CAPTAIN AMERICA #288

Cover shows strong gloss with vivid colors and sharp corners; minor edge wear is visible at the top right corner and a small ding at the bottom left corner. There is slight spine stress with a few faint tick marks near the top of the spine, and minor surface handling wear along the right edge. No major creases, tears, or color breaks are visible. Interior and back cover were not assessed.

Captain America #288 (cover-dated December 1983) closes the three-part "Mazes!" storyline written by J.M. DeMatteis with art by Mike Zeck and inker John Beatty. Guest-starring the original Deathlok (Luther Manning), the arc sends Steve Rogers into a devastated future to join Godwulf's Redeemers against Hellinger's plan to exterminate the surviving population. It is a well-regarded run of Cap by a strong creative team, but the issue carries no first appearance, origin, or death that collectors treat as a key, placing it firmly in mid-run territory.

Market demand is modest and driven mainly by run collectors completing the Zeck/DeMatteis era and by Deathlok followers assembling the character's early-1980s appearances. As a standard 60-cent U.S. newsstand copy from a large print run, supply comfortably exceeds demand in raw grades, and prices reflect that: unslabbed copies change hands for pocket money, with value accruing only at the very top of the grade scale where high-grade newsstand copies become genuinely harder to locate. The Deathlok tie-in provides a floor of ongoing interest without lifting the book into key-issue pricing.

Buyers are predominantly completists and Deathlok specialists rather than investors, and the book trades accordingly: near-worthless as a beaten reading copy, a few dollars in presentable mid-grade, and a meaningful step up only in certified high grade where registry and condition-sensitive collectors compete. It is a comfortable fill for a Bronze Age Cap run and a reasonable low-cost slab target, but it should be catalogued as a solid mid-run issue, not a speculative piece.