Venom: Lethal Protector #1 — Signed by Todd McFarlane, CGC 9.8

The first issue of Venom: Lethal Protector gave the character his own series and, with it, a new status inside the Marvel universe: the antagonist of Spider-Man recast as a protagonist in his own right, violent and strangely principled. It is the title that consolidated Venom as a commercial force and opened the road that would eventually lead the character to the screen.

Todd McFarlane's signature on the cover is more than an autograph. As the artist who designed Venom's visual language, he is the author of the character's silhouette — the mass, the teeth, the fluid black — and his hand on this copy closes the circle between the drawing and the object. The special McFarlane label issued with the slab records that link officially.

Certified by CGC Signature Series at 9.8, the book sits at the top of the grading scale, with the kind of preservation that is increasingly difficult to find on a 1990s issue handled and read in its time. A first issue, a key character, an artist's signature and a near-perfect grade combine here into a piece that functions both as a cornerstone of a Marvel collection and as a stable long-term holding in the market for signed modern comics.