Turok’s is a name you may have heard of, which is likely as he’s been around since 1954. Believe it or not, Turok still has fans today and those fans are willing to pay premium dollars for back issues of their primitive hero.
Although some may associate Turok with the ‘Acclaim Entertainment’ video game, produced in the late 1990s for the Nintendo system (aka: ‘Turok: Dinosaur Hunter’), he was actually a comic book character before he was a video game.
Created by either: Matthew H. Murphy, Gaylord Du Bois or Paul S. Newman (to this day, there’s no agreement on who created him), the first appearance of Turok was definitely illustrated by Rex Maxon.
In the early stories (obviously influenced by Tarzan pulp fiction tales) Turok is a native American warrior of the Kiowa tribe. After losing contact with his tribe, and accompanied by a companion called Andar, he must make his way back through ‘the Lost Valley’ (Marvel’s X-Men would later take up this theme in the Silver Age, but it’s a perennial idea). In this lost land a dinosaur population exists and Turok’s job is to avoid and/or kill them. Fairly straightforward, right?
That’s the charm of these early stories.
In other words, early Turok comics were definitely the product of a more innocent and less hyperkinetic time. It’s not that dinosaurs are not popular today (think ‘Jurassic Park’), but in these early comics, the dinosaurs, or “honkers” and “runners” as they’re called here, are fairly simple creatures hunted by Turok.
Four Color #596 (October/November 1954) – First Comic Book Appearance of Turok
Here’s the very first appearance of Turok and for that reason alone this is a highly collectible comic. Actually, under the Dell label (or as originally published by Western Publishing who licensed the stories from Dell) this comic was one of the most popular adventure books of the Silver Age for Dell- only outsold by the Lone Ranger. The Four color comic that introduced Turok today has a hypothetical FMV of $11, 000.00 in certified universal (read: Blue Label) 9.8 grade. Of course, good luck finding it in 9.8.
The CGC census shows a total of 138 copies with a 9.4 the highest recorded copy to be graded.
Does Turok sell? Do Honkers and Runners roam the ancient valley? The answer is yes if you’ve never read the series.
Long term returns on regular graded copies are quite positive with strong negative data only for 4.5 and 8.0 copies. Over the last 12 months, the returns on Turok look as follows:
The 5.5 grade is the only copy that’s sold frequently enough to extrapolate info about, and that’s slightly down after 2 sales at negative -8.2% after a Heritage auction on 12/09/2018 sold for $440.80. This was followed by an eBay sale on 04/17/2019 ending at: $480.00. These are fairly respectable numbers for a franchise without a movie in the works.
Turok, Son of Stone #3 (February 1956) – First Turok in self-titled Magazine
Here’s Turok’s very first, but far from last, self-titled comic. There are a total of only 42 of these on the CGC census, but one of them is a 9.6. In that grade, this comic has a FMV today of at least $1, 000.00 going by the last Heritage Auction sale all the way back in 2008, which ended at $1,015.75 (11/13/2008). The most recent Heritage Auction on record is for the sale of a 9.2, but that only fetched $432.00 on 07/29/2018. This comic is therefore definitely not as valuable as the Four Color original appearance of Turok.
Turok’s success however, was not restricted to the Golden and Silver Age of comics. Written by Jim Shooter and illustrated by Gonzalo Mayo, Magnus #12 is the issue you want to have if you’re looking for his modern reappearance. A series of Gold Key reprints did little to help the series, however by the 1990s there was something like a Turok renaissance going on. This is reflected in prices for this Valiant comic that reintroduced our favorite dinosaur hunter. Today this has a FMV of circa: $110.00 in regular 9.8 graded condition. On 02/25/2019 a copy sold on eBay for $242.50. Not at all bad.
Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 (1993) – First issue of the Valiant Comic Series
This comic sold upwards of a million copies upon its release. Yup, you read that right. Unfortunately, the huge supply has rendered it so common that it’s probably the least valuable of all the Turok keys. Currently, in graded regular blue label 9.8, this comic sells for around $32.00. That said the Gold Foil Edition, can still fetch decent prices, upwards of $95.00. So, the regular edition should be passed over in favor of the Gold Foil. Demand for the modern relaunch right now is just not strong enough to really make seeking out the regular edition worth your while.
