ACES HIGH #3

Graded at 3.5 (VG-) on 2026-10-22, from new photos taken out of the sleeve: front, back, interior page and spine. Paper chipped away around the top staple. Heavy stress lines and chipping along the lower spine. Small creased tear at the right edge of the front. Top-left corner creased, bottom-right blunted. Tan pages.

Aces High was one of EC Comics' short-lived but artistically ambitious war titles, launched in 1955 as editor Al Feldstein and publisher William Gaines pushed the war-comics line toward meticulously researched aviation stories spanning both World Wars. Issue #3 continues that format, pairing script work from Feldstein with art from EC's reliable bullpen of Reed Crandall and John Severin, and a cover credited to George Evans, an artist whose aeronautical draftsmanship became closely associated with the title. The book arrived late in EC's New Trend era, shortly before the Comics Code Authority's 1955 restructuring forced the line's cancellation, giving Aces High a compressed eight-issue run that has made complete sets modestly scarce.

Market data shows a typical Golden Age war-anthology curve: values stay soft through mid grades before climbing sharply toward the top of the census, with 9.6 copies bringing multiples of the 9.0 price on a thin but consistent run of recorded sales. Demand is driven less by any single first appearance — the title has no key origin or character milestone — and more by EC's reputation for high production values, the aviation-genre niche audience, and the collector base that pursues complete EC war runs alongside titles like Frontline Combat. With only a handful of copies graded above 9.2, high-grade examples are genuinely scarce rather than merely well-kept.

This is a book that trades in two very different markets: low- and mid-grade copies move steadily as reading and run-filling material at modest prices, while high-grade slabs are chased by a smaller circle of EC specialists and war-comics completists willing to pay a steep premium for top-census condition. Absent any 9.8 or 10 on record, a fresh submission at that level would likely set a new benchmark rather than simply fill an existing price point, and should be expected to command a significant premium over the last confirmed 9.6 sale.