Outpost Parallax is a weekly Saturday night musing of all things science fiction.
In the early 1990s, when the comic book boom was in full-force, I got swept up in the massive gravitational pull that was Marvel and Image Comics. While I collected some Marvel titles that I thought would be “valuable” some day, my favorite to read was the X-Men. I didn’t even go for the Avengers, Spider-Man or anything other than the X-Men. It was the same for Image comics. I collected and read some of the early titles, but something wasn’t capturing me like the X-Men did.
This is where Valiant Comics hit different for me.
Valiant Comics was different because it didn’t look like Marvel or Image’s gimmicky aesthetic. It also felt serious. The Valiant Universe as a whole also felt contained. Marvel and DC had such massive universes, and Image was so scattered that I couldn’t quite grasp it. With Valiant, there was enough world-building that I didn’t feel overwhelmed.
The art of the early Valiant comics wasn’t exactly top-tier, but strong storytelling and emphasis on character development made them stand out. They were also highly collectable at the time.
To sum up Valiant Comics in a single paragraph: Valiant was co-created by former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and launched in 1991. The launch was a massive success, and the fan-base scrambled to collect all things Valiant. In 1992 Jim Shooter was fired from Valiant, and while the company was able to hold it together for some time afterwards, sales and quality declined. Valiant Comics was sold to Acclaim Entertainment in 1994, and it was never the same. Valiant has since made several comebacks, but they never captured the glory of the early days.
Those early days of Valiant still resonate with me. It’s been decades since I’ve read any Valiant comics, but I remember big parts of the world building. It was my first exposure to the concept of the far future, which I was really fascinated with. The universe had characters that were immortal, or technologically altered, or were young and had powers.
In particular, this is where I became obsessed with what the future of humanity could look like, especially through the eyes of a family of immortals. If Star Trek showed us an optimistic version of humanity’s future, Valiant (as I remembered it) painted a flawed, imperfect future ruled by artificial intelligence and technology gone overwhelmingly crazy, and the found-family that is fighting against it.
I’ve decided to dive back into the early titles of Valiant Comics. Some of the key launch titles and issues are hard to find, and are not available digitally, but I’m working my way to what is available. I’m eager to discuss what I’ve found so far, and revisit what elements of the writing I can learn from.
