OUR FIGHTING FORCES #112

Cover shows moderate wear consistent with a mid-grade Silver Age book: visible spine stress with a small tick/tear at the top left edge, light surface creasing across the upper portion of the cover, and mild waviness/texture distortion in the orange background suggesting some handling or slight moisture exposure. Corners appear reasonably sharp with only minor blunting, and there is no significant color break at the spine visible in this photo. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed, so the grade reflects front cover condition only.

Our Fighting Forces #112, cover dated April 1968, falls in the middle of the Lt. Hunter's Hellcats run that carried the title from issue #106 through #123. The feature was DC's answer to the men-on-a-mission war stories then in vogue: homicide detective turned officer Ben Hunter commands a squad of military prisoners — Brute, Juggler, Snake-Oil, Swinger and Light Fingers — on missions no regular unit would be given. The series was steered by Robert Kanigher, DC's principal war editor and writer of the period, with Irv Novick supplying cover art in the clean, hard-edged style he brought to the whole DC war line. No first appearance, origin or death occurs here; the issue's interest lies in its place within a well-defined, collectible run and in the quality of the artwork DC's war group was producing in its last Silver Age years.

Market activity for this issue is sparse and driven almost entirely by run collectors. Copies surface irregularly on eBay and Mercari and through dealer stock at MyComicShop, mostly in the mid grades that survive from newsstand distribution, and they trade at levels close to those of the surrounding Hellcats issues rather than at any premium. Certified examples are scarce because grading costs are difficult to justify against the raw price, which leaves the high end of the grade curve unusually thin and unusually volatile: a top-census copy answers to whoever is assembling a high-grade DC war set at that moment, not to an established price history. Demand is steady but shallow — the buyer pool is the DC war constituency, which prizes Kubert-era Sgt. Rock and Losers material first and treats the Hellcats stretch as secondary.

This is a run-filler with genuine appeal rather than a speculative book. In low grade it functions as a reading copy and moves best bundled with other war titles; in the mid grades it is the practical collector option and the grade band in which most transactions occur. High-grade copies are where the leverage sits, since surviving white-page examples of a twelve-cent war book are genuinely uncommon and certification instantly places a copy near the top of a very short census. Buyers should expect patience on both ends: acquisition opportunities are infrequent, and resale depends on finding an active run builder rather than a broad market.