JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS #5

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creases or color breaks. Spine appears tight with no stress lines visible through the protective sleeve. There is a small area of surface glare near the top edge but no evident chipping or wear. Book is in a protective sleeve; interior and back cover were not assessed.

John Carter, Warlord of Mars #5 continues Marvel's mid-1970s adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels, scripted by Marv Wolfman with pencils by Gil Kane and inks by Rudy Nebres; the cover is credited to Kane and Pablo Marcos. The issue features the series' core cast of John Carter, Tars Tarkas, Kantos Kan, Mors Kajak, and Stara Kan, continuing the sword-and-planet adventure that Marvel licensed to capitalize on renewed interest in pulp science fantasy during the Bronze Age. It holds no first-appearance or origin significance and is valued primarily as a representative issue of a licensed adaptation series rather than as a landmark superhero or horror book.

Market data for this issue is thin, reflecting its status as a lower-profile ongoing series rather than a heavily tracked key. Certified sales cluster at the high end of the grading spectrum, with a small number of 9.6 and 9.2 copies changing hands for modest sums, while no 9.8 has ever been certified across a census of roughly three dozen graded copies. This scarcity at the top is more a function of limited submission volume than intense demand, and raw copies in low and mid grades trade quietly outside the certified market, generally near or just above cover price.

This is a book for Burroughs and Barsoom completists, Gil Kane art collectors, and buyers assembling a run of Marvel's John Carter series rather than speculators chasing a key. Across grades it trades as a low-cost Bronze Age filler book, with value concentrated less in rarity of the story and more in the difficulty of finding pristine, unpressed newsstand copies for the top of the census.