DARK ANGEL #12

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creasing or spine stress; edges appear clean with no chipping. Slight softness at top right corner tip and minor handling wear may be present but not clearly visible under the protective sleeve's glare. Interior and back cover were not assessed, so overall grade is capped conservatively.

Dark Angel #12 (cover-dated July 1993) is a late-run installment of the Marvel UK series that began as Hell's Angel and was retitled from issue #6 after a trademark dispute with the Hells Angels motorcycle club. Shevaun Haldane, created by Bernie Jaye and Geoff Senior, continues her campaign against the occult-corporate Mys-Tech board; this chapter closes out the four-part "Assassination" arc as she survives the killer robot Safehouse. Jaye scripts, with pencils and cover by Salvador Larroca and inks by David Hine, placing the issue among Larroca's earliest published Marvel work several years before his long tenure on X-Men, Iron Man and Star Wars.

Commercially the book sits in the flat middle of the Marvel UK experiment, a line printed in quantity for the American direct market at the height of the speculative boom and never subsequently squeezed by attrition. Sales activity is steady but shallow, consisting of single-copy retail and auction transactions rather than any established price trend, and third-party price trackers rely on estimation because recorded sales for this specific issue are sparse. Demand is driven by two narrow groups: Marvel UK completists assembling the Hell's Angel through Dark Angel sixteen-issue run, and Larroca collectors chasing his pre-1994 credits. Neither group is large enough to create scarcity pressure, and supply in high grade remains ample.

For collectors, this is a run-filler rather than a target book, and it trades accordingly. Low- and mid-grade copies move as part of bulk lots or cheap-box fills, with shipping frequently exceeding the comic's price, so buyers are best served acquiring several issues at once from a single dealer. Certification is rarely economic here, since the grading fee outstrips the underlying value and the census for the title is nearly empty; the few slabbed examples that surface appeal mainly to registry builders working the Marvel UK line or to Larroca specialists. Copies in Near Mint from unread dealer stock are the practical ceiling of interest, and patient buyers face little competition at that level.