SUPERMAN’S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #128

Cover shows moderate wear with a diagonal crease/bend running through the lower left corner near the flag, along with visible edge wear along the spine and corners that appear slightly blunted. There is a small stress mark noted at the left edge (No.418 sticker remnant or printing tick). Colors remain bright with good gloss, no major stains or tears observed, but the book is in a protective sleeve which slightly obscures fine surface detail; interior and back cover were not assessed.

Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #128 carries an April 1970 cover date and sits in the last stretch of the title's traditional era, before Jack Kirby took over the book with #133. The cover is penciled by Curt Swan and inked by Murphy Anderson, the house team that defined the Superman family look through the 1960s. Inside, the lead story "No Father for Jimmy!" is scripted by E. Nelson Bridwell with art by Pete Costanza, sending Superman and Jimmy to the Yucatan after Jimmy's long-absent father, Mark Olsen, who has been installed as the Mayan deity Kukulkan and adorned in Gold Kryptonite, forcing the Man of Steel to work at a distance. The issue is filled out with a reprint drawn from the early Jimmy Olsen run, a common practice in the title at this point.

Commercially this is a mid-run Bronze Age book with no first appearance, origin, or death to drive it. The printed statement of ownership for the period reports an average print run north of 700,000 copies, and survivorship is correspondingly high, which keeps raw copies inexpensive and abundant on eBay and in dealer stock. Demand comes almost entirely from run collectors filling the pre-Kirby gap and from Swan/Anderson cover completists, not from speculators. The one place the book becomes scarce is the top of the census: submission volume on non-key issues of this title is minimal, so certified NM/MT copies surface rarely and are priced by scarcity of the slab rather than by the issue's reputation.

The practical collecting picture splits cleanly. In low and mid grades this trades as inventory, frequently moving inside lots and often for little more than shipping, so buyers should be indifferent to which copy they take. In the high-grade certified band the calculus reverses, and the audience narrows to registry participants and completists assembling the entire 163-issue series in matched grade, where a 9.8 can command a figure out of all proportion to the raw market. Anything between those poles, roughly VF to NM raw, trades quietly and steadily but with little upside, making this a book to buy for completeness rather than appreciation.