While Deadpool is breaking all box office records with “Deadpool & Wolverine,” a cover featuring the superhero’s very first comic book appearance could sell for a record $7.5 million.
The image, created in 1991 by author and artist Rob Liefeld, would be the most valuable comic book cover of all time if it achieves the asking price, according to Heritage Auctions, which is handling the sale.
Since Deadpool’s first appearance, fans have taken a liking to the mercenary supervillain played by Ryan Reynolds in the comic book adaptations, who developed into a witty and unfiltered antihero.
“Marvel contacted me and said this was the most fan mail we’d gotten in 15 years about a new character,” Liefeld said, according to Reuters. “They were inundated with letters, fan letters that they were sending me. And the box that this mail came in… I thought I was getting a washer and dryer.”
When Liefeld began work on The New Mutants—the series in which he and screenwriter Fabian Nicieza introduced Deadpool—it was Marvel’s worst-selling mutant title.
But the increasing popularity of Deadpool and other new characters like Cable made the series even more successful, even surpassing the sales of X-Men.
And the recently released film Deadpool & Wolverine also exceeded all expectations at the box office, grossing $211 million domestically in its first weekend, making it the highest-grossing opening of 2024, the highest-grossing opening of all time for an R-rated film, and the sixth highest-grossing opening of all time.
With Deadpool now firmly established as a lucrative franchise in pop culture, the cover’s owner approached Heritage Auctions, saying “the time was right” for the sale, the auction house said in a statement.
The owner acquired it nearly 20 years ago after Liefed sold it, but declined offers to sell it. Since then, Deadpool has moved from comics to the big screen, making his first appearance in the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine and his first main appearance in 2016’s Deadpool.
If the cover fetches $7.5 million, it will surpass the current record held by a 1938 comic book in which Superman first appears, which sold for $6 million at auction in April.
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