WHERE MONSTERS DWELL #5

Book is protected in a plastic sleeve which creates some glare across the center, but overall the cover shows moderate wear: a light vertical crease running through the center of the monster figure, mild corner softening at top left and top right, and slight edge wear along the top edge. Colors appear bright with no visible fading or staining. This is a pre-1977 cover date so no direct/newsstand distinction applies. Interior and back cover were not assessed, and the front is under plastic which may obscure minor surface defects.

Where Monsters Dwell was one of several black-and-white-to-color reprint anthologies Marvel ran in the late 1960s and early 1970s, recycling pre-Marvel Age monster and suspense stories originally drawn by artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko for titles such as Journey Into Mystery, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales. Issue #5, cover-dated September 1970, follows the format of the series: new cover art wrapped around a handful of early-1960s giant-monster tales, aimed at readers who missed the originals the first time or wanted the stories in a fresh package. The book carries no first appearances or origin stories of continuing significance and is valued primarily as a representative example of Marvel's Bronze Age monster-reprint line.

Market activity is thin and consistent with a lower-demand anthology title. The CGC census shows only 45 universal copies recorded against a modest number of tracked sales, with pricing rising sharply but unevenly as grade climbs – flat in the $30-$50 range through the mid grades before jumping toward the $110-$130 band at 9.4 and 9.6. No 9.8 sale has been recorded despite five copies at that grade on census, indicating collectors chase pristine examples but transactions are infrequent. Demand is driven less by narrative importance and more by condition scarcity and general interest in Marvel's monster-comic era ahead of the company's pivot to superheroes.

This is a book for completists of the Where Monsters Dwell run, Bronze Age monster-comic collectors, and buyers assembling Kirby/Ditko reprint sets rather than key-issue investors. Raw copies in lower and mid grades trade cheaply and are readily available given census depth, while top-grade slabs command a real premium due to genuine scarcity at the high end. Long-term appeal will track broader interest in Marvel's monster and horror anthology output rather than any breakout character or creator milestone tied to this specific issue.