My Valiant Story As a Longtime Comic Book Fan

How did you become a VALIANT collector?

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kaspercole
2 posts down, 2 million to go
2 posts down, 2 million to go
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 3:09:44 pm
Valiant fan since: return of Ninjak in X-O
Favorite character: Ninjak
Favorite title: X-O Manowar
Favorite writer: Joshua Dysart
Favorite artist: Tomas Giorello
My Valiant Story As a Longtime Comic Book Fan

Post by kaspercole »

Ever since I was a kid in Elementary School, I was a fan of comic books. My favorite character at the time was Spiderman. I read comic books here and there, but didn't start collecting until I was in Middle School. I mainly collected Spiderman followed by Iron Man thru middle school and my first two years of high school. It was the best of times (art-wise) and worst of times (story/writing-wise) as this period of my comic book reading was in the early 90s. At this time, most comic books were between 99 cents and $1.50. Spiderman had three ongoings (Spectacular, Amazing, and Web of Spiderman). This was also the time when the original Valiant comics were coming out. To be honest, I never saw what all the fuss was about with the original Valiant universe.

From my junior year in high school thru my college years (1993 to 2000), I stopped reading and collecting comic books. Every now and then, I discussed comic books with some of my fellow university colleagues who were more involved in comic collecting and reading. Although I was previously in the Marvel fan camp, I had a colleague convince me that DC in general was putting out better content story and character development wise than Marvel.

Graduating from college and starting out on my own, I decided to make a return to my LCS and started getting a regular pull of content based on recommendations from the people working at the LCS. I ended up getting 3-5 issues of DC's best at the time, 6-7 issues of Marvel's best, and a couple of Indy titles every month. The amount of story content I was covering every week along with the money I was dishing out monthly (the $1.50 titles I remembered as a kid in the 90s all of a sudden were $3 to $4) became a bit too overwhelming. I decided to cut out titles that people thought were "cool" and kept titles that really piqued my interest. I found as time went on that I was getting fewer and fewer Marvel titles and more DC titles in place of the dropped Marvel titles. Other than Saga, my Indy titles usually involved short-lived mini-series. I loved the idea of super heroes and super villains in a shared universe. Although DC characters felt more like they were playing in the same sandbox than Marvel characters, I still was not getting the level of quality story-wise and character building wise. I felt like DC was still throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck.

DC's New52 reboot was a year or so in and that was when I was first introduced to the Valiant universe. I missed the Harbinger boat and saw an advertisement for Ninjak being re-introduced in the X-O Manowar title. Those first couple of issues (X-O #5,6,7?) became my gateway drug into a more fine-tuned, intriguing universe with fewer monthly ongoing series to buy in on. The Ninjak intro convinced me to go back and collect the Harbinger and X-O issues I had missed. The only thing that was missing was a unified Avengers or JLA like team up. Matt Kindt then gave me Unity. Through all of this, Ninjak became my favorite character in all of comics with X-O being a close second. The only thing missing was a spy-themed series starring my favorite character. Damnit Matt Kindt you read my mind and gave me a Ninjak series. The rest is Valiant history. Through the last couple of years, I've gotten an amazing Bloodshot series by Jeff Lemire, an amazing continuation Bloodshot series by the same author, an amazing Venditti written X-O run, an ongoing amazing X-O continuation written by Matt Kindt and mostly drawn by the great Tomas Giorello. Joshua Dysart gave us one of the most complicated near-omnipotent villains ever in Toyo Harada. What amazes me the most is through these years, how the creators at Valiant continue to build on what past creators have laid out with these characters. I'm very excited to see what Valiant has in store for their characters going into 2020!

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greg
The admin around here must be getting old and soft.
The admin around here must be getting old and soft.
Posts: 22861
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2004 9:39:27 am
Valiant fan since: Rai #0
Favorite character: Depends on title
Favorite title: Depends on writer
Favorite writer: Depends on artist
Favorite artist: Depends on character
Location: Indoors
Contact:
Re: My Valiant Story As a Longtime Comic Book Fan

Post by greg »

Welcome to the board!

"my junior year in high school" - "1993"
Me too! :high-five:

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TheeBaldMoose
Rockin' out in Torquehalla
Rockin' out in Torquehalla
Posts: 2451
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2016 12:03:41 pm
Valiant fan since: ECCC April 2016
Favorite character: Bloodshot/Ninjak/Divinity
Favorite title: Divinity/BS Reborn/Britannia
Favorite writer: Kindt/Lemire/Roberts
Favorite artist: All of them, really
Location: Tacoma
Re: My Valiant Story As a Longtime Comic Book Fan

Post by TheeBaldMoose »

Welcome! Glad you found us
Moose

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grendeljd
innerSPACE does whatever I tell them
innerSPACE does whatever I tell them
Posts: 8132
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:51:43 am
Valiant fan since: 1991
Favorite character: Aric
Favorite title: Harbinger
Location: On the 7.5th floor of LesterCorp, headed through the back door to John Malkovich's brain.
Re: My Valiant Story As a Longtime Comic Book Fan

Post by grendeljd »

Welcome! Glad your comic reading journey took you through Valiant eventually - some really fantastic books since the 2012 relaunch.
I like to draw stuff... http://grendeljd.deviantart.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My wife likes to draw stuff too, and she is better than me! [I'm very proud of her]... https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sara-Dec ... ref=stream" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


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