Warehouse W - Valiant: X-O Manowar, Ken and Randy

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Woodclaw »

Jabroniville wrote: Sun Feb 10, 2019 1:17 am Interesting guys! But now I demand pictures of Bingo’s wife :).
I haven't been able to find one so far. I'll keep looking.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Woodclaw »

As asked over on Jab's thread her you go.

The Giussani Sisters
Angela (1922-1987) and Luciana (1928-2001) Giussani were two sisters from the upper-middle class of Milan.
A former fashion model, Angela married the publisher Gino Sansoni in 1946 and started working in his company, managing a series of children books. In 1960 she left the company and opened her own publishing venture trying to create comics. After a first failed attempt (Big Ben Bolt, a story about a pugilist) a series of events inspired her to create a comic book about a criminal.
Apparently, the first piece of the puzzle was a paperback copy of The Adventures of Phantomas that she found on a train. Knowing that mystery and crime novels were always popular (thanks to the dirty cheap paperbacks from the Mondadori publishing company, called "Gialli" - yellow - due to the color of the cover, which became the name of the genre in Italy), Angela started to draft the first version of her character.
The name came from a rather gruesome murder from 1958. Mario Giliberti was killed in Milan by Aldo Cugini with a stiletto. Cugini started to send letters to the newspapers, imitating Jack the Ripper, signed Diaboliq.
When Diabolik #1 came out in 1962 the Italian comic industry was in pretty good shape. The Bonelli family dominated the market with Tex, their flagship character, about to enter one of his best decades and Zagor (created by Sergio Bonelli) debuting just a year before. Meanwhile, foreign comics, especially superheroes were popping out here and there.
So what did set Diabolik apart, up to the point of starting a complete new genre?
Simply put, he was the villain and didn't make any excuse for it!
Up to that point, all main characters were heroes, maybe rough around the edges a bit too keen on shooting, but heroes nonetheless. Diabolik was a genius with all the skills and ingenuity of Arsene Lupin, but he completely lacked the morality of the gentleman-thief created by Maurice LeBlanc. His stories were sordid affairs where he stole, murdered and worse without any hint of remorse. The entire city of Clerville was so scared of him that, when caught, he was sentenced to death by guillotine (a real stretch, if you ask me)!
Anyway, after a full year of stories, Angela asked her sister Luciana (a primary school teacher) for help and the two of them went on to write most of the character for the decades to come.
In 1963 Angela Giussani was put on trial after distributing free copies of issue #3 in some schools. The charge was "corruption of the youth". In the end, she was cleared, but this opened a Pandora's box and several elements of the series were toned down... a lot!

The King of Terror
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Straight from the #1 Diabolik was characterized as an ice cold thief and killer. Throughout the first 6 issues, which formed an ideal introduction to the character, he ruined an entire noble family, killed pretty much everyone that crossed his path without hesitation, stole billions in jewels and... was arrested.
That's right in issue #3 Diabolik's then lover Elizabeth "Tina" Gay -- who ignored his real identity -- found out one of his lairs and informed the police. Meanwhile, Diabolik had fallen in, reciprocal, love with Lady Eva Kant, the widower of a right English nobleman. Eva proved immediately to be Diabolik's equal in every respect, masterminding his escape in such a way that the judge who condemned Diabolik was executed in his stead.
The two of them tracked down Elizabeth, who left Clerville for an isolated clinic after the trauma of discovering her lover was Diabolik. Using a series of stage magician tricks and chemicals, Diabolik and Eva started to push Elizabeth toward the edge of madness until she is sent to a mental asylum.


Diabolik, who are you?
The fictional origin of the character remained mysterious and undefined until 1968 (and later expanded in a series of flashbacks from 1989 onward). Up to that point, Diabolik had no friends, no family, no bond of any sort except his accomplice and lover (later wife) Eva Kant.
When the criminal and his nemesis Inspector Ginko remained trapped in an airtight room with no escape, the policeman asked the great question: "Who are you?"
And Diabolik replied: "I don't know."
It turned out that, as a newborn, Diabolik was the only survivor of a shipwreck near an uncharted island. The man who ruled the island was a world-class criminal mastermind known only as "King" and all the inhabitants were the elite of his organization. After taking a look at a series of documents (the content still unknown to this day) in the liferaft, King ordered his men to take the boy under their wing and raise him as one of their own.
As time went by, the kid future Diabolik, referred just as "Boy" by anyone else on the island learned a vast series of skills ranging from assassination to lockpicking, from mechanical engineering to impersonating, but his true talent was chemistry. His intelligence was so impressive that King once commented: "All of my men are world-class criminals. One word from me and they would kill anyone without fear or hesitation, but they talk about you like a supernatural being."
As a teenager, he discovered that there was only one thing in the world that King feared, a black panther that lived on the island that none was ever able to kill. The beast was so cunning that King nicknamed her Diabolik, a name that the young man would use later on. Fascinated by this creature, the Boy took an opportunity to study her and was enthralled by her agility when King killed the panther and, later, had it stuffed. From this moment on the Boy started to hate King with passion and took years to develop a plan to rob the old criminal blind and kill him in front of the stuffed panther.
The occasion came when he was 22 and his talent put him at odds with King. When the Boy perfected the formula for a synthetic skin absolutely identical to normal human flesh, the aging criminal tried to force him to reveal the formula and the Boy enacted his plan.

After leaving the island he took the name Diabolik to honor the only creature that King feared and tried to lay low, but the rest of the gang tracked him down. A smuggler called Ronin saved young Diabolik and offered him to enter in his "school", where he trained the best assassin and mercenaries on the planet. During the terrible training, Diabolik started a relationship with a fellow student called Jin and adopted his signature costume. As he progressed Jin -- formerly Ronin's star pupil -- stared resenting Diabolik and, in the end, he was forced to kill her (one of the rare times he regretted doing so). Shortly thereafter the entire school was destroyed and Ronin killed by Walter Dorian, a criminal from Clerville, who was a perfect lookalike of Diabolik. After avenging his mentor and friend (in fact his only friend up to that point), Diabolik moved to Clerville and took over Dorian's many properties (including the Jaguar Type-E that became his signature vehicle).
While in Clerville, Diabolik met Natasha Morgan (a half-Russian mobster) and the two had a weird platonic relationship. After they went their separate ways, Natasha was kidnapped by the survivors of King's gang. Natasha tried to escape, but when she discovered that she was on a plane, she crashed it, while broadcasting over the radio that this was "the revenge of Diabolik". The ensuing media circus forever cemented the man's reputation as the "King of Terror".
In the aftermath, Diabolik left Clerville for the Deccan Plateau in India, where he met his future nemesis: Inspector Ginko. There the two had their first confrontation and Diabolik started planning his return to Clerville.


The Cast
As a general rule the only two characters, other than the main character, with any relevance to Diabolik's stories are Eva Kant and Inspector Ginko. There are a number of recurring characters, but they are almost always linked to Ginko rather than Diabolik, like the policeman lover Duchess Altea of Vallenberg.
Image
Eva Kant went through a strange character evolution. In her first appearence, she demonstrated of being as resourceful and ruthless as Diabolik, who fell madly in love with her (up to the point of showing her his real face). After the 1963 trial, Angela Giussani toned down many elements of the series, especially linked to Eva. She went from ruthless adventurer to a woman trapped in a nightmarish life that she couldn't escape due to her infatuation with Diabolik. Fortunately, this characterization lasted only for a short time and Eva became Diabolik's equal once again. Later stories, especially from the early '90s explored her past as well, revealing that before marrying Lord Kent she was actually an industrial spy, which justified some of her skills.
Image
Inspector Ginko is Diabolik nemesis and yet the closest thing the King of Terror has to a friend. The two shares a mutual respect for each other's intellect and, on occasion, ended up as unlikely allies against greater threats. Ginko has always been compared to Zenigata from Lupin the 3rd: a stalwart policeman, trying to catch a superhuman criminal. While this comparison has its merits, it totally downplays the key element of Ginko -- possibly inspired by Javert from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables -- he's above anything else a man of the law. Diabolik himself admitted that if Ginko was willing to break the law once he could actually catch him, but the inspector feels that this would make him a criminal as well, so he sticks to the letter of the law.

Clerville, the most boring place in the universe
While the initial stories from Angela Giussani were set in Marseille, this was later retconned in the fictional city of Clerville, capital of the eponymous microstate somewhere between Italy and France and, over time other bits and nearby villages were added. The often quoted main inspiration of later authors was the Principate of Monaco.
Years ago I read a long-winded article about how most DC comics cities were tailor-made to their resident hero (especially Gotham and Metropolis), but they are nothing compared to Clerville. For decades the entire city seemed to exist only by virtue of Diabolik, everything was almost a cardboard cutout, there were no gas stations, no newsagencies, no shops, just the bare minimum scenario for a criminal heist. Later authors added a bit of life to Clerville as a whole, but the general feeling is still of a stage dressed up for the arrival of the main character.


Why do I dislike Diabolik?
I'm going out on some very personal opinions here, you've been warned.
In general, I never really liked Diabolik, although I understand his popularity: Diabolik is the incarnation of that small voice we have in our heads that push us to do something illegal. He's the flip side of our conscience and, as such, his exploits, his lack of morality and limits are absolutely fascinating. He's the devil on our shoulder made flesh, just like Batman is a childhood trauma made flesh.
Speaking of Batman, there's more than a passing similarity between these characters: genius level intellects, a knack for pre-planning, distaste for firearms (Diabolik uses only knives and dart guns). He's is the answer to the age-old question: "what would a villainous Batman be like?"
Given that I have two massive issues with the character. First, everything in his story and world seem like a stage performance, from the lackluster scenarios of Clerville to his blank slate background there's nothing in the character that speaks to me on any level. He's not a criminal because of ambition (like Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom), he's not mad like the Joker, nor someone with a chip on his shoulder like Flash's Rogues; he's a villain just because, he never had any morality to contend with, but his surrounding never gave him any chance to even develop one. In actual fact, I'm kind of surprised he even felt any kind of attachment any other living being.
The second issue is a bit less prominent but it still nags me: Diabolik is Batman in a world populated by normal people, he's simply so superior to any possible opponent, except Ginko on occasion, that there's just no bite to his stories. He can conquer even the most absurd challenges in hours, days at worst, making the entire deal boring as hell for me.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by catsi563 »

Interesting the cartoon show version of it made him into the adopted son of a wealthy man who was framed by his older brother a bully and swine for their fathers murder. he adopted the cat moniker as a thief in order to get evidence to clear his name and because he fou nd his brother was a member of a secret cabal of crime which he set out to stop. Eva was his equal and protégé of sorts as she wanted to findout about her missing father and after he finds her he teachers her his skills which she shows a knack for.

the two are romantically linked through the series and end up together at the end as ir ecall
Dr. Silverback has wryly observed that this is like trying to teach lolcats about Shakespeare

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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Woodclaw »

catsi563 wrote: Wed May 29, 2019 8:04 am Interesting the cartoon show version of it made him into the adopted son of a wealthy man who was framed by his older brother a bully and swine for their fathers murder. he adopted the cat moniker as a thief in order to get evidence to clear his name and because he fou nd his brother was a member of a secret cabal of crime which he set out to stop. Eva was his equal and protégé of sorts as she wanted to findout about her missing father and after he finds her he teachers her his skills which she shows a knack for.

the two are romantically linked through the series and end up together at the end as ir ecall
Yeah, the Saban's cartoon watered down a crapton of stuff to make the character more palatable to younger audiences.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Jabroniville »

Fascinating stuff. Such a relatively big name character, largely unknown to North America.

I can see the appeal- to Europeans, the dark side being explored is rather more of interest than it would be in the more “hero”-focused Western media (where even criminals like the Corleones and the Sopranos are typically opposed by even DARKER forces). A comic about an evil man doing evil things, without the righteous anger or self-guilt if American protagonists, seems to fit that bill.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Doc chaos »

Hey, Woodclaw have you play Apex Legends? Would you be interested in statting up those characters?
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Woodclaw »

Doc chaos wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 6:35 pm Hey, Woodclaw have you play Apex Legends? Would you be interested in statting up those characters?
Sorry, I haven't played it yet. Right now I'm not so much into Looter/Shooter.
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Let's Talk Valiant

Post by Woodclaw »

Well, this has been a long time coming and I really wanted to do it right.

First of all, there is a big disclaimer, I’m going to mention Jim Shooter quite a lot in this piece because, for better or worse, Valiant Comics was his pet project. Now, I honestly think that for all his flaws as a writer (and, my god, there were a lot) and as a person, Jim Shooter knew how to run a tight ship and how to put the right people in the right place.
Since I know that a lot of people around here have… strong opinions about Shooter, I’d really appreciate a bit of restrain.

Now, let’s do some comic book history.

When all is said and done, the 80s were one of the best decades for Marvel Comics. Many titles had some of their all-time-best creative teams (Claremont and Byrne on X-Men, Walt Simmons on Thor, Roger Stern on Avenger and Spider-Man, Frank Miller on Daredevil, etc.), but like many good things, it had to come to an end.
In 1987, Jim Shooter was fired from Marvel after a series of personal and contractual disputes that resulted in many top-tier talents leaving (Steve Gerber, Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, John Byrne, Doug Moench and, above all, Roy Thomas). According to many of them, Shooter had simply overstayed his welcome: when he became editor-in-chief in 1978 he gave the company the shot in the arm it needed, but according to many people things started to go down after the success of Secret Wars in 1982.
Roy Thomas wrote:When Jim Shooter took over, for better or worse he decided to rein things in – he wanted stories told the way he wanted them told. It's not a matter of whether Jim Shooter was right or wrong; it's a matter of a different approach. He was editor-in-chief and had a right to impose what he wanted to. I thought it was kind of dumb, but I don't think Jim was dumb. I think the approach was wrong, and I don't think it really helped anything.
John Romita Sr. wrote:Shooter had been great for the first two or three years. He got the creative people treated with more respect, got us sent to conventions first-class with our ways paid, and we thought the world of him. Then his Secret Wars was a big hit, and after that he decided he knew everything and he started changing everybody's stuff.
John Byrne wrote:Shooter came along just when Marvel needed him — but he stayed too long. Having fixed just about everything that was wrong, he could not stop "fixing". Around the time I left to do Superman, I said that I thought Shooter and Dick Giordano should trade jobs — it was DC that needed fixing then -- and do so about every 5 years or so. Shooter had put Marvel into a place where all that was needed was a kindly father figure at the helm —- and that was not Shooter!… Secret Wars… was when the trouble really kicked into high gear.
The apparent last straw was the New Universe, Shooter’s pet project launched to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Marvel Comics. Despite some good ideas, the New Universe quickly became a mess and was terminated (I think Jab summed it up much better than I could).

Anyway, fast forward to 1988, Shooter teamed up with Steve Massarsky and a group of private investors in an attempt to buy Marvel Comics (I’d imagine out of spite more than anything else) and came insanely close to actually doing it.
After another unsuccessful attempt at buying Harvey Comics, Shooter and Massarsky founded Voyager Communication and its publication branch Valiant Comics in 1989.

The Valiant Style
Image
Just like Stan and Jack defined the “Marvel Style”, Valiant Comics started building its own house-brand of comics. True to form, the key points were:
  • Strict continuity. All Valiant titles included time-stamps that established unequivocally where every character was in every moment in time, this put a lot of extra pressure on the writer, who couldn’t use other character at will, but had to be aware of what was going on in other series.
  • Limited plebotium. This was one of the most strict editorial mandates of Valiant and the one that allowed it to work so well as a self-contained universe: all character got their powers from a well-defined source, which could be technology, psionics or magic (although there was a little overlap between the last two). This more “Hard Sci-Fi” approach, compared to Marvel or DC, allowed to connect the origins of the character more strictly.
  • Scheduling. Say what you want, but Valiant’s schedule was insanely strict and, apparently, distributors loved them for it. Even after Shooter left the company, Bob Layton (who took over as editor-in-chief) and Kevin Van Hook (a new talent that would became one of the company big names) pulled two all-nighter to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible.
  • Enter the new guy. After the first few titles, no Valiant character was ever introduced in a solo title, everyone debuted in different series (often with a #0 book added as a bonus).
  • Gimmick in service of the story. The biggest selling point of Valiant was that everything was done in service of the story. Between 1991 and 1992 the company used a lot of dirty tricks to get more readers, like Solar Alpha-Omega. This secondary book was sold as part of the first ten issues of Solar, Man of the Atom and detailed the origin of the character, ending with what was,rightly, hailed as "the most insane splash page ever put to print", a ten panels (the actual back covers of the 10 parts) of pure unmitigated devastation drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith.
1991: The Beginning
Valiant started working on some insanely unsuccessful license comics, first with Nintendo then with the World Wrestling Federation (which was just about at the top of its game). Superheroes arrived in 1991, when Shooter bought the right to three characters from the then defunct Gold Key Publishing (an imprint of Dell Publishing that went out of business around 1984): Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; Magnus, Robot Fighter; Tukor, Son of Stone. Solar and Magnus became the two launch titles of the original Valiant Universe.
Magnus literally started when the original Gold Key series ended. The penciler, Art Nichols, and Shooter (who wrote the first year or so) took care of reproducing the art style and the atmospheres of the original comics as close as possible.
Meanwhile, Solar went in a completely different direction: this new Solar was a man that lived in a completely ordinary world and was a fan of the old Gold Key comics. Inspired by his favorite character, the original Doctor Solar, he pursued a career as a nuclear physicist and ended up gaining similar powers.

1992: Unity
Image
After Magnus and Solar, Valiant launched a series of titles with new characters throughout 1991 and early 1992: Rai (who debuted in Magnus #5), Harbingers, X-O Manowar (who became the flagship character), Shadowman, Eternal Warrior and Archer & Armstrong.
Meanwhile, in Magnus #12 we saw the return of Turok and the Lost Valley (now called the Lost Land), while in Solar thing were gearing up for the big event of summer 1992: Unity.
Heralded by a free issue #0 with a spectacular cover by Barry Windsor-Smith and the tagline “Time Is Not Absolute”, Unity was an attempt to duplicate the success of Secret Wars and it very well did. Unity spanned 18 chapters (including the prologue and epilogue) and brought together all the characters of the two main time periods of the Valiant Comics (the present and the 4001 of Magnus and Rai). After that the story followed its own timeline, completely divorced from the usual one, of 153 days. Saying that Unity was a success would be an understatement. Up to that point the Valiant books sold well, but not so much, Unity started a hunt for the early books of Valiant.
Not long after Unity, Jim Shooter left the company. The details of this decision were never fully disclosed. Officially, it was due to “creative divergences with Massarsky”, but more than a few people suspected foul play. Bob Layton took over as editor-in-chief and while he was able to keep the stories running smoothly, many of his ideas were overruled by the company investors (more on this later).
Anyway, in the wake of Unity, a bunch of new projects were green-lit. Many of these “second wave” titles had a more 90s vibe compared to the initial run, but they still maintained the “story first” motto that was the cornerstone of Valiant’s style.

1993: Deathmate
Image
As editor-in-chief, Bob Layton actually tried to rein in some of the company's worst excesses. In the early days, Jim Shooter used some gimmicks to gain new readers (see above), but things like trading cards and flipbooks were always done in service of the story. In particular, Layton tried and failed to impose a limit on the number of copies of every issue, putting a barrier at around 500,000 copies to avoid massive returns... a few months later Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 was printed un 1,700,000 copies and the worst was yet to come...
In 1993, Valiant and Image decided to start an inter-company crossover called Deathmate. In a perfect world, this should have been the perfect kick to the nuts of Marvel (and possibly DC as well): two companies formed by disgruntled ex-employees with wildly different styles joining forces to create the first true intercompany crossover. In reality, it was an unmitigated disaster.
Valiant’s "old-style" clashed wildly with Image’s “creator first” policy, resulting in a series of fuck-up worthy of sitcom. The books were developed almost completely independently, but most people had no clue about how to use and write the characters from the other company. Moreover, Valiant's strict schedule policy clashed with Image's notorious slips, and the result was that all the Valiant books were ready way before some of the Image books were even inked. In a particularly famous incident, Rob Liefeld was so behind schedule that Bob Layton took a flight to Liefeld’s home in Florida and sat on the porch until he got the four pages needed to finish the prologue book.
The distribution timing also sucked, In 1993, the comic book bubble burst and 40% the comic shops in the United States closed. As a result, Deathmate became the straw that broke the camel and sent Valiant on a downward financial spiral.
I’m saying financial, because the stories remained pretty darn solid… for a while.

1994: Chaos Effect
Image
In 1994, Valiant had its last hurrah with Chaos Effect, a new company-wide crossover. It’s pretty rate to be able to pinpoint the exact moment when a comics company goes from good to bad but, in my opinion, this was almost certainly it.
Contrary to Unity, Chaos Effect didn’t feature all the company titles directly. Similar to Marvel’s Act of Vengeance, a small number of books were directly involved (Archer & Armstrong, Doctor Mirage, Shadowman, Magnus), but most enjoyed only a tie-in. While this was perfectly fine with the idea at the heart of the story (a global cataclysm), it failed to boost the sales.

1995: Acclaim and Birthquake
Shortly thereafter, the entire Voyager Communications was purchased by Acclaim Entertainment that tried a cross-media project by using most Valiant properties as basis for new videogames. To do so, the first order of business was to clean up the storyline and so the 1995 Birthquake event was green-lit.
Birthquake was a “soft-reboot” of all the existing characters… soft like a free-falling beluga whale! In the space of two months, most characters were brought back to the state they were in issue #0 of their respective series. Gone were up to four years of character development. Gone was all the new supporting cast. Gone were most of the principles that guided the company. If Chaos Effect was last warning, Birthquake was the point of no return.
The original Valiant Universe went on life support, but in less than a year Acclaim decided to pull the plug and restart everything from scratch with their own comic book lines. Despite having some of the industry's top talents of the day (like Mark Waid), some of these new interpretations didn’t really work and sales kept going down. There were some exceptions, like Quantum & Woody (a buddy-cop superhero series and the most fondly remembered piece of this period) and the new Turok (who got a big push thanks to the tie-in videogame series).

1999: Unity 2000
In 1999, Acclaim tried its own last hurrah with Unity 2000, the first true company-wide event since the acquisition. Jim Shooter was recalled to write it, with art by Jim Starlin, and his plans were pretty grandiose: merging the original Valiant Universe he created with the new Acclaim Universe to create a completely new comic book universe. Unfortunately, the project tanked badly and was cut short, Acclaim only published the first three issues and two prologue volumes The Valiant Death of Jack Boniface.


Big and Small Names
Although the name Valiant will always be associate with Shooter, the company employed many well-known professionals of the industry, especially from Marvel Comics, and was the launchpad for many others.
Among the most notable:
  • Bob Layton was pretty much Shooter’s best friend and right-hand man (apparently the only Marvel author that had no qualms with Shooter) and took over after the first left. He penned most of the early years of X-O Manowar and coordinated all company-wide events up to Unity 2000.
  • Barry Windsor-Smith, despite being a former Marvel artist, did most of his work for the House of Ideas before Shooter came on board, so there was very little friction between them. He worked on many titles and did the concept art for many of the early titles and was instrumental to get the company recognition in the same way Jim Lee did with Image: he was a respected professional that had no qualms with either Marvel or DC, making him the "good face" of the company. Still, his biggest contribution has to be Archer & Armstrong, where he was writer, penciler and inker.
  • John Ostrander took over Magnus and Rai in the late 1992, starting the Malev War, an insane storyline that involved both titles for a FULL YEAR and had a death count in main characters worthy of a Judge Dredd comic.
  • Dan Jurgens tried (and in my opinion failed) to revitalized Solar shortly before Birthquake.
  • Keith Giffen was called to end some of the most long-running book of the company, penning the final runs of Solar, Magnus and X-O Manowar (because, if you have to go down might as well do it in style).
The Valiant Multiverse
According to the comic book collector's consensus, there are 6 universes in the Valiant Multiverse:
  1. VH-1 for "Valiant Heroes One" published from 1991–1994 as Valiant Comics;
  2. VH-2 for "Valiant Heroes Two" published from 1996–2002 as Acclaim Comics; and
  3. VEI for "Valiant Entertainment, Inc." published 2012–present as Valiant Entertainment. Additions include
  4. VDF for "Valiant Digital Firsts" published 2017
  5. NVU for "Ninjak Vs. The Valiant Universe" released in late 2017
  6. VCU for "Valiant Cinematic Universe" (scheduled to start in April 2020 with Bloodshot... and we all know what happened)
Last edited by Woodclaw on Mon May 03, 2021 5:49 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Ares »

Valiant was honestly where Shooter shined, since it was something he was building from the ground up, he got to do all of the worldbuilding, and it made sense to have a single, guiding vision for the kind of world he was building. That worked less in a setting like Marvel which already had several decades of history and was a true kitchen sink from the get go, which was Stan and Jack's vision of the setting.

The newer version of Valiant has been hit or miss, but a lot of it has been entertaining. Unfortunately, it just doesn't feel "right" without elements like Solar, Magnus and the like, given how integral they were to the original continuity.

Though Solar felt like another Shooter mainstay of "Flawed character with godlike power that people just won't let fix everything".
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Woodclaw »

Ares wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 4:54 pm The newer version of Valiant has been hit or miss, but a lot of it has been entertaining. Unfortunately, it just doesn't feel "right" without elements like Solar, Magnus and the like, given how integral they were to the original continuity.
I kind of skipped the new version, mostly because it never really appealed to me, despite some really excellent bits.
Ares wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 4:54 pmThough Solar felt like another Shooter mainstay of "Flawed character with godlike power that people just won't let fix everything".
I would go into the details later on, but you're mostly correct.
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Re: Warehouse W - Bonelli Comics: Jim Brandon, Gros-Jean, Pat MacRyan, Montales, El Morisco

Post by Jabroniville »

Sweet! You finally did it! I remember asking you on FB if you were still going to do this one. After people had bugged me to stat Valiant, the endless corrections over my New Universe set pretty much convinced me it was stupid to ever try to stat things I'd never and would never read, so I'm happy an actual fan with some knowledge is laying it down! Looking forward to this!
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Rant Alert!

Post by Woodclaw »

Just a little update/rant. Apparently the initial set of builds I was working on must be cursed or something.
I really wanted to approach the Valiant Universe in pseudo-publication order... but how do you do that when the first character on the block is a f***ing god?!

Allow me to explain: the reasonable starting point for the VH1 is Solar, Man of the Atom.
Why?
Because Solar is one of the prime movers of the setting (or rather Jim Shooter envisoned him as such), being he's directly or indirectly responsible for the existence of many other characters. It was a battle between Solar and an alien armada that allowed Aric of Dacia to snatch the X-O Manowar armor from the aliens. Moreover Solar's origin created the conditions for the existence of Shadowman, but his origin was also influence by the actions of X-O during 1991. Moreover, after the U.S. goverment found out about the existence of X-O and Solar, they greenlighted "Project Deep Freeze" and the data obtained gave birth to the Armorines... and so on.

The problem is that Solar is borderline PL X, a being in the same power class of someone like Doctor Manhattan. It also doesn't help that his power level seem to fluctuate issue by issue, possibly a byproduct of Shooter's idea that Solar is pure energy with a conscience, i.e. as powerful or as vulnerable as the story requires.
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Re: Warehouse W - Valiant: Rant Alert!

Post by Ares »

Solar and Dr. Manhattan are interesting since, while they're both obviously powerful entities, a large part of their perceived power comes from the fact that they're surrounded by much less powerful people.

Honestly, before Doomsday Clock, I wouldn't have pegged Dr. Manhattan as being someone who could take on Superman, let alone the majority of the DCU at once. Honestly, I still don't. Given his limitations and what abilities he displayed, I would have pegged Manhattan as decently powerful but his perceived godlike status was due to existing in a world where he was the only person with superpowers. Someone like the Vision would appear pretty godlike to a world where he was the only powerful entity.

Solar is likewise someone whose level of power is at least somewhat exaggerated due to living in a world full of low-powered heroes. The next most powerful character is X-O Manowar, but I never really saw X-O as being on par with most versions of Iron Man. The X-O armor had some unique features that made it versatile, but in terms of raw power it never came off as something that powerful by most comic book standards.

Solar at least has the benefit of actual showings against other superhumans, but his biggest showings often had him have to juice himself up on power. He did show himself capable of destroying a planet on multiple occasions, but both times he had to absorb the energies of a star in order to do so. His average power levels were at a much lower intensity.

In some ways, Solar reminds me of a more limited Silver Surfer. Both of them have vast energy and matter manipulating abilities, but Solar tends to have less displays of raw power, is restrained by more realistic universal laws, and is much more vulnerable physically. The Surfer could always rely on the fact that he was a Thor-level physical powerhouse and virtually indestructible. Solar's energy form was actually vulnerable to kinetic impact, and being hit with too much focused energy could disrupt his form. He was also vulnerable to things that could disrupt his thoughts or his energy. So while he was relatively godlike compared to the other Valiant heroes, he was also a lot easier to challenge than most top tier heroes. Solar has almost been beaten by people in the X-O armor. I'd honestly expect a fight with someone like Thor to be pretty one-sided and completely favor the Thunder God over Solar.
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Re: Warehouse W - Valiant: Rant Alert!

Post by Woodclaw »

Ares wrote: Mon May 24, 2021 5:20 am Solar and Dr. Manhattan are interesting since, while they're both obviously powerful entities, a large part of their perceived power comes from the fact that they're surrounded by much less powerful people.

Honestly, before Doomsday Clock, I wouldn't have pegged Dr. Manhattan as being someone who could take on Superman, let alone the majority of the DCU at once. Honestly, I still don't. Given his limitations and what abilities he displayed, I would have pegged Manhattan as decently powerful but his perceived godlike status was due to existing in a world where he was the only person with superpowers. Someone like the Vision would appear pretty godlike to a world where he was the only powerful entity.

Solar is likewise someone whose level of power is at least somewhat exaggerated due to living in a world full of low-powered heroes. The next most powerful character is X-O Manowar, but I never really saw X-O as being on par with most versions of Iron Man. The X-O armor had some unique features that made it versatile, but in terms of raw power it never came off as something that powerful by most comic book standards.

Solar at least has the benefit of actual showings against other superhumans, but his biggest showings often had him have to juice himself up on power. He did show himself capable of destroying a planet on multiple occasions, but both times he had to absorb the energies of a star in order to do so. His average power levels were at a much lower intensity.

In some ways, Solar reminds me of a more limited Silver Surfer. Both of them have vast energy and matter manipulating abilities, but Solar tends to have less displays of raw power, is restrained by more realistic universal laws, and is much more vulnerable physically. The Surfer could always rely on the fact that he was a Thor-level physical powerhouse and virtually indestructible. Solar's energy form was actually vulnerable to kinetic impact, and being hit with too much focused energy could disrupt his form. He was also vulnerable to things that could disrupt his thoughts or his energy. So while he was relatively godlike compared to the other Valiant heroes, he was also a lot easier to challenge than most top tier heroes. Solar has almost been beaten by people in the X-O armor. I'd honestly expect a fight with someone like Thor to be pretty one-sided and completely favor the Thunder God over Solar.
The problem with Solar is that he has been portrayed as someone who can engage an entire alien fleet in direct combat and have a good chance of winning, but at the same time vulnerable to normal firearms. Pegging down his Power Level is the key to defining all the others.
On the subject of X-O Manowar, my old build put him on par with Iron Man based on the idea that Aric is much better fighter than Tony, although I might revise this.
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Re: Warehouse W - Valiant: Rant Alert!

Post by Davies »

Possibly he has Vulnerability (mundane weapons) as a complication? Science-fiction stuff is opposed by his Impervious Protection, but because he thinks mundane stuff should still affect him, they do.

I generally peg all-powerful types like this at PL 18, like the DCA books put the Spectre or Superboy-Prime.
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