VALOR #2

This is an EC reprint line title (1990s reprint of 1950s 'New Direction' material); cover shows sharp corners, strong glossy blue color with no visible fading, and clean edges with no chips or tears. A faint vertical crease/handling line is visible near the top left spine area and a small dimple near the bottom left edge. No stains or writing are visible on the front cover; interior and back cover were not assessed.

Valor #2 from Gemstone Publishing, cover dated November 1998, reprints EC Comics' Valor #2 of May-June 1955 in full color at 36 pages. Edited by Russ Cochran, the issue carries an Al Williamson cover and interior work associated with Williamson, Bernard Krigstein, Graham Ingels, and Wally Wood, with scripting credited in part to Carl Wessler. The original title was one of EC's post-Code New Direction books, trading horror and crime for historical adventure across Roman, Asian, and Arthurian settings; the Gemstone program of the 1990s made that material available to readers who would never encounter a 1955 original, and the reprint line remains the standard reading path into EC's short-lived final wave.

Market profile is driven by content rather than scarcity. Print runs were adequate to demand, distribution was largely direct market, and the books were bought by adult EC readers who stored them carefully, so surviving copies skew to high grade and supply comfortably exceeds interest. Buyers pursue the run as a set or as an Annual collecting #1-5, which suppresses the price of individual issues; single copies circulate at or near their original cover price and are frequently absorbed into bulk lots at auction rather than catalogued separately. There is no first-appearance or origin premium attached to the reprint, and the Williamson cover, while attractive, is not a cover collectors track.

The audience is the EC completist and the reader-collector assembling the New Direction titles, not the certified-slab market. Across grades the spread is unusually flat: a low-grade copy and a mid-grade copy sit close together because condition-sensitive demand barely exists at this price level, while the practical ceiling for a raw copy is set by what the whole five-issue run costs. Certification is economically irrational here except as part of a registry-style completion project, which means any encapsulated example is priced against the fee paid rather than against a sales record. Dealers are best served treating this as inventory that moves with the set, with the 1955 EC original reserved as the genuine collectible in the lineage.