A super blunder for a superhero.

Somehow the latest issue of Marvel Comics' Wolverine made it to the printer with the anti-Semitic slur "kike" in its pages.

And worse, the title was due to hit stands Wednesday, in the midst of Jewish holy day Yom Kippur.

Marvel averted complete PR disaster by swooping in and ordering the issues yanked from shelves--in some cases, before they went on sale.

"It was a grave mistake," Marvel spokeswoman Maryanne Caruso told the New York Post.

"We're very, very sorry it happened and we're taking measures to make sure nothing like this ever happens again."

According to Caruso, what happened was this: The comic's writer penned the following panel of dialogue: "Though the ceremony was interrupted by one of our closest foes, the killer known as Sabretooth."

But through "human error," she told the Post, something got garbled. "The killer known as Sabretooth" became "the kike known as Sabretooth."

Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman said Marvel, upon discovering the error, is making the best of a bad situation.

"We are satisfied that they are doing everything they can to correct the situation," Foxman said.

David Webster of Manhattan's Midtown Comics says his store received both the bogus Wolverine shipment and the call to keep it off shelves on Tuesday. That's the day Marvel officials apparently discovered the mistake.

Corrected Wolverine issues are expected to hit stands October 13.

If any of the "kike" issues slip through the cracks, Webster says he expects they'll inevitably attract big prices from collectors--even if, "to me, for that reason [the use of the slur], it's not an attractive" buy.

But Webster says he's seen questionable, if not dubious, distinctions make comics hot before--including a Superman issue from June, which drew heat for focusing on the Holocaust. And mentioning neither Jews nor Nazis.

(ORIGINALLY POSTED at 12 p.m.)