A look back at the disaster known as....Deathmate!

[cabbageboy 0]

I used to be a big comics fan around the time of the big boom period in the early90s. Some of my favorite books were from Valiant Comics (at that point the #3 publisher behind Marvel and DC). I remember being very excited about the whole Deathmate crossover with Image, though I really was never an Image fan. Here's some info I found on wikipedia.com about this ill fated crossover that essentially wrecked the comics industry for years:

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Deathmate was a six-part comic book crossover between Valiant Comics and Image Comics. Designated by color rather than issue numbers (namely Yellow, Blue, Black, and Red) plus two book-end issues, Deathmate Prologue and Deathmate Epilogue, the main books were written as so they could be read out of sequence. Created at the peak of the comic book speculator boom of 1993, the entire project was heavily promoted, but was wrought with production delays, with the Image books (Black, Red, and Prologue) coming out severely behind schedule and out of sequence (Red shipped several weeks after Prologue).

 

The plot evolved around a chance meeting of two characters, Solar from Valiant and Void from Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.s, published by Image. As the two became lovers, their joining would meant the destruction of both comic book universes.

 

It is notable that only half of the Image founding members chose to take part. Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, and Todd McFarlane were not involved, although Al Simmons makes a brief character appearance in Deathmate Red.

 

The books

Books from Valiant

 

Deathmate Prologue

"A Love to End All Time"

Story: Bob Layton

Pencils: Barry Windsor-Smith

Inks: Jim Lee

 

"Universal Truth"

Story: Bob Layton

Pencils: Rob Liefeld

Inks: Bob Layton with Danny Miki and Dan Panosian

 

 

Deathmate Black, the comic that introduced Gen 13.Deathmate Yellow

"Jerked Through Time" (featuring characters from Archer & Armstrong and WildC.A.T.s)

Story: Mike Baron

Pencils: Bernard Chang

Inks: Rodney Ramos

 

"Cat and Mouse" (featuring characters from Ninjak and WildC.A.T.s)

Story: Jorge Gonzalez

Pencils: Don Perlin

Inks: Mike Manley

 

"The Dying Game" (featuring characters from H.A.R.D. Corps and WildC.A.T.s)

Story: David Michelinie and Bob Layton

Pencils: Mike Leeke

Inks: Tom Ryder

 

"Revalations and Recruitments" (featuring characters from Shadowman and WildC.A.T.s)

Story: Bob Hall

Pencils: Mark Moretti

Inks: John Dixon

 

Deathmate Blue

"Battlestone vs. Magnus Outlaw!" (featuring characters from Brigade and Magnus: Robot Fighter)

Story: John Ostrander

Pencils: Jim Calafiore

Inks: Ralph Reese

 

"Secret Forces" (featuring characters from Secret Weapons and Cyberforce)

Story: Joe St. Pierre

Pencils: Sean Chen

Inks: Kathryn Bolinger

 

"Sacrifices" (featuring characters from Harbinger, Brigade, and Cyberforce)

Story: Maurice Fontenot

Pencils: Howard Simpson

Inker: Gonzalo Mayo

 

"Supremely Darque" (featuring characters from Solar and Supreme)

Story: Kevin VanHook

Pencils: Peter Grau

Inker: Jimmy Palmiotti

 

Books from Image

 

Deathmate Black (featuring characters from Gen 13, WildC.A.T.s, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Cyberforce, and X-O Manowar)

 

Story: Brandon Choi and Eric Silvestri

Pencils: Brandon Peterson, Brett Booth, Marc Silvestri, J. Scott Campbell (as Jeffrey Scott),

Scott Clark, Greg Capullo, Jim Lee, and Whilce Portacio

Inks: Scott Williams, Sal Regla, Alex Garner, and Trevor Scott

 

Deathmate Red (featuring characters from Youngblood, Bloodshot and Eternal Warrior)

 

Story and Pencils: Rob Liefeld

Script: Eric Stephenson

Additional pencils: Jeff Matsuda, Rich Horie, Dan Fraga, Cedric Nocon, Dan Pacella, Anthony Winn, Marat Mychaels

Inks: Danny Miki, Jon Sibal, Marlo Alquiza

 

Deathmate Epilogue

Story: Bob Layton

Pencils: Marc Silvestri and Joe Quesada

Inks: Bob Layton and Scott Williams

 

Aftermath

 

Deathmate Red, Rob Liefeld's belated contribution to the project.As Image books were plagued with deadline problems at the time, it was very little surprise to either fans, retailers, or critics that their books would also arrive late, unlike the books published by Valiant, which arrived on schedule. Despite that, the books were ordered in heavy quantities by retailers, but when shipping dates were not met, orders were cancelled and the books were re-ordered. By the time the books finally did arrive, fans generally lost interest, leaving many retailers with numerous unsold copies.

 

As a cross-promotion, two trading card companies also did a cross-over, Upper Deck and Topps. But, because of deadline problems with Image Comics, Topps ended up backing out of the contract.

 

In a retrospective interview with Newsrama on the rise and fall of Valiant, Bob Layton (former editor in chief) lambasted the whole affair, regarding it as an "unmitigated disaster." As the Image artists were notorious for failing to meet deadlines, Layton allegedly flew out to Los Angeles, went to Rob Liefeld's residence and refused to leave until Liefeld was able to pencil his contribution to Deathmate Prologue, which Layton ended up inking in a hotel room.

 

"I literally had nothing to do with most of those projects," Layton revealed, "Deathmate was thrust upon us because (Steve) Massarsky and Jim Lee were best buddies at the time and had privately arranged the crossover."

 

For retailers, Deathmate was disastrous, but due to the tying up of cash flow from books that were arriving late, especially given the $4.95 USD cover price (at the time, the average comic book cover price was less than half of that). Also due to waning fan interest as they waited for books to arrive, the re-orders were lowered once the initial orders were cancelled. The Valiant Deathmate books (Prologue, Blue, and Yellow) had print runs of over 700,000 copies, but by the time Deathmate Red was eventually released, it had a print run of 250,000. Even still, retailers were left sitting on many unsold copies.

 

At the time, comic book distributors would only allow unsold books to be returned if they were six months late. For retailers already dealing with constantly late books from Image, this indirectly caused many comic book shops to close. Partly due to the lateness of Deathmate (although more to do with the lateness of Image books in general), the window was eventually decreased to two months, but by then the majority of the shops' fates had already been sealed.

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Anyone else out there remember this whole debacle? I have to admit I never picked up the notorious Rob Liefeld issue or the epilogue, but I recall buying one issue at Squeeze Play (a now defunct comic store) and the guy there said "Yeah man, enjoy the book. Hopefully some day we'll get the Image stuff....it might be Christmas!"

[starvenger 0]

It's pretty much what you'd expect it to be. The Valiant stuff was well done, and the fact that they were all 8-12 page stories meant that things were kept fairly tight and exciting.

 

Deathmate Black was ok, and given that Brendan Choi and Eric Silvestri were mediocre at best writers, that was about all you could hope for. The art, of course, was great.

 

Deathmate Red was yet another example of why people don't like Rob. The story was bad, the art was bad and overall it was a waste of money.

 

Still, you combine a couple of hot companies, foil-stamped covers and tons of Wizard/Hero (I think it was Hero at the time. Could've been Fan) pimpage, and the books shipped in pretty huge numbers. Unfortunately, the retailers ended up eating much of the stock, and you can hold this out as another example of that the speculator boom did to the comic industry.

[cabbageboy 0]

I never personally bought the Liefeld issue, so I can't really vouch for the crappiness of it. I'm actually semi interested in finding a cheap copy so I can finish the series.

 

I think aside from the catastrophic damage it did to the comic industry, there were fundamental flaws in the approach the books had. I checked out the issues I did have (Blue, Yellow, and Black) and I'll be damned if I knew who half of these Image jobbers were. What does it say when Spawn wasn't in the entire series (save for a brief cameo) and Savage Dragon wasn't in it?

 

This speaks to the huge problem I had with Image, namely that the characters were tedious. I'd think most people walking into this series had some notion of who X-O, Turok, Solar, etc. were and what they do. But I had no idea about Cyber Force, WildCATS, Gen 13, Brigade, and so on. I had a vague notion of Supreme and Union.

 

The Valiant stuff at least had things boiled down into 4 stories per book with clear mentions of what characters were in the story. Then I pick up Deathmate Black and it's a baffling book with no mention of who the hell is in it, it's all one really long and bizarre story, and it made little sense.

 

And in the end, what difference did most of Black, Blue, Yellow, and Red end up making? The main stuff boils down to the unholy alliance of Solar/Supreme/Master Darque/Dr. Eclipse anyway, so most of this stuff is window dressing.

[Vampiro69 0]

For years I blocked that event out of my mind. Sadly, this thread has brought those horrible memories back. Although I do have the Deathmate Black issue. Is that worth anything anymore due to it being the first appearance of Gen13?

[cabbageboy 0]

Well I dunno how reliable www.comicpriceguide.com is but I took a look at the Deathmate books on there. If they are CGC graded then they might be worth the cover charge. If they aren't and are less than NM condition then they are worth like 2.50.

 

I don't know what made me think of this whole crossover. Maybe it was my brother looking through my old comics and then checking out Valiant on Wikipedia. It's pretty funny to compare the Valiant entry on there to Image. With Valiant they were practically waxing poetic, whereas with Image it was like "Fuck Rob Liefeld! Fuck these assholes and their late arriving books with overly flashy art and uninteresting characters!"

 

As an aside, I haven't bought any comics since 1994 until recently when I found a Solar #1 at a local store for 8.00. I also have some old school Valiant stuff coming in the mail. I am getting Rai #0-4, and also 6-7 from this guy, as well as Magnus #1 and #12 (first Turok). Oh, and I'm getting Harbinger #1 as well. The lone Image I'm getting is a Spawn #1 since I traded my copy years back and regretted it.

 

I don't really understand this whole CGC grading thing though. Mainly it sounds like a way to screw people out of money.

[starvenger 0]

I don't really understand this whole CGC grading thing though. Mainly it sounds like a way to screw people out of money.

Pretty much. Just do a search on eBay for CGC and you'll probably find 52 #3 going for $75 slabbed...

[randomguy 0]

Image Comics was basically an unmitigated disaster altogether.

[randomguy 0]

Image Comics was basically an unmitigated disaster altogether.

[starvenger 0]

Image Comics was basically an unmitigated disaster altogether.

Must be why they're still around today.

 

Actually, I think that expelling Rob and Jim Lee selling Wildstorm to DC was the best thing to happen to Image, as it forced the remaining four founders to rethink their overall business model.

[cabbageboy 0]

You have to wonder...what would the comics industry look like had Acclaim succeeded in buying Image instead of Valiant? Cause let's face it, while stuff like Deathmate hurt Valiant it was Acclaim that basically bought the company, made some video games of Turok and Shadowman, and otherwise buried them.

 

The irony of Image is that by the time they finally started getting their act together the comics boom was over and a whole lot less people cared.