Part of the problem is that Valiant isn’t doing anything revolutionary. They are not changing the way we think about comics. They are instead honoring a time when comics worked better, made a great deal more sense, and gave you value for money. All good things, but they don’t necessarily beg for a billboard. What's your headline? “Valiant: Hey, these comics won’t make you super pissed when you’re done”. Huh….maybe that is revolutionary in 2013. I don’t know.
None of the books are Diamond 300 standouts, either. Looking at the latest data, Harbinger Wars # 2 is the highest at #144, with Bloodshot bringing up the rear at # 192. The rest of the stable settles in between # 159 and # 174, most of them less than 1,000 issues apart. At those levels, these comics are not particularly profitable. Robust trade and digital sales might help, and I think Valiant customers are a little more staunch, and that makes Valiant titles a little less susceptible to attrition.
Still, the natural laws of comic book physics tell us that all things being equal, sales go down over time, not up. Given where Valiant readership is now, it’s difficult to imagine these titles being around two years from now.
That would be a shame, because the Valiant books operate as a kind of superhero “how to” manual. If there were some mythical creature out there looking to try some superhero comics, but were a bit daunted by the continuity baggage of the Big Two, this is exactly where I’d send them. I’ll put one caveat on that – one unifying attribute of the Valiant books is that they’re all smart, and they all trade in adult themes. When I say adult, I don’t mean swears and crotch shots. I’m talking about looking at the world in a sophisticated manner without a safety net.
You don’t give these books to ten year-olds, is what I’m getting at. But a fifteen year-old with a brain? Yes, ma’am. Do give that person Harbinger (my favorite title in the line) and let it rip!
So what can one of these clever and sophisticated readers expect find in the Valiant books? Here’s a couple of things that came to mind, all pulled from the handful of comics I read on Wednesday
Bloodshot’s Face Came Off
In Bloodshot # 11, Toyo Harada takes his face clean off. This is both profoundly violent and delightfully absurd. Bloodshot of course can withstand an attack like that, because his blood is loaded with healing nanites. Like Wolverine or Deadpool, you say to yourself? No, way better than that.
Unlike a lot of other comics, things make a little more sense in the Valiant universe. Rumor has it that back in the day Jim Shooter demanded that all the powers be based in some kind of science. I don’t know if the new regime still has that edict in place or not, but I can tell you that Bloodshot’s nanites can’t build new material out of nothing. They need amino acids and protein to construct the new flesh.
So Bloodshot can grow himself a new face, but he needs to eat a lot of meat to do it. It’s restricting, but it makes sense and that rule has provided a lot of fun over the issues. Sometimes he has to attack cows on the roadside. I’m pretty sure that he munched one of his arms a couple of issues ago to shore up the rest of his physique. Crazy, surreal stuff, but it makes sense in a comic book sort of way.
Bloodshot is elegant in its brutality, rivaled only by Luther Strode, in my opinion. If you want violence unfiltered with no apologies, this is the place to be. He’s a military tool constructed to deal with multiple psiots, the most powerful people on the planet. There will be blood, ‘kay?
Remember When Crossover Meant Exciting?
Bloodshot is squaring off against Harada because of Harbinger Wars, New Valiant’s first crossover event. The twist here is that this actually makes sense, and the event is being used to propel stories forward, not cram pages with characters behaving oddly until everything goes back to normal.
So here’s the down and dirty – psiots are rare folks born with latent potential for super powers. Chief among them is Toyo Harada. He’s got a plan to usher in a golden new age, and he’s going to do so by cultivating and controlling more psiots via the Harbinger foundation. Pete Stancheck and his group are renegade psiots uncomfortable with Harada’s vision and heavy hand. Then you have the US government, who are also trying to develop their own weaponized psiots in Project Rising Spirit. They control and terrorize these children with Bloodshot. Bloodshot was also the victim of some aggressive brainwashing. He’s getting better, though.
These forces will naturally collide. Toyo will never stop hounding Pete, because Pete’s very powerful and has a knack for activating psiots. The activation process kills most subjects, but not when Stanchek does it. (still quite traumatic, though) Kris is interested in recruiting more psiots away from Harada, so PRS represents a major coup for the Harbinger kids. Bloodshot is trying to get to the bottom of who he actually is, and that means returning to Project Rising Spirit, and that means meeting up with the ultra-powerful kids he doesn’t remember killing and torturing.
That’s a powderkeg. That’s how a guy gets his face ripped off. Really, when you consider the magnitude of power Toyo Harada has at his disposal, it’s amazing that Bloodshot survived at all. That’s accounted for inside the story. I won’t ruin anything, but Swiercynzski demonstrates how Bloodshot, his nanites, and his programming are designed to counter him in a way that makes solid comic book sense.
Actions Have Consequences
In Valiant books, actions have consequences. If you buck PRS, they are coming after you with prejudice. If you tangle with Toyo Harada, say goodbye to your face and call yourself lucky. Kids who grow up in PRS compounds have significant emotional damage that affects their behavior and decision-making. Pete Stanchek did some exceptionally questionable stuff to Kris early in Harbinger, and we’re still healing from that in issue #12.
In most comic books, nothing seems to matter. In the Valiant universe, there are ripples to be dealt with everywhere. In X-O Manowar #13, Aric picks himself up off the mat in true Hulk Hogan fashion, retrieves Shanhara and proceeds to use that armor to whip some serious Vine ass in resplendent splash pagey glory. Right on their home court, too.
But when he gets done with that, the Vine priest who considers him something of a messiah hits him with this revelation:
You may be pretty pleased with yourself, and you may even be able to get your Visigoths off this rock….but we’ve got a bevy of slave races on this planet, and what you’ve done has just now sentenced them all to death, buddy.
I live for that kind of thing. I like the fact that the priest is sticking by Aric, even though he has to be disgusted by him. If you have faith in something, and the portents point to this unevolved beast, well, you don’t ask God questions. He survived the bonding process with Shanhara where generations of your people failed. And I adore the fact the larger world is intruding on Aric’s limited plans.
Ultimately, I think that’s what we’re really looking for in great storytelling, the illusion that we are peering inside the remarkable happenings of a larger world. It’s why a piece of me aggressively rejects stories like, oh, the latest Abrams Star Trek movie.
There is no sense that you’re a fly on the wall watching those characters react naturally to their surroundings. Everything is quite forcibly jammed into the conceit of the characters, whether it makes a lick of sense or not. Why did Bones stick that tribble with Khan’s blood? Because it made sense to do that? Or did he do it because we all know he’s going to need it in the third act to bring Kirk back, and also “hey kids, remember tribbles?”
Essentially, what Khan’s blood represents is the end of all disease, and probably death. This would represent the greatest human achievement in ever. Bigger than space travel, folks. Do any of the characters even acknowledge this momentous sea change in human history? No, they do not. Because the point isn’t about the world, the point is “how do you get Kirk back in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise?” Once he’s back in the chair, the rest doesn’t matter. The discovery of human immortality doesn’t matter in that story as much as that particular dude doing things we remember William Shatner doing. That kind of storytelling can be entertaining, but it has nothing to say to us as human beings. It has no spiritual nutrients.
Robert Venditi is packing X-O Manowar with plenty of consequences and spiritual nutrients. Vengeance feels good, but watch who you’re stepping on. Violence has costs. Faith has costs. All of the Valiant books do this to one degree or another. Valiant is not interested in the status quo. Valiant is interested in that magical question that Steve Gerber used to ask all the time. What happens if……?
There is no baseline that the Valiant line is committed to re-setting to. The underlying bedrock principle seems to be placing interesting characters inside a living environment and then playing out situations naturally. Even if superheroes are “not your thing”, I think it makes sense to give the Valiant books a whirl. They’re just smarter, and better.
It’s All About Character
I’m particularly impressed with Harbinger. If you remember, it placed #7 on my Top 10 for 2012, and barring some major weirdness, it’s going to place much higher this year. I had lots to say about Joshua Dysart’s character work, which is extraordinary, but I’m running long here.
Let me just share this - I didn’t like Torque in the old Harbinger book, and I’m not in love with the new one, either. He’s a bit of a “broheim”, which just rankles me on an epic level. These are the idiots that stuffed my head in toilets during high school, and I will simply not forgive that. Torque’s bravado is all an act, of course. He’s really just a young bumpkin who’s been crippled his whole life, and developed an elaborate fantasy of wish-fulfillment to compensate for being cooped up in a shack for his entire young life.
When Pete activates him, he’s able to turn all that wish-fulfillment into powerhouse physical reality, and he becomes Torque. Since that time, he’s been constantly under attack and way out of his league, and well….he’s just a kid. So Dysart packs him in a room with a bunch of other psychologically scarred psiots, and there’s where you get your classic Valiant “What if” moment. What if we packed a bunch of hyper-powerful kids with no social skills together into a Vegas convention center?
Well, what happens is that Torque is looking to finally flirt with an actual girl, in this case a psiot named Telic, who can sort of read the future like she’s peering into the Matrix code. She can sense that he’s about to do something that will put her out of her comfort zone and warns him off. But Torque is just a teenage kid, so he doesn’t even know what he’s going to do. So when he tries to get Telic to dance with him, he puts his hands on her and all hell breaks loose.
Enter Pete:
I still don’t really like Torque…but I’m really starting to feel for him. He’s just a kid, and he’s been through too much. And that’s life. And that’s Valiant.
I also heartily endorse X-O Manowar and Bloodshot. If you’re a fuzzy bunny, Archer & Armstrong is your new favorite comic book. You’re welcome. I hope these comics are around for awhile, but I’d rather not hope. I’d rather get a bunch of you on board, because you’ll love them and they need to survive.
You sold the heck out of these books! Well done.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't steered me wrong with any of your other recommendations that I've been able to pick up. These books sound excellent. I'm going to have to look into the new Harbinger and Bloodshot trades.