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Marvelous Marvels: The Five Most Expensive Marvel Comics Ever Sold

The year 1996 seemed like an endgame for Marvel. With waning sales and mounting debts, the company was bankrupt, its share price plummeting. However, acquisition by Disney—and twenty-seven MCU films later—Marvel now provides the basis for what are some of the most popular stories ever told. Of the top ten grossing films of all time, four are Marvel comics adaptations. This fact would have seemed like something from the multiverse if you had told it to a movie exec thirty years ago.

With all these films and TV adaptations, it’s easy to forget where it all started: comic books. When they were first published, they often went for ten or twenty cents, were read, and thrown away. Today some are worth hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. Below is a list of the five most expensive Marvel comics ever sold.

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Tales of Suspense #39 with the original grey Iron Man.

5. Tales of Suspense #39

Original price: $0.12

Sold for: $375,000

Why so valuable?: Originally published in 1963, the issue has the first appearance of Tony Stark and Iron Man.

Points of Interest: You’ll notice from the photo above that the iconic Iron Man red and gold suit is missing. Instead, we have a plain grey metal suit drawn by Jack Kirby. It would take another nine issues for the famous red and gold armor to appear.

They say the customer is always right, but Stan Lee took the opposite approach with Iron Man. Noting that the Cold War had most comics readership hostile to military spending and extreme wealth, Stan Lee opted to give the public what they said they didn’t want: a billionaire arms dealer. It worked like a charm. As Marvel and later Disney’s balance sheets can attest.

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Cover of X-Men #1 in 1963.

4. X-Men #1

Original price: $0.12

Sold for: $807,300

Why so valuable?: Published in 1963, it is the first issue of what would become one of the most successful comics series of all time. With over 12,000 issues and more than 260 million sales, it began with X-Men #1, introducing staple characters such as Professor Xavier, Cyclops, and Magneto.

Points of Interest: Along with being the third-most-expensive marvel comic ever, the issue shares the same name as the 1991 version, the best-selling comic of all time. X-Men #1 (1991) has sold over 8 million copies.

Although its most famous character is Wolverine, he first appeared as a cameo in The Incredible Hulk. He would not join the X-Men series until 1975, more than a decade after the first issue.

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Captain America Milestone edition with original issue #1 cover art.

3. Captain America Comics #1

Original price: $0.10

Sold for: $915,000

Why so valuable?: It contains the first-ever appearance of Captain America, and original copies in decent condition are exceedingly rare.

Points of Interest: Its cover depicting Cap punching Adolf Hitler is iconic and often reproduced. However, despite the clear-cut triumph of good over evil within the comics’ few pages, the reality of 1941 was far more bleak and uncertain. The world was at war. France had fallen to the Nazi armies, and British and Soviet defenses seemed at breaking point. America had not yet committed itself to the war. The comics’ creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, were eager to create a character that would shift public opinion towards intervention. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Reprinting of the cover for Marvel Comics #1.

2. Marvel Comics #1

Original price: $0.10

Sold for: $2.427 million

Why so valuable?: The second most expensive Marvel comic of all time is also the oldest. Published in 1939, it contains the work of writer-artist Carl Burgos. Being the first outing by Marvel, no one knew whether it would succeed, and there was a smaller initial printing than most of the other names on this list.

Points of interest: As well as being the first-ever Marvel comic, the issue is noted for debuting the Human Torch, later made famous in The Fantastic Four. However, in Marvel #1, he is not the wise-cracking teenager Johnny Storm but an android monster that the hero must overcome.

The record-breaking sale is partly due to the historical value and uniqueness of the copy sold. Known as the “Pay Copy,” it includes handwritten annotations by the publisher, Lloyd Jacquet, about how much the artists and writers were paid.

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Vintage cover art of the original Amazing Fantasy #15 depicting Spider Man.

1. Amazing Fantasy #15

Original price: $0.12

Sold for: $3.6 million

Why so valuable?: As you may have already gathered, the priciest comics all have one thing in common. They debut a character that would subsequently become iconic. The most valuable Marvel comic ever has the first appearance of what is undoubtedly the most famous Marvel superhero of all time: Spiderman.

Points of Interest: Stan Lee pitched the idea of a teenage superhero with the powers of the spider, but his boss shot the idea down. Such a character would not get a solo issue, but he also wouldn’t appear in any issue. A kid who crawled up walls? Ridiculous. And besides, teenagers didn’t want to read about other teenagers. They wanted aspirational heroes like Captain America.

Undeterred, Stan Lee snuck Peter Parker into Amazing Fantasy #15, a series so unpopular the Marvel execs were on the point of scrapping it. No one cared what appeared in that comic until Spiderman, of course. Then people cared a lot.

Takeaways

For the budding collector of such comics, a few things become clear. First, issues that debut iconic characters tend to be exceptionally valuable. Also fascinating is that except for Captain America, the most famous Marvel superheroes had humble beginnings. They appeared as cameos or villains before the writers saw their true potential. With the MCU conquering the world, it’s worth remembering how close we came to never having these characters at all.


Originally from Dublin, Ferdia Lennon divides his time between France and Ireland. He holds a BA in History and Classics and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. His writing has been widely published, including in the Irish Times, Litro, and Southword. He is passionate about history and how we understand it through objects and collectibles. In the past, he has given tours of the Tate Modern, the British Museum, and the National Gallery of Ireland. He is also particularly interested in rare book collections and first editions.

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