THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER #12

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners and no visible creasing or spine stress lines. There is minor edge wear at the top left and bottom left corners, and the book is housed in a protective sleeve which slightly obscures fine detail assessment. No tears, stains, or color breaks are visible on the front cover; interior and back cover were not assessed.

The Frankenstein Monster #12 arrived from Marvel in September 1975, part of a short-lived Bronze Age series that reimagined Mary Shelley's creature for a horror-hungry newsstand audience. The title, retitled partway through its run from The Monster of Frankenstein, was carried for much of its length by writer Doug Moench, who steered the Monster through a mix of gothic atmosphere and Marvel-style continuity. Issue #12 falls in the latter half of an 18-issue run that never achieved the sales or lasting collector recognition of Marvel's contemporaneous horror hits like Tomb of Dracula or Werewolf by Night, and it introduces no first appearances, deaths, or other events that price guides flag as historically significant.

Market data reflects a book with a small but not negligible collector base: census figures show 73 universal copies graded, concentrated in the 9.4-9.6 range, with the 9.8 tier commanding a real premium built on five recorded sales rather than a single outlier. The FMV curve is unusually flat through the mid grades, only breaking upward sharply from 9.4 to 9.8, a pattern typical of a low-mintage, low-demand Bronze Age title where most surviving copies were well cared for by original owners but few buyers compete for anything short of the top of the census. Demand is driven almost entirely by series completists and Frankenstein/horror-genre collectors rather than by any character or creator premium.

This is a book that trades quietly rather than actively: raw copies in low and mid grades move for modest sums to readers filling out the run, while graded 9.8 copies see periodic, well-spaced sales to census-chasing collectors willing to pay for top-of-the-pop status. It suits a dealer's back-catalog inventory better than a marquee lot, with the top grade offering the only meaningful appreciation story in the book's trading history.