DC COMICS PRESENTS #79

Cover-dated March 1985 and on sale in December 1984, DC Comics Presents #79 pairs the Man of Steel with his own alter ego: the meddlesome Ventura gamblers Rokk and Sorban, holdovers from the Weisinger-era Superman mythos, wager on separating Superman from Clark Kent, and the two halves must contend with lives neither can sustain alone. Paul Kupperberg scripts, Curt Swan pencils, and Al Williamson inks, an unusual and welcome pairing that gives the interior a finer line than the title's house style, with an Eduardo Barreto cover. The issue arrives in the final stretch of the Earth-One Superman, published in the months just ahead of Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Byrne reboot that would retire this version of the dual identity altogether.

Market profile is that of a late-run team-up book from a well-collected but low-heat series. No first appearance, origin, or death anchors it, and the sales record is dominated by raw copies moving through dealer stock, dollar bins, and run lots rather than by discrete auction results. Attention in the 1978-1986 run concentrates on a short list of issues – the New Teen Titans preview, the Masters of the Universe debut, the Ambush Bug appearances, and the Alan Moore Swamp Thing chapter – and #79 sits outside that group. What demand exists is driven by the Swan and Williamson art team, by Superman completists filling the run toward #97, and by the pre-Crisis Earth-One context that has quietly gained followers over the past decade.

Buyers divide cleanly. Readers and run collectors take mid-grade copies at commodity prices and are indifferent to a crease or a spine tick, which keeps the low and mid brackets compressed within a couple of dollars of each other. The only meaningful spread appears at the census top, where high-grade newsstand copies from this period are genuinely harder to find than print runs suggest and a 9.8 carries the cost of certification plus a scarcity premium against a shallow bidding pool. Sellers should expect certified examples to trade episodically rather than on a reliable schedule, and to price off the broader 1985 DC Comics Presents 9.8 market instead of a specific prior result for this issue.