The asking price: $7.5 million. If sold, the cover of New Mutants #98 would be the most valuable piece of original comic book art ever sold.
This is the first time in nearly two decades that the historic cover has been offered for sale.
Its owner acquired the piece nearly two decades ago and has received – and rejected – numerous offers since then. But given the runaway success of Deadpool & Wolverine – a global hit that has already grossed $600 million and counting and that paired Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman for a bloody, wild jaunt through the Marvel Cinematic Universe – its owner approached Heritage to put it up for sale. The cover’s owner says, “The time is right.”
“I have admired and coveted this work for a long time. I consider it the most important piece of comic book art of the 1990s,” says Heritage co-chair Jim Halperin. “I am thrilled that we can now offer it to someone like me who admires Rob Liefeld and adores his Deadpool, who is one of the most beloved characters in comics and now in the MCU.”
Deadpool’s debut in New Mutants #98, alongside fan favorite Domino, was nothing short of a lightning bolt, igniting fan attention and admiration like few other characters before him. Marvel Comics once said the mail they received about Deadpool was the biggest response to a character in years. In fact, two issues after his debut, Marvel published the first of many fan letters celebrating his introduction:
“I love him. He looks cool, is obviously the best at what he does, and has a great attitude. And he’s funny. He reminds me of Spidey, both visually and with his witty quips. Deadpool is basically Spidey wielding instruments of death instead of webs. But it works!”
It ever did: When Marvel hired Liefeld for New Mutants, the title was “the dog of the franchise,” Liefeld told Comic Book Resources in 2016. All of the other X-Men titles, including Wolverine, were huge hits while New Mutants was on the brink of extinction. Liefeld says Marvel told him to fill the title “with the energy, the ideas and the creativity that you have, because otherwise we’ll turn the lights out. This is kind of the last chance.”
Together with writer Louise Simonson, Liefeld began creating new characters, including Cable, who was later played in Deadpool 2. by Josh Brolin and killed countless others. When Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza took over the title for the last few issues, they introduced an army of characters who survived long enough to form the film franchise, including Domino and Shatterstar. Liefeld was just 23 when he took over New Mutants, and it came at just the right time: As he explains, his father had been battling cancer for 20 years and his parents were “broke.”
“New Mutants was my ticket,” he told CBR. “I had to get this done. I told my friends at the time, ‘Look, you’re not going to see me for a while. They’ve given me what I want. I can write and draw my own book. They’ve rewarded me.'”
And in return, Liefeld rewarded the readers with a great Christmas present, as New mutants No. 98 hit newsstands in December 1990. Deadpool shows up near the end of the book to kill Cable at the behest of a certain Mr. Tolliver – who, it turns out, was a mutant from the future (and Cable’s estranged son) posing as an illegal arms dealer. Deadpool was almost fully trained when he fired his first gun: He was a brash, quick-witted, seemingly indestructible killing machine. As a result, “Deadpool was a hit with fans from the start,” said Liefeld. Forbes in July.
Less than a year after his debut, Deadpool appeared on the cover of Liefeld and Nicieza’s X-Force No. 2 – and soon after as an action figure, video game character and since then as the star of his own titles. Although Reynolds made his debut as Deadpool in 2009 in X-Men Origins: Wolverine – in which the Merc’s mouth was inexplicably sewn shut – the actor and the character have been inseparable since the long-awaited 2016 film Dead Poolwhich gave rise to a global franchise that has now exceeded the $2 billion mark.
“Deadpool has never been more popular,” says Halperin. “And his popularity continues to grow. I can’t think of a better time to offer Rob’s cover that introduced him to the world.”
