Fightin\' Army #140 (Charlton Comics Aug 1979) RAW 5.5-6.5 Tom Sutton Cover Art For Sale

Fightin\' Army #140 (Charlton, August 1979) — a Tom Sutton cover over twelve pages of Pat Boyette art and a story by Sanho Kim, one of the first Korean artists to work in American comics. Newsstand copy, graded 6.0 Fine.

• Sanho Kim: A Korean artist who emigrated to the United States in 1966, Kim was among the first Korean creators to work in American comics. He drew extensively for Charlton across war, horror and western titles in a loose, brushy style that stands out sharply from the house look. He wrote, drew, inked and lettered \"Make It Go Away\" here.
• Twelve Pages of Pat Boyette: Boyette draws both the two-page text piece and the ten-page \"The Secret War of Armand Blaise!\", the latter pencilled, inked and lettered by him alone.

• Every Story Inside Is a Reprint, and the Book Doesn\'t Say So: All four interior pieces are reprinted from Fightin\' Army #120, three years earlier. The cover is new to this issue; the contents are not, and nothing on the cover or in the indicia tells a 1979 buyer that. George R. Wildman is credited as reprint editor, which is the only hint. This was standard practice at late Charlton, filling schedules with recycled inventory to keep titles alive on a collapsing newsstand.
• The Cover Credit Is Held Loosely: The index credits Tom Sutton for pencils and inks but flags both with an uncertainty marker, meaning the indexer was not confident. The cover is unsigned. Sutton is the credit of record, held with less confidence than usual — worth stating plainly.
• Boyette\'s Route In: He was a television news anchor and film-maker in San Antonio until his forties, then drew comics full-time for Charlton from 1966 — work heavy on mood and clearly informed by someone who had spent years thinking about how to light a shot.
• Hitler Cameos in \"Himmler\'s Heroes,\" drawn by Demetrio Sánchez Gómez.

Condition:

FRONT
Top-right corner — visible fold at the apex with the paper slightly turned. The worst single defect on the book — MED impact to the grade.
Dark fields — light surface scuffing, fine and irregular — LOW impact to the grade.
Remaining corners — blunted, no folds — LOW impact to the grade.
Note — the diagonal light lines across the dark blue and black areas are printed action lines, not creases. They are regular and evenly spaced, they stop dead at the edge of the white indicia banner rather than crossing it, and the same motif appears in the yellow field as printed dashes — No impact on the grade.

SPINE
Structure — straight, no split, no roll, cover flush on the page block. Confirmed on both raking-angle views — No impact on the grade.
Cover flatness — mild wave along the length, short of a roll — LOW impact to the grade.
Staples — intact and holding, no rust — No impact on the grade.

BACK
Bottom-left corner — blunted with a small notch — LOW impact to the grade.
Other corners — blunted — LOW impact to the grade.
Cream field — light soiling — LOW impact to the grade.

INTERIOR
Page quality — Cream to Off-White
Pages — complete and supple, no tears, writing, cut coupons or water damage — No impact on the grade.
Staples — intact, no rust migration — No impact on the grade.

Graded 6.0 Fine, range 5.5–6.5. The best-preserved of the three Fightin\' Army books in this group: flat, complete, straight unsplit spine, intact staples and a page block in good order. One corner is genuinely bent; everything else is light. Notably better preserved than the 1977 issues, largely because this cover is not a solid black field.

Grading is my own opinion on a raw, uncertified book. Photos are of the actual comic you will receive, including close-ups of all eight corners and a raking-angle view of the spine. Shipped bagged and boarded in a rigid mailer.