XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS: THE WRATH OF HERA #2

Cover shows strong color and gloss with sharp corners visible and no major creases or tears. There is minor surface handling wear and slight softness at the top left corner, plus faint scuffing near the spine edge. A UPC barcode box is present, consistent with a newsstand edition, printed cleanly with no obstruction. Interior and back cover were not assessed, so grade is based solely on the visible front cover.

The Wrath of Hera #2 closes the two-part 1998 Topps miniseries built on the Xena: Warrior Princess television property, then at the height of its syndicated run. Trina Robbins scripts, with pencils by Gordon Purcell and inks by Larry Mahlstedt, and John Van Fleet supplies the painted cover, repeated as an interior pinup. The story resolves the Leda subplot as Gabrielle confronts Hera directly, with Zeus, Ares, and Poseidon rounding out the Olympian cast u2014 standard licensed-series material, competently executed by veterans of DC and Marvel work-for-hire, and typical of the tie-in line Topps maintained alongside its X-Files and Jason vs. Leatherface books before the company exited comics publishing.

Market activity is thin and driven by television fandom rather than by comic-collector demand. There are no first appearances or origin content here, and the issue carries no key status in any standard price guide. Copies surface regularly on eBay as single listings and inside bulk Topps Xena runs, where per-book value collapses toward filler pricing; sell-through at asking prices is inconsistent, and best-offer transactions are the norm. Certification is effectively absent from the market, which means any slabbed example trades on novelty and on the cost of grading rather than on an established price history.

Buyers are Xena completists assembling the full Topps output, licensed-TV-comic specialists, and occasionally Trina Robbins collectors. Across raw grades the spread is nearly flat u2014 a low-grade reader and a mid-grade copy differ by pocket change, since demand concentrates on high-grade unread copies that were widely preserved in the late 1990s. The photo-cover edition and the Gold Edition of part one draw more attention than the standard painted-cover printing, and dealers are generally better served moving this issue as part of a complete set than as a standalone offering.