Is it true Valiant at its peak was once as big as Marvel/DC? If so, what in the ever-living frick happened? How do you go from rivaling the two biggest publishers to complete obscurity?
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Is it true Valiant at its peak was once as big as Marvel/DC? If so, what in the ever-living frick happened?
Deathmate happened
Any god-tier limited series from Valiant?
I can't speak to a lot of the pre-2012 Valiant (except for Quantum and Woody which is hilarious).
2012 reboot of Valiant had a lot of really good series and plenty of variety. Some of my favorites are:
Dysart's Harbinger Saga (including Imperium and Life and Death of Toyo Harada)
Archer and Armstrong (and Ivar, Timewalker)
Lemire's Bloodshot
Divinity Saga
Quantum and Woody! (not as good as Priest's but still pretty funny)
Rai and 4001 AD
XO-Manowar (pretty much every volume is good)
Honestly, there are very few bad books in the bunch. Things went to hell after DMG tried turning it into an IP and crypto farm.
Thanks, friend.
I got big into Valiant 'round the 2nd or 3rd year of their '10s return. I even storytimed each valiant comic each week here as we were leading up to the Armor Hunters crossover and then The Valiant and all that.
The strength of the return was that you had really strong writers like Dysart, Van Lente and Kindt given carte blanche to create whole sections of the universe themselves, and they wrote some really damn good stories. Then yeah, as anon above mentioned
It got bought out. Are they even publishing anymore? Or did that Bloodshot movie flop kill them?
>Are they even publishing anymore? Or did that Bloodshot movie flop kill them?
I don't think it's so much that the Bloodshot movie killed them as it was just one of many, MANY bad decisions on DMG's part. As for your other question, it's recently been announced that Valiant is teaming up with Alien Books to release new Valiant comics, including their Kickstarter graphic novel from a few years ago. No idea if it'll be successful, but for the time being it's not dead just yet.
The collector comic book bubble of the 90s happened and then it burst. Valiant was popular because the provided a sophisticated alternative to Marvel and DC which was much more consistent than Image's scattershot output. Once the masses buying up multiple copies as an investment realized that early 90s Valiant comics were some of the most printed comics of the time, they fell off quick.
They sold to Acclaim. Valiant was really on the rise throughout the early 90s until that point and I don't think they were as big as Marvel/DC but they were getting to a point where they could have been the third arm of the industry.
well, this is 1993, bigger than the years either side by some way for dollar-value sales in the North American market:
https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/1993.html
you can see Turok (Valiant) is the #6 book, behind five (!) Superman titles and ahead of Batman, a Malibu comic and an Image title, with a second Valiant making up the #10 spot
you then get down to #24, #38 and #46 for the top 5 Valiant titles that year; that they're in the top 50 at all indicates some success, but you can clearly see most of it is Marvel, Image and DC
the following year (and all years until I think something like 1999 or maybe 2001) the market contracts by 15% year on year, so we can say if Valiant got to be as big as Marvel/DC/Image after this point it was down to market contraction (which given how the direct market worked may not be anything to do with the perceived quality of Valiant titles)
but if we go further back we can only go to 1989 when Valiant was founded, so the question before we do a whole lot of data comparison is "do we really think Valiant got big enough to challenge Marvel/DC/Image at the height of the direct market bubble, and if we do, do we really think this was the quality of the titles or just their perceived worth to the collector market?"
because if it's about perceived worth to the collector market, then the answer to "what in the ever-living frick happened" is "they weren't very good but people bought them anyway thinking they'd be valuable one day"
tl;dr Shooter probably just rode the speculator bubble; he cashed out to Acclaim in 1994, so what does he even care
Interesting summary, Anon. Thanks.
unfortunately it also led to a certain writer to head to Archie comics and develop a boner for monotremes
thanks
huh
I found the first few issues of Solar Man of the Atom in a dollar bin and picked them up because of the BWS cover art.
It's unbelievable how enjoyable they are. I went in assuming they'd be Image-tier but they're great. They feel more modern than anything Vertigo was putting out st the time.
Solar's Valiant run is pretty fricking wack all the way through, can recommend
Turok (as has been said numerous times)
Shadowman
Archer & Armstrong though I haven't read beyond when Barry Windsor-Smith leaves
I've never read XO Manowar but he's pretty consistently based whenever he pops up in someone else's book so who knows
Fricking hell I REALLY gotta doublecheck to see if I remove the name before posting
Anyways I haven't read much of the Acclaim years stuff but if you like the Turok and Shadowman games you'll probably dig their comics, they got Niceiza and Ennis respectively doing them
No.
Anything pre-00s that is good?
The Shooter era (which is everything up to Unity, with maybe an issue or two post-Unity) is worth looking at
Post-Shooter, I would say Turok is worth looking at
Then there's the Acclaim relaunch in 1996 and from there Quantum and Woody is the best one
Warriors Of The Plasm was fun.
If you like chris priest, Quantum and woody is very good.
A lot of little things I imagine. I remember they did a collected edition of the old The Aliens backup feature from Gold Key's Magnus, Robot Fighter and must've had to eat the cost of the whole run because every copy I saw was misprinted entirely in green and purple.
Thanks doc
newbie
I have "The Aliens". They semi-swiped the plot from Murray Leinster, but Russ Manning's artwork can't be beat.
My copies are printed correctly.
Incidentally, I'm _still_ waiting to find out what the "false men" from Venus were planning. 🙁
>Is it true Valiant at its peak was once as big as Marvel/DC?
Frick no.
For me, it’s the Nintendo Comics System.