Approximate
Condition Profile
DC COMICS · 7/91
UNIT ECA-001794
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #4
1991 Justice Society revival, Hawkman against Solomon Grundy and Vandal Savage, Tom Lyle cover
// Unit specification
// Run position
// Condition analysis
Cover displays strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creases, tears, or color breaks. The book is protected in a plastic sleeve which shows some surface wrinkling/scuffing but this does not appear to affect the comic itself. Spine appears tight with no visible stress lines in this view; interior and back cover were not assessed. Minor edge softness cannot be ruled out due to the protective sleeve slightly obscuring fine detail.
// Valuation — market reference
| Bracket | Grade | Est. market value | Marker |
|---|---|---|---|
| LOW_RAW | 0.5 – 1.5 | $1 | |
| MID_RAW | 4.0 – 6.0 | $2 | |
| HIGH_CERT | 9.8 SLAB | $50 |
// Archive commentary
Justice Society of America #4 is the midpoint of the eight-issue 1991 miniseries by writer Len Strazewski that returned the Golden Age team to publication after the post-Crisis housecleaning had left them stranded. The series is set in 1950, with each installment spotlighting a different member, and this chapter turns to Hawkman while pitting the team against Solomon Grundy and Vandal Savage. Tom Artis pencils over Strazewski's script, with inks by Frank McLaughlin, color by Tom Ziuko, lettering by Janice Chiang, and a cover by Tom Lyle, who supplied the wraparound-house look that unified the run. Editorially the book sits between Roy Thomas's earlier All-Star Squadron work and the 1992 ongoing series, making it a bridge title in the long DC effort to keep the Justice Society commercially viable.
Market profile is that of a well-liked but heavily printed Copper Age DC title. Print runs in 1991 were large, the miniseries has never been scarce, and the overwhelming majority of transactions occur as complete eight-issue sets bought by Justice Society completists rather than as single issues. Certified copies are essentially absent from the market: census populations are minimal because grading fees exceed any plausible return, which means high-grade valuation rests on the general behavior of common 1991 DC books rather than on observed sales of this number. Demand is driven by run collectors, Hawkman and Jay Garrick specialists, and readers assembling the Strazewski Justice Society material, which has attracted renewed attention alongside later Justice Society media exposure.
Collecting outlook is stable and modest. Raw copies trade almost interchangeably from low grade to VF because supply is deep and condition sensitivity is limited on a book with no key content; the practical spread between a beaten reading copy and a solid mid-grade example is a matter of a dollar or two. The upside is concentrated entirely at the certified top of the census, where a registered 9.8 carries a scarcity premium tied to submission economics rather than to underlying rarity, and where sales are episodic enough that any single result should be treated as a data point rather than a level. For dealers this is inventory best moved as part of the complete miniseries or as Hawkman and Golden Age Flash character stock, not as a standalone speculative hold.
// Copies in archive
| Unit | Grade | Variant | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ECA-001794 | ~9.2 | — | AVAILABLE |
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