DARK ANGEL #15

Cover shows strong color and gloss with sharp corners visible in this photo; no creases, tears, or spine stress lines are apparent. The book is in a protective sleeve which limits ability to assess minor surface sheen or edge wear precisely, but no significant defects are visible. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed, and slight page yellowing common to early 90s stock cannot be ruled out.

Dark Angel #15 falls near the end of the short-lived Marvel UK series that began as Hell's Angel and was retitled from issue #6 after a naming dispute. The lead character, Shevaun Haldane, was created by writer Bernie Jaye and artist Geoff Senior in 1992, and by this stage the book had settled into the Mys-Tech conspiracy material that tied the Marvel UK line together with Death's Head II, Warheads and Dark Guard. This issue is scripted by Jaye with pencils by Salvador Larroca and inks by John Stokes, placing it among Larroca's earliest published Marvel work several years before his long runs on X-Men, Iron Man and Star Wars. Supporting players include the sorcerer Algernon Crowe, Bronwen Gryffn, the Guide and the Anti-Being, with the Mys-Tech board driving the plot.

Market demand for the title is limited and concentrated at the front of the run. Hell's Angel #1 and Dark Angel #6, the first issue under the new name and the Excalibur crossover, absorb most collector attention, while later issues such as this one circulate as inexpensive singles or as filler inside Marvel UK lots. Retail inventory and want-list activity indicate steady but shallow interest: copies are easy to source, seldom sell individually at premiums, and the practical spread between a well-worn copy and a solid mid-grade example is small. The Larroca connection is the one genuine demand driver, and it appeals to artist completists rather than to key-issue buyers.

Buyers for this book are Marvel UK run collectors finishing the sixteen-issue set, Larroca completists tracking his pre-1995 output, and dealers assembling themed lots. Because the run was distributed in the direct market at the tail of the early-1990s speculation glut, high-grade raw copies survive in quantity, which caps upside and makes certification uneconomic in all but exceptional cases. Trading behavior is therefore compressed: value moves very little from low to mid grade, then jumps disproportionately at the certified top end purely because the graded population is negligible. Sensible acquisition strategy is to buy raw and buy complete runs rather than to chase individual grade points.