On February 4th, Marvel released its teaser trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps which will debut in July 2025. With over 24M views on Marvel Entertainment's YouTube channel since the trailer's release, this film is easily one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2025.
Although the teaser makes it clear that Galactus will be the "big bad" in this film, many YouTubers have speculated that the Watcher and Red Ghost will appear in the film. They have good reason to believe Uatu the Watcher will appear since he's a key figure in the "The Galactus Trilogy," a three-issue comic book story arc that begins with Fantastic Four #48 and introduces Galactus and the Silver Surfer to the Marvel Universe. The Watcher breaks his vow not to intervene, and attempts to prevent Galactus from destroying the Earth.
Fantastic Four #48 has become a poster child for the "comic boom" in 2020-22 and bust in 2023-24. The value of this book, across 13 contributing grades, has fallen to prices that we haven't seen since early 2019. That's important because the value of this issue is now less expensive than it was prior to COVID and the collectibles boom.
To me, that could be a sign the market has overcorrected on this issue especially when you factor in inflation.
As for Red Ghost, he's a supervillain who battles the Fantastic Four alongside his three super-powered apes. We may have seen Red Ghost in the teaser; many are speculating the great Jon Malkovich, who appears briefly, is playing the Red Ghost.
Importantly, the first appearances of both of the Watcher and the Red Ghost occur in the same issue: Fantastic Four #13 (1963) making this issue a double key. Unlike Fantastic Four #48, Fantastic Four #13 is beating the rest of the Silver Age comic book market by a fairly wide margin. During the past year, GoCollect's Silver Age CPI, an index of the most important (and expensive) comic books of the Silver Age, which includes Fantastic Four #48, has fallen nearly five percent:
On the other hand, Fantastic Four #13, which isn't included in the Silver Age CPI, is outperforming the Index by a significant margin across multiple CGC grades. For instance, let's take a look at the sales values for one of the most common grades on the CGC Census, a 6.5. Even prior to the release of the Fantastic Four teaser trailer, sales prices had been rising for this issue; the 30-day sales average of $1,099 is considerably higher than both the 90-day sales average of $953 and 1-year average of $861.
This 6.5 sold for an impressive $1,370 in early January; we haven't seen sales that high since the tail end of the "comic boom" in late 2022:
As hype builds towards Fantastic Four: First Steps, there's mounting evidence that collectors want Fantastic Four #13 and not Fantastic Four #48. That could be at least partly explained by limited supply; there are only 1,488 copies of Fantastic Four #13 on the CGC Census in comparison to 10,220 for Fantastic Four #48.
Are you excited for Fantastic Four: First Steps? Let us know in the comments section below!
