JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS #13

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners and clean edges; no visible creases, tears, or color breaks. Spine appears tight with only the faintest hint of stress at the top edge. A UPC barcode box is present, confirming newsstand distribution. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed, and the book is currently in a protective sleeve which may obscure minor surface flaws.

John Carter, Warlord of Mars #13 is a mid-run issue of Marvel's late-1970s adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels, scripted and edited by Marv Wolfman with pencils by Carmine Infantino and inks by Rudy Nebres, following John Carter, Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas, Kantos Kan, and Sola through the series' ongoing swashbuckling planetary-romance plotline. The title arrived on the heels of Marvel's licensing push into Burroughs properties alongside Tarzan and Korak, giving Infantino and Nebres a canvas for the sword-and-planet visuals the source material is known for, though the book carries no first appearances, deaths, or landmark creative firsts of its own.

Demand for the series centers on completists building the Wolfman/Infantino Barsoom run and on Edgar Rice Burroughs collectors assembling adaptations across publishers, rather than on any character key-issue speculation. As a newsstand-distributed Bronze Age comic from a licensed property with a relatively modest print run and little crossover appeal to mainstream superhero buyers, raw copies see thin but steady turnover at the low end of the price spectrum, while high-grade survivors are scarce simply because newsstand copies of secondary titles were handled and shelved more roughly than direct-market comics of the same era.

Collecting interest in this book skips typical grade-driven bidding wars and instead reflects a scarcity premium concentrated at the top of the grading scale: low- and mid-grade raw copies are inexpensive reading-and-filler material for Burroughs and Marvel Bronze Age completists, while a Universal 9.8 becomes a census-driven outlier commanding a real multiple over mid-grade material purely because so few newsstand copies of this title survive that well-preserved. Buyers are almost entirely long-run collectors and ERB specialists rather than character-key speculators, so pricing tends to stay stable and unglamorous outside of the rare high-grade sale.