LOS ANGELES, CA – AUGUST 5TH 2024 – Let’s f*****g go!
That’s the rallying cry heard throughout Deadpool & Wolverine, which became the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever just days after its July 26 release. It’s also the perfect reaction to the news that Heritage Auctions is offering for sale the original artwork Rob Liefeld penciled and inked for the cover of New Mutants No. 98, which introduced Marvel Comics’ Merc With a Mouth.
The asking price: $7.5 million. If it sells, the cover of New Mutants No. 98 would become the single most valuable piece of original comic book art ever sold.
This marks the first time in nearly two decades that the historic cover has been offered for sale.
Its owner acquired the piece almost two decades ago and has received — and rebuffed — numerous offers ever since. But given the runaway success of Deadpool & Wolverine— already a $600-million-and-counting global smash hit pairing Ryan Reynolds with Hugh Jackman for a bloody, riotous romp through the Marvel Cinematic Universe — its owner approached Heritage about offering it for sale. Says the cover’s owner, “The time is right.”
“I’ve long admired — and coveted — this work, which I consider the most important piece of comic book art from the 1990s,” says Heritage Co-Chairman Jim Halperin. “I’m thrilled we’re now able to offer it to someone who, like me, admires Rob Liefeld and adores his Deadpool, who is among the most beloved characters in comics and, now, the MCU.”
Deadpool’s debut in New MutantsNo. 98, alongside fan favorite Domino, was nothing short of a lightning strike that ignited fans’ attention and admiration like few characters before him. Marvel Comics once said the mail they received about Deadpool was the largest response to a character in years. In fact, two issues after his debut, Marvel ran the first of many fan letters celebrating his introduction:
“I love him. He looks cool, is obviously the best at what he does, and he has a great attitude. And he’s funny. He reminds me of Spidey, both visually and with his wisecracks. Deadpool is basically Spidey wielding instruments of death rather than webs. But it works!”
Did it ever: When Marvel tapped Liefeld for New Mutants, the title was “the dog of the line,” Liefeld told Comic Book Resources in 2016. All the other X-Men titles, including Wolverine, were massive hits, with the New Mutants teetering on the brink of extinction. Liefeld says Marvel told him to fill the title “with whatever energy, ideas and creativity you have, because we are going to turn the lights off, otherwise. This is kind of like the last chance.”
With writer Louise Simonson, Liefeld began creating new characters, including Cable, later played in Deadpool 2 by Josh Brolin, and killing off countless others. When Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza took over the title for its final few issues, they introduced an army of characters who survived long enough to make 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’s explained, his father was in the midst of a 20-year battle with cancer (which Liefeld says informed Deadpool’s backstory), and his parents were “broke.”
“New Mutants was my ticket,” he told CBR. “I needed to make that work. I told my friends during the time, I said, ‘Look, you are 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 turn, Liefeld rewarded readers with one hell of a Christmas gift when New Mutants No. 98 hit newsstands in December 1990. Deadpool shows up toward the book’s end to kill Cable at the behest of someone named Mr. Tolliver — who, it later turned out, was a mutant from the future (and Cable’s estranged son) masquerading as an illegal arms merchant. Deadpool was almost fully formed when he fired his first gun: He was a brash, quippy, seemingly indestructible killing machine. As such, “Deadpool was a hit with fans from the get-go,” Liefeld told 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 that, as an action figure, a video-game character and the star of his own titles ever since. Though Reynolds made his debut as Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine – in which the Merc’s mouth was inexplicably sewn shut — the actor and character have been inseparable since 2016’s long-awaited Deadpool, which spawned a global franchise that has now eclipsed the $2-billion mark.
“Deadpool has never been more popular,” Halperin says. “And his popularity only continues to grow. I can’t think of a better time to offer Rob’s cover that introduced him to the world.”
