Fantastic Four #5

Looking for a villain who would last

By early 1962 Fantastic Four was performing well, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby set out to dream up what Lee called a "soul-stirring...super sensational new villain" for it. Looking for a name, Lee settled on "Doctor Doom," which he called "eloquent in its simplicity — magnificent in its implied menace."

Fantastic Four #5 went on sale on April 10, 1962, according to the publication date in U.S. Copyright Office filings, with a July 1962 cover date. It cost 12 cents and ran 36 pages. The series was still bimonthly. The issue marked the point where Lee and Kirby moved from the monster stories of the first issues toward superheroes, and it was their first attempt to create a lasting supervillain.

The story, "Prisoners of Doctor Doom!," runs in five parts. Doom takes the Invisible Girl hostage to force her teammates to obey him, brings the team to his castle stronghold, and uses a time machine to send the Thing, the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic back to the age of the pirate Blackbeard to steal treasure. The Thing ends up playing Blackbeard himself and is tempted to stay in the past. When the team returns, Doom tries to kill them, the Invisible Girl saves them, and Doom escapes with a jetpack.

Kirby's idea of Death in a mask

Kirby explained the design in a 1987 interview: "Dr. Doom was the classic conception of Death, of approaching Death. I saw Dr. Doom as The Man in the Iron Mask, who symbolized approaching Death. It was the reason for the armor and the hood." He added that death was without mercy, and human flesh contains mercy, "therefore, I had to erase it, and I did it with a mask." Kirby drew the face beneath with only a tiny scar on the cheek, which is the point: Doom hides his face not from the world but from himself.

The credits are Stan Lee for script, Jack Kirby for pencils and Joe Sinnott for inks, on both the cover and the story, with Stan Goldberg coloring and Artie Simek lettering.

In the issue Doom is introduced as a former peer of Mister Fantastic, scarred by a scientific experiment, who learned magic in Tibet and took control of his home country, Latveria. Some descriptions call #5 his origin issue, but because of the rush to publish, the character did not get a full origin story until Fantastic Four Annual #2, two years later, which established that he was born to a Romani family in Latveria, a small kingdom in the Alps.

Spring 1962

The issue went on sale the same day the first major league game was played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Two months earlier John Glenn had become the first American to orbit the earth, and on April 16, less than a week after the issue appeared, a 20-year-old Bob Dylan first performed "Blowin' in the Wind" in Greenwich Village. Seattle's World's Fair opened its Space Needle on April 21.

Doom's debut fell roughly midway between the Checkpoint Charlie standoff in Berlin in October 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. A masked, armored ruler of a small European state with his own castle was a villain from an anxious year.

Marvel was expanding at the same time. The issue carries a full-page ad for Incredible Hulk #1. Its letters page includes a letter from Roy Thomas, who later wrote for Marvel himself, including Doom's first solo feature in 1970.

The copies and the prices

Fantastic Four #5 is described in auction catalogs as the second most valuable issue of the entire run after #1. High-grade copies are scarce. In August 2022 the grading census showed 13 copies at 9.4 and three at 9.6, the highest grade. By September 2024 it showed 19 copies at 9.2 with 18 graded higher. A copy currently offered for sale is described as one of four at 9.6.

The entry here is a copy graded CGC 9.2. In March 2022 a 9.2 copy closed at auction for about $160,000, as the selling auction later reported it (another account gives $160,111). On September 11, 2022, a 9.2 with white pages sold at auction for $180,000, the highest price for the issue in that auction's archive and the highest verified public price found for any copy.

One higher-grade sale in between is not settled. A 9.4 copy closed at auction on August 29, 2022; several days before the close, bidding had already reached $210,000. Its final price could not be confirmed, so it is left out of the price history.

Prices fall steeply with grade. In a July 17, 2025, auction devoted to the Fantastic Four, a 7.0 copy brought $14,400, a 6.0 $8,400 and a 4.5 $6,000. A 7.5 from the Dixie Cream Collection, assembled in the early 1960s by a young collector with money earned selling donuts, brought $13,420 on April 14, 2026. The highest-graded copy currently offered, a 9.6, carries an asking price of $360,000.

The Fantastic Four's archenemy

Doom returned in the very next issue, briefly allying with Namor the Sub-Mariner, and again in #10 (January 1963), which the scholar Ben Saunders calls the best early Doom story, establishing him as Mister Fantastic's "Jungian shadow or distorted double." He crossed into The Amazing Spider-Man in #5 (October 1963). The Fantastic Four had already fought the Mole Man, the Skrulls, the Miracle Man and Namor, but Doom overshadowed them all and became the team's archenemy.

The critic Peter Sanderson traced his lineage to Shakespeare's Richard III and Iago, and the writer Michael Kaminski suggests he was a likely influence on Darth Vader, in both design and backstory. In 1981, when Marvel's editor-in-chief Jim Shooter co-wrote Superman and Spider-Man, the second crossover between Marvel and its chief rival, he picked Doom as the villain: "Their greatest hero against our greatest villain."

On screen, Doom has been played by Julian McMahon in 2005 and 2007 and by Toby Kebbell in 2015. Robert Downey Jr. took the role in the Marvel films, appearing first in a cameo in The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), and is set to play him in Avengers: Doomsday (2026) and Avengers: Secret Wars (2027).

The numbers

Print run

No figure verified; not stated by the sources used

CGC census, September 2024

19 copies at 9.2, 18 graded higher

CGC census, August 2022

13 copies at 9.4, 3 at 9.6 (the highest grade)

Pages

36; the Doom story runs 23 pages in five parts

Cover price

12 cents

Job number

V-735

Timeline

1. Feb 8, 1962

   Fantastic Four #4 goes on sale, bringing back Namor the Sub-Mariner.

2. Apr 10, 1962

   Fantastic Four #5 goes on sale, cover-dated July 1962, introducing Doctor Doom.

3. Sep 1962

   Doom returns in Fantastic Four #6, briefly allied with Namor.

4. Jan 1963

   Fantastic Four #10 brings Doom back again.

5. Oct 1963

   Doom appears in The Amazing Spider-Man #5.

6. 1964

   Fantastic Four Annual #2 finally gives Doom a full origin story.

7. Aug 1970

   Doom gets his own solo feature in Astonishing Tales, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Wally Wood.

8. 2005

   Julian McMahon plays Doom in the film Fantastic Four.

9. Mar 2, 2022

   A CGC 9.2 copy closes at auction for about $160,000.

10. Aug 2022

    Grading census shows 13 copies at 9.4 and three at 9.6.

11. Sep 11, 2022

    A CGC 9.2 with white pages sells at auction for $180,000.

12. Sep 2024

    Grading census shows 19 copies at 9.2 and 18 graded higher.

13. Jul 17, 2025

    Copies graded 7.0, 6.0 and 4.5 sell for $14,400, $8,400 and $6,000 in an auction devoted to the Fantastic Four.

14. 2025

    Robert Downey Jr. first appears as Doom in a cameo in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

15. Apr 14, 2026

    A CGC 7.5 from the Dixie Cream Collection sells at auction for $13,420.

The world in 1962

• Feb 20, 1962

  John Glenn orbits the earth three times aboard Friendship 7.

• Mar 2, 1962

  Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in a single NBA game.

• Apr 10, 1962

  The first major league game is played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

• Apr 16, 1962

  Bob Dylan, 20, premieres "Blowin' in the Wind" at a club in Greenwich Village.

• Apr 21, 1962

  The Century 21 Exposition opens in Seattle, opening the Space Needle to the public.

• May 24, 1962

  Scott Carpenter orbits the earth three times in Aurora 7.

• Jul 10, 1962

  Telstar, the first commercial communications satellite, is launched.

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, Fantastic Four #5 is number 26 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 (33 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Jack Kirby said he designed Doctor Doom as "the classic conception of Death," with the armor and hood erasing anything merciful about a human face.
• In Kirby's own conception, the face under Doom's mask has only a tiny scar.
• The issue's story sends three of the Fantastic Four back in time to steal Blackbeard's treasure, and the Thing ends up playing Blackbeard.
• The letters page includes a letter from Roy Thomas, who went on to write for Marvel and wrote Doom's first solo series in 1970.
• The issue carries a full-page ad for Incredible Hulk #1.
• Doom did not get a full origin story until Fantastic Four Annual #2, two years after his debut.
• The issue went on sale the same day the first game was played at Dodger Stadium.