Robserecaps Fifteen – episode 47 DeathMate
by Joe
It’s two for Wednesday at Robserecaps, be sure to check out west coast comic relator Mike Sterling who listened to this episode and lit the fire under me to get my butt in gear. Also, go listen to this episode as always!
- the Rob has debated changing the name of the show to “Look, it’s a Podcast!”
- Again, the origins of ‘Robservations” goes back to his early fanzine days and Wizard’s side project, Entertainment Retailing
- Today, we’re talking Valiant! The Rob says they came up at the same time as Image, however, loyal Patreons know Valiant has been in the Previews catalogs for months, publishing Nintendo comics and reprints of the Gold Key characters they would launch with shortly
- Let’s star with Jim Shooter, who, while editor at Marvel, gave voice to Walt Simonson, John Byrne, Frank Miller and more
- The Rob spends a lot of time trying to recall the names of the Valiant launch titles, he missed a few
- Valiant had nice covers but they were not artistically driven, heavy on the six panel grid very boring comics, nothing grabbed the Rob’s attention until Bloodshot
- The early Valiant books were by Don Pearland, Bob Hall, Bob Layton, who were ten years past their prime
- At C2E2 in 1992, the had an Image ten for the Image boys, and that’s when Steve Massarsky, the money behind Valiant and Aerosmith’s agent, introduced himself to them
- that summer, the Rob called Massarky looking to crossover Youngblood with Bloodshot (which had not come out yet) off the slogan “This Blood’s For you!” but didn’t feel Massarsky was interested in a solo crossover, but months later, Massarsky would call Jim Lee to do a company wide crossover
- When Jim pitches the Image/Valiant crossover, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen and Jim Valentino refused to participate, but the Rob felt since he was patient zero and got the ball rolling, he already had a pin up of Shaft and Bloodshot together, he had to do it
- Each company would do two books of the crossover, with the Rob stating the one he worked on, DeathMate Red, was the highest selling of the bunch, but citation needed!
- When the Rob launched Exteme Studios, they did a tour of four comic shops. From that, Valiant wanted to do a bus tour for DeathMate. I can only hope this song was playing on the ride.
- The Rob does an impression of ‘Derrick’ Aerosmith’s tour manager who would be running the bus tour. The impression is a much more subdued version of his Todd McFarlane impression
- The Rob visited the Valiant offices, a dodgy building in a dodgy part of town with very little space
- Jim Shooter told the Rob since they had untested young and old artists at Valiant, “wouldn’t it be better to have ugly little drawings than ugly big drawings?” and the Rob got it
- The Rob brushes (pun intended) by Bob Layton having to fly to the Rob’s house to make sure pages were done. The Rob left Layton six pages to ink, it wasn’t that the Rob wasn’t doing the work, it was he was avoiding giving the pages to Bob
- When this event caused other Image books to fall behind, Todd (the scolder in chief) gave everyone what for
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