The Marvel Family #1, from 1945, is the first appearance of Black Adam — the character Dwayne Johnson played in a 2022 film with a very large budget.
A CGC 9.4 sold for $186,000 at Heritage in September 2021. Before you do anything with that number, here is the part that matters: that copy came out of the Promise Collection.
Why the record is the wrong comparison
I checked the source before writing this page, and the record copy is pedigreed, which changes what it is evidence of.
The Promise Collection was a large original-owner hoard that Heritage brought to market across a series of sales starting in June 2021. Those auctions were among the most heated Golden Age events of the decade: fresh material, documented provenance, an assembled audience of serious bidders, and results across the board that outran comparable copies without the label.
So the $186,000 is three things at once — a high grade, a pedigree, and a moment. Strip any of them away and the number changes — and the ladder below shows by how much.
The timing compounds it. September 2021 was near the peak, and the character’s film had not yet come out. Both of those cut in different directions and I am not going to pretend I can net them out.
| Grade | Result | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| CGC 9.4, Promise Collection | $186,000 | Heritage Auctions, September 2021 |
| CGC 9.0 | $90,000 | Heritage Auctions, January 2022 |
| CGC 5.5 | $10,600 | MyComicShop Prime Auction, January 2023 |
| CGC 1.5 | $2,650 | same January 2023 auction |
An unpedigreed 9.0 brought $90,000 four months after the record — less than half the money, one grade point down, and the cleanest measure I have of what the pedigree and the moment were worth. From there the ladder falls fast: $10,600 for a 5.5, a record for that grade and double what the same grade had brought in 2019, and $2,650 for a 1.5 in the same January 2023 auction. That last band is where the ordinary copy actually lives.
What a film actually does to a first appearance
Worth being clear about, because it is the reason most people are reading this page.
Screen attention reliably lifts a character’s first appearance, sometimes sharply, usually in the run-up to release rather than after it. What it does less reliably is hold. A film can move a first appearance a long way, and it can move it back. Books whose value rests mostly on a character being currently visible behave differently from books that are scarce regardless.
This one has both, which is the encouraging part. Underneath the Black Adam attention is a genuinely scarce 1945 Fawcett comic, and that scarcity does not depend on anybody making another film.
What The Marvel Family actually was
By 1945 Fawcett had built out an unusually large family of characters around one idea, and this title is where they were gathered: Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and the supporting cast, sharing a book.
It worked because the concept scaled in a way its competitors did not. A word turns a child into a hero, so anyone could be given the same power without much explanation, and Fawcett kept adding people. At its height this was the best-selling superhero material in America.
Black Adam arrives in issue one as the inversion — the same power, granted thousands of years earlier, gone wrong. That framing is why the character survived the company that made him and why writers keep returning to him.
For a seller the useful point is that this is a first issue of a title that mattered commercially, not a spin-off nobody read. It carries value on the debut, on the title’s standing, and on Fawcett scarcity, and those three do not all rise and fall together.
What to do when a character is having a moment
Since most people arrive at this book because of the film, here is the honest version of the timing question.
Attention raises the number of buyers and the speed of a sale, and those are real advantages. What it does not reliably do is raise the ceiling in a way that holds, and selling into a peak requires knowing where the peak is, which nobody does in advance.
What I would actually advise: decide whether you want the money or the comic. If you want the money, current conditions on a character with recent visibility are perfectly good and waiting for a better moment is a bet. If you want to keep it, a 1945 Fawcett book with a genuine first appearance is a reasonable thing to own regardless of what is on screen.
What I would avoid is the middle position — holding while watching for a spike. That is where people end up selling into a decline because they were waiting for a rise.
Selling a Marvel Family #1
- Check whether your copy has a pedigree label. If it does not, the $186,000 is not your comparison.
- Expect brittle paper. 1945 Fawcett stock is poor and browning is normal.
- Do not time it around a film. Speculating on release schedules is a bet, and it is not one I would make on your behalf.
- Look for the rest of the Fawcett books. Whiz, Captain Marvel Adventures and Marvel Family runs travel together.
I would rather show you an honest range than a number I know is the wrong comparison, and on this book that means starting well below the headline.
Have a copy?
Send three photos: front, back, and the small print. That is all I need to tell you where your copy really sits.
Related
- Whiz Comics #2, the first Captain Marvel, where the Fawcett story starts.
- The 100 most valuable Golden Age comics, and what each one really sold for.
Cover images on this page are shown small, for identification, with the publisher credited in the caption. If you are a rights holder and want an image removed, contact me and it comes down.
