i miss shooter's blog.

He was just about to give us some Byrne stories.

This is why he was silenced.





He was always like this, but bigger and brighter stars like John Byrne unfairly eclipsed him - Shooter was prevented from being seen as he truly was because he was only the Editor-In-Chief (now), not the leader of the Faithful Fifty Thousand.

Life is often unfair.

We need more Bad Shooter stories, Litigious Ellison stories and so on. We may never get to hear them all, but we deserve to.

Woof.

I can see how being called an interesting derange-o by Harlan Ellison could potentially boost someone's career. We should all be so lucky.

Imagine if he'd put this policy into effect in 1983 instead of 1984. We would have gotten a GOOD "Secret Wars"!

I like Secret Wars in a “B” movie way. The dialogue is atrocious, characters are off model, and the central theme is kind of dumb, but Doom is my favorite character.

Oh, I like it too!

But as the work of Mr. I Taught Everyone in the Comics Industry How to Make Good Comics, it's laughable, for the reasons you stated.

Secret Wars accelerated my leaving comics. My original collection ends during Secret Wars.

Was it related to Secret Wars or was it more timing / age (you were getting more interested in sports and girls)?

Or was it the fact that your long-simmering hatred for Jim Shooter finally boiled over, in a scalding explosion of bile and rage?

Had to be a little of both. But i was turned off by them changing Spideys costume, and by FF losing the Thing for She-Hulk, and the look and feel of Secret Wars was terrible to me.

So I drifted. I read the rest of my subscriptions as they finished out. Then I just became an interested onlooker. I would thumb through Trades of DKR and Watchmen in a bookstore.

Big time TL;DNR post coming up but I had to get it out...

I took a few years and did it off-and-on, but I've read all of Jim Shooter's Valiant up through the Unity crossover. From what I can tell, Jim Shooter was fired during or right after this crossover, so it is a good stopping point for the line.

From a world-building and writing perspective, the entire line is a remarkable and very underrated achievement by Shooter. The stories read like a strong slow burn television series with a focus on interesting situations, organic plot twists, and very strong characterization. It's a shame Shooter has ruined his reputation as an editor because as a writer and "show runner", I think he's one of the best out there. Taken altogether, the Valiant line through Unity reads like a sprawling epic in the vein of Game of Thrones and Wild Cards -- multiple seemingly unrelated stories that eventually coalesce into unified whole.

I think he saw how tightly knit and cohesive the continuity of the Kirby / Lee / Ditko era of Marvel was compared to DC at the time (when most books didn't really acknowledge what was happening in any other book) and wanted to take it a step further. It's interesting to consider some of the potential obstacles he faced in making that a reality.

First, the original core of the line was the licensed Gold Key characters, Dr. Solar and Magnus, Robot Fighter (Turok wouldn't really show up until the very end of his reign). If you want to start a modern superhero line of books, it's sorta easy to see where Solar fits in, but Magnus is set in the year 4001 and didn't seem to really fit the zeitgeist of the time. But in May of 1991, they are launching the line with those two titles.

Even more remarkable is how short his time was on the Valiant superhero universe -- the line was launched with Magnus #1 in May of 1991 and his last credited writing / editing work was published with the conclusion of Unity in September or October of 1992. But in that year, he set up the entire foundation of the Valiant superhero universe for years to come. While popular characters like Bloodshot, Ninjak, etc. were launched after Shooter was gone, it’s not surprising to me that the line was dead in the water by the end of 1995. I haven’t read those issues, but I figure that would likely be around the time the original conflicts and long-running storylines Shooter set up would have run dry, leaving his successors to come up with stuff just as interesting (and I guess Bob Layton and company weren’t up to the task).

Almost from the jump, Jim seems to put on his deconstructionist Alan Moore hat (not saying he's in Moore's league, just the approach to the material) and get to work.

In the opening Magnus arc, Steel Nation, we pick things up from the Gold Key series by Russ Manning, with the titular hero serving as the superhero protector of North-Am (a megalopolis that encompasses the entire North American continent) from renegade robots seeking to harm humanity. But the status quo gets shaken up almost immediately, as Magnus comes to realize robots with free will are sentient and makes peace with them, helping them set up their own colony where they can live in peace away from humans. This action is seen as treasonous and Magnus is outcast from the higher levels of society, and chooses to live among the gophs, the misfits and outcasts of the lowest level of North Am.

Solar (sans the “Doctor” – I guess he got that PHD for nothing) is far trippier and weirder -- knowing how market / audience conscious Jim Shooter is, I'm sort of amazed that he chose this approach for a line-leading launch title, with each issue containing two separate stories of the same character at different points in his life. Wikipedia explains it better than I probably could -- "The new Solar series began with three multi-part stories all written by Jim Shooter: "Alpha and Omega" spanned the first ten issues and told of the origin story of how Phil Seleski became Solar and accidentally destroys the world; "Second Death" spanned the first four issues and tells of Seleski's attempt to prevent another version of himself from destroying the world; "First Strike" spanned issues #5 to #8 and follows Solar as he fights spider aliens." That old chestnut.

Then starting with Magnus #5, that book becomes a two-hero title (inspired by 60s Marvel books like Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, perhaps?) for four issues to introduce Rai... which is a bit of a trippy concept as well.

Set in the same world as Magnus, Rai is the #1 superhero of a futuristic Japan, which dealt with the same overpopulation issues as North-Am by first transforming the entire land mass into a mega-tower hundreds of feet tall, then somehow detaching the island itself from the earth and floating it above the globe. The nation is run by Father, an artificial intelligence that handles all the logistics of running their society. Rai is his enforcer and chief peacekeeper, the first line of defense against the Raddies, an anti-technology terrorist group that feels Japan has lost its way and should be governed by human beings instead of machines.

The next series to launch is Harbinger and it has the most conventional premise so far – it’s basically just mutants like the X-Men and they’re on the run from an evil corporation who want to control them. As I write this, a thought occurs to me – what is the high-concept for this series is just “What if Professor X was evil?” Because the core villain of this series and the biggest mover-and-shaker in the Valiant universe so far seems to be Toyo Harada, a super-successful and respected Japanese businessman who is secretly the most psionic on Earth (telepathy, telekinesis, mind-control) with the classic villain motivation of controlling the world in order to save it. He established the Harbinger Foundation to recruit others with superhuman abilities, but a small group of mutants discover how evil he is and go on the run, with the ultimate goal of killing him when they can figure out how.

Again, the premise is old hat, but it’s just so well executed. It reads like a HBO drama series with its focus on realistic, believable characterization and plausible story situations, plot development, and ramifications. Again, it’s not mind-blowing writing, but it’s very good and very entertaining.

X-O Manowar launches around the same time and it’s got a funkier premise like the previous Valiant books – barbarian warrior from a time that predates Gilgamesh is abducted by aliens and kept alive in a vat for centuries. He finally escapes in the modern era by commandeering a suit of bio armor that makes him a powerhouse. He reacts to the modern world as you’d expect and we go from there.

A handful of titles debut just before or concurrently with the launch of the Unity event – Shadowman, Archer & Armstrong, and Eternal Warrior. Like with Harbinger, the premises themselves aren’t particularly original, but the stories told with those premises make them feel fresh and interesting.

To make it short and sweet – Shadowman is a jazz musician in New Orleans that gets a mask that gives him powers that more most potent at night; Eternal Warrior (Gilad) and Armstrong are immortal brothers who were born before recorded history; and Archer is a young hero who has befriended Armstrong and possesses Taskmaster type abilities (peak human who can imitate anything a human can do and has become a super martial artist / warrior with that ability).

As all this is going on, we see Toyo Harada pop up in various titles outside of Harbinger and they do a really good job of setting him up as the arch-villain of the Valiant universe. He sends his elite strike team, the Egg Breakers, to capture / kill Solar (who is so powerful that he easily repels the attempt). And instead of just Dr. Doom style villain plotting, we see him making logical moves that an actual mastermind would make. He befriends heroes (who are more realistically characterized, they aren’t crusaders like normal superheroes) such as X-O Manowar and Eternal Warrior whenever he can.

They did a great one-shot issue with his entire life story, from his childhood in WW2 era Japan (where he murders his parents after reading their minds and discovering they fear his powers and plot to kill him), to his rise as a businessman and the present day. It’s the sort of issue you rarely see from Marvel and DC but often see in a novel as a chapter or a drama series as an entire episode devoted to fleshing out a character so the audience can really understand who they are. It’s sorta like the issues of Watchmen devoted to a character’s backstory.

In fact, this is a theme with many of the core heroes and villains of the Valiant universe under Shooter – exploring their backstories deep into their childhoods to give them richer and more full realized characters with believable psychological depth. They just tend to feel slightly more real than the usual heroic archetypes we see in standard superhero comics (slightly – again, this isn’t mind-blowing writing, just solid writing with an approach you often see in other media).

Then Unity hits and outside of something like Alan Moore’s Judgement Day, I think it’s probably the best event comic I’ve ever read (which is admittedly a low bar). Something like this shows how an event comic can work well when there’s a strong central creator running a tight ship across the entire line. The event comes from seeds Shooter planted in the launch storyline of Solar that developed in a very organic way.

And while the event interrupts the other titles’ ongoing stories in the way event books typically do, the events from the story actually have substantial ramifications to the characters involved – it’s not just a temporary diversion before we get back to their regular titles. Event books always advertise “nothing will ever be the same again,” and “shocking revelations will be made,” but Unity actually delivers on those claims.

All-in-all, it’s been a very good read so far and I can see why this line has a relatively small but passionate fanbase. That said, I still have a few criticisms.

While I’ve praised Shooter and company’s plotting, pacing, and concepts, the dialogue does tend to feel more utilitarian than I’d like. There’s an effort to make it feel organic and believable, and sometimes it does, but it just as often feels like characters are saying what the writer wants him to say. Shooter isn’t great at disguising his “voice” – like with John Byrne’s writing, you really feel like everyone talks and sometimes thinks the same.

And of course, there’s the artwork – like the New Universe and Secret Wars, whenever Shooter takes a hands-on approach to the page-by-page, panel-to-panel storytelling, the results are very clear but also not very exciting to look at. Not only the insides, but you can see it in the covers to so many of the Valiant titles of the time – they have all the information you need, but they are usually not exciting or intriguing on a visual level at all.

I can’t recall what got me interested in reading all the Jim Shooter Valiant books to begin with, but prior to that, I found any Valiant comic not drawn by Joe Quesada to be repulsive. The art reminded me of the free anti-drug comics or religious story comics of the 1980s -- utilitarian, functional, and as bland as ice milk.

I've also come to really feel for the Valiant artists. Even issues Barry Windsor Smith drew felt more... unspectacular?... than his typical output in the "How to Draw Comics the Jim Shooter Way" system. First, the coloring does the art no favors, it gives the entire line a very soft and kiddie feel (despite the books being quite the opposite).

Second, having drawn some (admittedly amateur) comics pages, it has to be the most difficult and work-intensive style to draw comics. Most fan-favorite 90s art is praised as being "detailed" but it really wasn't -- it was just covered in rendering lines that give the impression of detail. From a drawing construction perspective, it's one of the easier ways to do comics -- one or two big central figures (or in McFarlane's case, a head) and then some floating panels with talking heads or simple establishing shots. It feels like half the time, there isn't even a need for the artist to do a single perspective grid. On average, just off the top of my head, they're probably doing one detailed background in perspective and 1-4 full figures.

In the Jim Shooter style, artists are doing 5-9 panels a page, almost all of them have backgrounds with *actual* detail (trim on the walls, furniture, windows, etc.) that is very tedious and unrewarding to draw, almost all requiring perspective drawing because you're drawing full figures in almost every panel. Not only that, they're not just drawing cyborgs and commandos in tights, they have to draw believable real people wearing believable real clothing in believable real environments -- that's not fun.

And what's the reward besides a mediocre page rate? People say your stuff is boring. They work harder, have to deliver on a tighter schedule, all while drawing stuff that mostly isn't fun to draw… and then people say you suck. Man, it had to be heartbreaking for most of those guys. David Lapham was a Valiant artist and probably thought to be boring -- until he starting doing his creator-owned STRAY BULLETS series, which has very interesting art and compositions.

That said, it makes me respect guys like Jack Kirby, John Byrne, George Perez, Walt Simonson, Frank Miller, Mike Zeck, Paul Smith, Jm Starlin, etc. even more -- they managed to draw very exciting looking comics while still sticking to Shooter's "clarity" rules 95% of the time. Pretty impressive. (And I know most of these guys weren't doing it because of Jim Shooter, their careers predate his run as EIC -- Shooter just had the Silver Age comics editor mentality when it came to storytelling.)

But at the end of the day, I wonder what would have happened if Shooter found more marketable artists and also loosened up just a little – I do think his overall mentality is right for facilitating good writing and storytelling, but many people, especially young ones, buy comics because they like to look at cool art. I have thought that if a comic had 2/3 balanced storytelling style pages and 1/3 splashy Image Comics type pages, it would be the right balance to attract an audience while still telling a well-paced and satisfying story.

Anyway, there’s that – I read them, I liked them, and I recommend them… especially if you can find ‘em on the cheap like I did.

Nice review of the Valiant line, Hanzo!

I read a scattering of issues of some Valiant titles back in the day, when I used to have access to cheap back-issue bins. The only one I saw all that much of was the first few consecutive issues of "Harbinger." None of it really connected with me, in terms of story or characters. You can tell the writing was done by somebody who actually knew how to write, though, which put it way ahead of so much that was coming out in that era. And it sounds like it worked pretty well as a carefully planned-out, interconnected line of titles.

I remember the art being consistently well-done. But it didn't come across as all that dynamic, for the reasons you describe. In principle I like an art style that doesn't call too much attention to itself. But in this case some greater freedom for the artists to have more input in their layouts and other aspects of visual storytelling could have helped a good deal.

Well, it was Jim Shooter's brainchild, and he always wanted tight, tight control of everything. The art feels tightly controlled.

Agree.

The Iliad of nineties comics has at last found its Homer.

How did you read them? Did you track down individual issues? Or are there handy dandy archived Editions available?

Multiple choice question. Come on, you know Hanzo hates that.

Yep. My bad. Now he will either ignore me or say "nope!"

Dear Hanzo
Please set forth the funny book format you were looking at when you read Valiant. Thank you and you are the best!

Great review! That encapsulates Shooter's Valiant very well!

I suspect this is a "Fight Club" situation. The first rule of reading these comics is to NOT talk about how.