FANTASTIC FOUR #264

Graded at 8.5 (VF+) on 2026-11-04, from new photos taken out of the sleeve: front and back. Front art sits off toward the spine, so the corner box loses its left border and the small credit letters are clipped at the fold. Spine nearly free of ticks. Tiny ripples along the back's open edge. Corners nearly sharp with faint wear at the upper right. Slim cream line along the front's right edge.

Fantastic Four #264 (March 1984) arrived during John Byrne's celebrated run as writer, penciler, and inker on the title, a stretch widely credited with revitalizing the franchise after a fallow period in the late 1970s. Byrne's tenure is remembered for tightening the family dynamic among Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm while restoring the book's cosmic scope, and this issue is a representative entry from that creative peak rather than a landmark first appearance or origin story.

Market data shows a book that is plentiful in high grade, with 170 CGC Universal copies on census and over fifty recorded 9.8 sales, reflecting typical mid-1980s direct-market speculator hoarding. Pricing is flat through the mid-grade range and only accelerates meaningfully at the top of the census, a pattern consistent with well-preserved Copper Age comics that were bagged and boarded from release. Demand is driven almost entirely by Byrne-run completists and Fantastic Four series collectors rather than by first-appearance or key-issue buyers.

This is a bread-and-butter Byrne-era FF issue: readily available raw in low and mid grades for a few dollars, with real premium reserved for pristine 9.8 slabs that round out a run set. It suits collectors assembling the complete Byrne Fantastic Four rather than investors chasing key-issue appreciation, and it trades predictably rather than speculatively across all grade tiers.