Sony is working on Harbinger, Bloodshot, and then Harbinger Wars, in that order.

BTW, with Valiant's flagship book X-O Manowar approachign # 50, a milestone issue for any indie title, I want to point out that all 50 issues, and 6 additional related issues, were all written by the same writer, Robert Vendetti.

If you like continuity in your universe, with a handful of affordable books and the creators really belting it out giving it their best, and are excited to be on a title for a full four years and are building a universe that still matters and makes sense, try Valiant.

They, like DC, knock $ 1 off after 1 or 2 months, on Comixology.

Valiant doesn't run sales as often as some, like Dynamite or Image, but when they do, you can pick up issues for $.99 ea.

They currently are running sales on all X-O back issues, including the originals, Acclaim, and current versions.

FWIW

I'll probably just begin by ordering from mycomicshop, as newer titles over a year old always sell at a substantial discount. Then, if I'm truly hooked, I'll begin pulling the newer stuff so that I'm actually supporting the company with my purchases.

Former Power Ranger Jason David Frank officially announced he is going to be Bloodshot:

That's what they said about Dell, Gold Key, Charlton and a host of others that were bigger than Valiant ever was and sold better than Valiant ever will.



If quality stories equaled sales for Valiant it might be the first time ever in the comics industry that were the case. And continuity that goes back decades is the main reason most of the customer base that buys int he direct market gets super-hero comics to begin with, so it's lack is a drawback in the eyes of the only customer base they are reachingbecause no one outside a comic shop is likely to ever encounter an issue of Valiant comics in the wild.



Valiant is barely selling 5-10K copies of books and many of those copies it unsold in bargain bins at comic shops and conventions across the country. AS DC and Marvel flood the market with more and more books shipping more and more often there is less room on the shelves at comic shops for anything else and less room in their budget to order anything else in quantities higher than their pull list customers, so unless there is a massive change in the direct market in the next year or two, those 5-10K sales are far more likely to decrease than increase no matter how much the people already reading the books like what they read as retailers feeling budget crunches stop ordering copies of anything beyond what they can pre-sell because the dollars and shelf space for anything else just isn't there. Increase in sales at DC is just shifting the market share around for example, customers don't actually have more money to spend and new dollars aren't coming into the market to buy books, so if one company sees a spike in sales it means everyone else will see a decrease, until the next new shiny thing comes along and shifts market share the next time. With very rare exceptions (and most of those are Image titles like Walking Dead and Saga), the longer a series runs, the fewer readers it has and the fewer copies retailers order because new growth doesn't happen outside the first 3 issues of any book no matter if it is the best comic book story ever or a turd with a coat of white paint peddled by a publisher looking to make a quick buck. That's just the reality of the market right now. The only people who can change it are the retailers who do the ordering, and they shoulder all the risk so have to be conservative in their ordering and only order what they know they can sell because if they over order on something that doesn't sell, they might not be able to pay for their next order from Diamond (say hello Hastings, or should I say goodbye).

In order for a title or a company to see growth, they would have to have copies on he shelves for people to see in places where potential new customers would shop. If digital platforms were priced according tot he mass market pricing structure instead of the comic specialty shop price structure, it might offer a glimmer of hope in that regard, because it's not happening with print copies. On the rare occasion someone new wanders into a comic shop, they are only going to see copies of the best selling titles on the shelf, everything else is ordered to pulls or to sell out by the first weekend after the Wednesday it comes out. That leaves zero room for potential growth of other titles or publishers at the print level. The only thing fueling over ordering now is minimum thresholds for variant covers that retailers can order and sell for a profit even with eating a load of unsold copies. It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of any comic (or the quality of Valiant in this particular case) but everything to do with the market that currently exists for print comics, which is a niche market and there is very little room for niche titles or publishers within a niche market because the biggest are barely selling at survival levels to the tiny customer base that keeps the market alive.

Could there be a change? Sure. But no one who is currently making money in the status quo is going to be an agent of change and most who are not already making money have the capital or resources available to fuel the kind of change needed and the grass roots movement of comic culture that could be an agent of change already exist outside Diamond and the comic shop and Diamond prefers it that way and keeps them out in their role as gatekeeper for the market and uses that position to keep any threat to their status quo/monopoly out. If you want to play in the direct market, you have to play by Diamond's rules and those rules are set to maximize sales int he fewest number of publishers as possible because the more publishers there are selling more product makes Diamond's job more labor intensive and thus lowers profit margins. More sales form fewer publishers lessens labor costs, allows them to cut levels of management and sales to make the margins wider so they net more money even if they sell less overall. If you aren't willing to play by Diamond's rules, you don't get to get into the game of the direct market. And as long as Valiant remains a back of the Previews catalog publisher in the Diamond world, their ability to influence anything Diamond does is nil.

-M

That's a totally unfair comparison. Those companies existed in an era where the market wasn't cornered by an oligopoly. Dell attained its true heights when DC's sales were already waning, Gold Key continued on that momentum, dominating in the years just prior to Marvel's rise to power, and Charlton came about during a superhero resurgence where it was still anyone's game.

DC and Marvel hold fixed positions at the top of the pyramid these days. No company should be expected to do as well in this market as underdog companies did in the Atom and early Silver Age.


There are a million reasons why Valiant probably won't make it in the long run, but why broadcast that kind of cynicism? If people want to support and believe in a company doing good things and mustering up fresh enthusiasm, why look for ways for it to fail? In the past twenty years, I can't think of another company offering a superhero line-up that attained the kind of quality and longevity that Valiant already has, so I will continue to root for them and hope that they continue to defy the odds.

After all, in 1968, it would have been easy to say many of the same things about Marvel.