SLIMER! #4

Cover shows good gloss and color with no major creases; there is a light corner blunting at the top left and some minor edge wear along the right side. A small amount of surface handling wear is visible near the bottom edge. Spine appears mostly tight with no visible stress lines, but slight softness at the bottom right corner. Interior and back cover were not assessed.

NOW Comics launched Slimer! in May 1989 as a companion to its Real Ghostbusters license, building a full color, all-ages title around the cartoon's green mascot rather than the four Ghostbusters themselves. The issues pair short humor strips with puzzles, games and activity pages, and were produced by a small rotating bullpen with Hilarie Staton supplying most of the scripts. Issue four, cover dated August 1989, is a standard entry in that run: no first appearance, no origin, and no story development that later media drew on. Its interest is as a period artifact of the licensing boom that followed Ghostbusters II and the syndicated cartoon's peak, when NOW built much of its publishing program on television and film properties.

Market activity is thin and almost entirely retail rather than auction. The book turns over on eBay and through dealer back-issue stock, usually inside multi-issue Ghostbusters lots, and the run rarely appears in graded form because submission costs exceed likely returns. What demand exists comes from Ghostbusters completists and from the broader nostalgia trade in late-1980s cartoon tie-ins, which lifted the whole category modestly around the 2021 Afterlife release without producing durable price movement for the Slimer! title specifically. Newsstand and direct copies trade interchangeably here; the copper-age newsstand premium that applies to major Marvel and DC keys has no traction on a NOW licensed book. Higher-grade copies are constrained more by the fragility of the format, including the removable centerfold poster in early issues, than by absolute scarcity.

Buyers divide cleanly into two groups. The first are set collectors filling the nineteen-issue run, who buy raw at whatever grade is offered and are price-sensitive; for them the book is inexpensive and readily available. The second, much smaller group pursues top-census slabs of obscure licensed titles as registry or curiosity pieces, and that competition is what supports any meaningful certified figure. Between those poles the grade curve is flat: a presentable mid-grade copy costs little more than a beaten one, and value only accelerates at the extreme high end where certified population is minimal. Dealers should treat this as inventory that moves best bundled with other Real Ghostbusters and NOW material rather than as a standalone offering.