STRANGE TALES: BLADE #2

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creasing or spine stress; edges appear clean with no chipping. The barcode area is labeled 'Direct Edition' with logo rather than a scannable UPC, consistent with the direct market edition. Book is in a protective sleeve which limits full assessment of spine and edges, and interior/back cover were not assessed. Minor handling wear cannot be ruled out due to glare and sleeve reflection.

Marvel launched this three-issue Blade limited series in November 1998 under its short-lived Strange Tales imprint, timed to the theatrical release of the first Blade film. Don McGregor u2014 whose 1970s Marvel work on Jungle Action and Killraven established his reputation for dense, novelistic scripting u2014 wrote the "Blood Allies" arc, with pencils by Brian Hagan, inks by Sandu Florea, color by Steve Oliff and lettering by John Costanza; the covers were supplied by Bart Sears and Randy Elliott. The second chapter moves the New Orleans-set story forward as Blade fights the vampire Yves St. Monroe on behalf of Dominique Levant, and brings in Morbius, the Living Vampire, whose presence remains the issue's main hook for character collectors.

Market behavior here is typical of a late-1990s licensed-adjacent miniseries: print runs were adequate to demand, most surviving copies are high grade because the book was bought off the rack by direct-market collectors, and raw copies change hands at or near a few dollars whether they grade Good or Very Fine. Certification is where the scarcity lies, since almost nobody has submitted the issue u2014 the certified census across all grades runs to a handful of copies, so top-grade slabs price off a small number of eBay results rather than a real market curve. Demand spikes tied to Blade's live-action appearances have historically lifted the 1998 Marvel Blade titles briefly, but the effect concentrates on first issues and photo-cover variants rather than middle chapters, and it recedes quickly.

Buyers divide into two groups. The first are Blade and Morbius completists filling a run, who purchase raw and are indifferent to anything above Very Fine; for them this trades as an inexpensive back-issue bin book and is best sold as part of the complete three-issue set, which carries a modest premium over the sum of its parts. The second are speculators on census scarcity, who will pay a real multiple for a certified high-grade example precisely because so few exist u2014 an unstable premium that depends on the next Blade adaptation rather than on the book's own merits. Mid-grade copies have no distinct constituency and should be priced as reading material.