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Few comics can claim to have changed the industry like 1961’s Fantastic Four #1. This single comic began the “Marvel Age of Comics,” and belongs to a run fans still routinely rank among the best ever published. In twenty-five pages, it set a standard for comic book characterization and plotting, establishing Marvel as a serious competitor to DC, and introducing characters that maintain a massive multimedia footprint sixty-five years on.
This week, Heritage Auctions is selling a near-mint 9.0 CGC-graded copy of Fantastic Four #1 as part of its summer Comic Books Signature Auction. Bidding for the auction has already surpassed a whopping four million dollars – small wonder with items like two copies of Action Comics #1 and a graded 8.0 copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 up for sale. This near-mint Fantastic Four #1 is one of only twenty-three on the CGC’s population report graded at a 9.0 or higher, making it not only the first super-hero comic of Marvel’s silver age, but one of the scarcest. Marvel comics collectors look to be paying accordingly, with the price for this auction already climbing past the six-digit range with more than two days left to bid.
How Fantastic Four #1 Changed Comics Forever
In 1961, “Marvel Comics” didn’t even refer to a publisher: it referred to a set of titles retailers could order from Martin Goodman’s “Atlas Comics,” alongside their “Romance Comics” and “Western Comics.” Goodman had also famously used the name “Marvel Comics” for a 1939 series that marked the debut of Marvel’s first superheroes, the Jim Hammond Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner. Prior to the August 1961 debut issue of Fantastic Four, the “Marvel Comics” range consisted of science fiction anthology titles like Tales of Suspense, Journey into Mystery, and Tales to Astonish. These titles lacked a monthly recurring character, and were instead built around loose recurring themes like aliens, monsters, and robots. A friendly game of golf between Martin Goodman and DC Comics president Jack Liebowitz changed that.
Liebowitz mentioned off-hand to Goodman that DC had been enjoying strong sales for its newly-launched Justice League of America. As Stan Lee tells it, this gave Goodman an idea: “Why don’t we do a book about a group of super-heroes? That’s how we happened to do Fantastic Four.” At the time, Lee and Kirby were working on Atlas’s science fiction anthology titles, which they felt were becoming stale and self-same. The pair leapt at the opportunity to create something new, and while accounts differ on who contributed what, the result was a super-hero melodrama that brought new humanity and vulnerability to the medium.
In Fantastic Four #1, the reader doesn’t just meet four super-heroes: they meet an arrogant Reed Richards, a quick-to-anger Ben Grimm, a mischievous Johnny Storm, and an underdeveloped Sue Storm (it was the sixties). All four personalities came with flaws that made them relatable to readers, paving the way for later heroes like Spider-Man and the Hulk.
What Makes Fantastic Four #1 a Collector’s Holy Grail
Every aspect of Fantastic Four #1 is iconic. The cover, depicting the Fantastic Four in battle against Mole Man’s monstrous servant Giganto, has been homaged by everything from other Marvel titles to The Simpsons. The team’s origin – a group of astronauts launched into space who are bombarded with cosmic rays and return as superheroes – is so ingrained in pop culture that last year’s Fantastic Four: First Steps made the decision not to depict it. The character dynamics it establishes are still how the team is portrayed across media. In many ways, this remains the definitive Fantastic Four story.
A 9.6 graded copy broke records in 2024 with its $2.04 million selling price, the fourth highest ever paid for a Marvel Comic. Last year, Heritage sold a 9.0 graded copy (the same as the sample on sale this week) for $180k, part of another Comics Books Signature Auction. With the price of this copy already at $112,850 at the time of writing, it looks poised to exceed the price realized last year, a new record for Fantastic Four #1 in this condition. While the team’s Marvel Cinematic Universe debut has certainly helped fuel these prices, it’s their place in comic book history that sustains them.
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