SUPERMAN #225

Graded at 4.0 (VG) on 2026-10-15, from new photos taken out of the sleeve: front, back, interior page and spine. Bright colours with fair gloss. Small chips and fraying along the spine edge. Short split at the bottom of the spine. Colour-breaking creases at the lower-right corner. Cream pages.

Superman #225 (DC Comics, April 1970) arrived early in the Bronze Age, during the Curt Swan-defined visual era of the Man of Steel. The issue pits Superman against a rare team-up of two of his most enduring adversaries, Lex Luthor and Brainiac, in a story typical of the period's emphasis on high-concept villain schemes over expanded mythology. Curt Swan's pencils, a hallmark of Superman's look throughout the 1960s and 70s, anchor the book's visual identity, with Murphy Anderson's inking lending the polish collectors associate with DC's flagship titles of the era.

Market demand for this issue tracks the broader pattern for non-key Bronze Age Superman comics: modest and fairly flat through the mid grades, with value concentrated almost entirely in high-grade certified copies. Sales data shows a steep climb above 9.0, with prices roughly doubling at each half-grade step toward the top of the census, reflecting the difficulty of finding well-preserved copies of ordinary-run issues from this period rather than any inherent scarcity of the book itself. With only a single 9.8 on census and no recorded sale at that grade, top-end value is driven by rarity relative to demand rather than an established sales history.

This is a book most likely to interest completist Superman collectors building a full Bronze Age run rather than buyers chasing landmark issues. Raw copies in low and mid grade trade cheaply and steadily as reading or filler copies, while high-grade certified examples command outsized premiums driven by census scarcity. Investment interest is limited but not absent, since Curt Swan Superman material from this period retains a stable base of collector attention even without a key first appearance to anchor speculative demand.