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Valiant Comics

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File:Valilogo.jpg
Company logo (1991-1995)

Valiant Comics was a comic book publishing company founded by former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and writer/artist Bob Layton in 1989.


Overview

Only Marvel and DC can claim a more famous and original library of comic characters. Valiant stormed onto the market in the 1990s, selling more than 50 million books in its first five years. It's characters have seen print in numerous languages across the globe and have featured in best selling video games. The Valiant characters are often called the most important of those created after the 1960s (after Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four etc). The Valiant universe includes X-O Manowar, Shadowman, Archer & Armstrong, Harbinger, Eternal Warrior, Magnus, Bloodshot and Rai, among others.

History

In 1988, former Marvel Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter and a group of other investors attempted to purchase Marvel Comics. Shooter's group submitted the 2nd highest bid, but ultimately investor/entrepreneur Ronald Perelman wound up submitting the highest bid to purchase the company. Steven J Massarsky, former manager of the Allman Brothers Band, and Shooter then convinced a venture capital firm, Triumph, to back their creation of a new comics publisher. They founded Voyager Communications Inc. and its comic-book publishing imprint, Valiant Comics, and hired Bob Layton away from Marvel to help with its planned superhero line. Voyager/Valiant licensed three classic Gold Key Comics properties: Magnus, Robot Fighter; Doctor Solar; and Turok.

In 1990, Valiant launched its superhero line, mixing modified versions of the Gold Key characters with several original titles & characters - Archer & Armstrong, Eternal Warrior, Harbinger, Rai, Shadowman, and X-O Manowar - to establish a new shared universe. In mid-1992, the company published a line-wide crossover called Unity. Through word of mouth and saavy marketing - employing a coupon-driven promotion to drive sales, as well as offering retailers sales-driven incentives - the popularity of the company grew. Publications like the Overstreet Price Guide and Wizard Magazine took notice of Valiant's success, specifically the escalating demand for rarer pre-Unity books from both fans and speculators.

Despite this burgeoning success, Shooter's security within the company was not ensured. His relationship with Triumph had been badly damaged and he reportedly resisted his partners' plans to position the company for a rapid sale. This dispute lead to Shooter's dismissal. Following his departure, Bob Layton took over the bulk of Shooter's duties in publishing operations. Valiant greatly expanded its comics line and soon became the #3 comic book publisher in terms of market share, behind only industry giants Marvel and DC. In 1993, the first issue of Turok, Dinosaur Hunter shipped 1.75 million copies. This was one of a series of highly successful books that cemented Valiant's place as an industry heavyweight - Bloodshot #1 shipped 900,000 copies, X-O Manowar #0 shipped 850,000, Rai #9 shipped 800,000, Ninjak #1 shipped 500,000 etc.

A year later, Voyager Communications Inc., went on the (metaphorical) auction block and was sold to the video game giant Acclaim Entertainment for $65 million in June 1994. Along with the rest of the comics industry Valiant's sales soon slumped as the speculative boom collapsed, and Acclaim management took a more active role in publishing decisions.

Acclaim renamed the line Acclaim Comics in 1996. Their primary motivation was to make the properties more suitable for use in video game development. The created runaway video game successes out of the Shadowman & Turok properties. The comic book industry's implosion from 1995 to 1997 hurt the entire comics industry and Valiant/Acclaim comics was no exception.

In 1999, Acclaim began publishing Unity 2000, a company-wide crossover written by none other than Jim Shooter that was supposed to integrate the old Valiant universe and new Acclaim Universe. Accliam failed to market the books but saw a good deal of interest on the first few issues. Acclaim was forced to stop the series after three issues because of an art return fiasco with Jim Starlin (artist on the series) and a payment problem with Jim Shooter. The company ceased all publication two months later.

In 2004, Acclaim filed for bankruptcy and shut down its offices.

In 2005, Acclaim auctioned off the rights for the original (non-Golden Key) Valiant characters as part of their bankruptcy proceedings. The characters auctioned included (but were not limited to) Archer & Armstrong, Armorines, Bloodshot, Doctor Tomorrow, Eternal Warrior, H.A.R.D. Corps, Harbinger, Ninjak, Quantum & Woody, Rai, Second Life of Dr. Mirage, Secret Weapons, Shadowman, Timewalker, Trinity Angels, Troublemakers and X-O Manowar. With a winning bid of approx $800,000, a group known as Ashok Kothari, Jason Kothari and Dinesh Shamdasani were recognized as the new owners of copyrights of the Valiant properties. However, in the time leading up to the auction, Acclaim had neglected to renew the trademarks and allowed the trademarks to lapse. During this time a group known as "Valiant Intellectual Properties (VIP) L.L.C." (owned by the publisher Dynamic Forces) applied for the trademarks. The status of the trademarks is still pending.

Universe

Valiant Universe (VH1)

Pre-Unity (VH-0)

In the beginning, the Valiant Universe was a reflection of Jim Shooter's vision for an ideal comic book universe: character-driven, strong continuity with emphasis on science fiction, long-reaching consequences and internal consistency. It was the first 90's company to attempt to follow a real-world timeline, where events in the comics occurred at the pace similar to their publication schedule. The company writers attempted to adhere to real-world science as much as they possibly could. No matter how powerful its characters got, they were still affected by friction, Newton's Laws of Motion, Einstein's laws of relativity, etc. While Valiant Universe had its share of aliens, they never used popular sci-fi conventions such as universal translators and faster-then-light travel. All Valiant Universe superheroes had powers that were derived from psionic awareness (the "power of the mind"), energy manipulation and/or technology. Valiant Comics' writers tried to emphasize the human aspect of super-powers, as well as how the actions of various super-powered individuals affected average human beings. Most Valiant heroes were not superheroes in the strict sense of the word. Some had more in common with the old-style pulp adventurers than traditional superheroes. Finally, Valiant Comics had tight, carefully integrated continuity, where events in one title had indirect effects on other titles. In many cases, major characters debuted in previously established titles before their own titles premiered.

The Valiant Universe was created by Solar as the result of his attempt to recreate his universe after he accidentally destroyed it, as explained in the "Alpha & Omega" storyline of Solar 1-10. As the result, something similar, but not quite identical, emerged. It was eventually discovered that several times during Valiant Universe's history, Earth was menaced by Spider-Aliens, who sought to use the human race for slave labor and food. Their efforts were indirectly responsible for creation of several superheroes (most notably X-O Manowar and Shadowman). The early 1990s saw the rise of psionically empowered humans: Harbingers. They were led by Toyo Harada, a powerful psionic businessman. While on the surface, he operated in the manner similar to Professor Xavier of X-Men, he actually sought to use Harbingers to "save the world from itself". The history of Valiant Universe's super-powered community was greatly influenced by Geomancers, human beings who had an ability to listen to psychic impressions left on most everyday objects.

From the beginning, all Valiant Comics titles could be divided into two groups - titles that were set in the late 1990s and titles that were set in the 41st century (beginning with 4000 A.D.)The heroes from the present weren't aware of the heroes of the future (and vice-versa) until the Unity conflict. Since then, heroes from the future made a few visits to the late 90s. It should be noted that Solar and Gilad the Eternal Warrior survived into the 41st century, but, in many respects, they were different from their more contemporary counterparts.

Post-Unity (VH1)

After Jim Shooter was ousted, the Valiant Universe experienced a few changes that contradicted previously established continuity. At first, the changes were minor, but over time, they grew more and more significant. Writers began to neglect the scientific aspects of Valiant Universe. Although post-Unity sales were far higher than pre-Unity levels, over time sales decreased dramatically. In 1994, in an effort to revive sales, Valiant cancelled half of their comics line while moving to a two-issuse-per-month schedule for their more popular titles (XO Manowar, Solar). This was known as "Birthquake" and failed miserably, alienating their fans while creating only a small, temporary increase in sales. Birthquake marked the beginning of the end, and by the time the original Valiant universe ended, it was suggested that most, if not all, of the entire Valiant universe was a dream (X-O Manowar #68).

Acclaim Universe (VH2)

When Acclaim Entertainment bought Valiant Comics, the universe was started completely from scratch. In 1996 , Fabian Nicieza, a former editor and writer from Marvel Comics, was hired as senior vice-president and editor-in-chief and was given the task of revamping the Valiant Comics properties. Nicieza as editor oversaw the new version, dubbed VH2 by the company, which re-imagined all of the Valiant characters such as Solar, X-O Manowar and Ninjak using popular comic book writers of the period including Warren Ellis, Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek. The line also introduced new concepts such as Troublemakers and Quantum and Woody.

Perhaps most successful in this period was the re-imagined Turok title, (by Nicieza and penciller Bart Sears). The title sold well but perhaps more importantly the character met with great success as a video game adaptation by Acclaim's parent company Acclaim Entertainment. This reflected the product synergy which the new company saw as its business model - this model essentially being that the comic line would foster and develop properties which could then be exploited as video games.

Originally, this new VH2 version, appeared to have little to do with the original Valiant Universe. However as sales began to fall, later crossovers revealed that the Acclaim Universe was the result of a time paradox caused by Solar.

The Acclaim Universe was similar to other superhero-based universes. It wasn't nearly as interconnected as Valiant Universe. While towards the end, Valiant Comic writers began to move away from real-world science and "realistic" superheroes, Acclaim Universe writers tended to ignore it altogether.

Although Acclaim Comics met with some initial success, by early 1999 most of the line had been cancelled, Nicieza had left and staff levels had been drastically cut. The next year a final attempt to resurrect some form of the universe was made with Unity 2000.

Jim Shooter's Valiant Universe (VH-0)

In 2000, during Acclaim's Unity 2000 crossover, writer Jim Shooter introduced yet another alternate universe, called VH-0 by fans. In essence, it was his vision of what Valiant Universe would have been like if he had been allowed to stay with the company. According to Jim Shooter's plot, at the end of the crossover, VH-0 was destroyed and most of its characters were killed. VH-1 and VH-2 fused together into a new universe. However, since Unity 2000 was cancelled after the third issue, none of that actually showed up in print and the storyline remains unfinished. However, there are rumors of the plots to the entire Unity 2000 storyline being available online.

In 2005, the universe was broken up when the rights to most of the Valiant and Acclaim original characters (such as X-O Manowar, Ninjak, Shadowman etc,) were auctioned off, while the rights to other characters (from the Solar, Magnus and Turok properties) reverted to their original rights' holders Western Publishing and Gold Key Comics.

Throughout all the re-imaginings and alteration of Valiant Universe, the only thing that remained consistent was real-time approach to continuity.

Titles and characters

Titles

Valiant Universe

Acclaim Universe

While most characters that appeared in Acclaim Comics were altered versions of previous characters, some were created specifically for Acclaim Universe (VH-2)

Characters

AIs and Robots

  • 1-A
  • Alloy
  • Grandmother
  • Tekla

Technologically Empowered Humans

Mystics

Harbingers

Immortals

Non-Powered Humans

Technologically Enhanced Humans:

Magic Users

  • Mamma Hettie
  • Sandria
  • Trinity Angels

X-O Manowar

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