WHAT IF? #47

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creases or color breaks. Slight bindery/production wave lines are visible in the cover stock near the top, and there appears to be minor rippling/waviness across the surface, possibly from the protective sleeve or slight cover flex rather than actual damage. Spine appears tight with no visible stress marks or ticks. Book is in a plastic sleeve which limits full assessment; interior and back cover were not examined.

Cover-dated October 1984, What If? #47 closed out the first volume of Marvel's long-running alternate-reality anthology after forty-seven issues. Peter B. Gillis scripts a full-length Asgardian tragedy in which Loki, rather than the exiled Donald Blake, takes up Mjolnir, with consequences that pull in Odin, Hela, Balder, Sif, Heimdall and the Warriors Three. The interiors are penciled by Kelley Jones, inked by Sam de la Rosa, at a very early point in Jones's career and well before the Batman work that established him; the wraparound-feel painted cover is by Bill Sienkiewicz, then at the height of his New Mutants period. The premise has stayed in circulation among Thor readers because it prefigures the worthiness-and-succession questions later mined by both the comics and the screen versions of the character.

Market behavior is that of a well-known but plentiful Copper Age anthology issue rather than a key. Print runs were healthy and newsstand distribution was broad, so raw supply is constant across eBay, HipComic and dealer back-issue stock, and mid-grade copies clear quickly at low single-digit levels. Two factors put a floor under it: the Sienkiewicz cover, which draws cover-artist collectors who buy across titles, and sustained Loki demand, which has kept any Loki-forward cover from falling to true bulk pricing. Certified copies are scarce simply because few owners find the grading fee justified, and that scarcity — not underlying rarity — is what supports the spread between raw near-mint and slabbed 9.8.

Buyers divide into three groups. Run collectors completing volume 1 absorb most of the low- and mid-grade supply and are price-sensitive, treating the issue as one slot among forty-seven. Sienkiewicz and Kelley Jones followers reach a little higher for sharp, well-centered copies with tight staples and clean black areas, since the dark painted cover shows wear readily. The slab market is the speculative end: with a thin census, a single strong listing can reset the visible comp, and Loki-related media announcements have historically produced short spikes in Thor-adjacent Copper Age material. The sensible posture is to treat raw grades as liquid and easily replaced, and the 9.8 tier as a low-volume, news-sensitive position best entered on weakness.