Flame On! Heritage Auctions Offers the World’s Most Fantastic Copy of ‘Fantastic Four’ No. 1

In September, the world’s most amazing Amazing Stories introducing Buck Rogers blasts off alongside the original cover from Wolverine’s first solo title, page featuring Iron Man’s first steps and 1954’s explosive Tomb of Terror cover DOWNLOAD DIGITAL PRESS KIT DALLAS, Texas (August 22, 2024) — “None higher” — the clarion call of the collector for whom only the perfect and pristine will suffice. None higher. The very best of the very best. It’s a phrase that will be heard almost 200 times during Heritage Auctions’ September 12-15 Comics & Comic Art Signature® Auction, applied to mint-condition moments spanning some of comics and pulp fiction’s most significant, revered and recognizable offerings. Among their precious ranks: Marvel’s first superhero book of the Silver Age that’s as treasured as gold, a copy of the 1928 magazine that introduced an oversleeping time traveler named Buck Rogers, Doctor Doom’s first solo title and the KISS comic book that — seriously — was once Marvel’s biggest seller. That’s in addition to as rich and varied a selection of comic art Heritage has ever offered, including horrific highlights from the pre-Code era, Iron Man’s initial tumble toward immortality and the cover from Wolverine’s first ongoing solo series. This auction will snikt its way into your heart and blow your mind. “This catalog reads like a pie-in-the-sky wish list filled with all the important books and iconic moments you likely remember as though you just read them yesterday,” says Heritage Auctions Vice President Barry Sandoval. “Who could have imagined a single auction during which you could find the best Fantastic Four No. 1, the page of art on which Iron Man takes his first steps or some of Steve Ditko’s most memorable pages from the 1960s? Yet here they are, among so many other historic and meaningful works, offered in a single place — and with no minimum bid, to boot.” Among this event’s centerpieces is one of only two copies of 1961’s Fantastic Four No. 1 awarded a Near Mint+ 9.6 grade by Certified Guaranty Company. Most copies of this Marvel landmark didn’t look this clean and crisp, this impressively immaculate, when they rolled off the printing press, fell off the distributors’ truck and landed on newsstands 63 years ago. It’s the Silver Age dipped in platinum, a sonically sealed time machine heading to auction for the first time. In more than two decades as the world’s premier comic book auction house, Heritage has never offered so highly graded — and coveted — a copy of the first Fantastic Four as this one. This was Marvel’s first superhero book of the era, and, given its mint condition, there will be little debate about its value, as a copy graded Near Mint- 9.2 sold in 2022 for $1.5 million. The book also serves as a springboard for the most anticipated Marvel movie in a long while: July 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, starring Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm and The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm — a period piece set in the 1960s in keeping with the title’s debut. But this first Fantastic Four is more than a comic book franchise awaiting its latest big-screen iteration. It redefined the superhero whole cloth. Marvel launched the book to compete with DC’s Justice League of America. But Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and their super friends were “square-jawed paragons of virtue,” as longtime FF writer Tom DeFalco notes in the paperback collection Fantastic Firsts. Marvel’s new superhero team, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, possessed quirks and flaws, too. Wrote DeFalco, forever after that first FF, “Heroes were required to have individual personalities, dialogue patterns, interesting backstories and personal conflicts.” Fantastic Four No. 1 was far more than just a superhero tale. It created the entire foundation upon which the Marvel Universe was eventually built and commingled numerous genres into a singular, riveting narrative. As Douglas Wolk wrote in All of the Marvels, the team’s debut was “an adventure-serial comic that’s also a superhero comic and also a monster comic and also a romance comic and also a teen-humor comic and also a sci-fi comic, all at once.” Another game-changer in this event is the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories — the lone copy bearing CGC’s grade of 9.8, with none higher on this planet or any other. It’s stunning to look at and appreciate as a work of art, given Frank Paul’s classic cover featuring a rocketman mid-flight. But inside is a landmark work that launched a hero and a franchise of its own: Philip Francis Nowlan’s science-fiction novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., which introduced hero and narrator Anthony Rogers, a veteran of World War I who was exposed to radioactive gas, then fell into “a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on physical or mental faculties” for almost 500 years, awakening in the 25th century. The story was so adored and successful that less than a year later, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. had turned into a comic strip syndicated to dozens (and then hundreds) of daily newspapers, where it appeared until the late 1960s. One of those original strips, from 1946, also appears in this auction. But there’s no shortage of important works of original comic art offered in this event, beginning with Lee Elias’ original cover of 1954’s Tomb of Terror No. 15. This work hails from the celebrated collection of Roger Hill, the fan, collector, historian and author who had a boundless passion for the horror comics that scared the pants off parents in the 1950s. In June, Heritage sold one of the most (in)famous comic book covers of all time, Lee Elias’ original art for 1954’s Black Cat Mystery No. 50, for $840,000 after a prolonged bidding war. It, too, hailed from Hill’s assemblage and shares the record as the most expensive horror comic book cover sold at auction. The Tomb of Terror cover is a sort of companion piece to the Black Cat cover, which infamously depicted a man’s face and hands melting after having come in contact with radium. Tomb of Terror is no less explosive: A woman reels in horror as a man’s face explodes, his left eyeball launching into the gory oblivion. The cover promises a grisly explanation within: “Never has a story burst with the terror of BREAK-UP!” Collectors will keep at least one eye on this prize, as well as Wally Wood’s original artwork for the cover of 1951’s Tales from the Crypt No. 26, an EC Comics classic likewise exhumed from Hill’s vaunted collection. No less coveted is John Buscema’s original artwork adorning the first issue of 1988’s Wolverine, the inaugural solo series for the X-Man called Logan. This landmark work, which hails from a John Buscema Family Collection, graced not only the cover but Marvel’s promotional poster, which promised, “AT LAST … Wolverine.” Readers were giddy at the promise of a book about Logan written by longtime Uncanny X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and illustrated by Buscema, who spent the late 1960s bringing The Avengers and the Silver Surfer to life. Wolverine was the first member of the X-Men to headline an ongoing series, which lasted nearly 200 issues and, as Marvel has noted, “firmly established Logan as one of Marvel’s top heroes.” The series showcased a Wolverine never seen in the comics: “Claremont and Buscema established Wolverine’s ties to Madripoor, a lawless nation that knew him only as Patch. And as his alias implies, Logan’s disguise was essentially a patch over his eye, as well as a new black costume.” Ultimately Patch became such an adored character his brief appearance in this summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine elicited howls of approval from audiences who’d longed to see this iteration of the beloved character take a swing on the big screen. Speaking of Deadpool: The Merc With a Mouth is here, too, alongside Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast, and Jean Grey, drawn by Deadpool’s co-creator Rob Liefeld for the variant cover of 2021’s X-Men No. 1. This event is replete with centerpieces and masterpieces, chief among them Don Heck’s original art for Page 8 from Tales of Suspense No. 39, which chronicles Tony Stark’s first steps in that clunky Iron Man suit. “I’m like a baby learning to walk,” says the Iron Man not yet ready to fly in his “massive, unbelievably powerful iron shell.” This landmark moment joins Page 3 from 1963’s The Avengers No. 1 by — who else? — Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers, a famous sequence during which Loki tries to trick Hulk into destroying a bridge to draw Thor out into the open. These moments are essential to the Marvel Universe, the first inklings of that superhero team about to assemble. No less essential are Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange pin-up from 1967’s Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics No. 10 and an absolutely essential and iconic page from 1966’s The Amazing Spider-Man No. 32; George Pérez and Terry Austin’s cover of Avengers No. 168 or John Byrne and Terry Austin’s Magneto splash page from The X-Men No. 111. This auction also features the earliest Frank Miller cover Heritage has ever offered: 1980’s Captain America No. 241, featuring the first meeting of Cap and the Punisher. Not only is this one of Frank Castle’s earliest appearances outside of The Amazing Spider-Man, in which the Marine-turned-vigilante debuted in 1974, but this was Miller’s first shot at the Punisher, who would become a regular during Miller’s celebrated stint on Daredevil. And no Heritage comic art auction would be complete without a page from Miller and Klaus Janson’s DC masterpiece Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – specifically, this roller-coaster of an action sequence from the third book, “Hunt the Dark Knight,” featuring Carrie Kelly’s Robin and the Joker. There’s a museum’s worth of masterpieces here — and a few hundred spinner racks’ worth of marvels and Marvels of significance throughout this auction, chief among them the book that introduced Spider-Man less than a year after the FF’s first fight: 1962’s Amazing Fantasy No. 15, graded Very Fine/Near Mint 9.0. This is no ordinary copy, as it bears from CGC’s Curator Pedigree, which a former museum worker assembled from the 1950s well into the 1980s (hence the name) and stored in the institution’s vaults until a collector acquired them in the 1990s. The Curator Pedigree is “one of the best Silver Age collections ever discovered,” says CGC, which means this stunning Spidey swings to the top of any historic assemblage. This event has one book that can shout out loud its best-of-the-best status: the world’s single finest copy of Marvel Comics Super Special No. 1 — a unicorn from June 1977, when everything Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss KISS-ed turned to gold. This copy of Marvel’s biggest seller (until Todd McFarlane suited up for the million-plus-selling Spider-Man No. 1 in 1990) is graded 9.9 by Certified Guaranty Company, which means it’s mint and likely to sell well into the five figures, as even beat-up copies of this rock-and-roll-all-niter sell for a few hundred dollars — when you can find them. And with Doctor Doom finally set to make his formal bow in the MCU, thanks to Robert Downey Jr., there’s no better time for Heritage to offer one of the world’s finest copies of Marvel Superheroes No. 20, the 1969 book in which the FF’s nemesis makes his solo debut. This is one of five copies graded CGC NM/MT 9.8 — with, you guessed it, none higher. Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world's largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Heritage also enjoys the highest Online traffic and dollar volume of any auction house on earth (source: SimilarWeb and Hiscox Report). The Internet's most popular auction-house website, HA.com, has more than 1,750,000 registered bidder-members and searchable free archives of 6,000,000 past auction records with prices realized, descriptions and enlargeable photos. Reproduction rights routinely granted to media for photo credit. For breaking stories, follow us: HA.com/Facebook and HA.com/Twitter . Link to this release or view prior press releases . Hi-Res images available: Robert Wilonsky, VP Public Relations and Communications 214-409-1887 or RobertW@HA.com