Marvel keeps releasing promo art for the X-men: Hellfire Gala and I am eating it up! This is looking to be such a cool event, and I love the unique, mutant-specific fashion that these characters are getting. All the big X-men characters have been covered already, but would I love to see more designs? Of course. We’ve actually seen more in previews that announced Polaris’ win including Forge,Strong Guy,Marrow,Armor,Boom-Boom, and Tempo. I’m a person that loves lists and collecting things though, so I couldn’t help but think of additional characters I’d at least love to see a glimpse of, including Wolfsbane,Cable,Vulcan,Darwin,Blink, Cypher, Bei, Husk,Chamber, Mondo, Hellion,Anole, Surge, Dust, Gentle, the Stepford Cuckoos, Oya, Elixir, Hope Summers, Proteus, Egg, Tempus, Triage, Petra, Sway,Callisto, Toad, Cecilia Reyes, Peter Wisdom, and even Apocalypse.
Honestly, I am already so happy with what we have here and my list is just me being greedy…but Marvel started it! LOL. A part of me does actually hope that this becomes an annual event, where all we do is celebrate some beautiful mutant fashion. I am just having so much fun!
I also kind of the love the idea that Monarch (James Braddock Jr.) is intentionally black and white…like he is going to show up like he is in the A-ha music video “Take On Me”. I mean he could and would do it. He has reality-altering powers and he is ridiculously fabulous.
365 Marvel Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…
May 20th - Tempo
The Mutant hero known as Tempo was born Heather Tucker. Her Mutant abilities manifested in late adolescence where she discovered she possesses the ability of chronokinesis, the capacity to mentally manipulate the flow of time in her immediate vicinity. With this ability she can cause the flow of time around her to slow to stagnant crawl or speed up to a rapid blur; and has learned to use this power in a host of different offensive and defensive fashions. The power additionally enables her the ability to fly.
Tempo was originally recruited by the evil Mutant, Stryfe, who indoctrinated her into a Mutant Supremacist mindset. She acted as a member of Stryfe’s Mutant Liberation Front and partook in battles against The New Mutants and X-Factor. Strife was ultimately defeated and the Mutant Liberation Front disbanded. Cable offered Tempo a place on his team, X-Force, but she declined opting instead to try to live a civilian life and go to college. Unfortunately, The Superhuman Registration act made this an impossibility and Tempo was labeled a renegade super powered individual.
Angered over how the world treats her fellow Mutants, Tempo fell in with Mr. Sinister’s team, the Marauders. Following the Messiah Complex storyline, however, she sided with The X-Men in creating the Utopia Mutant sanctuary off the coast of San Francisco.
More recently, Tempo has relocated to the Island of Krakoa and has shown interest in becoming a member of the X-Men. She was in the running to be selected as a member of the new flagship X-Men squad, but ultimately lost out to Polaris. Instead Tempo has joined Kitty Pryde’s squad of Marauders endeavoring on covert missions to protect Krakoa’s interests.
The former villain turned heroine first appeared in the pages of New Mutants Vol. 1 #86 (1989).
Dani: I was forced to isolate myself because I couldn’t control my powers, also I lost my parents to a demon bear haunting me.
Roberto: My girlfriend jumped in front of a bullet to save me and died in my arms.
Sam: I nearly died in a mine collapse.
Rahne: I was raised by an abusive reverend who then led the town to chase me with torches and pitchforks, branding me a witch when my powers manifested.
Xi'an: My parents were killed and I was raped by pirates when trying to flee Vietnam.
Amara: I was almost sacrificed in a deadly ritual by Selene.
Illyana: I spent seven years raised by a demonic sorcerer in Limbo to be his apprentice, and believe I am inherently evil now.
Warlock: Self’s father wants to kill self.
Julio:I was kidnapped and tortured by an anti-mutant militia known as the Right, and nearly forced to destroy San Francisco.
Tabitha: My father physically abused me until I ran away and spent time homeless on the streets.
The first and only CGC 10.0 copy of New Mutants #98 – the first appearance of Deadpool — written by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza and drawn by Liefeld, has just sold for $15,449.
This sale eclipses the controversial 2009 sale of a CGC 9.9 copy for $12,500. There have been over 3900 copies of this 1991 Marvel comic graded by CGC, with only this single copy evaluated at 10.0.
The first CGC 9.9 hit the census in 2005 when there were only 275 total graded copies. The $12,250 sale for that copy took place around December 2009 when there were 1244 total copies graded.
By March 2013, there were 9 copies in 9.9 on the census (including 1 signature series copy) out of a total 3082 copies graded. So, in the time since the $12k sale up to this time, 1838 submissions produced 8 additional cgc 9.9 copies on the census. So, everything else being equal, another 9.9 appeared for every 230 copies submitted during this “gold rush” period, with prices for these additional 9.9 copies ranging from $3500 to $6000.
None of which says anything much about this CGC 10.0, besides what we already knew about it being one out of 3900 submissions. However, let’s look at other highly-submitted books from roughly the same period:
Amazing Spider-Man #300: 10 copies in 9.9, 0 copies in 10.0 out of 7700 copies graded.
Wolverine (1988) #1: 12 copies in 9.9, 1 copy in 10.0 out of 5100 copies graded.
Uncanny X-Men #266: 10 copies in 9.9, 0 copies in 10.0 out of 4200 graded.
Confining it to the year of New Mutants #98’s publication, there are 25,129 comics from 1991 on the CGC census, with only 130 CGC 9.9 graded and only 9 CGC 10.0 graded out of those.
Nothing in all of that prevents another CGC 10.0 from showing up on the census tomorrow, but it does go a ways towards explaining why an important comic from 1991 has just sold for $15,449 at public auction.
