never established a meaningful secondary market. It circulated primarily through wrestling merchandise and convention channels rather than the direct-market comic shop system, and it has no recorded appearance in major auction results or graded-sales databases. The book trades, when it trades at all, near its original cover price, consistent with its bulk-stock classification.

Interest in this issue is confined almost entirely to wrestling memorabilia collectors and completists chasing the full run of Hellwig's self-published output rather than mainstream comic buyers. Raw copies are readily available in low to mid grade at nominal prices, while a certified 9.8 example would be a novelty for a niche buyer rather than a benchmark sale, since no meaningful census or auction history exists to anchor its price beyond broad small-press comparables.