IRON MAN #218

Cover shows sharp corners and strong glossy surface with vibrant color; no visible spine stress lines or ticks in the visible spine area. The book is bagged, obscuring fine edge detail, but no creases, tears, or major wear are apparent through the plastic. Interior and back cover were not assessed, and glare from the bag could be hiding minor surface scuffs.

Iron Man #218, cover dated May 1987, carries the story "Deep Trouble!" plotted by David Michelinie and Bob Layton with script by Michelinie, art by Layton, and alterations by John Romita Sr.; Layton also supplied the cover. The issue falls early in the celebrated second Michelinie-Layton tenure on the title, the run that would shortly produce the Ghost and then Armor Wars. Tony Stark travels to London on a State Department assignment and descends to the wreck of the Titanic to prevent the release of a cache of toxic gas, unveiling a purpose-built Deep Sea Armor for the dive. Supporting players include the doomed Carter Hastings, introduced and killed in this issue, and Irina Tarasova.

Market-wise this is a run book rather than a key. The Deep Sea Armor debut gives it a line in armor-variant checklists and a mention on collector key databases, but it has never generated the auction record or census depth that drives price, and certified examples surface only sporadically. Demand comes almost entirely from two directions: readers assembling the complete Michelinie-Layton stretch from #215 through the Armor Wars arc, and registry-minded collectors chasing every armor first appearance. The newsstand designation carries little premium here, since newsstand distribution was still the majority channel for Marvel in early 1987 and direct-edition copies are the comparatively scarce printing on later Copper Age books, not this one.

For buyers, the practical picture is straightforward. Well-loved copies are reader and fill-in material that move in lots; presentable mid-grade copies are inexpensive enough that shipping and handling dominate the transaction. Value concentrates entirely at the top of the grade curve, where the combination of a shallow census and the newsprint-and-black-ink cover design, which shows spine and corner wear readily, makes a genuine high-grade example harder to source than the book's reputation suggests. Anyone submitting for certification should weigh grading and shipping costs carefully against the realistic ceiling; the sensible play on this issue is to buy an already-slabbed high-grade copy when one appears rather than to speculate on raw material.