The Fantastic Four: First Steps Artbook Listed Online... But It's Not All Good News
February 20th 2025
An eagle eyed artbook fan has spotted the first and only listing for The Fantastic Four: First Steps artbook, but the details of the book are cause for concern.
I've been critical of Marvel, a piece could be dedicated to their disastrous handling of the artbook releases, but now they could potentially be making it worse with Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps - The Art and Making of the Movie, if the information on the book is correct.
The listing was sent to me and can be found on Penguin Random House here. The image above is used for the book, certainly a placeholder as is normal and expected, until the final cover is revealed. The other details on the listing begin to look different to previous releases though, as I'll now explain.
To start, the title of the book is Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps - The Art and Making of the Movie. The 'and Making of' is new, never seen before in the series, which has been published alongside the very first MCU movies. This would imply additional content, as they already provide insights from the visual development teams, so maybe there will be a content change too.
All of this sounds fine right? But, here is the big issue... the price. It has been something I've taken issue with for the Deadpool & Wolverine, Agatha All Along, Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World artbooks. Those are listed at a RRP of $100/ £90. This new one is even higher at $150.
The price of the ones mentioned above is already a sticking point, as they almost doubled the old price to include a slipcase and lithographs, not included in the previous books post-Endgame. However, I don't feel it brings enough value to justify the increase from $60 to $100. You can read more on this in my review of Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine: The Art of the Movie, found here.
With another 50% price hike, this really needs to justify its value, because this is usually reserved for collector's editions, not for the only version of the book. Even then, they are often much cheaper.
The page count looks like the way in which they may be justifying this. It is currently stated to be 400 pages. This would be a big leap from the previous cap of 224, in place from the Black Widow artbook, to the upcoming Thunderbolts* artbook. But this doesn't work for me, 300 - 400 pages should have been included as part of the last price increase to make them competitive on the artbook market. More pages are needed in the books, but not with this trade-off.
It's worth noting however, there are a number of reason this could change. First, because details change all the time, it could be placeholder information to get the book on the website before details are confirmed.
Also of note, is that no other website has it listed, so they could have jumped the gun on making it public. Sites like Amazon are often the earliest to get books up and they have no listing at this time. There is also further evidence of this, as the Google search result uses an image for the incorrect book.
Lastly, there is no listing for a Daredevil: Born Again book, which should be listed first as Marvel does them in order, or at least around the same time.
I did think the details on Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine: The Art of the Movie could be incorrect though, as the price seemed too high, but it ended up being true.
If the listing information is correct, especially in the current economy, Marvel will be pushing out even more buyers with this price. Sticker shock alone has me questioning if I should add this to the collection, even when I have all the others. I can only hope this is not true, but Marvel seem hell-bent on ruining their line of artbooks with pricing, endless delays and the current page cap. A real shame, as the content is consistently very high in quality with art from incredible artists.
Should these details be confirmed or changed, I will update you here!
Comments