Deathmate



Deathmate was a six-part comic book crossover between Valiant Comics and Image Comics published in 1993 and 1994. Designated by color rather than issue numbers (namely Yellow, Blue, Black, and Red) plus two book-end issues, Deathmate Prologue and Deathmate Epilogue,as well as Preview issues collected with comic products, the four main issues were written so they could be read in any order. Created at the peak of the comic book speculator boom, the project was heavily promoted and sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but was beset with production delays. The Image half (Black, Red, and Epilogue) came out severely behind schedule and out of sequence. Deathmate Red shipped after the epilogue issue, and despite cover dates of September 1993 to February 1994, the actual publication lag was far longer than six months.

The plot evolved around a chance interdimensional meeting of two characters, Solar from Valiant and Void from Image's WildC.A.T.s. The two became lovers, but their joining would mean 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
Preview Issues

Green sold with Comic Defense comic bags or Advance Comics magazine

Same story and cover, but with the logo of the sponsor in the corner

Story: Solar and Prophet battle Erica Pierce

Orange and Pink

sold with Previews magazine

Same story, but different covers

Story: Archer chases Shadowman while Grifter chases Archer

Books from Valiant

"A Love to End All Time"
 * Deathmate Prologue

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

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

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

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

Story: Bob Hall

Pencils: Mark Moretti

Inks: John Dixon

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

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

Story: Brandon Choi and Eric Silvestri
 * Deathmate Black (featuring characters from Gen¹³, WildC.A.T.s, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Cyberforce, and X-O Manowar)

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

Story and Pencils: Rob Liefeld
 * Deathmate Red (featuring characters from Youngblood, Bloodshot and Eternal Warrior)

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

Story: Bob Layton
 * Deathmate Epilogue

Pencils: Marc Silvestri and Joe Quesada

Inks: Bob Layton and Scott Williams

Aftermath
As Image Comics was plagued by late, rescheduled, or cancelled publications at the time, it came as no surprise to fans, retailers, and critics that Deathmate also arrived late, although the issues published by Valiant were shipped on schedule. However, the books were pre-ordered in heavy quantities by retailers. When shipping dates were not met, distributors cancelled the original orders and required re-orders. By the time the last issues did arrive, some fans had lost interest, leaving retailers with unsold copies.

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

In a retrospective interview on the rise and fall of Valiant, Bob Layton (former editor in chief) lambasted the whole affair, regarding it as an "unmitigated disaster." Valiant Editor in Chief Bob Layton, who says he had to fly to Los Angeles and literally sit on Liefeld's doorstep until Liefeld finished penciled his portion of the Deathmate Prologue, and who inked the artwork himself in an Anaheim hotel room, stated, "What a pain in the ass that was! There I was, with my own company to manage, and I was in California, managing someone else's people. I look back at it and can't believe some of the shit I had to put up with as E.I.C. of Valiant. As far as failures, Deathmate and [Valiant promotion] Birthquake were unmitigated disasters. Not necessarily in the numbers, but in the consequences of their release...I think that Deathmate sounded the beginning of the problems, and when Image couldn't get their side of the cross-over out on time, it hurt everyone. I think [Valiant crossover] Chaos Effect the next summer was a decent idea, but there wasn't anything new to capture the audience's imagination. We made a specific mistake in choosing not to advertise during the summer of '93. Our books were almost too hot and we wanted to get more realistic numbers. Remember, we were the collectible company. That meant wealthier speculators buying cases of the stuff, hoping to sell it for ten times what they paid for it within a year. In some cases, they did! That's why there's so much of our output from that era on the market."

"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 harmful, due to the tying up of cash flow with books 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, the re-orders were lower than initial orders. The Valiant Deathmate books (Prologue, Blue, and Yellow) had print runs of over 700,000 copies, but by the time Deathmate Red was released, it had a print run of 250,000, although retailers were nonetheless left with many unsold copies. At the time, comic book distributors would only allow unsold books to be returned if they were six months late. Retailers dealt constantly with late books from Image, which indirectly caused some comic book shops to close. Partially due to the lateness of Image publications, the window was eventually decreased to two months.