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.