Deathmate was a six-part comic book crossover between Valiant Comics and Image Comics. Designated by color rather than issue numbers (namely Yellow, Blue, Black, and Red) plus two book-end issues, Deathmate Prologue and Deathmate Epilogue, the main books were written as so they could be read out of sequence. Created at the peak of the comic book speculator boom of 1993, the entire project was heavily promoted, but was wrought with production delays, with the Image books (Black, Red, and Prologue) coming out severely behind schedule and out of sequence (Red shipped several weeks after Prologue).