CONAN THE BARBARIAN #3

Cover shows sharp corners and clean, unworn edges with no visible creases or color breaks. Spine appears tight with no stress lines visible in this bagged/boarded presentation. Colors appear vivid with no fading or staining evident; slight glare from the protective sleeve limits full assessment of surface gloss. Interior and back cover were not assessed as they are not visible in this photo.

Marvel's second series to carry the Conan the Barbarian title was a three-issue limited series published July through October 1997, and this is its final chapter, closing the "Stalker of the Woods" storyline. The scripting came from Roland Green, a prose novelist who had written several licensed Conan novels, while the interior art and cover were handled by Claudio Castellini, then recently visible to American readers through his work on DC versus Marvel. Dan Brown colored, John Costanza lettered, and Joe Andreani edited under Bob Harras as editor-in-chief. Conan carries the issue, joined by the Bossonian woman Vessila; the underlying character remains Robert E. Howard's creation, adapted here near the end of Marvel's long tenure with the license.

Commercially this is a late-period Marvel Conan title released into a depressed post-boom market, and it trades accordingly. Print runs for the 1997 Conan books were modest by the standards of the era, but so is demand: the series produced no first appearances of consequence, no origin content, and no creator run that collectors chase. Raw copies surface regularly in dealer boxes and online listings, most often as complete three-issue sets rather than singles, and high-grade copies are common because the books were bought new by collectors and stored. Certification is rare for the practical reason that grading costs exceed the book's value, which leaves the top of the market untested and prone to erratic single results.

The buyers here are Conan completists assembling the full Marvel run, Castellini followers, and readers filling gaps between the Bronze Age series and the later Dark Horse era. Across the low and middle grades the spread is negligible, so condition matters far less than availability and shipping economics, and copies move fastest bundled with the other two issues. A certified high-grade copy is best understood as a novelty within the census rather than a market benchmark, and anyone submitting one should expect the slab, not the book, to account for most of the value.