STRANGE TALES #141

Cover shows moderate wear consistent with a mid-grade Silver Age book: visible vertical crease running through the center figure, a corner crease/soft top-left corner, and slight edge wear along the top and right border. Color is bright with no major fading, and the spine appears intact but with some stress. Book is in a protective sleeve, which obscures fine edge detail; interior and back cover were not assessed.

Strange Tales #141 arrives during the dual-feature era of the title, pairing a Doctor Strange adventure with a Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD backup in the tightly-plotted Cold War spy idiom Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were developing for the character. The issue sits within the celebrated stretch of Strange Tales that built two of Marvel's most visually distinctive Silver Age features side by side, months before Jim Steranko's arrival would push the Fury strip toward psychedelic experimentation. No new character debuts in this issue, and it is not cited in standard price guides as a landmark number, but it is a representative chapter of a run collectors pursue as a set.

Market data shows a typical mid-run Silver Age demand curve: values stay compressed and modest through the low-to-mid grades, then rise sharply once a copy clears the 9.4 threshold, with the sole certified 9.6 sale commanding a large premium over anything below it. The absence of any 9.8 on a census of over two hundred certified copies underscores how difficult high-grade survival is for a 1966 newsstand title with typical spine and cover stress, and it means top-end value is driven by scarcity rather than by recorded transactions. Demand is anchored almost entirely by ongoing collector interest in the Doctor Strange and Nick Fury features rather than by any single first appearance in this specific issue.

This is a book bought primarily by Silver Age Marvel completists and Doctor Strange or Nick Fury specialists filling out a run, not by speculators chasing a key. Lower and mid-grade raw copies trade as steady, affordable reading and set-building material, while a true high-grade certified example would be a genuine condition-census rarity commanding outsized interest from grade-chasing collectors and registry competitors, given that no 9.8 has yet surfaced.