New Mutants #98, cover-dated February 1991, is the first appearance of Deadpool, and generally the most valuable mainstream comic of the 1990s, particularly in high grade.
It’s also one of the books people most often own without realizing it. Plenty of people bought it in 1991. Rob Liefeld’s New Mutants was selling well even as the series wound down toward its relaunch. But nobody bought it for the unknown mercenary on the cover. The copies that stayed pristine mostly did so by accident, and that’s precisely why they’re worth what they are.
If you think you have one, this is what decides whether it’s a few hundred dollars or a great deal more. One thing up front: there are no dollar figures on this page, on purpose. This book reprices on film news, and there’s a three-minute method further down for pulling a current number yourself. I buy these across Southern California. Call or text (951) 515-9604 and I’ll tell you what yours is.
First, make sure it’s actually the book
More copies get misidentified than you’d think, because several things look almost identical to it on a shelf.
- It must be issue 98 of The New Mutants, cover-dated February 1991. The indicia inside the front cover is what settles it, not the cover.
- X-Force #1 is not it. New Mutants ended at #100 and became X-Force, so the two sit together in most collections. X-Force #1 was printed in enormous numbers and is worth a fraction of #98.
- Reprints exist and are worth very little. New Mutants #98 has been reprinted in various forms since. A reprint says so in the indicia. Read it before you get excited.
- Don’t rely on the cover. Reprints and facsimile editions reproduce the original cover art, price box and date by design. The only thing that settles it is the indicia inside, which will name the reprint and its year.
If you want to be certain, the Grand Comics Database lists every printing and every variant with cover dates, and it’s free.
What actually sets the price
Grade, and more brutally than on most books
This is a 1991 comic, so a great many high-grade copies survive. That has a specific consequence: the serious money in this book sits at 9.6 and above, and a 9.4 and a 9.8 aren’t a few percent apart. They sell into two quite separate markets.
A well-read copy is still worth real money. Not because the book is rare, because it isn’t, but because demand for the first Deadpool runs deep enough that even beaten copies sell. If you’re imagining the headline figures you’ve seen quoted, though, those are near-perfect copies, and near-perfect is rarer than it sounds for a book that’s spent decades in a long box.
The things that most often knock this particular book down a grade are the same ones that catch out every early-90s comic: spine stress from being packed tight, corner blunting, and a color-breaking crease you can only see under raking light. What actually gets checked when a book is graded walks through how to spot each of them before you assume a number.
Newsstand versus direct edition: the one most owners miss
In 1991 this book was printed in two versions. Copies sent to comic shops carry a small box or logo where the barcode would be. Copies sent to grocery stores and pharmacies carry a real UPC barcode in the lower-left corner of the front cover.
Newsstand copies were bought by casual readers, carried home in bags, and mostly destroyed. They’re a small minority of surviving copies, and on a key issue like this one a high-grade newsstand copy carries a real premium over the direct edition.
It takes two seconds to check and most owners never do. Look at the lower-left corner.
Whether it’s already graded
A slabbed copy with a grade on the label is a known quantity and prices against a public record; how I price slabs is its own short read. A raw copy prices against an estimate, which is why two buyers can look at the same book and disagree by a wide margin.
This is one of the few books where speculative grading can genuinely pay, because the value curve above 9.4 is steep enough to cover the cost. It’s also a bet. If it comes back lower than you hoped, you’ve spent the money for nothing. If it’s a strong enough copy and you’d rather not carry that risk, I’ll send it to CGC at my cost with the payout agreed per grade in advance, so the downside is mine rather than yours.
Why there are no prices on this page
Deliberately. This book reprices on film and casting news, and it has done so repeatedly. Any figure I typed here would be wrong within months, and a stale number on a page like this is worse than no number, because someone will plan around it.
Here’s how to get a current one in about three minutes:
- Search eBay for New Mutants 98 and filter to Sold Items.
- Match like for like. A slabbed 9.8 tells you nothing about a raw copy, and vice versa.
- Take the middle of the last couple of months rather than the highest sale.
- Check the CGC census for how many copies have been graded at each level. That’s a count of submissions, not of copies in the world. But on a book this heavily submitted, it still tells you whether high grade is genuinely scarce or merely uncommon.
Then remember that a sold price is the ceiling rather than the outcome. What each price source is really measuring covers which numbers to trust, and what buyers actually pay covers the gap between a sold listing and an offer.
Think you’ve got one?
Text me a photo of the cover and the lower-left corner and I’ll tell you which edition it is and roughly where it sits. I’ll buy it on its own; it doesn’t have to come with the rest of the boxes.
Where these turn up
When one appears in a collection it’s usually in the middle of a run, not bagged separately with the keys, because whoever bought it in 1991 had no reason to think it was one. If you’re going through boxes, don’t only check the books that were kept apart. Check the New Mutants run itself, in order, around the high nineties.
The same logic applies to the other book from that era people miss: The Batman Adventures #12, the first comic appearance of Harley Quinn, filed under a kids’ cartoon tie-in that serious collectors ignored at the time. Both are covered in are 90s comic books worth anything?, along with the rest of the decade’s exceptions.
Questions about this book specifically
Is New Mutants #98 the first appearance of Deadpool?
Yes: first appearance, cover-dated February 1991, created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld. It’s also the first appearance of Gideon, and of the character presented as Domino, later revealed to be the shapeshifter Copycat; the real Domino debuts in X-Force #8. Deadpool is what drives the price.
Is a copy without the poster or inserts worth less?
Completeness matters on any book. If your copy shipped with anything bound in and it’s gone, that’s a defect a grader will note. It’s worth checking what the issue was supposed to contain before assuming your copy is complete. That’s a habit worth having on every book, not just this one.
Should I get it graded before selling?
On this book, more often than on most. The value curve above 9.4 is steep enough that a strong copy can justify the cost. On a well-read copy, no; you’ll spend the fee and the grade won’t change the market much. If you’re unsure which you have, that’s exactly the call worth making before you ship anything.
Will you buy just the one book?
Yes. A single significant book is worth a drive in a way that a box of ordinary modern comics isn’t, and this is one of the books I actively look for. Text a photo to (951) 515-9604 and I’ll tell you what I can do on it.
Related reading
- Are 90s comic books worth anything? lists the rest of the decade’s exceptions, and the much longer list of books that aren’t.
- What actually gets checked when a book is graded shows the difference between a 9.4 and a 9.8, and how to spot it yourself.
- The ten books I most want to find has not one 90s book on it, which tells you where the decade stands.
- What happens on a free appraisal explains how I get from a comic to a figure, in front of you.
