MARVEL TALES #117

Cover shows strong gloss and bright color with sharp corners overall; a small crease/wrinkle is visible near the upper right corner tip and a faint horizontal stress line crosses the mid-right edge. Spine appears tight with no visible major stress lines or color breaks. Minor surface glare makes it hard to fully assess fine print quality, and interior pages and back cover were not examined.

Marvel Tales #117, cover-dated July 1980, is part of Marvel's long-running reprint anthology that recycled earlier Amazing Spider-Man adventures for a new generation of newsstand readers. This issue reprints the Gerry Conway-written, Ross Andru-drawn story that introduced the wrestler-turned-costumed-menace Grizzly, with the Jackal also appearing as the story's behind-the-scenes manipulator. Supporting cast regulars Betty Brant, Ned Leeds, Flash Thompson, Glory Grant, and J. Jonah Jameson round out the Daily Bugle milieu that anchored Spider-Man's civilian-life subplots through the 1970s. As with all Marvel Tales issues, the cover art and indicia credit the reprint packaging rather than crediting new creative work, and the book carries no first appearances of its own since Grizzly's true debut belongs to the original Amazing Spider-Man issue being reprinted.

The market treats this as a common, high-print-run title with no meaningful scarcity in any grade below the top of the population. Demand is limited to Spider-Man completists filling out reprint runs, Grizzly or Jackal character collectors seeking an inexpensive alternative to the pricier original issue, and newsstand-format Bronze Age collectors. There is no independent collector base driving this specific issue; whatever interest it draws is entirely secondary to the value of the story it reprints.

Copies in low and mid grade trade close to cover price and are readily available through back-issue bins, quarter boxes, and online lots without much competition. High-grade certified examples, particularly a Universal 9.8, become disproportionately more valuable simply because so few copies of a disposable newsstand reprint survive in pristine condition, not because of any narrative or historical importance. Buyers for this book are typically assembling a complete Marvel Tales run or want an affordable way to have the Grizzly and Jackal story on their shelf, rather than pursuing it as a standalone investment.