Early Image: Deathblow

The Give Me Comics or Give Me Death podcast is available from all your usual podcast providers, or see all episodes here

For Season Two of the podcast we've taken an in-depth look at the foundation and history of Image Comics.  To accompany that we've done a blog series on comics published by Image in their exciting and chaotic formative years - 'Early Image'.  

 

Deathblow #1-12 (1993-1995)

Written by Brandon Choi and Jim Lee

Art by Jim Lee (#1-2), Time Sale (#3-12)

Colours by various

Letters by various

 

If this series of blogs seems somewhat negative on those early days of Image Comics (come on, most were terrible), then we have a pleasant break here to consider Deathblow.  Re-reading this over 30 years later, it's clear that it stands head of shoulders above most of its Image contemporaries.  In short, is had solid foundations that were lacking in almost all the other titles; high quality art that focused as much on coherent storytelling as on illustrative style, concentration on a single character, and a complete well-told and thought-out story over a dozen issues.  The latter was in surprisingly short supply in Image's early days - even comics like Spawn and Savage Dragon were feeling their way around issue-by-issue rather than presenting a considered narrative.  That's not to say Deathblow isn't without its Image-isms; tied to a larger universe of connected characters, shadowy government agencies with nefarious agendas, the supernatural, and lots of guns.  The fact that Deathblow himself has kept popping up under various guises whilst the Wildstorm universe and imprint has undergone multiple transformations, is testament to the work done on this initial series.

 

Created by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi, Deathblow initially made his debut in March 1993's Darker Image.  That was an anthology series featuring different Image creators' characters that were, as the title helpfully points out, a bit darker than the usual superhero fare.  The title also featured Rob Liefeld's Bloodwulf (a Lobo knock-off), and Sam Keith's The Maxx (who would go on to have his own series).  In true early Image style, only one of the planned four issues were ever produced.  Deathblow #1 hit the stands just a month after Darker Image, written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi with art by Jim Lee.  

 

Deathblow is the codename for Michael Cray, an agent for International Operations (IO), an American agency that's essentially a combination of the Navy SEALS, the CIA, and deep state conspiracy theories.  Cray is an elite level soldier, part of a crack team sent to deal with the most dangerous situations (which you'd think is a rare position, but in early Image most characters were part of some kind of similar team at some point!).   In one such operation, Deathblow and his team are sent to infiltrate a target in Iraq and gather intel.  In fact, the location is the centuries long prison for The Black Angel, a herald of Lucifer, who intends to rescue the dark lord from his imprisonment and launch a new war on heaven - destroying humanity in the process.  At the same time, Deathblow discovers he has terminal cancer and his death is imminent - and with the threat now facing the world, he sees an opportunity for the redemption of his blood soaked history.

 

What follows is an action packed roller-coaster of a ride that takes in demons, archangels, a 'chosen one' child, betrayals, revelations (appropriately enough), soul-searching, the horsemen of the apocalypse, and a hell of a lot of fighting.  The fantastical elements of the story are kept on a tight leash, and despite the apocalyptic consequences ratcheting up the tension, the story stays small and focused on Deathblow and his handful of allies.  Whilst the ending might be predictable - spoiler; the hero saves the day and even manages to survive his terminal cancer (which turns out to be something else entirely) - there's enough twists, turns, and setbacks on the way to keep the story and the characters interesting.

 

Jim Lee channels his inner Frank Miller

 

When Deathblow first arrived it immediately drew attention and controversy for Jim Lee's artistic approach.  Blending his bold detailed line work that made his name with chiaroscuro contrast of black and white, he stood accused of ripping-off Frank Miller's Sin City style that had made waves just a couple of years earlier.  Miller even publically called out Lee over the blatant appropriation - though they then collaborated years later on All-Star Batman and Robin, so he can't have held too much of a grudge.  Interestingly, at the same time Todd McFarlane and Jim Valentino were ripping off Miller's writing style in Spawn and Shadowhawk respectively, and that attracted little comment.  As it happens, Lee's art is great to look at, and a perfect change of style for the tone of Deathblow, but his thefts/homages from Miller are superficial, and it doesn't at all have the storytelling panache of Sin City.  However, the title was to take an unexpected shift after the first 2 issues.

 

Jim Lee had noticed that, unsurprisingly, the Wildstorm Studios titles he was drawing sold many more copies than those he wasn't.  So he came up with a cunning plan - he would draw the first handful of issues of a new title, before handing over to a new artist in the hope that the Jim Lee fans enjoyed the premise of the book enough to stick around after he had moved on.  With Deathblow he chose up-and-coming artist Tim Sale.  Sale had worked on Grendel and a handful of various Batman comics, so had experience of the dark and violent comic characters, and he proved to be an inspired choice.  The grey ink wash and limited colour pallet gave the comic the brooding, mysterious, and morally ambiguous atmosphere that Lee had been aiming for.  Bars cloud with smoke, battlefields reek of death, and the all pervasive blackness hints at the secrets and hidden agendas of the cast.  Sale's Deathblow is a hulk of a man, filling panels and pages even as he skulks around burnt out churches, yet he is also able to draw out the emotion of a man torn between his violent past and regret for his misdeeds.  The only time the art stumbles, is when - almost inevitably - the story brings in characters from the wider Wildstorm universe with Deathblow's former teammates (Grifter, Backlash, and Dane) whose 90s Image superhero outfits are just not suited to Sale's style or the feel of the book in general.  

 

Tim Sale's moody muscular Deathblow

 

It's no surprise that following this series Marvel and DC would recruit Tim Sale to work on prestige stories of key characters.  He is now best remembered for his series of modern Batman classics with Jeph Loeb; The Long Halloween, and Dark Victory.  He sadly passed away in 2022, aged 66, but it is testament to his ability that this early work on Deathblow can be talked about in the same breath as those classics.

 

Deathblow continued on until #29 with Brandon Choi and a variety of artists, but it never matched the heights of this story arc.  Shorn of the biblical elements, he became just another superpowered ex-military hero amongst many.  Despite dying at the end of his first series, he has been resurrected into various iterations over the years - some good, some less so - and at the time of writing is dead, yet again, following the conclusion of Warren Ellis' reboot of the Wildstorm characters in 2019.