Tell me the story of how Image and Deathmate nearly destroyed

>>93046112
Oh god I'm reciting this from memory so if I get things wrong please correct me.

Some people say that Deathmate didn't do it by itself, but it was a long time coming and it just so happened to be the perfect storm of everything wrong in the 90's. Image right now is living high on it's Indie cred but back in the day to call them terrible publishers is not far off. They had some classics but that was like the Maxx and even Sam Keith left eventually. Valiant was going through it's woes after Jim Shooter was ousted but they still had an amazing work ethic.

Still they somehow decided to have a crossover! Where Valiant would make three issues and Image would make the other three. Valiant was on time with there issues. Image was so god damn late it took a year to get the one issue out of Rob Liefeld.

>>93046332
Rob's issue was the one that mucked things up the most, Bob Layton had to got to Rob's house and get his to finish the damn issue. See back than and even today comic ordering was based on pre-orders. These books were also expensive, they were 4.95! Comic shops ended loosing so much money many closed down and this was also when Rob's super stardom was going down the drain.So even if you don't close you still had unsold copies of Deathmate Red.

>>93046409
It was one of the many factors that made the speculator market go away realizing that none of these comics would pay for their college. There was also all the other things too like the Marvel Bankruptcy and Diamond distribution creating the monopoly but Deathmate did kill the market. Year's Later Eric Stephenson the writer of Deathmate Red now the head Editor at Image would make a plea that Image comics with it's focus on creators would save the industry and you don't need the big two to survive if your a retailer. BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAAHAHA! Fuck Image, I like many of their books but man they are so up their own ass and I hate how anytime they get mentioned it acts like there the first publisher who focused on creator own comics or forget to mention how many early image books were terrible.

>>93046409
>These books were also expensive, they were 4.95!

imagine a comic that costs 4.95.

or even 4.99.

>>93046604
Not going to lie I think Magazine paper was a mistake.

>>93046604
Think of the inflation.

$4.95 would be like $8 or so today.

Comic shops ordered a bazillion copies.
Half of it was late.
Sales were so bad it ran tons of shops out of business.
The glut of Deathmate and other "landmark" issues crashed the investor market.
People stopped reading the big publishers because of low quality products + lack of places to buy them.
The market had become so focused on superheroes that the bottom fell out before other genres could fill the void, and consumers had it ingrained in their minds that comics were "for kids" after 50+ years of conditioning.

>>93046112
Blaming the crash on Deathmate is a narrative pushed by Marvel zombies. In reality there were numerous factors contributing to it but it was mostly just a natural bubble and burst you see in any investment speculation. People thought the comics were going to be worth money, then they caught on and stopped buying them. High school economics. And the books that printed millions of copies around the time speculators stopped biting (Deathmate, Death of Superman) got saddled with misdirected blame.

>>93046635
The economics of paper production and large-scale printing means that you're not going to see a significant cost savings unless you're using newsprint.

>>93047040
Dude if your a retailer this was the book that did it. Look I get there were other factors but even today when I talk to people who ran stores at the time it was hard not to say Deathmate fucked over retailers bad. Sure the speculator market leaving was bad but the book being so late as with other image books helped with that as well. The era was a clusterfuck for everyone but Deathmate is a real special case where the first major failure of the era can be pointed to.