shaxper
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Posts: 22,709
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Post by shaxper on Jan 7, 2016 21:46:33 GMT -5
Did you read Milligan's Eternal Warrior? It's a great moral tale, just a little slow... It was better than the reboot run, that's for sure I keep hearing current Rai is great Trust me, it is. It's the perfect melding of Japanese period dramas and cyberpunk. The original was great too until after Unity where they decided to make the book play second banana to Magnus Original Rai was amazing when he first appeared in Magnus, but he was too whiny, pathetic, and Charlie Brown-like in his own title. His replacement was even worse, but I can see why they made the call to discard the original.
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Post by hondobrode on Jan 7, 2016 22:32:30 GMT -5
Bleeding Monk was way too cool
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Post by Batflunkie on May 5, 2016 10:10:03 GMT -5
Bumped the nu-Valiant thread yesterday, so I figured I might do the same with this one
A few moments ago, a very interesting thought occurred to me: What if the indie book The Crow partially inspired the creation of Shadowman along with Englehart's run of Batman? I mean the first volume came out in the very late 80's, so it could be possible
---Edit--- I emailed Steve Englehart about it, who's incredibly nice by the way, and he said "no". I also asked him what Shooter was like to work with and if the "horror stories" that so many ramble on about were true and this is what he had to say: "Jim was fine tow rok with at Marvel, for me, but I don’t negate any of the horror stories told by other people. At Valiant, we started off fine, but he eventually got to his “my way or nothing” mode and that’s when we parted." --------
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Post by theturok on May 6, 2023 3:23:18 GMT -5
Hi there, I thought I'd tell my experience about the old Valiant Comic (The numbers are the issue that I read)
turok(9) is fun have good action and characters and i love timothy troman work But I was hoping for the return of the old concept of the lost land or the lost valley I forgot the name of it
and there is solar(17) and X-O Manowar(15) where good but now i feel they are overpowered and And the story does not go anywhere, however, I love characters and ideas, and I hope to know whether it will improve later
Shadowman(8) its boring now for some reason
bloodshot(3).Eternal Warrior(5).Harbinger(12).Archer & Armstrong(5) Excellent ideas, but the characters are OP and their personalities are boring, stories that do not go anywhere, adventures and action without danger and a great threat, and characters that I do not care about, even though I loved Aram and his brother from the flashbacks
Harbinger(12) kinda boring for some reason i like H.A.R.D. corps(6) more
Magnus and rai I did not return to them from the Unity event, but I liked what I read, and I look forward to reading more of them
Now I want to try Ninjak and Timewalker and Geomancer and Armorines and Secret Weapons , but I feel that it may not be good. What do you think of it? And what is the series that will improve ?
As for the new Valiant, I liked X-O Manowar. I got bored of it after two volumes, and after that I followed three issues of Ninjak, and I felt cringe, so I stopped reading it. I don't know about the level of the rest of the stories.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,709
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Post by shaxper on May 6, 2023 9:25:14 GMT -5
turok(9) is fun have good action and characters and i love timothy troman work But I was hoping for the return of the old concept of the lost land or the lost valley I forgot the name of it I never tried Turok. Valiant felt like it was already in decline at this point, and I didn't enjoy him in Rai #0, so I never really gave him a shot. Solar is so different. He has the powers of a god, so the conflict is always turned inward. I found some it it inaccessible back in the day, but I should probably give it another shot. I know I enjoyed some of the middle range issues, long after Valiant was past its prime, and Solar was more concerned with his relationship issues than saving the universe; sort of an approaching middle-age Peter Parker. The first few issues of X-O were positively brilliant: a caveman in futuristic alien armor. How could you go wrong? But once Aric started thinking and talking like any other character, it got old. I didn't really get it as a kid. I should try it again. Agreed on Bloodshot and Eternal Warrior. it's hard to take interest in a character who is super serious, super confident, and always the best at what they do. If there was more to either of their personalities, I missed it. However, I'll strongly disagree on Harbinger and Archer & Armstrong. They were some of the most unique personas in comics in their day. H.A.R.D. Corps felt very generic to me, but maybe I didn't give it enough of a shot. Probably the only Valiant titles that got unequivocally better after Shooter left. Really. Read them to the end. You won't regret it. Timewalker was fantastic. Very very funny. Sort of felt like Dr. Who with more action. I avoided the others. I enjoyed X-O for about as long as you did, and Harbinger was fascinating, but I didn't care to follow multiple titles after it crossed over with Bloodshot and The Bleeding Monk. I picked up the first issue of Rai and was impressed, but not enough to continue with it. I think much of the new Valiant was superior to the old, but the stories were far more decompressed and cost $4 an issue, so I didn't feel I was getting my money's worth.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 6, 2023 21:31:04 GMT -5
Magnus was okay; but I'd rather read the Russ Manning stuff. Solar was great, through the 10 issue saga. Once that story was done, so was the series, as far as I was concerned. It worked best if you bad the past history first and then went back to the beginning and read the present material. Never cared for Rai or Bloodshot. One felt like a bad mix of sci-fi and samurai comics (without the good stuff) and the other was a sci-fi take on yet another murderous anti-hero. next. Shadoman was okay; but I never cared for mystical and supernatural stories and it was filled with the stuff. It started better than it finished. Harbinger felt too much like X-Men-Lite; but, David Lapham's early work helped and Zephyr was a fun character. Turok lost me with the first issue. I preferred the earlier appearance of Turok, in Magnus (issue 12, I think). Eternal Warrior sounded cool on paper, like Highlander, but without heads getting lopped off each issue; but, turned out to be kind of bland. There were a few issues, here and there, that rose above. Archer & Armstrong was one of the most fun books on the stands and BWS was really having a ball. Armstrong was the hero through the ages (which is what I thought they were doing with Eternal Warrior), but was also a drunk and a reprobate. Archer is the serious one. Great buddy adventure stuff, plus an interesting idea that the Vatican had assassins trying to kill Armstrong, because he represented a threat to Church doctrine, regarding their version of biblical history. Timewalker started out interesting, when he was introduced in Archer & Armstrong; but, I left the books with BWS. Hard Corps got me for one or two issues, then I dumped it as junk. Looked at Secret Weapons #1 and no more. X-O Manowar started well and I stuck with it past the purge; but, the early stuff was more interesting.
Valiant was much more interesting under Shooter, with a tight continuity that you could watch unfold. A lot of it was New Universe 2.0, but with more of what Shooter wanted to originally do with that property. That said, some of the books were better than others, such as X-O and Archer & Armstrong. Solar was the best of the old Gold Key bunch, though the original Gold Key series was the weakest of Solar, Magnus and Turok. Gold Key Magnus was the best, visually and storywise; but I always loved Turok's adventures, even though the plots were repetitive. i only saw about a half dozen issues, as a kid, so the formula didn't get a chance to bore me. Solar's art was a hinderance, at Gold Key. Valiant's art was so much better, for obvious reasons (BWS)
The funny thing is, when Smith started Barry Windsor Smith: Storyteller, at Dark Horse, most of it was pretty much what he was doing with Archer & Armstrong and Armstrong's brothers (Eternal Warrior and Timewalker), plus a sort of middle-aged Conan (who had a lot of similarities to Armstrong).
I picked up Valiant, originally, for the Gold Key hook, then stayed because of the world building and because I liked what was going on, leading up to Unity. Shooter's purge took that enthusiasm with it and when BWS was done, so was I. After that, followed both to their new projects: loved Storyteller, hated Defiant. Took one look at the initial Broadway Comics offerings and new it wouldn't make it, either.
Acclaim's purchase of Valiant was doomed, from the start. They purchased it to get content for games, based on the success of their Turok game. Problem was, they didn't own the biggest profile properties (Magnus, Solar, Turok) and the of ones they did own, X-O had the best potential for a video game; but, Acclaim was hemorrhaging money, without Valiant and it just nosedived from there. looked at Quantum & Woody later and it was kind of funny; but, I didn't think it was that great, compared to similar material out there. The whole Windjammer experiment died on the vine, though Mike Grell's Bar Sinister was an interesting companion to Shaman's Tears; but, he wasn't drawing. Published my first fan letter, though. I didn't bother with neal Adams' stuff, as I knew it was just the leftover Continuity stuff, from when that tanked.
When Valiant got going, with the Gold Key chaarcters, it seemed like the happening thing; but, in retrospect, Dark Horse was the best alternative to DC and Marvel. Not that they didn't do the same boneheaded thing, with Comics Greatest World. I preferred the earlier attempts at superheroes, like The American and The Mark. They had more original hooks to them.
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Post by berkley on May 7, 2023 0:29:29 GMT -5
I'm still trying to go back and find everything BWS did when he came back to comics in the 1980s and '90s. I have a fair bit of it now but not everything. I'm doing this mostly for the artwork, to be honest: I don't harbour any great expectations that I'm going to like any of it as far as the characters or writing go, so anything even mildly positive in those regards will be a pleasant surprise.
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Post by theturok on May 7, 2023 14:01:00 GMT -5
turok(9) is fun have good action and characters and i love timothy troman work But I was hoping for the return of the old concept of the lost land or the lost valley I forgot the name of it I never tried Turok. Valiant felt like it was already in decline at this point, and I didn't enjoy him in Rai #0, so I never really gave him a shot. Solar is so different. He has the powers of a god, so the conflict is always turned inward. I found some it it inaccessible back in the day, but I should probably give it another shot. I know I enjoyed some of the middle range issues, long after Valiant was past its prime, and Solar was more concerned with his relationship issues than saving the universe; sort of an approaching middle-age Peter Parker. The first few issues of X-O were positively brilliant: a caveman in futuristic alien armor. How could you go wrong? But once Aric started thinking and talking like any other character, it got old. I didn't really get it as a kid. I should try it again. Agreed on Bloodshot and Eternal Warrior. it's hard to take interest in a character who is super serious, super confident, and always the best at what they do. If there was more to either of their personalities, I missed it. However, I'll strongly disagree on Harbinger and Archer & Armstrong. They were some of the most unique personas in comics in their day. H.A.R.D. Corps felt very generic to me, but maybe I didn't give it enough of a shot. Probably the only Valiant titles that got unequivocally better after Shooter left. Really. Read them to the end. You won't regret it. Timewalker was fantastic. Very very funny. Sort of felt like Dr. Who with more action. I avoided the others. I enjoyed X-O for about as long as you did, and Harbinger was fascinating, but I didn't care to follow multiple titles after it crossed over with Bloodshot and The Bleeding Monk. I picked up the first issue of Rai and was impressed, but not enough to continue with it. I think much of the new Valiant was superior to the old, but the stories were far more decompressed and cost $4 an issue, so I didn't feel I was getting my money's worth. I did not read Rai #0 and bloodshot #0 because I feel that it will spoil other stories from the pages that I saw, so I do not know about Turok there i think solar still has treat i mean the alians were hard time so i think we can get something intresting i will read lore of it on X-O i think i agree but i love his crossover turok and there friendship Although no danger, I mean, what could a dinosaur do to Aric's armor? I think the shadowman was interesting at first though there is no interesting story just someone beating up criminals at night I thought I'd enjoy Bloodshot because of the mystery about who he is and his abilities but he quickly learns who he is and it's nothing really interesting and there are hardly any threats against him even the modified humans like him sent to kill him fail hilariously (he hacked their nanomachine to kill them in seconds)this character is broken I'll try giving Archer and Armstrong another chance until at least Time Walker shows up I think if Harbinger focused on characters with better sequences and more threats, I would have liked it more. What do you think? Is it worth completing it to the end? And I think Hard Cops gives me what I kind of want. The rest of the characters are the same treatment oh and i forgot i love their adventures because they are full of suspense due to the presence of threats he is a doctor? I am interested I think I'll try the new Harbinger
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,709
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Post by shaxper on May 7, 2023 16:30:06 GMT -5
I did not read Rai #0 and bloodshot #0 because I feel that it will spoil other stories from the pages that I saw, so I do not know about Turok there Rai #0 was intended to be read right after Unity. It ambitiously lays out where the entire universe is headed, giving away some things, but leaving plenty of room for later surprises. Definitely not. It's only truly great up until Unity. That's only nine issues, but wow did it give us so much in that brief time. It's still decent up until #25, but never recaptures the power of those early stories. After that, it goes in a totally different direction that I've yet to read.
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