kodave

I don't believe that's ever been officially solicited by either Marvel or DC. It appears on Amazon from time, and then eventually goes away or never progresses into more. Been like that for years now.

PhantomStranger

I'm pretty sure I heard DC was prepping it at one time and then talk of it vanished.

I'll guess it had to do with getting everything approved by both Marvel and DC.

Crossoverking

Thank you for the welcome!

This thread actually gave me a kick in the butt. I'm nearly finished writing a history/collector's guide to 20th Century intercompany crossovers. I've done virtually nothing on the book in a year.

I lost my wife a year ago and have been zombi-ized since. Reading the enthusiasm in the thread for intercompany crossovers has hopefully renewed my juices to get back to work on it.

The Valeyard

Coming in September - Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes (Dark Horse/Boom! Studios). This one sounds good.

Why So Blu?

This thread gave me flashbacks to when Valiant and Image did their crossovers years ago. Deathmate, I think they were called. The art was hit and miss depending on who was drawing the book but the stories didn't quite gel with people, if I remember correctly.

rocket1312

Did anyone even read the full story? I bought the prologue issue but lost all interest long before the series was finished. Deathmate Red (Liefeld's issue) was delayed over a year, wasn't it?

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I did. It was pretty much shit, as expected.

The crossover was kicked off when Valiant's Solar met WildCATs Void during some kind of interdimensional jaunt.

The meat of the crossover wasn't as much of a crossover as a melding of the various characters and teams, similar to what Marvel and DC did with the Amalgam project a few years later.

There was very little story there, and it felt more like an obligation to satisfy the fanboys than they actually had an interesting story to tell.

Trevor

Wasn't there some big crossover that never finished?

majorjoe23

Image United never finished, but that was just Image stuff.

Josh-da-man

"Schism" from Defiant Comics, the company Jim Shooter formed after Valiant. They were gearing up for a big event similar to "Unity" at Valiant when the company went tits-up. I think it was going to be a four-issue miniseries with all of their titles tying into it. The miniseries never came out, but a couple of the tie-ins did come out before the sword of Damocles fell.

I also believe that something similar happened with Neal Adams' Continuity Comics during one of their big crossover events ("Deathwatch 2000" maybe? Or one right after it?) I never read Continuity, so I can't recall for certain. Continuity Comics was always a hot mess that epitomized the speculator craze of the 90s with perpetually late books, gimmick covers, incomprehensible stories spread out over serial crossover events, and a general lack of direction.

The Valeyard

Yes. The final chapter to "Deathwatch 2000" never came out. They moved on to their next crossover, "The Rise of Magic" (which also never finished).

"War of the Independents" is an indie crossover that includes a ton of small press characters banding together in a Crisis-type storyline (Cerebus, The Tick, Gumby, etc). It's been running for almost 7 years now, slowly eking out issues and tie-ins every once in awhile. It feels like the story is too big for the people running it. I was real excited when it was first announced and even contributed to the Kickstarter campaign back in 2010. The first three issues came out roughly after that. Issue 4 was released through their website earlier this year. I think it's supposed to be six issues.

Speaking of Deathmate, Valiant comics just introduced a character named "Deathmate." I guess they owned the actual name.

Why So Blu?

The one that had the best artwork of those Deathmate books was "Deathmate Black." Yeah, they were all color coded. I think Liefeld's was Deathmate Red.

The Valeyard

Yes. Liefeld's was Deathmate Red. The sole reason Valiant went with a color system instead of a numbering system was because Image was chronically late with all their books. From what I understand, Valiant was to release the Prologue issue and Image was going to release the Epilogue issue. In the end, the Image books were so late, Valiant released the Epilogue issue to end the whole damn thing. Deathmate Red was quietly released a year or so later.

Josh-da-man

There's a rumor out there that Bob Layton actually went to Rob Liefeld's house and wouldn't leave until Liefeld drew his pages for the Deathmate prologue.

grundle

Archie Meets Batman ’66

http://archiecomics.com/archiemeetsbatmanpreview/

b2net

Will for sure grab this one (from the library to read once they have the full series in TPB available)

Red Hood

Reading this thread, it still surprises me that Image didn't go belly up in the 90's during the market crash due to all their delayed titles and money losses.

PhantomStranger

Hollywood optioning every comic book property in sight during that era helped their finances a great deal. Virtually every Liefeld comic at one time was in Hollywood development because studios had seen how much Batman had made for Warner.

fujishig

Plus, they were popular enough that retailers never really stopped ordering their crap when it was solicited.

Josh-da-man

Image isn't set up like a regular publisher. It's not set up to turn a profit. It's more like a collective of self-publishers and independent studios.

Image itself doesn't make money, or a lot. It differs from a traditional publisher in that creators aren't paid up front, but after their books are released. They then keep all of the profits minus printing costs and production fees from Image, and also keep all of their trademarks and copyrights.

But, yeah, if Image was a traditional publisher, they probably would have been bankrupted in their first five years from all of the late and never-produced titles.

Red Hood

I know that, but at one point everything was so delayed, that I was surprised the Image studios like McFarlane's, Larsen's and other's were not coming out on any consistent basis to make the idea work. Add to this the whole Liefeld embezzling funds fiasco, Lee taking the ball and leaving for DC in 98-99 wit the successful Wildstorm imprint and the whole Image structure could have fallen apart. Even Jeff Smith took his Bone book back to Image, which wasn't a good sign of things to come.

fujishig

I do wonder what would have happened had Kirkman not come along with Walking Dead in the more recent era. That seemed to really complete the trend away from pure superhero stuff and into a place where writers and artists could stretch their legs once they got their notoriety and popularity working at the big 2. But I'm probably remembering it wrong, all I know is that there was a long stretch where Image wasn't very compelling to me from a storytelling perspective.

If anything, that brain drain really hurt the big 2.

majorjoe23

Spawn and Savage Dragon were two of the more consistently shipping titles for Image. It probably helped that McFarlane stopped drawing Spawn early on and Larsen is a very fast artist. Not that those two books didn’t hit shopping hiccups in the 2000s.

stingo

I really like this one - maybe more than I should.

mrhan

I never read it but will eventually get to it. Is it better than the LSH/ST crossover?