FANTASTIC FOUR #25

Silver Age Marvel key (Hulk vs. Thing) showing notable wear: soft/rounded corners, visible spine stress with several ticks and a slight roll, and a diagonal crease running through the lower left cover area. The cover shows overall handling wear, mild surface soil, and edge wear along the top and right border; the book is protected in a plastic sleeve which adds glare in the upper portion, obscuring fine detail. Interior pages and back cover were not visible/assessed in this photo, so grading is based solely on the front cover's visible condition.

Fantastic Four #25 (April 1964), written by Stan Lee and penciled by Jack Kirby with inks by Chic Stone, opens the celebrated two-part crossover that pits the Thing against a rampaging Hulk while Giant-Man, the Wasp, Thor, and Iron Man of the Avengers move to intervene. The issue is a foundational early example of Marvel's shared-universe storytelling, staging one of the company's first major team-versus-monster brawls and setting up the direct continuation in Fantastic Four #26. Kirby's cover, built around the Hulk and the Thing locked in combat amid a collapsing cityscape, is among the most frequently reproduced Silver Age images and has anchored the issue's desirability for decades.

Market data across the certified population shows a typical Silver Age demand curve: mid- and low-grade raw copies trade in a tight, well-populated band, while values climb sharply above 8.0 and again above 9.0 as surviving high-grade copies thin out dramatically. The steep jump between 9.2 and 9.4 in realized and FMV pricing reflects how few copies survive white-paged and structurally sound at the top of the census, and that scarcity compounds further at 9.6 and 9.8, where only a handful of copies are known and sales are rare enough to be individually market-moving events.

The book is chased by Fantastic Four and Avengers crossover-era completists, Kirby cover collectors, and Silver Age Marvel generalists building runs through the Lee-Kirby era. Lower and mid-grade copies remain accessible reading/collecting copies with steady, incremental value alongside adjacent issues in the run, while pristine certified examples are effectively centerpiece pieces — infrequently offered, and priced accordingly whenever one surfaces at auction.