AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT #24

Cover shows sharp corners and clean edges with strong color and gloss under the protective sleeve; no visible creases, tears, or stains. There is slight surface glare from the bag but no evidence of spine stress or color breaking along the spine. Interior and back cover were not assessed, so grade is based solely on the visible front cover.

Avengers Spotlight #24 continues the retitled run that began as Solo Avengers, with Hawkeye carrying the lead feature. Howard Mackie scripts "A Show of Hands," penciled by Al Milgrom and inked by Don Heck, in which a bounty placed on one of Clint Barton's arms drives him through an encounter with the Death-Throws, an uneasy alliance with his former mentor Trick Shot, and a confrontation with Razor Fist in the sewers beneath Los Angeles. Steve Geiger supplies the cover. The backup, "Waste Not, Want Not," written by Fabian Nicieza with pencils by Gavin Curtis, sets out the origin of Firebird, Bonita Juarez, expanding a supporting player from the West Coast Avengers orbit. The issue sits in the first wave of dollar-cover-price Marvels and marks the point where the title shifted to a bimonthly schedule.

Market behavior is that of a plentiful late-copper-age Marvel mid-run book. Print runs from 1989 were substantial, unsold copies survived in quantity through the speculation years, and the title has never developed a collector following independent of Hawkeye completists. Raw copies move as bulk inventory, priced by the handful rather than individually, and dealer listings across the grade spectrum from Very Good through Very Fine cluster tightly with little spread. Certification is rare and largely economically irrational here: the fee to grade exceeds the book's raw worth many times over, so what few slabs exist trade on the cost of the plastic rather than on scarcity of the content.

Demand comes almost entirely from two groups: readers assembling the complete Solo Avengers and Avengers Spotlight run, now more visible thanks to the Epic Collection reprints, and Hawkeye collectors chasing Trick Shot appearances after that character's later use in the 1994 Hawkeye limited series and subsequent adaptations. Neither group pays a premium for grade at this level, which flattens the curve from low to mid grade to near-nothing and makes the high-grade certified bracket a curiosity rather than a market. For a dealer archive this is set-filler with a legitimate niche audience: worth cataloging accurately for run buyers, not worth holding for appreciation.