IRON MAN #138

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners and no visible creases or spine stress lines. Slight edge wear is visible at the top right corner and along the bottom edge, and there is minor waviness near the spine consistent with light handling. The book is in a protective sleeve, which limits full assessment of surface sheen; interior and back cover were not evaluated.

Iron Man #138, cover-dated September 1980, falls squarely inside the David Michelinie and Bob Layton run that reshaped the character's 1979-1982 output, with Layton handling both the cover and pencils and Tom Palmer inking. Titled "Facades and Ruses," the issue pits Iron Man against Dreadnought robots deployed by Madame Masque and the Maggia, with Spymaster, Bethany Cabe and James Rhodes in the supporting cast, and it opens the two-part story that concludes in #139. It carries no first appearance or origin; its most-cited curiosity is a background police officer drawn as a likeness of comedian Steve Martin, an Easter egg that sellers frequently mention in listings but which has never translated into recognized key status.

Market behavior matches that of a well-regarded but non-key mid-run Bronze Age Marvel book. Raw copies circulate in volume and are priced as run-filler at both dealer and auction level, with condition rather than content driving the spread. Certified activity is modest and clusters in the 9.0 to 9.8 range, and the top of the grade scale is where nearly all of the value concentrates, reflecting the era's newsstand production standards and the difficulty of finding square-spined, sharp-cornered copies of 1980 Marvels rather than any story-driven demand. Adjacent issues from the same year trade on a similar curve, which makes the certified market here easy to bracket even without a deep sales record for this specific number.

Buyers divide into two groups: run collectors assembling the complete Michelinie/Layton stretch, who are content with mid-grade copies bought cheaply, and high-grade Bronze Age specialists chasing 9.8 census copies of an entire year's worth of a single title. There is little speculative interest, so pricing has been stable rather than volatile, and grading costs exceed the value of anything below the high end of Near Mint. For a dealer archive, this is best positioned as a solid run book, with the certified high-grade slab the only version that supports a meaningful ask.