Air Jordan 4 ‘Comic’ Drops Pop-Art Spin on the Classic Retro

The Air Jordan 4 “Comic” has been on shelves since July 25, and most of the coverage still circulating about it carries the wrong style code and the wrong price. Nike shipped it as JA1135-100 at $230. A leak from October 2025 put it at IO2362-100 and $220, and a long list of outlets never went back to correct the record once the shoe actually arrived. This page was one of them. The numbers below are Nike’s.

To be specific about the fix: this post previously listed the Comic at style code IO2362-100 for $220. Nike’s own product listing gives JA1135-100 and $230 for men’s sizing. The ten dollars is the small part. The style code is not, because a wrong code sends anyone searching for a pair to a dead result, and it follows the shoe into resale listings and retailer feeds for years afterward.

Tinker Hatfield designed the Air Jordan 4 and Nike released it in 1989 at $110, a figure Nike’s own archive still carries even though it often gets rounded down to $100 in retellings. The visible Air unit was not the new part, that had already arrived on the Air Jordan 3. What the 4 introduced were the molded plastic wings at the eyelets, a lace-lockdown system that let a player route the laces to change how the shoe held the foot, and mesh netting across the quarter panels and tongue, which cut weight and moved air through a basketball upper that had been mostly solid leather. Four colorways launched that year: White Cement, Black Cement, Fire Red and Military Blue. Jordan wore the shoe for the first time at the February 12, 1989 All-Star Game, months ahead of retail, and wore the Black Cement pair on May 7, 1989 for the buzzer-beater over Craig Ehlo in Game 5 against Cleveland. Nike’s own page for that release confirms it was the 4 and not the 3, a detail plenty of retellings still invert.

The Comic is built off a 1985 Michael Jordan T-shirt that drew a dunk in vintage comic panel style, and the shoe takes that source literally rather than as a mood board. The upper is off-white leather and synthetic leather, listed by Nike as Off White, Anthracite and Fire Pink. The wing eyelets are cut into jagged red and pink shapes, the burst outline a comic panel puts behind an impact. An orange-to-pink gradient sits under the mesh netting. The Nike Air heel tab carries halftone dots and comic lettering, and Nike’s product copy makes an unusual point of it, saying that heel treatment has not been done before. That is a specific claim from a brand that normally describes its retros in generalities, and it is the most interesting thing on the shoe. Sneaker Bar Detroit reported a matching vintage-style T-shirt alongside the release, though Nike.com does not list one. Kids sizing ran the full ladder at $165 grade school, $105 preschool and $90 toddler.

Jordan Brand spent 2026 finding out what happens when the retro calendar outruns the audience for it. Trade reporting puts growth in new-sneaker sales at just over one percent in 2025, down from thirteen percent in 2022, and the share of releases trading above retail has fallen well off its 2020 peak. The Comic is a useful case precisely because it is not a lazy release. Somebody did real work on that heel tab and on the gradient under the netting. It opened, spiked, and then settled below what Nike charged for it anyway. The distance between the design effort and the market response is the story of the current Jordan retro program, and it is why Nike leadership has been signaling fewer and more distinct releases instead of another year of colorway volume.

$230 puts the Comic at the top of the current Air Jordan 4 band. The Air Jordan 4 “Lakers” retailed at $220 in March. AJ4 retros ran around $190 through 2020 and roughly $200 to $215 across 2023 and 2024, so this is a step up of ten to twenty dollars on a make-up that carries more printing and finishing than a two-color retro. The resale market has not paid for the difference. StockX shows a last recorded sale of $126 against the $230 retail, inside a twelve-month range of $106 to $500, and the top of that range was launch-week enthusiasm that did not hold.

The Air Jordan 4 “Comic” released July 25, 2026 at $230 in men’s sizing, style code JA1135-100, colorway Off White, Anthracite and Fire Pink. It was a general release rather than a SNKRS draw, and it went out through Nike.com, the SNKRS app, Foot Locker, Finish Line and JD Sports. The SNKRS launch page now reads sold out while the standard Nike.com product page is still showing men’s sizes, so check both before paying a resale premium that the market is not currently asking anyone to pay.

Source: Justfreshkicks

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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