MARVEL TALES #104

Cover shows strong gloss and bright, unfaded colors with sharp corners and clean edges; the UPC barcode box confirms newsstand edition. Minor handling wear is visible along the spine with faint stress lines, and there's a small amount of edge wear at the top right corner. No creases, tears, or color breaks are evident in this photo, though the book is in a protective sleeve which limits close inspection of surface texture. Interior and back cover were not assessed.

Marvel Tales #104 is a 1979 reprint issue in Marvel's long-running anthology line, reproducing an Amazing Spider-Man story from the Clone Saga period with penciling and inking by John Romita, one of the definitive Spider-Man artists of the era. The issue brings back the Jackal and the second Vulture (Blackie Drago era design cues aside, this is the Adrian Toomes lineage as depicted), alongside Harry Osborn, Flash Thompson, Mary Jane Watson, and the Human Torch in a supporting turn, giving the book a dense cast pulled from a pivotal stretch of Spider-Man continuity even though the material itself is secondhand rather than a first printing.

As a reprint title, Marvel Tales #104 carries none of the first-appearance or origin weight that drives major key-issue demand; its market is thin, with only a handful of certified copies and sales recorded across the grading spectrum. Pricing tracks a fairly standard low-print-run Bronze Age reprint curve: modest values in low and mid grade, with the real premium concentrated at the top of the census where high-grade survivors are scarce. The Romita art and Clone Saga-adjacent story content give it a small but real niche appeal to Spider-Man art and story completists rather than broad speculative interest.

This is a book for Spider-Man supporting-cast and Romita art collectors filling out reading runs rather than investment-grade key buyers. Raw copies in low and mid grade trade cheaply and steadily as reading or filler copies, while a true CGC 9.8 would be a condition-census rarity commanding a real premium purely on scarcity of high-grade surviving newsstand copies, not on story significance. Expect slow, low-volume trading across all grades with occasional spikes when a top-census copy surfaces.