What you think of Deathmate?

rai4ever · Post by **rai4ever** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:05 pm

What did you all think of the Deathmate series?

Valiant was on time on their books.
Image was late.....losers.

I thought the graphics for Image were better...who cares.
The Valiant one's had a better story.

I think Image really screwed Valiant by being late.

dellamorte · Post by **dellamorte** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:27 pm

I think the Valiant books were ok, they had a story you could read and understand with decent art. The image books had nothing to offer other than a few pages of nice art, a bunch of pages of bad pinup art and stories that sucked big fat d***.

I think Valiant delivered their end of the deal and Image F'd up big time.

The real tragedy is that Valiant took the fall and Image thrived.

magnusr · Post by **magnusr** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:19 am

rai4ever wrote:What did you all think of the Deathmate series?

I liked how the prologue and the green preview tied into Valiant continuity. Red and Black had exagerated art and bad story. The rest was ok.

/Magnus

The Spider · Post by **The Spider** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:43 am

It was kinda half-hearted... Only half the Image founders participated (McFarlane, Larsen, and Valentino wisely avoided it, although Rob Liefeld did use Al Simmons for DEATHMATE RED). Had a few interesting ideas, and graphically the Image side looked more interesting, but it really wasn't that good.

The Spider · Post by **The Spider** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:52 am

dellamorte wrote:I think the Valiant books were ok, they had a story you could read and understand with decent art. The image books had nothing to offer other than a few pages of nice art, a bunch of pages of bad pinup art and stories that sucked big fat d***.

I think Valiant delivered their end of the deal and Image F'd up big time.

The real tragedy is that Valiant took the fall and Image thrived.

Image thrived, but two of the three partners who were involved in the DEATHMATE crossover are no longer with Image (Liefeld left or was booted out in 1996, Jim Lee sold Wildstorm in 1998 or '99, I think)

But had Image fallen and Valiant stayed around, what would've happened? Would they have gone with the Windjammer stuff and possibly diversified the line?

From '95-97, there were a lot of attempts by Image to diversify a bit. They even got around to publishing BONE and STRANGERS IN PARADISE for a short time, and those books are completely different from the type of books people associate early 90's Image with. And Jim Valentino tried his best to bring in small press stuff as well (though that particular line collapsed in '98 or something). But they still tend to try, at least. Would anyone have thought the Image of 1992 would've published something like POWERS?

So what I'm wondering is, say Image went down around the time Valiant was supposed to, and Valiant thrived instead--what would've happened? I think they'd still publish the superhero stuff, but they'd still do some cancellation. And they were bought out by Acclaim, around... what, '94, weren't they?

ManofTheAtom · Post by **ManofTheAtom** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 12:57 am

I disagree.

Death*Mate Red's story was a little off, but it still made sense, and Death*Mate's story was great, I really felt for the characters.

Death*Mate was the very first non-DC and non-Marvel comics I've ever read and it was the way that Solar was written throughout the event that eventually turned me into a VALIANT reader.

From the VALIANT side, I really liked blue, which had the chaptered story of the heroes trying to contact Harada, only for all of them except for Geoff to die in the process.

Harada's line ("all you had to do was ask for an appoinment"), is a classic.

Master Darque was, I'd dare to say, a more dangerous, powerful, and terrifying villain in Death*Mate than he ever was in the regular VALIANT universe.

I do think Marc Silvestri's pencils went a long way to help there.

The way he revived Supreme's corpse to do his bidding in the epilogue was beautiful.

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 5:34 am

I was really looking forward to these books as well but the whole thing fell short of what it could have been. I did like some of the Image artwork though and the way they did a few of the Valiant characters such as Turok and Bloodshot. But all in all in was a disapointment.

andrew · Post by **andrew** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 9:38 am

I was just confused.

myron · Post by **myron** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 9:53 am

complete schizophrenic story line....

Hi...I'm schizophrenic and so am I!

we both think it sucked A**

Jaknife · Post by **Jaknife** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 9:57 am

WAAAAY to many plotholes. the fact turok was even in any of them was a big mistake. seriously, the only reason turok came back to earth was because of unity. unity was averted, and turok would have stayed in the lost land. archer would have never ever ever ever used a gun. really. magnus wouldnt have been there, since he would have either not existed, ir would have been in the 90s. pete woulda never been on haradas side. i mean seriously, why because two universes are joined into one does every character have to change? their personalities wouldnt have changed. arics character was a wussy, and only ivar and aram were even remotely the same in deathmate as they were in the regular universe.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 10:00 am

Deathmate just promised a lot more story (and art) than it delivered. The crossing of these two universes into one should've resulted in something more than shoot outs and random character deaths. But I did enjoy some of it, though some of it I didn't.

Deathmate Prologue- waist of money, I got more out of reading articles about it in Previews

Deathmate Previews thing- Grifter v Shadowman v a psychotic Archer (one of the better twists of the event) I liked it, good action and rocking art.

Deathmate Blue- Good art, well-written action short stories. I liked the irony of Maniac being the only surviving Corps member

Deathmate Yellow- Sub par art and story from guys I know can do better. And you guys had to remind me about that "all you had to was make an appoint line". Ugh. Nothing like tons of characters dieing for no good reason.

Deathmate Black- Decent art, average story. Really disappointed at how lame the Valiant characters were in it and how I couldn't figure out how it connected to the rest.

Deathmate Red- Bad art and story. Some cool ideas that were killed by the execution.

Deathmate Epiloge- Great Quesada art and a good fight scene but an average, predictable story.

I never read the other preview of Deathmate with Mothergod in it though I was always curious about it. Are the pages of it online anywhere?

x-omatic · Post by **x-omatic** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 11:32 am

andrew wrote:I was just confused.

Me too.
It could have been a great crossover if the Image books shipped on time so you could actually read them in order. You would think with a different artist doing almost every other page they could of had it done in couple of days.

It was still nice to see Marc Silvestri draw some Valiant characters though.

pta391 · Post by **pta391** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:29 pm

All I remember (i was at best 12 or 13 at the time was that this was supposed to be the crossover event for the year. All the hype in wizard and previews for the Deathmate project left myself and my fellow middle school accomplices in crime drooling. What more could you want... the awesome flashy big breasted art of Image, combined with the solid cohesive storytelling of Valiant. This series didnt just seem like it would be the event of the year, but quite possibly one of the greatest artistic and creative superhero endeavor comics had seen since Stan Lee created the Marvel Universe. (im probably hyping this crossover more than wizard did but man it was huuuge to this 12yr old Valiant fan). In the end after waiting and waiting for Image to deliver their half, for months or years sometimes, I got a complete story, and I felt jacked. What could have easily been the greatest superhero crossover ever wound up as a confusing mass of paper. Don't get me wrong I found many things that I thought were awesome, It just didnt live up to what I had come to expect story wise from the minds at Valiant...a preview of what was to come with the arrival of Acclaim no doubt. Also the biggest reason why this series was and never will be held in high regard by myself and peers.... We all waited for what I believe to be over 1 year and a half (could have been more or less passage of time for a 12 year old is different than for the rest of us) for Deathmate Red.... and it totally did not deliver.....

The Spider · Post by **The Spider** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:58 pm

pta391 wrote:All I remember (i was at best 12 or 13 at the time was that this was supposed to be the crossover event for the year. All the hype in wizard and previews for the Deathmate project left myself and my fellow middle school accomplices in crime drooling. What more could you want... the awesome flashy big breasted art of Image, combined with the solid cohesive storytelling of Valiant. This series didnt just seem like it would be the event of the year, but quite possibly one of the greatest artistic and creative superhero endeavor comics had seen since Stan Lee created the Marvel Universe. (im probably hyping this crossover more than wizard did but man it was huuuge to this 12yr old Valiant fan). In the end after waiting and waiting for Image to deliver their half, for months or years sometimes, I got a complete story, and I felt jacked. What could have easily been the greatest superhero crossover ever wound up as a confusing mass of paper. Don't get me wrong I found many things that I thought were awesome, It just didnt live up to what I had come to expect story wise from the minds at Valiant...a preview of what was to come with the arrival of Acclaim no doubt. Also the biggest reason why this series was and never will be held in high regard by myself and peers.... We all waited for what I believe to be over 1 year and a half (could have been more or less passage of time for a 12 year old is different than for the rest of us) for Deathmate Red.... and it totally did not deliver.....

I was 10 when Deathmate Prologue was hyped up--Even though I hadn't read the Image and Valiant stuff at the time, I could see that it was going to be INCREDIBLY popular.

Didn't get around to reading it until just a few years ago, though.

On a sidenote, around a few months after the couple of Deathmate comics came out, there was a guy in the math class who collected comics, so I asked him what his prized ones were. He said Spawn, Deathmate.

I'm not so sure he'd think the same now.

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:31 pm

On a sidenote, around a few months after the couple of Deathmate comics came out, there was a guy in the math class who collected comics, so I asked him what his prized ones were. He said Spawn, Deathmate.

I'm not so sure he'd think the same now.

I know what he's thinking... "doh!"

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What you think of Deathmate?

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