Amazing Fantasy #15

A hero for a dying title

The series that introduced Spider-Man had been through three names in barely a year. It began as Amazing Adventures #1 to #6 (June to November 1961), became Amazing Adult Fantasy for issues #7 to #14 (December 1961 to July 1962), and was retitled Amazing Fantasy for issue #15. By then it was slated for cancellation.

Stan Lee conceived Spider-Man in 1962, after the success of the Fantastic Four the year before. The publisher, Martin Goodman, objected. Lee later recalled that Goodman approved the character only because the tryout would run in the final issue of a declining title. The issue's own editorial page promised that "the Spiderman [sic] ... will appear every month in Amazing." It was the last issue of the 1960s run.

Amazing Fantasy #15 went on sale on June 5, 1962, with an August cover date. It cost twelve cents and had 36 pages, ten of them paid advertising. The Spider-Man story ran 11 pages. Lee and Ditko also filled the issue with three short stories: "The Bell-Ringer," "Man in the Mummy Case" and "There Are Martians Among Us."

Lee, Ditko and the pages Kirby drew first

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in Manhattan on December 28, 1922, to Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents. He started in 1939 as an assistant at Timely Comics, the company owned by Martin Goodman, whose wife was Lee's cousin. In 1961 he and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four, the start of the Marvel line.

Kirby drew the first pages of Spider-Man, and Lee rejected them. "I hated the way he was doing it! Not that he did it badly—it just wasn't the character I wanted; it was too heroic," Lee recalled. He gave the job to Steve Ditko, born November 2, 1927, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, who had studied under the Batman artist Jerry Robinson after Army service in postwar Germany. For the cover, though, Lee turned down Ditko's version and had Kirby draw one, which Ditko inked. "I always had a lot of confidence in Jack's covers," Lee said.

Ditko designed the costume, hiding the hero's face, he said, to conceal an "obviously boyish face" and add mystery. "I did costume, web gimmick on wrist & spider signal," he said in 1965. He drew the first 38 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man and left Marvel in 1966. Who had the idea first remained disputed: Jack Kirby said he and Joe Simon had developed a character called the Silver Spider in the 1950s, and Ditko himself said, "I still don't know whose idea was Spider-Man." Ditko died in New York in June 2018, and Lee on November 12, 2018.

With great power

The story introduced Peter Parker, a timid high school bookworm who is bitten by a radioactive spider, discovers new powers and puts on a disguise. His selfishness leads to the death of his Uncle Ben. The final caption reads: "With great power there must also come great responsibility ... and so a legend is born and a new name is added to the roster of those who make the world of fantasy the most exciting realm of all."

A few months after the issue came out, Goodman looked at the sales figures and was shocked to find it was one of the young Marvel line's best sellers. The Amazing Spider-Man #1 followed, cover-dated March 1963, and Spider-Man went on to a cartoon, a newspaper strip, video games and film franchises.

The original pages in the Library of Congress

On April 30, 2008, the Library of Congress announced that an anonymous donor had given it Ditko's original art for the issue: 24 black-and-white pages, each 21 by 15 inches, covering the Spider-Man origin and the three other stories. The curator, Sara W. Duke, has said she will never divulge the donor's name: "I'm going to go to my grave and I'm not going to divulge it."

The pages show the collaboration in progress. Erased pencil notes from Lee to Ditko are still visible ("Steve, remove spider—change position of hand"), along with places where Ditko ignored them. Throughout the story the hero is written "Spiderman," without a hyphen, and on the title page a new "Spider-Man!" logo is pasted over a webbed one. Lee explained in 2008 that the original "looked a little bit like 'Superman,'" and he did not want readers to confuse the two.

Duke counted many notes on the Spider-Man pages but only two in the other three stories, evidence, she said, that the origin "obviously meant something to both of them." Ditko was offered the pages before the donation and declined them. The cover art, by Kirby and Ditko, is not in the collection, and its whereabouts have never been confirmed.

From $227,000 to $3.6 million

In 2007 a CGC 9.4 copy from the White Mountain collection sold for $227,000. On March 8, 2011, the CGC 9.6 copy, then the only one known in that grade, sold privately for $1.1 million, at the time the highest price paid for any Silver Age comic. A CGC 9.4 brought $454,100 at auction on February 19, 2016; its owner had bought it in 1980 in a $10,000 lot, of which about $1,200 was attributed to this comic. A CGC 9.0 sold for $415,000 at auction on March 12, 2018, when it was one of nine copies in that grade.

Prices then climbed sharply. A CGC 9.4 copy sold for $795,000 at auction in March 2020. On September 9, 2021, a CGC 9.6 copy sold at auction for $3.6 million, the most ever paid for a comic book at that time. It beat the $3.25 million paid privately earlier that year for an Action Comics #1. By then four copies were known in 9.6, and none in 9.8.

Lower grades followed. In November 2022 a CGC 8.5 sold at auction for $552,000, a record for that grade; the census then showed 13 copies at 8.5 and 26 in higher Universal grades. In May 2026 another CGC 8.5 sold for $268,400.

The numbers

Cover price

12 cents

Pages

36, including 10 pages of advertising; Spider-Man's story is 11

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census, March 2011

One copy known in CGC 9.6

Census, March 2018

Nine copies in CGC 9.0

Census, September 2021

Four copies in CGC 9.6; none in 9.8

Census, November 2022

13 copies in CGC 8.5; 26 in higher Universal grades

Original art

24 pages, 21 by 15 inches, Library of Congress

Timeline

1. Jun 1961

   The series launches as Amazing Adventures #1.

2. Dec 1961

   The title becomes Amazing Adult Fantasy with issue #7.

3. Jun 5, 1962

   Amazing Fantasy #15 goes on sale for twelve cents, introducing Spider-Man.

4. Mar 1963

   The Amazing Spider-Man #1 is published (cover date).

5. 1966

   Steve Ditko leaves Marvel.

6. 2007

   A CGC 9.4 copy sells for $227,000.

7. Apr 30, 2008

   The Library of Congress announces the anonymous gift of Ditko's original art.

8. Mar 8, 2011

   The CGC 9.6 copy sells privately for $1.1 million.

9. Feb 19, 2016

   A CGC 9.4 copy sells at auction for $454,100.

10. Mar 12, 2018

    A CGC 9.0 copy sells at auction for $415,000.

11. Jun 29, 2018

    Steve Ditko is found dead in his New York apartment.

12. Nov 12, 2018

    Stan Lee dies in Los Angeles.

13. Mar 2020

    A CGC 9.4 copy sells at auction for $795,000.

14. Sep 9, 2021

    A CGC 9.6 copy sells at auction for $3.6 million, a record for any comic book.

15. Nov 2022

    A CGC 8.5 copy sells at auction for $552,000, a record for the grade.

16. May 2026

    A CGC 8.5 copy sells at auction for $268,400.

The world in 1962

• Feb 20, 1962

  John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth.

• Mar 2, 1962

  Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in an NBA game.

• Apr 21, 1962

  The Seattle World's Fair opens, debuting the Space Needle.

• Jul 2, 1962

  The first Walmart store opens in Rogers, Arkansas.

• Jul 10, 1962

  The Telstar communications satellite is launched.

• Sep 12, 1962

  President Kennedy gives his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University.

• Oct 1, 1962

  James Meredith registers as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi.

• Oct 1962

  The Cuban Missile Crisis unfolds, October 14 to 28.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Amazing Fantasy #15 is number 3 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (3 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Spider-Man got his tryout only because Amazing Fantasy was about to be canceled.
• Jack Kirby drew the first Spider-Man pages; Stan Lee rejected them as "too heroic."
• In the original art the hero is "Spiderman"; Lee added the hyphen so the name would not look like "Superman."
• Steve Ditko was offered the original pages before they went to the Library of Congress, and turned them down.
• The curator of the original art says she will take the donor's name to her grave.
• A CGC 9.4 copy that sold for $454,100 in 2016 had been bought in 1980 as part of a $10,000 lot.
• The 2021 sale of a CGC 9.6 copy for $3.6 million made it, briefly, the most expensive comic book ever sold.