Deathmate Blue

Deathmate Blue

Before this came out it was one of the most hyped and anticipated comic company cross overs in years. You have Image comics ,who were smoking hot at the time. And Valiant comics,who were at their peak artistically and storywise. And the basic idea wasn't bad. The two different universes merge and a small group of people are trying their best to correct this huge mistake. Well lets start off with the obvious mistakes,this was published in mid 1993 and had a cover price of $4.95. IIRC at this times most comics were at most $1.95. Sure the issue is over sized and the cover has a small amount of blue foil on it. But there is no way this should have been almost $5 an issue. Each of the four "color" issues of Deathmate were collections of some short stories. We start this one off with a story that has Magnus Robot Fighter and Brigade. Written by John Ostrander and art by Jim Calafiore,this is decent. But really this story,and most of the other ones in this entire crossover,feel like you have been dropped into part 20 of a 40 part storyline.The fight between Magnus and Battlestone is decent,and has the usual Valiant style of good art. Next story is one that pairs up Secret Weapons and Cyber Force. Secret Weapons as a title never really worked for me. And Cyber force always felt like a X-men spin off team that would have lasted 2 years at the most. Written by Joe St. Pierre and art by Sean Chen,this one is more interesting than the first story. There is an attempt on the President's life and the combined team of Secret Weapons and Cyber Force must stop it. The next one has people from Harbinger,Brigade and Cyber Force. The team from the last story has invaded the Harada HQ and it ends up with a big fight. The story by Maurice Fontenot and art by Howard Simpson are both flat and really drags the pace of the book down.Geoff the geomancer finally gets to meet up with Harada and the both of them get in touch with Solar. This sets up the storyline that will be continued in Deathmate Epilogue.Last story has Solar man of the Atom and Supreme. Written by Kevin Vanhook and art by Peter Grau. This has Solar and Supreme teaming up with Master Darque and Dr Eclipse to go find out what has caused the two universes to combined and what is causing they to be destroied.This is one of the better issues in the whole Deathmare shitfest. But even then it is barely worth 2 bucks much less the $5 it sold for. I do like how it took the storyline and continued it forward.Which is something other issues in this series didn't manage to do. Deathmate Blue gets a C.