Trivia / Deathmate

• Creator Backlash: Bob Layton, Valiant's editor-in-chief at the time who also contributed to some Deathmate issues, did not speak fondly of the crossover when he was interviewed about it in 2003. In addition to the stress of having to manage the people at Image as well as his colleagues at Valiant, he wasn't happy that the project had been initiated by Jim Lee and Valiant co-founder and publisher Steve Massarsky without any input from him.
• Creator Killer: As stated elsewhere, this was one thing that helped kill Valiant Comics.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Since the copyright status of the title was complicated even at the time of publication, given that the rights to the Image characters were divided between Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, and Todd McFarlane, and since the ownership situation has complicated even further since then (Turok and Solar are now owned by DreamWorks SKG, Lee's characters are owned by Warner Bros. since DC Comics bought his company WildStorm, and Liefeld has lost creative control over Youngblood) the chances of Deathmate ever being reprinted are next to none. Thankfully, since the series was massively over-printed, the original issues are neither rare nor expensive.
• Schedule Slip:
  • Image Comics's habit of falling into this was arguably one of the key factors that led to the decline of Valiant - Valiant's issues were released on time, but because they only told half of the story, comic fans were left hanging, on top of the fact that, due to the issues being color-coded rather than numbered, fans were unsure if they were starting at the right place or not.
  • Valiant themselves tried to defy this with Rob Liefeld's contributions to the prologue issue they published. Since Liefeld was already infamous for his tardiness over at Image Comics, Valiant editor Bob Layton had to come over to Liefeld's house and refuse to leave until Liefeld finished his penciled art for the issue.