GREEN LANTERN #12

Cover shows significant wear along the spine with multiple stress lines and small chips/tears, most notably a piece missing near the top-left spine edge and cracking along the fold. Corners show moderate rounding and wear, with the bottom-left corner showing some blunting. There are scattered surface creases and a soiled/discolored appearance in the lower right and left edges, along with minor foxing. The book is currently housed in a protective sleeve; interior pages and back cover were not visible for assessment.

Green Lantern #12 (DC, April 1962) belongs to the celebrated early run of the second Green Lantern series, scripted by John Broome with art by Gil Kane and inks generally attributed to Murphy Anderson during this stretch of the title. The issue is representative of the Broome-Kane creative partnership that defined the Hal Jordan era, delivering the clean, dynamic linework and space-age plotting that made Green Lantern one of the more visually distinctive superhero books of the period. It carries no first appearance, origin, or death of major consequence, and its cover, while a solid Kane composition, is not among the handful singled out in standard price guides as a certified classic.

The certified population data shows a typical Silver Age curve: a broad middle tier of raw-adjacent grades trading in the tens of dollars, a meaningful step up through the 8.0-9.0 range as survivors thin, and a sharp discontinuity above 9.4, where only a handful of 9.6 copies exist against zero recorded 9.8s across a 190-copy Universal census. That absence of a top grade, combined with strong sales activity in the 9.0-9.4 band, indicates real collector demand chasing a shrinking pool of high-grade survivors rather than speculative pricing on a low-population book. Demand is driven by completists building the Broome-Kane Green Lantern run and by Silver Age DC collectors rounding out early-1960s superhero material rather than by any single iconic moment tied to this specific issue.

This is a book that trades steadily rather than spectacularly: lower and mid grades remain affordable entry points for readers and run-builders, while the jump into high certified grades reflects genuine scarcity rather than key-issue premium. Buyers at the top end are likely long-term Green Lantern or Gil Kane art collectors rather than investors chasing a landmark first appearance, and a 9.8 would be expected to draw strong competitive bidding simply because none currently exists on record. Across the grade spectrum, value growth tracks general Silver Age DC appreciation, with the steepest gains concentrated in the thin upper tier of the census.