STRANGE TALES #136

Pre-1977 single edition, so no direct/newsstand distinction applies. The cover shows a prominent vertical crease running through the Hydra shield and upper title area, along with several white stress lines/creases across the lower-center image, indicating moderate handling wear. There is mild corner softness at the top corners and slight edge wear along the borders, with overall color and gloss still fairly bright. The book is in a protective sleeve, which obscures fine surface detail; interior pages and back cover were not assessed.

Strange Tales #136 (Marvel, September 1965) arrived directly on the heels of issue #135's introduction of Nick Fury as Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., carrying forward Jack Kirby's espionage reinvention of the World War II sergeant into a new Cold War-inflected super-spy feature. The issue's back half continues Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's celebrated Doctor Strange serial, then deep into the Dormammu confrontation that would shortly lead the Sorcerer Supreme into his encounter with Eternity. The pairing of Kirby's S.H.I.E.L.D. and Ditko's Strange on the same double-feature title places #136 squarely within one of the most creatively dense stretches of 1960s Marvel output, even though the issue itself introduces no new characters or origins of note.

Market data reflects a healthy mid-run Silver Age book rather than a recognized key: raw low-grade copies sit in the mid-twenties, mid-grade raw copies trade in the thirties to fifties range, and values climb steadily but not dramatically through the 6.0-9.0 tier before flattening near $280-300 at 9.2 and 9.4, a plateau likely driven by thin sales rather than genuine scarcity-driven demand. With only a handful of 9.6 copies and none certified higher, the top of the market remains largely theoretical, and any 9.8 would command a rarity premium well beyond the current 9.2/9.4 ceiling. Demand is sustained primarily by run-completists building the Lee-Kirby-Ditko Strange Tales sequence rather than by speculative key-issue buying.

This is a book for collectors assembling the full Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. origin run or the Ditko Doctor Strange Dormammu-Eternity saga, and for dealers stocking mid-tier Silver Age Marvel inventory. Lower and mid-grade raw copies move steadily as affordable pieces of a celebrated creative era, while high-grade certified copies are scarce enough that a true 9.8 would likely draw significant attention at auction given the complete absence of comparable sales at that level.