Deadpool: Rob Liefeld’s Original Art for New Mutants No. 98 Cover Set at $7.5m

Following the success of the movie Deadpool & Wolverine released last month, 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’ Deadpool.

This marks the first time in nearly two decades that the cover has been offered for sale. If it sells for the owner's asking price of $7.5m it would become the single most valuable piece of original comic book art ever sold.

The cover's owner acquired the piece almost 20 years ago and recently approached Heritage about offering it for sale. 

“I’ve long admired  this work, which I consider the most important piece of comic book art from the 1990s,” said 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.”

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.”

Liefeld was 23 when he took over New Mutants. In New Mutants No. 98 Deadpool shows up toward the book’s end to kill Cable at the behest of someone named Mr. Tolliver. Less than a year after his debut, Deadpool appeared on the cover of Liefeld's X-Force No. 2.