DOCTOR STRANGE, SORCERER SUPREME #57

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creasing or color breaks; spine appears tight with no stress lines visible in this photo. Slight bend/wave noted in the upper right area of the cover near the title box, and minor surface handling wear is possible but not clearly visible due to the protective sleeve and glare. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed, so grade is based solely on the visible front cover condition.

Cover-dated September 1993, this is a mid-run installment of Marvel's second ongoing Doctor Strange title, with Geof Isherwood handling script, art, and cover, George Roussos on colors, and Pat Brosseau lettering. The story, "And a World Dies!", advances the long-running conflict with the renegade sorcerer Urthona, brings Kyllian and Wong into the orbit of Strange's Greenwich Village operations, and introduces supporting figures Rasmus Palmroth and Vicky Barnett along with the alien Jarakk and the doomed Pura-Shamutra. It sits immediately before the Salome arc and the Midnight Sons crossover "Siege of Darkness" that would reshape the title within a year, making it a connective chapter rather than a turning point.

Market behavior matches the profile of an unremarkable early-1990s direct-market Marvel: high print run, wide surviving supply, and no first appearance or event tie-in that collectors track. Raw copies circulate constantly on eBay and through dealer stock at bulk-run prices regardless of whether they present as Fine or Near Mint, which compresses the spread between the low and mid brackets to near nothing. The only real price separation appears at the certified end, where the CGC census for this stretch of the series is nearly empty and a graded copy is bought for scarcity of the slab rather than for the content of the book.

The buyer base is split between run collectors filling the 1988 series and Isherwood completists, both of whom shop raw and price-sensitively, and registry-minded Doctor Strange specialists who will pay a multiple of raw money for the handful of top-census slabs. Submission economics work against new certified supply, since grading fees exceed the raw value many times over, so the high bracket should be understood as scarcity-driven and thinly traded. For dealers, the practical approach is to move raw copies in runs or as part of a complete-series offering, and to treat any certified example as a special-order item with a slow but comparatively firm ceiling.