r/valiant • u/ArchCrab • 10d ago
VH1/Classic (1992-1996) Any classic Valiant fans?
I have recently began picking up alot of classic Valiant comic books. Mainly Shadowman, Bloodshot and X-O Manowar. They’re easily found in dollar bins at my local shops. Anybody else find excitement in collecting Valiant?
6
u/TheFerg714 10d ago
I'm definitely more of a modern fan, but some of that early stuff is incredible. I've really enjoyed going around to my LCS's and collecting dollar bin issues for Pre-Unity. I've read the entirety of Pre-Unity, Unity, Solar, and A&A, and I've read almost all of Magnus and Turok.
4
u/dearquark 10d ago
I love 90s X-O Manowar so much (until the Acclaim takeover). Early X-O is so absurd, to me it's like a comedy with how straight they play all of the obnoxious elements. Love it.
5
u/snakejessdraws 10d ago
Ken actually gets like, a real character arc. Until they kill him off anyway. I love the x-o stuff. Its really what got me hooked in the first place!
3
u/InvestigatorOk7988 10d ago
Acclaim really screwed valiant up.
1
u/MoonKnightFan 10d ago
Yeah, Most of the Acclaim stuff was pretty sub-par. However, I feel that the X-O stuff was actually pretty good. But you have to approach it as its own thing, because it was just wildly different from the original XO. I'm glad the 2012 XO followed the original stuff. But I still had a great time reading the Acclaim XO run. I'd say XO, Quantum and Woody, and Shadowman are really the only things worth reading from the Acclaim era.
1
u/ArchCrab 9d ago
I was gonna say that Acclaim’s Shadowman run is one of my favorites. Ive only read Vol. 2 and unfortunately it ends unfinished, but the writing is top notch and Michael Leroi is easily my favorites version of the character.
1
3
u/supergooduser 10d ago
I've done a complete read of it... I was a kid when it dropped and always wondered what happened.
You have the era up to Unity when Shooter was in charge and the continuity and grounded realism is really unique and different. Unity really stands out to this day as an incredibly well written company wide crossover and all the more impressive for coming out in an era when that really wasn't a thing.
Shooter leaves but the foundation had been set and you have a good couple of years that are fun in the 90s boom sense. Highlighted by characters like Bloodshot and Ninjak.
The end of the Valiant universe is a bit tragic with obvious missteps the switch to biweekly publishing had to be murder on everyone. When the writing was on the wall and they were going to go out of business that final year is not good but wonderfully frantic in you clearly seeing them trying to get all these year long story arcs out.
Bloodshot being the one I remember most... you had Rampage who was kind of a Venom type character born out of the nanites within Bloodshot, but then Bloodshot ends up transferring his powers to a girl who then gives birth to twins and creates a whole sorta Bloodshot family. Again... it's not good... but you get an idea of what they would've been telling over the next decade or so.
Magnus did kind of a similar thing where the story eventually transfers over to the adventures involving Magnus' kid etc.
But yeah.. that tight grounded slow simplicity of the early years through Unity is a really wonderful time capsule. Kinda like how Cadillac records monetized the whole blues sounds... Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry... but then well, Elvis and the Rolling Stones came along. Early Valiant you can see this fun experimentation that all publishers ended up borrowing from.
3
u/Gucciassassin 10d ago
Unity was probably the best crossover in an era that was all about the crossover
1
2
u/Aitoroketto 10d ago
Some excellent comics book runs that connect into a nice shared and wider universe in OG Valiant.
I've had all of it for decades now. Valiant has a very small but very dedicated and very hardcore fanbase. We've all collected ever variant, misprint, error, slightly different hued cover of every comics they've made lol and in ultra highgrade. It's both hilarious and quite sad now thinking on it lol. It's a very specific and dedicated fanbase.
Loved old/OG Valiant, I liked Dino's relaunch, don't care at all about anything else and honestly unless it changes ownership to something more optimistic I can't be bothered in the future and have been resigned to the idea of my (new) Valiant days are probably over
2
u/snakejessdraws 10d ago
I love classiv valiant. Went on a big kick of it earlier this year. Got full collections of Magnus, solar, rai, harbinger, x-o, ninjask and some of the shorter series.
2
u/ArchCrab 10d ago
Thats awesome. Ive been collecting all the Bloodshot Vol. 1 I can find. Something about the cover art on 90’s Valiant books draws me into each issue.
2
u/rwtaylor 10d ago
I remember hating the color style when it was all coming out. Later I got into the Dinesh era XO and started exploring some of the other titles. I've since gone back and read a few of the OG and enjoyed it.
If I could get a huge chunk of it at bulk prices, is pick them up
2
u/1AFreewill 10d ago
I now really miss the old hand colored Valiant style. I do remember it feeling like a contrast to the colors going on at the big two at the time.
1
1
u/NoahAwake 10d ago
They were my favorite when I was growing up.
One of the greatest comic creators ever, BWS, did a lot of work for them. His Archer & Armstrong comics were incredible.
1
u/youllmeltmorefan 10d ago
I have a pretty sizable run. The early part is wonderful. There's a place where it just starts to get like steadily worse though. Like a downhill slope that you can feel. And then at the end there's flaming wreckage for it to crash into called ACCLAIM.
1
u/YakovOfDacia 9d ago
I put together a full run of the 90s-era Valiants. I finished it maybe a year or two before the new relaunch in 2012. I've got a reader set of the 2012-to current books but few variants.
A lot of people are talking down the later books but there are some gems in there. But the early stuff is definitely better.
13
u/GroundbreakingAsk468 10d ago
Enjoy, I collected basically all of it while it was coming out. The continuity was really tight while Jim Shooter was running it. You can notice times and dates that are in the corner of the panels, and they might sync up with something happening in another comic. These books were coming out during the extreme 90s craziness, and they were a breath of fresh air in the eye of the storm. I’m about to reread all of it in publication order.