DARKHOLD: PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF SINS #13

Cover shows sharp corners, strong glossy inks, and no visible creases or spine stress in this photo; the book is protected in a plastic sleeve which limits full assessment. No fading, tears, or writing is visible on the front cover. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed, so grade is estimated conservatively from the front cover alone.

Darkhold: Pages from the Book of Sins ran from 1992 into 1994 as one of the five founding Midnight Sons titles, following the Darkhold Redeemers as they hunt down the scattered, corrupting pages of Chthon's grimoire. Issue #13, cover dated October 1993, arrives immediately after the Midnight Massacre crossover and turns the spotlight on Sam Buchanan and his encounter with the Monstrosity, scripted by Chris Cooper with pencils by Rurik Tyler, inks by Bob Downs and color by Gina Going. It is a connective chapter rather than a debut or origin, sitting between the black-cover Midnight Massacre chapter at #11 and the Siege of Darkness opener at #15, both of which absorb most of the collector attention aimed at this run.

Market behavior matches that position. The book is a routine back-issue and dealer-bin title: raw copies in almost any condition change hands for pocket change, usually inside runs, lots or Midnight Sons set fills rather than as standalone purchases. Interest in the Darkhold as a concept rose with its screen exposure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but that attention concentrated on the 1992 first issue and on appearances tied to the Scarlet Witch and Chthon, leaving mid-run chapters largely unaffected. Certified copies are the exception rather than the rule here, and the small census reflects the fact that submission costs exceed the raw value by a wide margin.

Buyers are principally run collectors completing the fifteen-issue series, Midnight Sons completists, and 1990s Marvel horror readers. Across grades the spread is compressed at the bottom, since a well-read copy and a solid mid-grade copy differ by very little in a market where high-grade copies are plentiful from a print run that was widely speculated on and stored. The only meaningful premium sits at the top of the scale, where scarcity on the census rather than underlying demand supports the price, and where results are episodic and depend on who happens to be building a registry set at the time.