The Valiant by Matt Kindt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Valiant Comics are back. That’s a thing.
If you’d have asked me a few years ago which comics would never come back, I would have said:
Solar: Man of the Atom
Warriors of Plasm
and probably ROM: Space Knight.
Solar: Man of the Atom got his powers by…who cares? Solar is like the king of the dollar comics bins. When someone has a big box of comics from the 90’s, and they’re really excited about it, dollars to donuts you’ll find some Solar in there.
Warriors of Plasm ran for about a year, and it was canceled. But I had a Plasm poster in my bedroom that I thought was pretty cool, even though the primary focus in the image was a portly dude in pants up above his belly throwing a haymaker.
And then ROM: Space Knight. I think the premise is mostly in the title. He’s a space knight. Robot. Guy.
One of these three titles has made a comeback, along with its brethren from Valiant. Any guesses?
Well, it’s Solar. And Valiant comics, in general.
The way I found out about it was from a comic book club I run at a high school. For work. Good god, thank everything that’s holy that I’m not visiting a high school twice a month just because it’s the only way I can get people to talk to me about comics. I mean, it IS, but that’s not the primary motivator, so all is good.
One of the kids in the book club told me that Valiant was putting out good books. And I was like, “Valiant? You mean…there are Valiant books out now? Not some old Solar: Man of the Atom books from your uncle’s garage or something?”
Nope. Valiant.
The characters they have running now aren’t the worst, honestly. A ninja, an immortal hobo, some guy who kills people with an axe, or at least tries. In this book, we mostly see him get housed over and over throughout history by the same infinite evil.
Bloodshot’s banter is fun. There’s someone who calls herself a Geomancer, whatever the fuck that is. She doesn’t even know herself.
This book kind of a big, whole universe book, and I guess it was weird to me because I don’t know very many of these characters. So seeing, you know, a giant robot and XO Manowar together at last was less exciting than it was supposed to be.
But there it is. Valiant comics. Who’s have thought?