TALES OF THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #319

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners and clean edges; no visible creases, tears, or spine stress lines. Minor handling wear is present at the top edge and a faint bend near the lower right corner tip. The book is housed in a protective sleeve which shows some glare, slightly obscuring fine surface detail. Interior and back cover were not assessed from this photo.

Cover-dated January 1985, Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #319 continues the numbering of the 1980 Legion series after DC moved the Levitz/Giffen flagship to the Baxter-paper third volume. The lead story, "If Memory Should Fail," is written by Paul Levitz with pencils by Terry Shoemaker and inks by Karl Kesel, sending Mon-El and Shadow Lass to Talok VIII to face the mind-controlling villainess Lady Memory and a hired Persuader, with Mon-El forced to relive his Phantom Zone confinement. Dan Jurgens and Kesel supply the cover. The issue also carries cameo appearances by the Monitor and Lyla, part of the year-long seeding of characters across the DC line ahead of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Commercially this is a mid-run Copper Age title from a period of heavy print runs and strong direct-market survivorship, and it trades accordingly. Raw copies move in bulk lots, dealer dollar boxes, and Legion run-fill orders rather than as standalone offerings, and grade spread across the raw band is compressed enough that condition barely moves the needle below Near Mint. Certification is almost never economic: the CGC population for the issue is minimal, and the few slabs that appear are byproducts of submissions from complete-run consignments, so the high bracket is governed by the cost of grading and shipping more than by competitive bidding. The one wrinkle worth knowing is the 95-cent Canadian price variant, which draws a small but committed CPV audience and prices well above the standard edition described here.

Buyers are Legion completists assembling the 300s numbering, Levitz-era readers who want the Shoemaker/Kesel and Jurgens/Kesel art, and the narrow group of collectors chasing every pre-Crisis Monitor and Lyla cameo appearance. Demand rises modestly whenever a Legion adaptation is announced, but the effect concentrates on genuine keys and rarely reaches issues of this kind. For dealers, the practical play is run assembly and set sales in high grade; single-copy certified offerings should be reserved for exceptional copies where a top-of-census designation, not the story content, is the selling point.