AVENGERS #45

Cover shows sharp, unblunted corners and strong gloss with no visible spine stress lines or color breaking along the spine. No creases, tears, or stains are apparent on the front cover; the book is protected in a plastic sleeve. Only the front cover was assessed – interior pages and back cover condition are unknown, and slight glare from the protective sleeve may obscure minor surface defects.

Published with an October 2001 cover date, Avengers (vol. 3) #45 falls inside "The Kang Dynasty," the sixteen-part storyline Kurt Busiek carried across issues #41-55 and the 2001 Annual. Manuel Garcia pencils over Bob Layton inks, with a painted-treatment cover by Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove. The chapter advances the war's middle act, moving between Kang's 40th-century holdings and a besieged Earth as Captain America, Thor, the Vision, Warbird, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, the Wasp, Yellowjacket, Firebird, Jack of Hearts and Triathlon are pulled apart by the conquest; Kang, the Scarlet Centurion and the Master of the World carry the antagonist load. It is a connective issue rather than a debut or origin, and its standing rests on the reputation of the arc as a whole, widely regarded as the high point of Busiek's tenure on the title.

Demand tracks the storyline, not the individual number. Raw copies circulate in quantity because this was a well-distributed direct-market book from a period of high collector retention, so dealer stock is deep and turnover happens at bargain-box levels regardless of whether a copy is beaten or merely handled. The only bracket with real price separation is certified high grade, where the buyer is usually completing a run of the arc in slabs or chasing Kang material generally. That certified market widened sharply while Kang was an active MCU property and has since cooled, leaving a thin, uneven sales record with wide spreads between individual results.

The collector base here is the run buyer and the Kang completist. Below Very Fine the book has effectively one price, since grade differences do not register in a market with abundant supply; the practical break point is between a raw copy and a graded copy, not between 1.0 and 5.0. Sellers should expect the arc to move best as a complete set, and single-issue certified copies to depend on timing and on whether Kang is again in front of a general audience. Newsstand copies from this period are genuinely scarce and are cataloged separately; the direct edition described here is the standard printing.