A ‘Valiant’ Return
It was back in the 90’s when Valiant Comics lived the good life before tapering off into oblivion. With a variety of titles to their credit including Archer & Armstrong, Harbinger, and Ninjak, their hottest book was arguably X-O Manowar. After the company changed hands and then practically fell off the face of the earth, its glory days may be resurfacing this year as the new-look Valiant makes its debut on Free Comic Book Day, May 1st, with the relaunch of X-O Manowar, which will be written by Robert Venditti (who also wrote The Surrogates books, which later became a popular Bruce Willis film) and penicilled by artist Cary Nord (Marvel Comics Presents).
Readers can expect the rebirth of other classic Valiant titles this summer such as Harbinger (June 2012), Bloodshot (July 2012), and Archer & Armstrong (August 2012). According to a source on Wikipedia, the revitalized Valiant also “revealed plans to release the world’s first ‘talking’ comic book cover, featuring QR code technology that allows the reader to use their smartphone to hear X-O Manowar speak.”
Personally, I’m looking forward to these next few months as the aforementioned series were all popular titles back in the early to mid-90’s when I was just getting into comics, especially X-O Manowar, which, in a nutshell was along the lines of Iron Man but with a living suit that heals itself. Though these are some memorable books from the past, the artwork and writing is clearly dated so let’s hope the new team of writers and artists breathes renewing life into their stories.
Hmmmm, never really got into the Valiant titles with exception to XO and Turok when Bart Sears was drawing them. Now they’ve gone all CGI comic-y. We’ll see how it goes.
Yeah, I’ll give the new X-O a read but I’m with you. It looks rather fake, too clean. Now Bloodshot, that looks promising.