New Mutants #98(Marvel, February 1991) marks the first appearance of Deadpool, Gideon and Copycat disguised as Domino. This is not a rare comic: the population recorded at CGC exceeds 28,000 copies in all editions combined, with only one copy rated 10.0. The price of a CGC 9.8 has fluctuated between around $800 and over $3,000 depending on the years and Deadpool releases at the cinema; the only known CGC 10.0 sold for $15,449 at auction, and a CGC 9.9 reached $40,250 in 2023. The value therefore depends above all on the exact grade and the cinematic context of the moment.
There are few comics from the 1990s whose commercial trajectory illustrates the roller coaster of speculation as well asNew Mutants #98. Published at the height of the direct market boom, this issue long remained an innocuous end-of-collection title before becoming, grade by grade, one of the most sought-after modern “key issues” in the Marvel catalog — carried by a character that no one, in 1991, imagined would become a multi-billion dollar film franchise.
Understanding the real value of this number requires going beyond the usual shortcuts. Unlike many "first appearances" from the Silver or Bronze Age, New Mutants #98 is not a rare comic in the strict sense: it was printed in very large quantities, at a time when Marvel print runs commonly exceeded several hundred thousand copies per issue. Its rating is therefore not based on physical shortage, but on a shifting balance between popularity of the character, state of conservation and release cycles of Deadpool films.
This guide takes the verifiable facts about this issue — creators, editorial content, CGC census data, documented sales at various grades — to give an honest picture of what this comic is really worth today, without artificially inflating expectations.
New Mutants #98: the origins of Deadpool's first appearance
New Mutants #98 hits newsstands with a cover date of February 1991, priced at $1.00, for 36 pages. The New Mutants series, launched in 1982 by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, then saw its final months: it ended at number 100 before being reborn under the name X-Force, with the same creative team at the helm. New Mutants #98 is therefore, editorially, a transition issue — the moment where the series shifts from a coming-of-age story to the paramilitary, hyper-muscular aesthetic that would define the early 1990s.
The screenplay is credited to Fabian Nicieza, on a plot co-written with Rob Liefeld, who also pens the sketches and the cover; inkings are provided by Steve Buccellato, lettering by Joe Rosen, under the editorial direction of Bob Harras. Liefeld, then a young cartoonist on the rise, was already imposing his instantly recognizable style: exaggerated anatomy, oversized weapon pouches and very cinematic staging, which would become the visual signature of the “Image Age” a few years later when he co-founded Image Comics.
It is in this issue that Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, appears for the first time, a mercenary with a disfigured face and a devastating sense of humor, hired to eliminate Cable. The character is designed by Liefeld and Nicieza as an ironic response to Deathstroke, DC Comics' Teen Titans antagonist — right down to the unsettling similarity between the names Wade Wilson and Slade Wilson. Nobody, at the time, predicted that this second knife would become one of the most profitable characters in the entire Marvel catalog.
This editorial context also explains why Deadpool took several years to establish itself as a main character rather than a simple foil. After New Mutants #98, he continued to appear sporadically in X-Force over the following episodes, before getting his first solo miniseries, Deadpool: The Circle Chase, in 1993, drawn by Joe Madureira. It was not until January 1997 and the launch of the monthly series written by Joe Kelly and drawn by Ed McGuinness that the tone specific to the character was lastingly established - the absurd humor, the addresses to the reader, the mixture of comedy and tragedy - which would become his trademark until the big screen. This slow rise in editorial power, spread over more than a quarter of a century before the arrival of the first film, is a key element in understanding why the rating of New Mutants #98 remained modest for so long before suddenly taking off from the mid-2010s.
What happens in New Mutants #98?
The plot of this issue, entitled “The Beginning of the End”, is part of the reconfiguration of the team initiated by Cable since his arrival a few episodes earlier. Rictor leaves the group in these pages, marking the gradual disengagement of the historical members of the original New Mutants. It is in this climate of tension that Deadpool bursts in, armed to the teeth and hired as a hitman to take down Cable - a mission that he will fail to carry out, but which is enough to immediately establish his register: formidable fighter, compulsive talker, unpredictable.
The issue also introduces Gideon, a wealthy industrialist and recurring adversary of Cable in the following arc, as well as Copycat (Vanessa Carlysle), a mimetic mutant who poses as Domino throughout this story. The twist would not be revealed until several months later, in This editorial subtlety explains why some catalogs distinguish Domino's "first appearance (as Copycat)" from his first confirmed appearance under his true identity.
A massive print run: why this issue remains affordable despite the character
The most structuring data for understanding the rating of New Mutants #98 is its print run. The early 1990s were the height of the direct market's speculative boom: distributors and outlets ordered huge quantities of every X-Men title and spin-off, anticipating collector demand that would soon turn against them. New Mutants #98 was printed on a large scale, in volumes that specialist commentators estimate at several hundred thousand copies – an order of magnitude consistent with what we observe across all of Marvel's production of this period, before the collapse of the speculative market in the mid-1990s.
This abundance is directly reflected in CGC census data. As of the February 2024 census, more than 28,500 copies of New Mutants #98 had been submitted to CGC, adding the newsstand and direct edition editions, to which are added 62 copies of the "Australian price" variant and a dozen copies of the Spanish reissue published by Panini España in 2019. Of this considerable volume, only one copy obtained the maximum rating from CGC 10.0 Gem Mint, and only eight examples reached grade 9.9. In 9.8, on the other hand, the population is in the thousands of copies - a figure which, in itself, explains why this grade is by no means a rarity and why its rating remains sensitive to variations in demand rather than to any shortage.
Two clarifications are necessary for buyers. First, the newsstand edition (with a barcode printed on the cover) is generally considered more difficult to find in very high grade than the edition intended for comic shops (which displays a logo in place of the barcode), because the copies sold on newsstands underwent more handling and storage constraints. Then, there is a facsimile reissue published by Marvel in September 2019 (New Mutants #98 Facsimile Edition), as well as a republication in “True Believers” format – two very real objects but which have no collector's value comparable to the original 1991 copy and which should never be confused with the latter when purchasing.
The rating of New Mutants #98 grade by grade
Unlike a rare comic whose value follows a relatively stable curve, the price of New Mutants #98 has experienced marked volatility, punctuated by the cinematographic news of the character more than by an underlying trend. On CGC 9.8 graded examples, documented sales draw a sawtooth trajectory: around $790 in 2017, $800 in 2019, $877 in 2020, an increase to $1,250 in 2021, a peak around $3,000 in 2022, then a new phase of fluctuation between $1,050 and 2 $200 in 2024. This instability, rare for a comic in such high demand, is explained precisely by the abundance of supply in very high grade mentioned above: as soon as speculative demand falls, the thousands of copies in 9.8 available on the market are enough to bring prices down.
Exceptional grades: 9.9 and 10.0
At the other end of the spectrum, the gap becomes dramatic. The sole CGC 10.0 Gem Mint graded copy sold for $15,449 at a specialty auction — a result that, at the time, was hailed as one of the rare cases of a modern 1990s comic achieving an absolute top grade. Of the eight known examples in CGC 9.9, a documented sale in June 2023 reached $40,250, illustrating how the final step in grade, even on a massive mintage, can multiply the value by a considerable factor compared to a mere 9.8. This phenomenon is explained by the relative rarity of these very high grades rather than by an absolute rarity of the comic: going from 9.8 to 9.9, on this title in particular, amounts to going from a population of several thousand copies to a handful of units recorded throughout the world.
Newsstand editions, bookstore editions and variants
Buyers looking specifically for the newsstand edition should expect a premium, particularly marked on high grades, due to the relative difficulty of finding these copies in near-mint condition compared to the direct market edition. The “Australian price” variant, rarer with its 62 copies listed, is however aimed at an audience of collectors of international variants rather than at the buyer simply looking for the first appearance of Deadpool at a lower cost.
New Mutants #98 vs. New Mutants #87: Deadpool vs. Cable
It is useful to place New Mutants #98 in its series context to measure its real place among the “key issues” of the Liefeld period on New Mutants. A year earlier, in March 1990, New Mutants #87 had already made an impression by presenting the first adult appearance of Cable – the character who would become the central figure of X-Force. These two numbers form, with hindsight, the basis of the “modern keys” of this run: #87 for the arrival of Cable, #98 for that of Deadpool.
The comparison between the two issues clearly illustrates to what extent the value of a comic depends on the cultural trajectory of the character more than on its initial editorial status. Cable, despite his central role in the 1990s, has never enjoyed the same mainstream exposure as Deadpool since the latter's arrival in theaters; New Mutants #98 has therefore gradually established itself as the most sought-after issue of this period of the series, surpassing #87 in visibility among the general public, even if the two titles share a comparable original print run and a similar abundance on the graded market.
The impact of adaptations on the rating
No other factor influenced the value of New Mutants #98 as much as the timing of the Deadpool films. The announcement of the casting of Ryan Reynolds in the role, then the confirmation of the project in 2014-2015, provoked a first wave of speculation: a mid-grade copy, which was trading around $50 a few years earlier in almost total market indifference, was able to rise to several hundred dollars even before the film's release.
The theatrical release of Deadpool in February 2016, driven by unexpected critical and commercial success for an R-rated film, triggered the largest demand spike for 9.8 copies, which reached the $1,000-$2,000 range. The pattern then reproduced itself identically: rise in prices in the months preceding the release, peak around the release date, then gradual ebb once the craze had died down - specialist commentators speak of an effect of "collector fatigue" which systematically sets in a few months after each peak. Deadpool 2, released in May 2018, followed the same mechanics with a new push on high grades, before a new reduction.
The most significant movement, however, remains linked to the character's entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the purchase of Fox's film assets by Disney, Deadpool officially joined the Marvel Studios universe, which reignited collector interest around his very first paper appearance. This repeated cycle - announcement, release, ebb - is now well documented and constitutes the most reliable reading key to anticipate future rating movements for this issue: the value of New Mutants #98 follows less a logic of rarity than the rhythm of release of films dedicated to the character.
Market analyzes devoted to this title also describe a phenomenon of collector fatigue which systematically follows each peak: the year following a theatrical release almost always shows a decline in the majority of grades followed, before a new cinematographic announcement restarts the mechanism. This pattern was verified after the release of the first film in 2016, with a clear decline in prices the following year, then again after Deadpool 2 in 2018. For a buyer who is not looking to speculate in the short term but to build a lasting collection, this documented cyclicality is undoubtedly the most useful information: it invites you to compare several recent sales before setting a budget, rather than relying on a single figure observed at the hottest moment of the media cycle.
Buying guide
Before purchasing a copy of New Mutants #98, a few simple checks can help you avoid the most common pitfalls for this specific issue:
- Check the cover price: the original 1991 edition shows $1.00 on the cover; any mention of a different price should alert you to possible confusion with a reissue.
- Never confuse the original with the facsimile: the Facsimile Edition published by Marvel in 2019 faithfully reproduces the original issue, including advertisements, but has no comparable collector's value - always check the mention "Facsimile Edition" or "True Believers" on the cover or on the back.
- Distinguish between newsstand edition and bookstore edition: the presence of a barcode printed on the cover indicates the newsstand edition, generally more sought after in very high grade; a logo at this location indicates the more common direct market edition.
- Compare several grades before arbitrating: given the considerable gap in value between a 9.8 and a 9.9, it is rarely profitable to pay a significant premium for an intermediate grade (9.4 to 9.6) rather than directly aiming for a 9.8, which remains the most liquid grade on this security.
- Inspect the edge and corners: on a comic that was so manipulated at the time of its release, spine creases and blunting of the corners are the most common defects that cause the grade to drop a full grade.
- Beware of undeclared restorations: on such a sought-after title, cases of pressing or light restoration to disguise folds are documented; favor certified “Universal” (unrestored) examples rather than “Qualified” labels without precisely verifying the nature of the restoration.
- Follow the cinema calendar: prices have historically risen in the weeks preceding each Deadpool film release before falling again; buying outside of these windows of media excitement generally allows you to pay less.