FANTASTIC FOUR #25

Graded at 4.0 (VG) on 2026-10-30, from new photos taken out of the sleeve: front, back, spine and interior page. Spine edge worn with many color-breaking ticks and small chips, lower left corner rounded and creased. Surface creasing in the upper right. Small red smudge on the title banner. Name written in ink inside the front cover. Cream to light tan pages.

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.