DARKHOLD: PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF SINS #16

Cover shows sharp corners, glossy unbroken surface, and strong color with no visible spine stress, ticks, or creases. The book is sealed in a protective sleeve which limits close inspection of edges, and a 'NM/M' grader sticker is affixed to the cover itself, suggesting prior dealer assessment. No fading, staining, or writing is visible; interior and back cover were not assessed.

Darkhold: Pages from the Book of Sins closed out with this January 1994 issue, the twelfth chapter of the seventeen-part Siege of Darkness crossover that ran through Marvel's Midnight Sons line. Chris Cooper scripts "Devil in Disguise," with pencils by Rurik Tyler, inks by Bob Downs and Mike Esposito, and a cover by Tyler and Malcolm Jones III. The story carries Victoria Montesi, Sam Buchanan, Jinx, and Modred the Mystic to Central America in search of Truthsayer, a member of the Blood marked for death by Zarathos, and delivers the series' final turn — Vicki revealed as the living portal for the Darkhold itself — plus a Scarlet Witch cameo, before continuing into Morbius. As a last issue it wraps two years of Marvel's most explicitly occult early-1990s title, the one that gave the Book of Sins its modern shape.

Market profile is that of a late-run Midnight Sons book from the tail of the speculation era: printed in quantity, widely available raw, and effectively absent from the graded market. Aggregator pages for the middle and late issues of the run record no tracked certified sales at all, and dealer inventory clears in mid to high grade at bulk-adjacent prices, most often inside complete #1-16 runs rather than as a single pickup. Such demand as exists is downstream of the 2022 Doctor Strange sequel, which lifted Darkhold #1 and the Darkhold branding generally; that interest thinned quickly past the first issue and has not produced a sustained bid here. The one place scarcity matters is the top of the census, where so few copies have ever been submitted that a certified high-grade example is priced by grading cost and crossover-completist interest rather than by any established sales trail.

Buyers divide cleanly. Midnight Sons and Siege of Darkness readers assembling the crossover in order account for most transactions and are indifferent to grade above about Very Fine, which keeps low- and mid-grade copies in reading-copy territory with almost no spread between them. Registry and set collectors chasing a complete certified Darkhold run are the only source of meaningful upside, and because submissions are so thin, a high-grade slab is illiquid in both directions — slow to sell, but hard to replace once placed. Sensible handling is to move raw copies within full-run lots and to treat certification as worthwhile only for genuinely pristine examples where the census position, not the story content, is the selling point.