AVENGERS: TIMESLIDE #1

Cover displayed in a protective sleeve shows sharp, undamaged corners and clean edges with no visible whitening or chipping. The glossy foil-embossed cover retains strong color and gloss with no fading, creases, or spine stress lines apparent. A small glare spot near Captain America's shield is from lighting/sleeve reflection rather than damage. Interior pages and back cover were not visible for assessment, so grade is based solely on the front cover's presented condition.

Published with a February 1996 cover date, this 48-page one-shot sits at the business end of "The Crossing," the Avengers-line crossover overseen by editor-turned-writer Bob Harras with Terry Kavanagh on plot and a rotating art team including Roger Cruz and Luke Ross; Cruz supplies the cover. The story sends the Avengers back through time to recruit a teenage Tony Stark as a replacement for the adult version the crossover had turned traitor, and it is the debut of that "Teen Tony" Iron Man, alongside past-set appearances of Howard and Maria Stark, Edwin Jarvis, Matt Murdock, and Victor von Doom. The issue was printed on glossy stock without interior advertising at a $4.95 cover price, a format Marvel used for event chapters it expected to sell above the newsstand line, and it feeds directly into Iron Man #325 and Avengers #395.

Demand is driven almost entirely by the first-appearance credit. Teen Tony is a first appearance of record rather than a character with a following: the storyline was reversed within months by Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, and later continuity treated the entire arc as an aberration, which caps the ceiling. As a mid-1990s Marvel event tie-in the print run was ample and unsold copies remained in dealer stock for years, so raw high-grade copies are easy to source and the book behaves like nearly all overprinted 1996 material: readily available, cheap in circulated grades, and only meaningfully valued when certified at the top of the scale. Certification volume is light, which lends census-topping copies more scarcity than the print run alone would suggest, though that scarcity reflects lack of submissions rather than lack of supply.

Buyers fall into two camps: Iron Man completists assembling every version and first appearance of the character, and Crossing/Heroes Reborn era collectors filling a run that is inexpensive to complete. Low-grade copies are bulk stock and should be treated as fill material; mid-grade raws move at or near cover price and are best sold in lots. The spread only opens at the top, where a graded high-end copy commands a multiple of raw money, so this is a book to certify selectively and otherwise merchandise as an affordable key adjacent to the Iron Man mythos. Any upside is tied to renewed interest in alternate-timeline Tony Stark material rather than to the book's own reputation.