First Appearance of Mary Jane: Amazing Spider-Man #25 vs #42

Mary Jane Watson first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #25 (June 1965), with her face hidden behind a potted plant, and her face was first shown in The Amazing Spider-Man #42 (November 1966) (Wikipedia). Before that she was a running joke: from issue #15 (August 1964), Aunt May kept trying to set Peter up with "that nice Watson girl", the niece of her friend Anna Watson.

In #42 she finally appears and delivers the line "Face it, Tiger… you just hit the jackpot!" John Romita Sr. designed her look using Ann-Margret in the film Bye Bye Birdie as a guide for her coloring, face, red hair and short skirts (Wikipedia). The character is credited to Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Romita.

PriceCharting labels #25 as her first cameo and #42 as her first appearance. Values retrieved September 25, 2026:

• Amazing Spider-Man #15 (first mention): ungraded $568.50; CGC 4.0 $682.41; 6.0 $1,181.19; 8.0 $2,722.63; 9.2 $5,983.36
• Amazing Spider-Man #25 (face hidden): ungraded $133.25; CGC 4.0 $217.50; 6.0 $270.52; 8.0 $669.92; 9.2 $1,316.00; 9.8 $13,875.75
• Amazing Spider-Man #42 (face shown): ungraded $84.11; CGC 4.0 $113.28; 6.0 $257.50; 8.0 $443.63; 9.2 $1,137.24; 9.8 $14,030.00

The hidden-face #25 is worth more than #42 from raw copies up to 9.2, even though #42 is the issue with the famous reveal. Issue #15 costs the most, but mostly because PriceCharting also lists it as the first appearance of Kraven the Hunter. Nine-point-eight copies of #25 and #42 sell about once a year, so those two figures can move on a single sale.

It depends on what you count. Mary Jane was mentioned first (August 1964) and seen first, face hidden (June 1965). Gwen Stacy debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #31, published in December 1965, as Peter's main love interest, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (Wikipedia). Mary Jane's face was not shown until November 1966, so Gwen was the first of the two readers actually saw, and Peter dated Gwen first.

Gwen was meant to be Peter's one true love and Mary Jane a bit of fun, but readers preferred Mary Jane. Stan Lee said Mary Jane "seemed to have all the personality" (Wikipedia). Gwen was killed in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 and #122 (June and July 1973).

That is a matter of opinion, and the Wikipedia article we checked records no critical consensus against her. What it does record is the opposite reaction when she was introduced: readers liked her more than Gwen. The stories most tied to her later history are her marriage to Peter in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (1987) and One More Day (2007), in which the demon Mephisto erased that marriage from reality. In recent comics she has taken the hero name Jackpot and is again romantically involved with Peter (Wikipedia).

• Spider-Man trilogy (Sam Raimi): Kirsten Dunst
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018): voiced by Zoë Kravitz

From Wikipedia's Mary Jane Watson article.

• Indicia: the small print on the first page or inside cover gives the title, issue number, date and publisher; reprints and facsimiles say so there.
• Cover price and barcode: a price or barcode that did not exist in the cover year means a later edition.
• Paper: decades-old newsprint tans at the edges; bright white pages on an old date are a warning sign.
• Restoration: color touch, trimmed edges and replaced covers are common on expensive keys; a grading service such as CGC can detect them.

Shoot the front cover flat and straight on in even light, then the indicia and the back cover. Make sure the issue number is sharp: #15, #25 and #42 differ in value by hundreds of dollars in raw condition. ComicLens reads the title, issue number and cover art from the photo, and there are free scans every day.

Research and drafting were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed on this page. Prices are the figures shown by the named source on the date given; they change with the market, and a grade that trades about once a year can move a lot on a single sale.