FLOAT 100 · Comics · No. 21
New Mutants #98
A wisecracking assassin sent to kill Cable in a fading X-Men spinoff was meant to be one more villain; instead the $1 comic that introduced Deadpool became one of the most-graded modern keys in the hobby.
- Year
- 1991
- Maker
- Marvel Comics
- By price in comics
- 70 of 100
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- Marvel Comics, cover-dated February 1991; accounts of the on-sale date differ (December 11, 1990, or February 10, 1991)
- Creators
- Plot, pencils and cover by Rob Liefeld; script by Fabian Nicieza; colors by Steve Buccellato; letters by Joe Rosen; edited by Bob Harras
- Cover price
- $1.00, 36 pages
- Firsts
- First appearance of Deadpool (Wade Wilson), Gideon, and Copycat posing as Domino; Rictor leaves the team
- Copies sold
- About 650,000, by one published account
- Graded copies
- 28,571 direct and newsstand copies in the CGC census as of February 19, 2024
- Top grade
- A single CGC 10.0; as of September 2026, 4,907 copies sat at CGC 9.8 and 13 graded higher
- Grade tracked here
- CGC 9.8, the most common high grade for this issue
- Highest reported sale of a copy
- $40,250 for a CGC 9.9, June 2023
A struggling title gets a new boss
By the late 1980s The New Mutants, the teen spinoff of Marvel's X-Men, was in trouble. When Rob Liefeld joined the book in 1989, starting as penciler with issue #86, it had fallen to roughly 100,000 copies a month at a time when the core X-Men titles sold in the 500,000 range.
Liefeld's kinetic, muscle-bound style caught on. Within months of his arrival, sales were climbing by roughly 50,000 copies a month, closing in on the flagship X-Men series. Marvel responded by giving him full creative control over plots and new characters, beginning with issue #98. From that issue on Liefeld plotted, penciled and inked the book, with Fabian Nicieza writing the dialogue.
The issue itself, cover-dated February 1991, is a hinge in the series. Rictor leaves the team, and three new characters arrive: Gideon, a wealthy adversary for the team's leader, Cable; Copycat, a shape-shifter posing as Domino; and a masked mercenary in red and black hired to kill Cable. His name was Deadpool.
The New Mutants ended with issue #100. Its cast and creative team carried on in X-Force, whose first issue carried an August 1991 cover date.
Two creators and a loudmouth
Rob Liefeld was born October 3, 1967, in Fullerton, California, the son of a Baptist minister, and grew up in Anaheim. He started drawing professionally as a teenager and was in his early twenties when he took over The New Mutants. Fabian Nicieza was born December 31, 1961, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to the United States with his family at age four. Growing up in New Jersey, he learned to read and write from comic books.
The name came first. Liefeld took it from the 'dead pool,' an expression he heard from his parents for guessing when a celebrity will die, and he liked the sound of it. The red-and-black costume and the attitude came from Spider-Man, a design Liefeld called easy to draw and instantly recognizable; he described his creation as 'Spider-Man, except with guns and swords' and 'a jackass.' He also tied Deadpool to Weapon X, the government program that gave Wolverine his powers, imagining him as an earlier, flawed product of it.
Nicieza, scripting from Liefeld's layouts and plot notes, recalled that Liefeld pitched the character as 'Spider-Man meets Punisher' and left the voice to him. After writing a run of grim, serious characters, Nicieza made Deadpool an 'annoying loudmouth,' and the voice he had in mind was the comedian Denis Leary's. He gave the character hollow-bordered word balloons to signal something unusual about how he talked, a device that later became Deadpool's yellow caption boxes.
The civilian name, Wade Wilson, began as an inside joke. Nicieza had been comparing the character to Deathstroke, DC Comics' masked mercenary, whose real name is Slade Wilson. Nicieza has pushed back on the idea that Deadpool is a parody or copy of Deathstroke, arguing that the name was an affectionate nod and that the two characters differ in personality, backstory and design.
A hit at the height of the boom
New Mutants #98 arrived as the comics market was swelling with huge print orders. The issue sold about 650,000 copies, and reader mail ran far above normal: Nicieza recalled three to four hundred letters, against the title's usual fifty, with about three-quarters asking for the new character to come back.
Marvel moved fast. Deadpool was one of five characters given a trading card inserted in X-Force #1 in August 1991. Liefeld noted that with five million copies of that issue sold, each carrying one of the five cards, about one million Deadpool cards reached readers. Deadpool took the cover and the first twelve pages of X-Force #2. X-Force #1 and #2 were the best-selling comics in the United States in June and July 1991, and the toy company Toy Biz fast-tracked a Deadpool action figure.
Liefeld did not stay. In 1992 he and several other popular Marvel artists left to found Image Comics, which launched a wave of comics owned by their creators, and Image's first release was Liefeld's Youngblood #1. Nicieza stayed with the character: in 1993 he wrote Deadpool's first solo series, the four-issue miniseries The Circle Chase, drawn by Joe Madureira, which established Wade Wilson as a mercenary with terminal cancer who entered Weapon X and came out with a powerful healing factor that left him disfigured and mentally unstable. Deadpool received his first ongoing series in 1997.
From dollar comic to modern key
For years the issue was an ordinary back issue. The grading census charts its rise. The first CGC 9.9 appeared in 2005, when only 275 copies had been graded. Around December 2009, with 1,244 copies graded, a 9.9 sold for just over $12,000; the published report gives the price as both $12,250 and $12,500. By March 2013 there were nine 9.9 copies among 3,082 graded, and the later 9.9s were changing hands for $3,500 to $6,000.
On August 28, 2013, the first and only CGC 10.0 copy sold at auction for $15,449, when more than 3,900 copies had been graded. The result was reported as a new record for a Copper Age Marvel comic.
Then came the films. Deadpool, starring Ryan Reynolds, opened in the United States on February 12, 2016, and earned $782.6 million against a $58 million budget, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film to that point. Three days before it opened, Liefeld held up a copy of New Mutants #98 at a Manhattan comic shop appearance. Deadpool 2 followed in 2018. After Disney acquired Fox in March 2019, the third film moved to Marvel Studios, and Deadpool & Wolverine opened on July 26, 2024, grossing $1.338 billion.
Grading volume followed the attention. As of February 19, 2024, the CGC census held 28,571 direct and newsstand copies, still with a single 10.0. A CGC 9.9 sold at auction for $40,250 on June 8, 2023, after 19 bids, and another brought $24,000 at auction on January 12, 2025. By September 2026 the census showed 4,907 copies at 9.8 and only 13 graded higher, and a 9.8 sold at auction that month for $915. With thousands of 9.8s in existence, the scarcity in this book sits almost entirely in the 9.9 and 10.0 tiers.
How to identify a first printing
The original issue carries a $1.00 cover price and runs 36 pages. It was released in a direct edition for comic shops and a standard newsstand edition, which carries a barcode on the cover, as well as a Mark Jewelers edition. An Australian price variant also appeared in 1991; CGC had graded 62 copies of it by February 2024.
The issue has been reprinted many times, sometimes with special covers, including a Spanish-language edition from Panini España in November 2019 (12 copies graded as of February 2024) and a Marvel Facsimile Edition in 2019. Reprints reproduce the story but are separate collectibles; check the cover price, cover markings and indicia before treating a copy as a 1991 first printing.
The grade tracked on this page, CGC 9.8, is near mint/mint. Spine stress and blunted corners are the common flaws that keep copies of this heavily handled book out of the top grades.
The art behind the book
The original drawings for the issue have become trophies of their own. In November 2024, Liefeld's original art for page 14 of New Mutants #98, Deadpool's debut, sold at auction in Dallas for $960,000, a record for Liefeld's art. The page had never been offered at auction and had sat in a private collection since the 1990s. 'I never imagined that this page, my debut as writer and artist on New Mutants No. 98, would command such an impressive price,' Liefeld said.
The cover art was offered in 2024 with a $7.5 million asking price, a figure that would have made it the most valuable piece of original comic art ever sold. It does not appear to have sold at that price. A 2025 report pointed out that the auction house's own social media reply had named Liefeld as the one who brought it to sale, suggesting he had reacquired his own cover years earlier.
In October 2025 Liefeld said he had perhaps five years left before retiring. The character he and Nicieza introduced as a hired gun in a $1 comic has outlived the series he debuted in by more than three decades.
The numbers
- Copies sold
- About 650,000 (published account; no print run figure found)
- CGC census, February 19, 2024
- 28,571 direct and newsstand copies, one at CGC 10.0; plus 62 Australian price variants and 12 Spanish editions
- CGC census, September 2026
- 4,907 copies at 9.8; 13 copies graded above 9.8
- CGC census, August 2013
- More than 3,900 copies graded; one at 10.0
- CGC census, March 2013
- 3,082 copies graded; nine at 9.9
- CGC census, about December 2009
- 1,244 copies graded
- CGC census, 2005
- 275 copies graded when the first 9.9 appeared
- Reader mail
- Three to four hundred letters, against the title's usual fifty, by Nicieza's recollection
Timeline
Fabian Nicieza is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rob Liefeld is born in Fullerton, California.
Liefeld becomes penciler of The New Mutants with issue #86.
New Mutants #98 goes on sale, by one account; another source gives February 10, 1991.
Cover date of New Mutants #98, Deadpool's first appearance.
X-Force #1, cover-dated August 1991, succeeds The New Mutants, with a Deadpool card among its five trading-card inserts.
Liefeld leaves Marvel to co-found Image Comics.
Deadpool gets his first solo miniseries, The Circle Chase, written by Nicieza.
Deadpool receives his first ongoing solo series.
The first CGC 9.9 copy enters the census, when 275 copies have been graded.
The only CGC 10.0 copy sells at auction for $15,449.
Deadpool opens in U.S. theaters and goes on to earn $782.6 million worldwide.
Deadpool 2 is released.
Disney acquires Fox, moving the third Deadpool film to Marvel Studios.
A CGC 9.9 copy sells at auction for $40,250.
The CGC census counts 28,571 graded direct and newsstand copies, one at 10.0.
Deadpool & Wolverine opens; it grosses $1.338 billion.
Liefeld's original art for page 14 sells at auction for $960,000.
A CGC 9.9 copy sells at auction for $24,000.
The CGC census shows 4,907 copies at 9.8 and 13 higher; a 9.8 sells at auction for $915.
The world in 1991
Pan American World Airways files for bankruptcy protection.
Operation Desert Storm begins with airstrikes against Iraq.
The New York Giants beat the Buffalo Bills 20-19 in Super Bowl XXV.
The first attempt to treat cancer with gene therapy takes place at the National Cancer Institute.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete debuts on Nickelodeon.
President George H. W. Bush announces that Kuwait is liberated, ending the Gulf War.
An amateur video captures Los Angeles police beating motorist Rodney King.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 28, 2013 | $15,449 | Sold at auctionCGC 10.0, the only copy at that grade. Reported as a record for a Copper Age Marvel comic. |
| Jun 8, 2023 | $40,250 | Sold at auctionCGC 9.9. Sold at auction after 19 bids; cited by the grading company as the issue's sales highlight. |
| Jan 12, 2025 | $24,000 | Sold at auctionCGC 9.9, white pages. |
| Sep 22, 2026 | $915 | Sold at auctionCGC 9.8, white pages, the grade tracked on this page. |
A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.
By reference price, New Mutants #98 is number 70 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (21 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- Deadpool's name comes from the 'dead pool,' a celebrity-death guessing game Liefeld heard about from his parents.
- Fabian Nicieza wrote Deadpool's dialogue imagining the voice of comedian Denis Leary.
- Wade Wilson's name began as an inside joke about DC's mercenary Deathstroke, whose real name is Slade Wilson.
- About one million Deadpool trading cards went out inside copies of X-Force #1 in 1991.
- Of more than 28,000 copies graded by CGC as of early 2024, exactly one had earned a 10.0.
- Liefeld's original art for a single interior page of the issue sold for $960,000 in 2024, far more than any graded copy of the comic.
- Three days before the first Deadpool film opened, Liefeld held up a copy of New Mutants #98 at a Manhattan comic shop.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 1, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026