Deathmate - Aftermath

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." 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 pencilled 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 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.