THE GREEN HORNET #16

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creases or color breaks. Slight softness at the top left corner and minor edge wear along the spine are visible under close inspection. No stains, tears, or writing are apparent on the front cover. Interior pages and back cover were not assessed, so grade is based solely on this cover photo.

Now Comics held the Green Hornet license from 1989 and built an ambitious shared continuity around it, treating the radio and television versions as successive generations of masked publishers and their Kato partners. This issue continues Ron Fortier's run as writer, with pencils by Patrick Zircher over inks by David Mowry and a cover credited to Bill Knapp, Dan Schaefer and Patrick Williams. The cast reflects the publisher's generational approach: Paul Reid in the Hornet role alongside Diana Reid, with Kato and Ikano Kato carrying the family's other half of the legacy. Zircher's presence is the most durable point of interest, since the assignment came several years before his higher-profile work at Marvel on Cable and Iron Man, and Now's licensed titles served as a training ground for a number of artists who later moved to the majors.

The market for Now Comics material is a bulk market. Print runs from the late Copper Age were large relative to demand, survivorship in high grade is good, and the collector base for this line is small and set-driven rather than speculative. Sales activity concentrates on the first issues of each volume and on the Tales of the Green Hornet spin-offs; mid-run numbers move mainly inside multi-book runs, in dollar boxes, or as fill-in orders from want lists. Renewed interest in the character through later licensors has never translated into meaningful price movement for the Now issues, and no first appearance, origin or death in this issue gives dealers a hook to price against.

Buyers here are run completists assembling the Now continuity, Green Hornet character collectors who want the licensed comics alongside radio and television material, and a thin secondary group of Zircher followers tracking his earliest published pencils. Across grades the spread is compressed: low-grade and mid-grade raw copies trade at essentially the same nominal level, so condition matters far less than availability and shipping cost. Certification is difficult to justify economically, and the few slabbed examples that surface are typically the byproduct of submitting a larger group; sellers should expect a certified copy to find its audience slowly and only among registry-minded set builders.