Valiant 101: "Unity"

Before we begin, I feel like I should mention that I actually read Unity after I had read the next big story in the new Valiant canon after Harbinger Wars. After I was done with Harbinger Wars, I naturally moved on to the next event; but since Armor Hunters regularly brought about how the Valiant superheroes came together after a geopolitical snafu, I realised I had missed something big. I dug around and found that I had jumped over the first volume of Unity and its tie-ins with X-O Manowar.

Although Unity shares its name with VALIANT's biggest and most popular event, it is neither a remake nor a throwback to that story. I suppose the reason it's called Unity is perhaps because the creators wanted to do some sort of homage or tribute to that book. And also maybe because Unity is such a good name for a superhero team.

With Unity, Valiant attempts to build its own version of the Justice League or the Avengers. The story follow ups from what Robert Venditti had been building over his run at X-O Manowar. Rather than simply following the adventures of Aric of Dacia after he gets the extra terrestrial armor, Vendetti's run had been cleverly exploring slavery, revolt, and the price of freedom. After rescuing his people from the Vine and arriving back on Earth, Aric decides to restore and re-establish the Visigoths in the present day location of Romania, a decision that Aric soon learns does not go well with the governments of the world. Due to time dilatation, the Visigoths, who lived during the 5th century have been thrown into the 21st century, and this, as you can imagine, causes all kinds of cultural and political differences. Russia retaliates to Aric's "invasion" of Romania in typical Russian fashion: with an all out assault. That does not go well for Russia simply because Aric of Dacia, with the Shanhara, is the most powerful being on the planet. Humiliated, Russia decides to go through with the next option: nuclear. Which is where Toyo Harada comes in. Toyo Harada, even though is an asshole, has issues with nuclear weapons.

After an initial failed attempt to stop Aric, he enlists Ninjak, Livewire, and the Eternal Warrior. Livewire, as it turns out, is obviously a badass. Although I have to say Ninjak is certainly the coolest. Which I suppose is because Matt Kindt enjoys writing him so much.

Like I mentioned, the story is told over the first volume of Unity and its tie-ins with X-O Manowar. Matt Kindt explores how Harada brings together this team of unique individuals in Unity, while Robert Venditti continues to concentrate on the Aric side of the story in X-O Manowar. And although you could simply read Unity vol. 1 and be done with this story, I would highly recommend reading the X-O Manowar tie-ins as well. While Unity brings out how Harada is justified in thinking Aric, with the Shanhara, is a threat to the world, X-O Manowar explores how burdened Aric is with the responsibilities as the leader of the Visigoths. Moreover, and what I thoroughly enjoyed, is how it subtly takes a critical look at the geopolitical issues of the world.

The stand character for me in this story was Colonel Jaime Capshaw, the Commanding Officer of M.E.R.O. (Think of, but not limit to, M.E.R.O. as Valiant Comics version of S.H.I.E.L.D.) She's an absolute badass. If Kindt enjoys writing Ninjak, Vendetti clearly enjoys writing Capshaw.

Some artists are meant for big superhero action book.  Doug Braithwaite is one of those artists. His artwork is incredible and I can see why the executives went with him to take the lead on their next big story, Armor Hunters. He's really good. Cary Nord draws the X-O Manowar part of the story. When I looked over the first issue of that book here, I was really impressed because the pages were so different. Sadly though, they went back to generic superhero comic book colouring in the next issue. Goes to show how important the colors are to not just the art but to the story itself.

Valiant 101: HARBINGER WARS

Last week we took a look at what I have begun to call as the pre-Valiant, VALIANT, era of Valiant Comics. This week we officially kick things off in the new era in the form of Harbinger Wars.

Harbinger Wars, like all crossover events, involves a lot of parties or set of cast of characters. If I had to break it down, the story involves five: Toyo Harada and the Harbinger Foundation, the Renegades, Project Rising Spirit, Generation Zero, and of course, Bloodshot. All the parties involved have their own ambitions and motives, which overlap and intertwine with each other's, causing conflict among them. I could detail for you who's fighting whom over what and all, and bore, or perhaps more likely, confuse you, or I could simply show you this:

This is the first page of the 12-part story (including the tie-ins) and it does an excellent job in setting up the stage. As a new reader, with absolutely no knowledge of these characters, this was really helpful. Even if you choose to skip this page (But why would you? Not only is it a recap page, but look at it! It's masterfully designed! It is stunning.), the book is written so exquisitely that the story provides ample history, motivations, attributes for pretty much all of the major players. You get that Bloodshot is a douche, a one-man army on a mission. And you get that Toyo Harada is a dick. Obviously, having read the entire catalogue of Valiant Comics would certainly help, but it's not explicitly required; which is great for new readers like me.

Speaking of the story, writers Joshua Dysart and Duane Swierczynski split the writing duties here, with Dysart writing the Harbinger tie-ins, Swierczynski writing the Bloodshot tie-ins, and both co-writing the main Harbinger Wars book. I am so glad I chose to read the tie-ins here because they are fantastic, especially Harbinger. It's a period story, set in the 60s, and takes a look at the business dealings and the tense relationship between Toyo Harada's Harbinger Foundation and the government's Project Rising Spirits. This arc does exactly those things which are why I don't read the tie-ins to any event in the first place, but it does it so well that I was hooked.

Just like the writing duties, the art duties are split precisely: Clayton Henry draws Harbinger Wars, with Clayton Crain coming in from time to time to draw the flashback scenes; Khari Evans and Stefano Gaudiano team up for the Harbinger tie-ins; and Barry Kitson does the Bloodshot tie-ins. This avoids any rushed artworks or tons of inkers filling in to keep the book on schedule, but more importantly, this gives everyone a chance to shine. And boy do they shine. Harbinger Wars and its tie-ins are one of the most gorgeous superhero books in recent memory. Finally, if I may say so, Khari Evans is a monster and every major publisher should be fighting over him.

This may be nitpicking, but my only quibble with this book is slight lettering issues. I ran across a lot of instances where the word balloon did not coincide with the panel box, and it made me... uneasy. What can I say. I'm a perfectionist, I guess.

In the end, Harbinger Wars is not only a excellent introduction to the post-VALIANT, Valiant, era of Valiant Comics, it is, hands down, one of the best big superhero crossover stories. I had fun and isn't that what comics are supposed to be?

Valiant 101: UNITY

When I decided to check out the current state of Valiant Comics, I was pointed to their ongoings and some miniseries. I dug around some more and found out their biggest stories: Harbinger Wars, Armor Hunters, etc. But as I learnt more, I found out about the pre-Valiant, VALIANT, stories. Fascinated, I wanted to read something from that era to get a better idea of what Valiant was and what it has become today; which is what prompted me to read Unity.

Although Unity is written by a number of writers, it clearly is a Jim Shooter story. This is not to dismiss the efforts of the legends involved with this tale. Bob Layton, Roger Stern, David Lapham are all masters of their crafts; but Shooter's imprint is hard to escape. Structurally, Unity reminded me of Secret Wars, another event, that Shooter wrote for Marvel. In Secret Wars, heroes and villains are pulled from different parts of the Marvel universe to fight, and perhaps work together, in order to defeat a bigger threat. Unity follows a similar formula. But instead of just bringing characters together from different parts of the VALIANT universe, Shooter takes it one step further and brings in characters from across time and space.

Solar, "the cornerstone of the VALIANT universe" (which is basically just a fancier way of saying he was their big guy) and the geomancer, Geoff McHenry, arrive at what prima facie looks to be a murder-suicide scene. Solar identifies the body as that of Erica Pierce, who was caught in the same explosion that gave Solar his powers. Geoff, however, thinks something bigger is at play. He believes Erica not only survived that explosion but is also onto something sinister. Although a little hesitant, Solar later agrees with Geoff's analysis and takes him to a land "beyond space and time and known reality".

Turns out not only did Erica survive the explosion, she blames Solar for all her misfortunes since the accident. She now wants to wipe away all parallel timelines -- creating a unity -- and rewrite reality. Geoff realises this a threat too big for Solar to take on alone. He jumps back to the regular timeline -- which happens to be 1992 -- to gather forces that include Harbingers, the Eternal Warrior, X-O Manowar, Archer and Armstrong.

The year 4001 is significant to Valiant universe for various reasons. Many of its biggest characters are billed to either be from the future or operate in the future. Unity cleverly involves those characters as well. Since every era in the Valiant universe has to have a geomancer, there must be a geomancer in the year 4001 as well. And thus, we are introduced to Rokland Tate. Like his counterpart from 1992, Rokland also realises that, well, it's about to go down. He gathers Rai, Magnus, and the Eternal Warrior to help Solar. (Yes, Eternal Warrior again. He's eternal.)

The heroes from the year 4001 join those from year 1992 to take on Erica, but as it turns out it's not so easy. This land "beyond space and time and known reality" where they are, was built by Erica herself. Here she is the "Mothergod". Everybody worships her with unshakable faith, and her forces, which include but are not limited to cyborg dinosaurs, are innumerable. Which is why I guess it takes 19 issues to defeat her.

One of the things that, in my opinion, makes Unity so good is how Shooter and Co. manage to bring in every Valiant character for this story. And by 'every' I do mean every. They find clever ways to involve characters like Turok or Shadowman: characters who do not necessarily translate directly into the story are brought in using some innovative methods. Also, the story is not told chronologically. This makes it both interesting (since you need to pay close attention to everything because you never know when one plotline would impact or influence some other plotline down the road) and repetitive (because every issue spoon feeds; the first few pages drag).

But what really impressed me is the colours on the books throughout. The palette on these books is not what we have generally come to expect in comic books. Colouring on this event is unconventional. Almost reminded me of old kindergarten books. And I mean that absolutely as a compliment.

My only quibble with this book are (what I found to be) unnecessary plotlines like Erica having "daddy issues" and the incest relationship between two characters. I understand the objective here. As I have come to learn, VALIANT Comics were known to weave their superheroes in "real world" scenarios and make them face "real world" challenges. (A common example is how characters that died in the VALIANT universe stayed dead.) But for me that didn't work. The "real world" drama that did work for me though, were the complexities of relationships that were explored when Kris gets pregnant with Torque's child and Pete thinks it's his. That, in my opinion, was done much better than this:

In the end, Unity manages to achieve what it set out to do. It pulled off a big spectacle of a crossover event. But more importantly, for me, as a first time reader, Unity provided excellent introduction to the VALIANT characters. If I had to pick, my favourite character was X-O Manowar. A complete douche, he didn't give a shit about other heroes' plan to defeat the "Mothergod". Rather, he built his own private army to plunder her off her riches. That was completely bonkers.

Valiant 101: A Brief History

Over the last few years, Valiant Comics has grown from just an "indie alternative" to the superhero universes of Marvel and DC to their legitimate competition. I was too young back when Valiant-- no wait... --back when VALIANT was at its zenith and I completely missed out when they relaunched their line a couple of years ago and got to where they are now. Last year, I attended a panel by Dinesh Shamdasani (CEO & Chief Creative Officer at Valiant Entertainment) at the Delhi Comic Con. Hearing him talk with such enthusiasm about his characters motivated me to go check out the buzz surrounding their comics. Over the next few weeks, I would be reading some their best stories, would be going through all of their "tipping points": stories that shaped their current universe, and hopefully, I would be sharing my thoughts here. But before I go read the stories, I wanted to know the backstory of this publisher. I have come to realise studying the history of a comic book publisher helps in understanding their stories better: why it is they do the story that they do. (Quick example: the reason the Justice League, in every origin story, comes together by accident is that the DC Universe was never cohesive to begin with. Batman existed in his own bubble, Superman existed in his own; except an odd story together. Marvel, on the other hand, was planned from the beginning by creators such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and more. And thus, the Avengers are always brought together.)

The more I read, the more I realised that the history of Valiant Comics could be broken into three chapters. Or in simpler terms: things were great, then stuff happened, now it's all good again.

Chapter One: VALIANT Comics

In the late 80s, Jim Shooter took over as the editor-in-chief at Marvel after Stan Lee left for Los Angeles to oversee the then embryonic Marvel TV, animation, live action movies division. Although he brought out some of Marvel's best books during his tenure, including Frank Miller's Daredevil, Chris Claremont and John Bryne's Uncanny X-Men, and written by himself, and what is considered to be Marvel's first major crossover (or "event"), Secret Wars, Shooter also had a reputation for being a bully. He was known to hammer his way into every creative decision. Over time the voices of disapproval grew strong enough and Shooter was fired from Marvel in 1987.

Shooter decided to form his own company and launched Voyager Communications with Steve Massarsky (a small time artist manager), Winston Fowlkes (publishing veteran from Time Inc.), and Michael Nugent and Melanie Okun (investors from Triumph Capital). He gathered his pals from Marvel, which included Bob Layton (creator of some of the best Iron Man stories, including Demon in a Bottle) and Barry Windsor-Smith (one of the greatest illustrators of all time). Together they formed the creative force behind VALIANT Comics.

Shooter wanted to write superhero comics, both create new and use the characters he bought from Gold Key Comics. Massarsky, however, wanted to enter the mass media market and brokered a deal with Nintendo. Although he was dissatisfied, Shooter liked the idea of directly entering mass media market.

Things did not work out, though. Turned out no one wanted to read stories about Mario, everybody wanted to experience a story about Mario through a video game. Reportedly, VALIANT lost 3.3 million dollars in two and a half years.

After a few more failed ventures, Shooter finally convinced Massarsky to go back to publishing superheroes. It was the right decision. In 1992, the company returned to profit. Half year down the line, VALIANT was voted by retailers at a Diamond convention as the publisher of the year and Jim Shooter won the Diamond Gemmi award for lifetime achievement alongside Stan Lee. At the same convention next year, VALIANT beat DC and Marvel and won the Best Publisher over 5% Market Share. A feat that stands till date.

It did so by making both smart creative and business decisions. Unity, VALIANT's eighteen-part crossover, officially began with Unity #0, which was given away free at comic book stores. This, and the event in general, drew in thousands of new readers, with sales rivalling the biggest books by Marvel and DC. These new readers wanted to know more about the pre-Unity VALIANT books, but since VALIANT Comics had relatively small print runs, getting those books was difficult, which in turn made them "collectables". VALIANT Comics also came up with the idea of the #0 -- zero issue or origin story -- which is now a popular industry concept.

Things weren't so great behind-the-scenes, though. Triumph Capital LP, the money behind Voyager Communications, was beginning to see a return on their initial investment, and saw a chance to make a lot of money by selling the company. This made sense. Triumph was, after all, a venture company, not a comics publisher. Once the sheer profit of a sale became apparent to Triumph, it was time to get their money and go. They planned on selling their share to investors Charles Lazarus of Toys "R" Us, Michael Ovitz and Wayne Huizenga from Blockbuster Video. Shooter would have no creative control in this deal and was offered an employment contract.

He left.

Fortunately for the readers, Bob Layton and Co. kept the comic book side of the company running and put out great stories every month. This is not to say that the behind-the-scenes drama did no damage to the machine.

In early 1994, VALIANT teamed up with Image Comics to do an inter-company crossover called Deathmate. Image has a similar "origin story" as VALIANT. It was also formed by former Marvel creators, but unlike VALIANT, it did not have a cohesive universe but rather, similar to Dark Horse Comics, it had smaller studios publishing their own stories under the bigger Image Comics umbrella. Deathmate was marred by scheduling and production delays, particularly from Image's side. Retailers who had ordered in bulk suffered heavy losses. At the same time, the comic book boom imploded and the magic that was VALIANT seemed to have died down.

Chapter Two: Acclaim Entertainment

In late 1994 / early 1995, Massarsky sold VALIANT to Acclaim Entertainment for $65 million. Acclaim began reshaping the VALIANT characters into properties more suited for video games, which was Acclaim's bread and butter. Some characters like Turok made smooth transition to the new media. Others, however, very not so lucky. (Like X-O Manowar, who was teamed up with Iron Man in a game called Heavy Metal.)

This is not to say that Acclaim were not committed to making comic books. They got heavy hitters like Mark Waid, Garth Ennis, and more, to write their biggest characters. However, these characters were simply too much changed to suit Acclaim's vision for their video games that fans barely recognized them any more. The characters they had come to love over the years were gone. The books performed poorly both financially and critically. Quantum and Woody, though, was very well received.

Acclaim even got Jim Shooter back to do Unity 2000, a miniseries that was supposed to bridge the old VALIANT universe and the then-current Acclaim universe. Sadly, only three of the scheduled six books were published as Acclaim got into deep financial troubles, and by 2004, Acclaim Entertainment filed for bankruptcy.

Chapter Three: Valiant Entertainment

Dinesh Shamdasani and Jason Kothari, entrepreneurs and fans of VALIANT comics, learned that the entire VALIANT comics characters library is up for auction at a rather obtainable price. Dinesh gathered some investors and made a bid for it.

Although Dinesh and Co. lost, the company that did win the auction pulled out after they found that another company had filed for intent-to-use on several VALIANT characters. The group that claimed the right to the names of these characters called themselves Valiant Intellectual Properties while Dinesh named his group Valiant Entertainment. Valiant v Valiant, in court.

Reportedly, Valiant Intellectual Properties hired a big shot lawyer, one well versed with cases associated with comic book IPs, who ended up costing them a fortune. Two years later and thousands of dollars down, VIP were forced into a settlement.

In 2008, Valiant Entertainment did their first announcement after procuring the rights. They announced the return of Jim Shooter (Although it didn't really work out. More on that in a bit.). They hired Warren Simons as Editor-in-Chief. They got an investment from Peter Cuneo, former Marvel CEO, who came on as Valiant's chairman with his son, Gavin Cuneo, an experienced investment banker, as CFO.

(Jim Shooter was fired for a breach of contract after he went out to work for Dark Horse Comics relaunch of Gold Key Comics characters -- characters, who were part of the original VALIANT universe.)

Valiant Entertainment gradually went out to rebuild their fanbase. Rather than building their brand on nostalgia, Valiant rebuilt them on accessibility: anybody should pick up the books and get instantly hooked up. They "broke down characters and redesigned them". In a good way. They started "Summer of Valiant," that announced new books with great creative teams annually, signalling new directions that kept things fresh.

To their credit, Dinesh and Co. realized that they can't compete with the Big 2 when it came to hiring big names for their books. So, they went "moneyball". They hired people who, for the lack of a better term, were cheap, but were very good at what they did. They got Robert Venditti, who at that time was relatively unknown but had made the right noises with The Surrogates, to write X-O Manowar. They got Justin Jordon, who at that time was relatively unknown but had made the right noises with The Legend of Luthor Strode, for Shadowman. They got Joshua Dysart, who at that time was relatively unknown but had made the right noises with The Unknown Soldier, for Harbinger. And so on.

It paid off wonderfully. In just three to four years, Valiant Comics grew exponentially. Consider this: their latest crossover, Book of Death, topped 200,000 in sales and became “the most successful independent crossover event of the decade”. Sony has optioned Bloodshot and Harbinger for a shared universe set of films similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In short, things are looking great.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we are done with the history lesson. Next, we take a look at the very first event of this publisher. We take a look at Unity.

The Playlist Zone: ANANSI BOYS

For readers of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Anansi Boys automatically becomes the next recommendation. It's also about old gods, dysfunctional families, forgotten magic, but also, music.

I did this exercise with American Gods, and it sort of involuntarily moved on with Anansi Boys, too.



PS: I should mention that Anansi Boys is not a sequel or prequel to American Gods. We learn more about one of the characters from American Gods in Anansi Boys and that's pretty much it. You do not need to read American Gods before Anansi Boys, or vice versa.

The Playlist Zone: AMERICAN GODS

While reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods last year, I kept a list of the songs mentioned in the book, purely for my own amusement. I made a Spotify playlist sometime later and totally forgot about it. Now that they are finally adapting the book into a TV series, this seems to be a good time to revisit the playlist, and the book.