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 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 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 McFarlane's character Al Simmons makes a brief 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
Despite both publishers saying the issues could be read in any order, fans have long speculated that there must be a proper order as the story doesn't make sense. In December 2017, a Reddit user and member of the Valiant Fans forum claimed that he had solved the dilemma and suggested that there is, in fact, a reading order where the story is more coherent. The proposed order is:
Prologue
Green
Red
Pink/Orange
Yellow
Blue
Black
Epilogue
This proposed order is wildly different from the order in which the issues were published. It's based on the content within the books and the timeline in which events must occur in order for a non-contradictory, cohesive narrative to exist. Deathmate was long considered "uncollectable" due to it having no proper order, and largely being viewed as unreadable by fans, but this new proposed order potentially solves that problem. Regardless, a collection seems unlikely as the character rights are now spread across several companies, with Solar, Magnus and Turok having reverted to DreamWorks Classics and NBCUniversal and the Wildstorm characters now being owned by DC Comics.
Aftermath
Although the issues of Deathmate produced by Valiant shipped on schedule, those produced by Image Comics did not, a problem that Image faced with many of its publications in its early years. The books were pre-ordered in heavy quantities by retailers, and 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 lambasted the whole affair, regarding it as an "unmitigated disaster." Layton says he had to fly to Los Angeles and literally sit on Liefeld's doorstep until Liefeld finished his penciled art for the Deathmate Prologue, and then Layton inked the artwork himself in an Anaheim hotel room. Layton 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 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 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 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. Also due to waning fan interest, the re-orders were lower than initial orders. The Valiant Deathmate books 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.
