ADVENTURE COMICS #352

Book is shown upside down in a protective sleeve; cover has moderate wear including a noticeable spine roll/curl and vertical crease running along the left edge (top of image), spine ticks and some fraying visible at the top edge, and general softness to the corners. There appears to be minor discoloration/toning along the edges consistent with age. Surface gloss looks mostly retained with no major tears, but the spine stress and edge wear are consistent with a mid-grade copy. Interior and back cover were not assessed from this photo.

Adventure Comics #352 (January 1967) is best remembered today as the first appearance of Mordru the Merciless, one of the most durable villains ever created for the Legion of Super-Heroes. The story, plotted and scripted by a teenage Jim Shooter during his celebrated run writing the Legion feature, introduced a sorcerer powerful enough to threaten the entire 30th-century Legion roster, and Mordru would go on to recur across decades of Legion continuity into the modern era. The Curt Swan cover, inked with George Klein on interiors, is typical of the clean, dynamic house style DC favored for its science-fiction anthology books in this period, and the issue sits within the broader Adventure Comics run that served as the Legion's primary home before their own title launched.

Market data shows a population of 87 CGC Universal copies out of 92 total graded, a mid-sized census for a Silver Age DC key, with sales activity spread fairly evenly from grade 6.0 up through 9.4. Pricing is relatively modest through the mid grades, reflecting a book that is a genuine key but a secondary-tier one behind the Legion's own first appearances or Superboy's earliest issues, yet the curve steepens sharply above 8.5, where population thins and the number of recorded sales per grade drops. The absence of any sold 9.8 copies, paired with a single untested 9.8 on census, signals real scarcity at the top of the pyramid and supports a meaningful premium for a top-graded slab relative to the last liquid data point at 9.4.

This is a book collected primarily by Legion of Super-Heroes completists, Silver Age DC villain-origin collectors, and Jim Shooter enthusiasts drawn to his precocious early scripting work. Lower and mid-grade raw copies remain accessible reading and filler-run material, priced well within reach of general collectors assembling the Adventure Comics Legion era. High-grade certified copies, by contrast, trade in a much thinner and more competitive market, where the rarity of pristine survivors of a mid-1960s newsstand comic drives outsized premiums for anything approaching a 9.8.