STRIKEFORCE: MORITURI #13

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners and no visible creases or spine stress in this photo; the book is sealed in a protective sleeve which limits close inspection. Minor light reflection near the top edge may be obscuring small surface imperfections. No tears, stains, or color breaks are visible on the front cover. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed.

Peter B. Gillis and Brent Anderson built Strikeforce: Morituri around a premise Marvel had not tried before: volunteers accept superhuman power knowing the process will kill them within a year, which forced constant cast turnover and gave the series a body count rather than a status quo. Issue 13 is the double-sized payoff of that structure, sending the newly minted third generation against the survivors of the first and second in "Jonny, We Hardly Knew Ye…" and introducing Shear (Walther Feyzioglu) among the new intake. Anderson pencils over Gillis's script with inks by Scott Williams under editor Carl Potts, and the extra pages carry two backups: a cartoon piece on how the creative team assembles and dismantles its own cast, and an installment of The Official Strikeforce: Morituri Handbook detailing the Paideia and Horde spacecraft, reference material later issues in the run cite.

Market behavior here is typical of a well-regarded but low-circulation Copper Age Marvel title with no film or television footprint. Raw copies move as run filler and in complete-set lots rather than as individual targets, and dealer inventory in high raw grades is deep enough that even sharp unread books trade near cover-price levels. Certified activity is close to nonexistent: census coverage for mid-run issues in this series is effectively blank, meaning the graded bracket is a theoretical rather than an observed market, and any slab that surfaces is priced against the series' first issue rather than against comparable sales of this number.

Buyers are Gillis and Anderson completists, readers working back from the Electric Undertow sequel and the modern collected editions, and collectors chasing early Whilce Portacio material elsewhere in the run who fill the surrounding issues cheaply. The practical route to ownership is a full 1-31 run or a partial lot, where per-issue cost drops well below single-issue retail; condition-sensitive demand only appears at the top of the scale, and submitting this number for grading rarely returns the fee. Expect stable, unspeculative pricing across low and mid grades, with the double-sized format and the handbook backup giving it slightly better standalone appeal than its neighbors.