Marvel Super-Heroes #18

A tryout in a reprint book

Marvel Super-Heroes began life as Fantasy Masterpieces, a reprint anthology. By the late 1960s it had become a 25-cent giant that mixed Golden Age reprints from Marvel's Timely years with a new tryout feature as each issue's lead. That slot had already introduced Captain Marvel in #12, cover-dated December 1967.

Issue #18 went on sale on October 15, 1968, according to Copyright Office records, with a January 1969 cover date. It ran 68 pages. Behind the 22-page Guardians of the Galaxy lead sat a three-page Sub-Mariner story by Bill Everett and reprints including an All-Winners Squad feature, plus ads for a Johnson Smith catalog and music lessons by mail.

The idea started with Roy Thomas, then Marvel's associate editor. He pitched super-guerrillas fighting the Russians and Red Chinese who had conquered and divided the United States, got general approval from Stan Lee, and handed it to Arnold Drake because he had no time to write it himself. In a meeting with Lee, the setting moved to outer space. Thomas later said all the characters and situations were created by Drake and/or Lee.

Arnold Drake and Gene Colan

Arnold Drake was born on March 1, 1924. In 1950 he co-wrote It Rhymes with Lust, an early graphic novel sold on newsstands. At DC he co-created the Doom Patrol and, with Carmine Infantino, Deadman, the ghost of a murdered trapeze artist; he won Alley Awards in 1967 for both. He had noticed, pointedly, that Marvel's X-Men appeared only months after his Doom Patrol with a wheelchair-using mentor and a team of misfits. By 1968 he was freelancing for Marvel, writing Captain Savage and X-Men #47 to #54.

Gene Colan, born September 1, 1926, was already one of Marvel's premier Silver Age artists, known above all for Daredevil, and had drawn Captain Marvel's debut in this same title. In the 1970s he drew every issue of The Tomb of Dracula, where he and Marv Wolfman created Blade. Drake died on March 12, 2007, and Colan on June 23, 2011.

The issue's credits page lists Stan Lee as editor, Roy Thomas as associate editor and Gary Friedrich as assistant editor. The letters page in the same issue printed a letter from a reader named Steven Grant, who may be the later comics writer of that name.

The year 3007

The story opens with the line "It is the year 3007!" Its heroes are each the apparent last of their kind. Major Vance Astro is a 20th-century astronaut who spent a thousand years in suspended animation on the way to Alpha Centauri. Martinex T'Naga is a crystalline being from Pluto, Captain Charlie-27 a soldier from Jupiter, and Yondu Udonta a blue-skinned archer from Centauri-IV.

They unite against the Badoon, an alien race trying to conquer the solar system, whose Brotherhood also debuts here. One Marvel history called the team a science fiction version of the movie The Dirty Dozen. The issue also introduces Charlie-27's ship and Astro's ship, the Odysseus I.

Sales of the issue were strong, but the Guardians did not appear again for more than five years, until Marvel Two-in-One #5 in 1974. Writer Steve Gerber brought them back in The Defenders in 1975 and gave them their own feature in Marvel Presents in 1976. A Guardians series ran 62 issues from 1990 to 1995.

A common book in middle grades

Marvel Super-Heroes #18 is not rare. In May 2021 the grading census counted 115 copies at CGC 5.5 and 956 higher; by December 2024 the counts were 197 at 5.5 and 1,325 higher. Copies at this grade change hands regularly, with one 5.5 sold at auction on December 23, 2024, and another drawing a $190 bid hours before an auction closed in 2021.

Top copies are a different story. Squarebound giants of the era are hard to find in pristine shape, and a single CGC 9.8, then the only one known, sold for $19,000, after a 9.4 had brought $2,374 in March 2014. One report credited "movie hype" for the leap. In October 2026 a U.S. dealer's page listed a CGC 5.5 copy with off-white to white pages at $249.99, marked out of stock.

The brand outlived the team

The Guardians of the movies are a different group: Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket Raccoon and Groot came from the 2008 relaunch by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Collectors still buy #18 because it is where the name began.

The originals have not been forgotten. They guest-starred in the 2008 series, got their own title, Guardians 3000, in 2014, and inspired characters in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, among them Yondu, Martinex and Charlie-27.

The numbers

Cover price

25 cents

Pages

68; the Guardians story is 22

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census, May 2021

115 at CGC 5.5; 956 higher

Census, December 2024

197 at CGC 5.5; 1,325 higher

Frequency

Bi-monthly

Timeline

1. Dec 1967

   Marvel Super-Heroes #12 introduces Captain Marvel in the title's tryout slot.

2. Aug 1968

   Arnold Drake's first Marvel work, Captain Savage #5, is cover-dated this month.

3. Oct 15, 1968

   Marvel Super-Heroes #18 goes on sale, introducing the Guardians of the Galaxy.

4. Jul 1969

   Marvel Super-Heroes becomes an all-reprint title with #21.

5. Jun 1974

   The Guardians return in Marvel Two-in-One #5.

6. Feb 1976

   The Guardians get their own feature in Marvel Presents #3.

7. Jun 1990

   Guardians of the Galaxy #1 launches; the series runs 62 issues.

8. Mar 12, 2007

   Arnold Drake dies.

9. May 2008

   A new Guardians team debuts in a second series by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.

10. Jun 23, 2011

    Gene Colan dies.

11. Mar 2014

    A CGC 9.4 copy sells for $2,374; a lone 9.8 later brings $19,000.

12. 2014

    The original team gets a new series, Guardians 3000.

13. Dec 23, 2024

    A CGC 5.5 copy sells at auction; the census shows 197 at that grade.

The world in 1968

• Oct 1, 1968

  Night of the Living Dead premieres in the United States.

• Oct 10, 1968

  The Detroit Tigers win the World Series in seven games after trailing three games to one.

• Oct 11, 1968

  NASA launches Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission.

• Oct 16, 1968

  Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists on the Olympic podium in Mexico City.

• Oct 20, 1968

  Jacqueline Kennedy marries Aristotle Onassis.

• Nov 17, 1968

  NBC cuts away from a Raiders-Jets game to air Heidi.

• Dec 9, 1968

  Douglas Engelbart demonstrates his hypertext system in San Francisco.

• Dec 24, 1968

  Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon.

Price record

A realized private sale is a completed transaction outside an auction room. The amount is what changed hands on the date shown. Private sales are reported less consistently than auction results, so a single comparable carries less weight than a run of them.

By reference price, Marvel Super-Heroes #18 is number 89 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (63 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Roy Thomas first imagined the Guardians as guerrillas fighting Russian and Chinese occupiers of a divided United States.
• Vance Astro spent a thousand years in suspended animation traveling to Alpha Centauri.
• Despite strong sales, the team did not appear again for more than five years.
• The inker signed the story as Mickey Demeo, a pen name of Mike Esposito.
• Arnold Drake co-created Deadman and the Doom Patrol at DC before this.
• The film Guardians are a different team, drawn from a 2008 relaunch.