THE ILLUSTRATED WARRIOR #2

The cover shows strong, glossy color with sharp corners and no visible creases, tears, or spine stress from this angle. There is minor edge wear potential near the top left corner but it's difficult to confirm due to the protective sleeve and glare. The book appears to be bagged, which suggests careful handling, but interior pages and back cover were not assessed.

The Illustrated Warrior #2 is part of a short-lived Crusade Comics venture from Billy Tucci, the writer-artist best known for creating Shi, whose warrior nun Ana Ishikawa appears here as a connecting element between Tucci's various projects in the early 2000s. Gary Cohn, a veteran editor with a long DC and independent-comics résumé, edited the book. This series arrived after Shi's initial 1990s boom, part of Tucci's continued efforts to expand his creator-owned universe through Crusade Comics rather than his earlier Crusade Fine Arts imprint arrangements.

As a lower-profile spinoff title from the black-and-white independent comics boom's aftermath, The Illustrated Warrior never generated the sales or secondary-market attention of the original Shi ongoing series or its higher-profile crossover one-shots. It carries no first appearance, no notable creative milestone beyond being a Tucci-drawn cover and script, and no significant continuity event; it is simply a minor extension of the Shi mythos published in small numbers for an already niche audience. Collector interest is limited almost entirely to completists tracking every Tucci or Shi-related release.

This book trades as a reader copy for Shi completists and Tucci fans building out ancillary material, with raw copies generally available near cover price regardless of condition given the limited demand. Graded submissions are uncommon simply because few copies were sent in over the years, so a high-grade slab occasionally commands a modest premium purely from scarcity of certified examples rather than any broad collector campaign. It is not a book pursued by mainstream key-issue buyers, and its market ceiling remains low across all grades.