I loved how Sting ended up as Harada's 'son' in the form of The Harbinger... the Visitor was cool up till it was revealed he was Sting from the future of the Harbinger Wars.

Yeah I think I know waaaaaaaay too much about valiant!

I loved how the whole universe may be a fever dream according to the last issue of X-O Man-o-War which ended the whole line of comics and the first universe!

And thanks Shellhead!

Man o man,
when I started this thread I had NO IDEA how rabid of a fanbase these comics used to have.

I remember them all fondly, and even took a stab at submitting artwork for an X-O story (this was all hitting right about the time I ended my sophomore year in CIA (Cleveland Institute of Art)) with some studio mates of mine.

By the time I graduated and started running a Comic shop, Valiant was a mass of variant gold/foil-etched/chromium/diecut/foldout/embossed/etc. misery and soon on to Acclaim and the end.

-moment of silence-

While most of the gimmick covers were a pain in the butt, the foldout ones produced some fantastic art. And I loved the covers of Wizard magazine that featured them.

My favorite was Wizard 7... it had the Flash on the cover for normal newsstands...
But Valiant sent them a little something for the direct market release!

Yeah, loved that one too Van Statten.

The H.A.R.D.Corps #1 cover was one of my favorites done by Valiant. Mainly because at one point I had a copy of it signed by Jim Lee, David Lapham and Bob Layton. Sadly, it was lost with a few other comics in a move. *sniff*

I had the gold version of that!

We had such a theory that the Harbinger who kills that one HARD Corps member... and who dies in issue 2 was actual a reanimated Torque from the Harbinger book.

My favorite wrap around cover was Bloodshot 0


followed by the awesome X-O Man-o-War 0

Looking back, they had such an amazing roster of talent go through that company.

Dave Lapham (whose best work is still Stray Bullets)
Bart Sears
Barry Windsor-Smith
Jim Lee
Joe Quesada
Jim Shooter

and the list goes on and on....

What a bullpen that was. And most of them were there BEFORE they became "names" in the industry ....

Awful what they did to Shooter after Unity... after he worked hard to build that company up from Voyager Communications who simply published Nintendo Comics and Wrestling magazines. The first voyage down the crapper was ditching Shooter... then loosing BWS... then not making Joe Quesada finish projects, like Ninjack. He did issues 1 and 2 and then left without completing issues 3.

Then the Valiant explosion with some questionable titles. Bob Layton was a good editor just not good at being in control.

Shooter may have - heck was - a complete jerk, but he could manage continuity. And completely agree - when they dumped him that was the start of the downward spiral. That was the whole attraction of Valiant. Keep the number of ongoing titles small, keep the continuity tight and have the characters stay consistent. *sigh*

I genuinely hope the X-O book can get a following, although I don't think the whole thing will be the same since they lost the rights to the three Gold Key characters (Solar, Turok and ESPECIALLY Magnus). Or at least it was my understanding they had.

Yeah Dark Horse has them now, Shooter's been writing them. Solar Man of the Atom has been good.

Thanks for the confirmation. Didn't know Dark Horse had them now.

Turok and Solar I can see being able to exist separately. They did it before under Gold Key. And while Solar is critical to the Valiant universe we know and love, they can still deal with that.

But Magnus? I have a hard time with this one. His book was really boring (to me at least) under Gold Key. And he was so entwined with the future Valiant universe it seems odd he's not there.

Magnus was an odd book... some of the Gold Key books were considered canon for the Valiant Magnus... and some weren't. I assume the Whitman originals weren't... but they even reprinted some of the Gold Key Magnus issues in a mini-series and they even referenced a few Gold Key stories in the early issues of Magnus Robot Fighter from Valiant.

I also LOVED Valiant and their continuity. I still have all of my original issues back at my folks house. I never read any of the reboots or comebacks though. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do this time around.

Does anyone remember the picture of the X-0 action figure prototype that was floating around as they folded the first time?

Yeah he was based on the Acclaim X-O design with a mentioned chase variant of the classic Valiant X-O, there was also a Solar and someone else in that mix.