THE GREEN HORNET #3

Cover shows sharp corners and clean, glossy surface with no visible creases or color breaks. Spine appears tight with no stress lines visible in this view. Minor handling wear may be present but not evident at this resolution; interior and back cover were not assessed.

NOW Comics revived the Green Hornet license in 1989 and relaunched it as a second volume in 1991, continuing the multi-generational premise in which the mantle passes down the Reid family line. This issue belongs to that second volume, with Paul Reid operating as the current Hornet alongside Mishi Kato, and it pairs a Chuck Dixon script with pencils by Tod Smith, inks by David Mowry, and a cover by Eddy Newell. Dixon was in the middle of his rise toward the Batman office at the time, and the NOW Hornet run is among the better-regarded pieces of his pre-DC work, though the series itself was a licensed title with modest print exposure and no first appearances of consequence in this installment.

Demand is thin and driven almost entirely by run collectors filling out volume two and by readers pursuing early Dixon credits. The title never developed a speculative following, was not distributed heavily outside direct-market channels, and has effectively no certified market: graded copies rarely surface, and there is no established secondary price ladder to interpolate against. What movement exists happens through dealer back-issue bins, bulk lots, and low-dollar online listings, where condition matters less than completeness of the run.

Buyers are Green Hornet completists, Dixon bibliographers, and pulp-and-radio-property enthusiasts who follow the character across Harvey, Gold Key, NOW, Dynamite, and beyond. Across grades the spread is compressed: a well-worn copy and a sharp unread copy differ by only a few dollars, since supply of high-grade examples is adequate relative to the small buyer pool. Certification is generally uneconomic here, which is precisely why a top-census slab would command a disproportionate multiple over raw stock if one were offered, and why the sensible acquisition strategy is raw copies at bin prices.