Valiant Comics

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Valiant Comics logo introduced in 2012

Valiant is an American comic book publisher of 1990-2000 Comics published and at times the third-largest US was comic book publishing. After the publishing house went bankrupt in 2004, it was acquired by Dinesh Shahmdasani and Jason Kathari and founded in 2005 as Valiant Entertainment . Comics have been published again since 2012.

Beginnings

In 1988, Jim Shooter , the former editor-in-chief of the comic book publisher Marvel Comics , tried to take over his financially troubled former employer. Together with Steven J. Massarsky - lawyer and former manager a. a. the Allman Brothers Band , Winston Fowlkes, and the Triumph Capital investor group , Shooter raised $ 81 million, but when it came to Marvel's auction, another bidder won. A second plan to buy up Harvey Comics has also been abandoned. Shooter and his donors then decided to use the money raised to set up their own comic book publisher.

Voyager Communications

In 1989 Shooter and Massarsky founded Voyager Communications , the company under which, according to the plan, Voyager Comics should appear in the future . However, it turned out that Voyager was already registered by another comic book publisher, and the name of the publisher was quickly changed to Valiant Comics , also in order to be able to continue using the already designed V logo; the name of the parent company remained unchanged.

At the beginning, the company looked for established franchises in order to guarantee Valiant the best possible start. The immense popularity of Nintendo , which was dominating the video game market at the time, and the wrestling organization WWF , which was at the height of its notoriety, led to licensing agreements being made with both of them that would enable Valiant to exclusively license Nintendo - and bring out WWF comics. In particular, they hoped for marketing support from Nintendo, whose insider magazine Nintendo Power had a circulation of over 3 million issues at the time, which in return would have meant that Valiant would also have been able to reach a large number of video game fans. Consequently, the first comics published in 1990 were Nintendo comics for video games such as Captain N , The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. and in 1991 wrestling comics such as WWF Battlemania or WWF: Ultimate Warrior's Workout .

The hoped-for response did not materialize, however; neither did a large number of wrestling fans resort to the corresponding comics, nor did comics relating to video games reach video game or comic fans. To make matters worse, Nintendo barely supported the new publisher and the costs for the licenses had eaten up a large part of the capital, so that the situation looked threatening for Valiant after the first year.

In this situation, Shooter decided to completely restructure the comic book program and to concentrate entirely on superhero comics, then as now the dominant genre of the US comic market. To this end, Shooter licensed some classic characters from Western Publishing , Doctor Solar , Magnus, Robot Fighter, and Turok . At the same time, Shooter brought established comic book greats on board, particularly Bob Laytob and Barry Windsor-Smith . Shooter, Windsor-Smith and Layton as the creative architects of the newly created Valiant Universe now set about creating the superhero universe that was to become the basis for Valiant Comics.

Valiant Heroes 1

The first series published by Valiant Magnus Robot Fighter in early 1991 with a story written by Jim Shooter, Steel Nation . The sales figures were not very high for the market at that time with 60,000 issues, but Valiant's second title, Solar - Man of the Atom , started three months later . Harbinger was the third series that Valiant released and the first to not have a " Gold Key " license. Other early Valiant series were XO Manowar and Shadowman ; the foundation was thus finally laid.

Valiant's marketing strategies at that time were revolutionary for the comic market at the time: The first eight magazines by Magnus, for example, contained coupons, for which, sent to Valiant, you received an exclusive # 0 magazine. In addition to the normal story , Magnus # 5 received the first part of a miniseries with the Japanese hero Rai as a flip book at no extra charge. After the miniseries within the Magnus series ended, Rai got his own comic series, the fourth ongoing Valiant series in the new superhero universe. Another innovation of Valiant was the introduction of so-called "Origin Issues", comic editions with the number 0, which, although they appeared later, play thematically before issue 1. In particular, the practice of these "zero issues" was later adopted by almost all of the major comic publishers and is now normal, at least in the field of superhero comics.

Valiant Comics slowly began to build a broader fan base, not least through the promotion of the comic magazine Wizard , which began to focus more and more on the up-and-coming publisher's publications. Magnus Robot Figher # 12 (with the first appearance of Turok , whose appearance completed the trio of licensed Gold-Key figures after a year ) and Solar # 10 (the first appearance of Eternal Warrior ) were particularly popular with the fans. At the annual Diamond Comic Distributors event in 1992, Valiant was named “Publisher of the Year” and for the first time held third place in terms of market share of the US comic market, behind Marvel Comics and DC Comics . Jim Shooter received a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1993 Valiant was again named Publisher of the Year .

At the peak

Despite the apparent success Valiant had, the company's debts were still dire and senior management devised the Unity Crossover to drive sales even further. Unity was a miniseries that combined all of the running Valiant titles into a single storyline . In addition, two new series, Eternal Warrior and Archer and Armstrong , were launched with Unity . Unity # 0, the prologue to the crossover, was released for free by Valiant, another of Valiant's marketing strategies that worked perfectly. Fans loved Unity and sales of the Valiant series continued to skyrocket. Issues of Rai and Turok and new series such as Bloodshot , HARD Corps or Ninjak sold very well in the booming comic market of that time: Turok # 1 sold 1,750,000 issues, Bloodshot # 1 900,000 issues, XO Manowar # 0 850,000, Rai # 9 800,000, Secret Weapons # 1 650,000, Ninjak # 1 and Second Life of Dr. Mirage # 1 500,000 issues each. In total, Valiant had sold more than 50 million comics by this time.

Valiant titles were consistently in the top 10 of the comic charts during this phase, and the early issues from the pre-Unity era began to fetch very high prices with collectors, sometimes over $ 100; for individual issues that were rarely more than a year old. Towards the end of 1993, sales of Valiant stocks peaked and investors began to see the time to take their profits. At this time, Jim Shooter left the company after internal power struggles and the like. a. with Bob Layton.

Armada and Windjammer

At the height of its popularity, Valiant decided to diversify its comic book program and formed the Imprints Armada and Windjammer . Licensed material related to the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering appeared under the Armada banner .

Windjammer only published series whose rights remained with the respective artists; a not an everyday concept at the time. Here appeared u. a. Neal Adams KnightHawk , Samuree and Valeria the She-Bat , as well as Mike Grells Starslayer and Bar Sinister .

After shooter and decline

With Valiant, the boom in the American comic book market of the early and mid-90s reached its peak. Valiant, like many other publishers, no longer produced stories , they created collectibles . Those with hologram or chrome covers, gold logos and similar, mostly purely optical, gimmicks and with z. B. Trading cards distributed and therefore sealed, comics mostly served the sole purpose of creating artificially small editions of these "special editions" and at the same time increasing the print runs through different (cover) variants of the same editions, but they were less and less attractive because of their content . Saturated the market and speculators found out that comics were not suitable as an investment, burst the bubble . As a result, sales plummeted. Despite further attempts such as the Deathmate crossover with Image Comics and publisher-wide events such as the Chaos Effect , Valiant, like other comic publishers, lost crowds of readers.

At that moment, Triumph Capital finally decided to sell Valiant; the publisher went to video game maker Acclaim Entertainment for $ 65 million . Acclaim's primary motivation for this was some characters for whom video games were to be created, such as Shadowman, XO Manowar, and especially Turok.

Acclaim and Valiant Heroes 2

Valiant, now led by Acclaim, initially tried to bring back lost readers with the crossover Birthquake . With Acclaim's investment, a number of popular cartoonists such as Dan Jurgens , Ron Marz, and Bart Sears were hired to feature Birthquake. A total of eight old Valiant titles were previously discontinued in order to concentrate on the new direction. These measures did not have the desired effect, and series such as Shadowman , Timewalker and Visitor were also discontinued shortly afterwards. The downward trend could not be stopped permanently and Acclaim began to cut Valiant's employees in mid-1995. All Valiant titles were finally completely discontinued at the beginning of 1996 under the new editor-in-chief Fabian Nicieza .

With completely new creative teams and under the label Valiant Heroes by Acclaim Comics , another attempt was made to revive the Valiant universe in the form of "Valiant Heroes 2", or VH2. Some series and characters were changed, sometimes massively, for this radical new start - such as Eternal Warriors , Shadowman or Turok - others had little more in common with their predecessor after their redesign - such as Bloodshot , Ninjak or XO Manowar . At the same time, completely new series were brought out, such as Quantum & Woody , Trinity Angels and Troublemakers , and the program was expanded to include humor ( Bad Eggs ), horror ( Gravediggers ) and crime ( Armed and Dangerous , Grackle ). In addition, Acclaim acquired a wide range of different licenses: films and series ( Power Rangers - Season Power Rangers Turbo , Sliders or Waterworld ); Tabletop games ( Mutant Chronicles ) and the rights to Classics Illustrated , the traditional series of comic adaptations of classical literature. Entertainment giant Disney was also brought on board with licenses for Arielle and Hercules .

But despite encouraging sales of Bloodshot and the new series Quantum & Woody and Troublemakers , neither VH2 nor the licensed comics could meet Acclaim's expectations. Due to the relative success of the video games around XO Manowar and especially Turok, the non-publishing comics were gradually reduced and the focus was more on VH2 around the video game characters.

Valiant Heroes 0

After initial successes, sales of the re-imagined Valiant universe fell significantly, and in 1999 Acclaim discontinued a large part of the remaining VH2 comic series, not least due to noticeable losses in the video game division. In 2000, Acclaim's comics division attempted one last coup. As part of the crossover Unity 2000 - so called based on the original crossover Unity from the early days of Valiant - the former driving force, Jim Shooter, was brought back to revise the Valiant / Acclaim universe again. Unity 2000 presented another universe, unofficially called "VH0" by fans, which represented Jim Shooter's vision of the Valiant universe, if Shooter would have had the opportunity to continue it according to his ideas until the end. At the end of the crossover, according to Shooter, the "VH0" universe should be destroyed and the previous VH1 and VH2 universes amalgamated into a single, further new comic universe. But it shouldn't come to that. The company's continued losses in the video game market resulted in Acclaim pulling out of the comics field entirely in 2000; Unity 2000 only published the first three issues of the six-issue mini-series.

In 2003 Acclaim filed for bankruptcy.

Valiant Entertainment

In 2003 Acclaim gave up the rights to Magnus, Robot Fighter and Solar, which reverted to Western Publishing. iBooks Inc. announced in April 2004 that they have signed a deal with Western Publishing to bring new Magnus, Robot Fighter material out. The remaining Valiant licenses were bought out by Starz Media after Acclaim went bankrupt in 2004 . In 2005, a group of investors led by Dinesh Shamdasani and Jason Kothari acquired all rights to the extensive publishing catalog from Valiant's estate and founded Valiant Entertainment (VE). Comics have been published again since 2012, starting with reboots of well-known titles such as XO Manowar or Bloodshot .

In Germany

The Actionkraft publishing house, a sub-label of the Schwerkraft games publisher, has been publishing the following Valiant comics in German since 2019:

  • Archer & Armstrong
  • Bloodshot
  • Harbinger
  • Quantum & Woody
  • XO Manowar

Other media

Acclaim published various video games with the Valiant heroes Shadowman, Turok and XO Manowar.

Comicography

Nintendo Comics (selection)

  • Adventures of the Super Mario Bros. # 1-9 (1991)
  • Captain N : The Game Master # 1-6 (1990-1991)
  • Game Boy # 1-4 (1990)
  • The Legend of Zelda ( First Series ) # 1-5 (1990)
  • The Legend of Zelda ( Second Series ) # 1-5 (1990)
  • Super Mario Bros. ( First Series ) # 1-6 (1990-1991)
  • Super Mario Bros. ( Second Series ) # 1-5 (1991)

Wrestling comics

  • Valiant Illustrated Action Books: Ultimate Warrior 's Workout (1991)
  • Valiant Illustrated Action Books Wait Till I Get My Hands On… (1991)
  • WWF Battlemania # 1-5 (1991-1992)
  • WWF: Ultimate Warrior's Workout (1991)
  • WWF: World Wrestling Foundation # 1-4 (1991)

VH1 (selection)

Crossover

  • Deathmate ( with Image Comics ) # 1-6 (Prolog, Black, Yellow, Blue, Red, Silver / Epilog) (1993-1994)
  • Magnus Robot Fighter / Nexus ( with Dark Horse Comics ) # 1, # 2 (1993–1994)
  • Predator vs. Magnus Robot Fighter ( from Dark Horse Comics ) # 1, # 2 (1992-1993)
  • XO Manowar / Iron Man : In Heavy Metal ( with Marvel Comics ) # 1, # 2 (1996)

Acclaim Comics / VH2 (selection)

  • Bloodshot ( Second Series ) # 1-16 (1997-1998)
  • Magnus Robot Fighter ( Second Series ) # 1-18 (1997-1998)
  • Ninjak ( Second Series ) # 1-12 (1997-1998)
  • Quantum & Woody # 0, # 1–21, # 32 ( 23 issues ; 1997–1998, 2000)
  • Shadowman ( Second Series ) # 1-20 (1996-1998)
  • Shadowman ( Third Series ) # 1-6 (1999)
  • Troublemakers # 1-19 (1997-1998)
  • XO Manowar ( Second Series ) # 1–21 (1996–1998)

VH0

  • Unity 2000 # 1–3 ( of planned six ) (1999–2000)

Web links

Commons : Valiant Comics  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stephanie Carrie: Valiant Comics: Two Students Did Not Want to See Their Favorite Comic Book Brand Die. So They Bought the Company. LA Weekly, May 16, 2012, accessed June 26, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c http://www.comicbooked.com/valiant-efforts-part-1/
  3. ↑ a b Interview with Jim Shooter ( Memento from May 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ a b http://www.comicbooked.com/valiant-efforts-part-2-the-history-of-valiant-comics/
  5. ↑ http://www.gregholland.com/VALIANT/beginnersguide.pdf
  6. ↑ http://www.badmouth.net/the-comic-book-apocalypse/
  7. ↑ http://www.comicbooked.com/valiants-efforts-the-history-of-valiant-comics-part-3/
  8. ↑ http://www.shooterswork.com/valiant/misc/u2kplot.pdf
  9. ↑ http://onlythevaliant.com/blog/the-future-of-valiant-comics/