ASTONISHING TALES #26

Cover shows moderate wear consistent with a mid-grade copy: visible surface creasing and a diagonal stress crease across the upper right corner of the indicia box, mild waviness/staining to the cover stock especially top edge, and slight corner softening at top left and bottom right. No major tears or missing pieces are visible, and color remains bright with no fading, but the crease lines and general handling wear keep this out of higher grades. Interior and back cover were not assessed, so overall grade could shift once those are examined.

Astonishing Tales #26 arrived during Marvel's mid-1970s experiment with anthology-format adventure titles, pairing a Ka-Zar jungle-adventure lead story with the ongoing cyborg saga of Deathlok the Demolisher, a character introduced one issue earlier by Rich Buckler and Doug Moench. The series gave Buckler room to develop Deathlok's dystopian, near-future setting across several installments, and issue #26 continues that serialized narrative rather than introducing new characters or concepts of its own. Ka-Zar, meanwhile, had been a recurring Marvel adventure hero since the 1930s pulps and later Silver Age revival, and his half of the book kept the primal, savage-land tone consistent with the feature's long publishing history.

Market activity for this issue tracks the broader pattern for secondary Bronze Age Marvel split books: steady but modest demand in low-to-mid grades, with a pronounced premium reserved for top-census copies. Certified sales data shows a fairly deep population across grades, with over 20 sales recorded at the 9.8 level alone, indicating this book was well preserved by original buyers and remains attainable in high grade relative to true scarcity keys. Pricing stays flat through the mid grades before climbing sharply near the top of the census, consistent with collector focus on assembling complete high-grade Deathlok/Ka-Zar runs rather than chasing any single milestone appearance in this particular issue.

This is a collectible for Bronze Age Marvel completists, Ka-Zar and Deathlok character collectors, and readers assembling the full Astonishing Tales split-book run, rather than a speculative key-issue investment. Raw copies in low and mid grade trade cheaply and are readily available, making the book an easy run-filler; the real market action is concentrated at CGC 9.8, where clean, well-centered copies command a real premium over lower certified grades. Long-term demand should continue to track renewed interest in Deathlok whenever the character receives fresh media or reprint attention, with this issue benefiting modestly as a supporting piece of that narrative rather than as its own draw.