Harbinger Wars II #4

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TheeBaldMoose
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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by TheeBaldMoose »

grendeljd wrote:
Dallow Spicer1 wrote:
TheeBaldMoose wrote:
Kindt will be gone after 24 on XO. He won't write for Valiant again (sadly)

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
When did this news come out?
I haven’t heard that yet either! Is it official?
Sorry guys, was away for a great busy weekend!

Nothing official, just my gut feeling, my :twocents:
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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by kinggirlfriend »

I believe the current X-O arc AGENT goes to #22. I'd be surprised if it's this close to ending and we haven't heard about it or a new series by now. Though to be fair, Valiant aren't exactly announcing much of where they're heading these days. But it'll be weird if X-O goes away for a while.

They can get rid of Kindt, he's done very good work and more than any other Valiant creator, but I hope they don't cancel the series outright and instead have another writer pick up the reins. But I'm guessing it would be hard for them to refuse marketing it as "ALL NEW #1, BEST JUMPING ON POINT EVER". Even though they are never good jumping on points for the uninitiated.

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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by agent_graves »

:( :censored: facepalm
#StayValiant

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Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by AnarchoMambo »

Waitaminute, Matt Kindt has a long history of writing riveting stuff for Valiant. Then he accepted an assignment to rewrite a summer event at the last minute, coming to the rescue for a brand-new transitional editorial staff that were in a bad situation, and it was about to only get worse. Matt laid his reputation on the line, and probably comes out the worse for it.

We get no official word about any changed status with Valiant, yet many assume that he’s out after the latest arc? Is this how Valiant is to treat their writers? I should hope not, and I would see no reason for such treatment.

It’s clear that Heisserer is gone, and probably now Lemire too, but I can see absolutely no evidence for this flimsy echoing argument about Kindt, the creator of Divinity, leaving Valiant.

Valiant may be served very well by maintaining a diverse stable of writers from the more experienced (Milligan, Kindt, Diggle) to the more youthful (Houser, Ayala, Nadler & Thompson.) I believe that Valiant will have some exciting books forthcoming, and no evidence at all that Matt Kindt will not continue to be a part of it.

And why would XO reboot now anyway? Soft reboots (restarts, really) like we have seen with Shadowman and XO, as well as series that serve to fill in back stories, like we have seen with Ninja-K and now Bloodshot, are a reality. But XO is a flagship title, and continues to sell well. This was also true of Bloodshot Salvation, but I believe that that title was only ended because Lemire wanted it to be over.

At C2E2 2018, VEI May not have put their best collective feet forward to impress longtime fans, but Matt Kindt was definitely an exception. He was knowledgeable of Valiant’s entire history (third perhaps only to Atom and Fred Pierce) and showed a true love and dedication for Valiant.

Therefore, we should not judge Matt Kindt on the results of Harbinger Wars 2 alone.

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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by markie7235 »

AnarchoMambo wrote:Waitaminute, Matt Kindt has a long history of writing riveting stuff for Valiant. Then he accepted an assignment to rewrite a summer event at the last minute, coming to the rescue for a brand-new transitional editorial staff that were in a bad situation, and it was about to only get worse. Matt laid his reputation on the line, and probably comes out the worse for it.

We get no official word about any changed status with Valiant, yet many assume that he’s out after the latest arc? Is this how Valiant is to treat their writers? I should hope not, and I would see no reason for such treatment.

It’s clear that Heisserer is gone, and probably now Lemire too, but I can see absolutely no evidence for this flimsy echoing argument about Kindt, the creator of Divinity, leaving Valiant.

Valiant may be served very well by maintaining a diverse stable of writers from the more experienced (Milligan, Kindt, Diggle) to the more youthful (Houser, Ayala, Nadler & Thompson.) I believe that Valiant will have some exciting books forthcoming, and no evidence at all that Matt Kindt will not continue to be a part of it.

And why would XO reboot now anyway? Soft reboots (restarts, really) like we have seen with Shadowman and XO, as well as series that serve to fill in back stories, like we have seen with Ninja-K and now Bloodshot, are a reality. But XO is a flagship title, and continues to sell well. This was also true of Bloodshot Salvation, but I believe that that title was only ended because Lemire wanted it to be over.

At C2E2 2018, VEI May not have put their best collective feet forward to impress longtime fans, but Matt Kindt was definitely an exception. He was knowledgeable of Valiant’s entire history (third perhaps only to Atom and Fred Pierce) and showed a true love and dedication for Valiant.

Therefore, we should not judge Matt Kindt on the results of Harbinger Wars 2 alone.
I have to agree. I know some have criticisms of him beyond HW2, but his work on X-O, Divinity, and Eternity were phenomenal. Not to mention The Valiant and the early Unity books. I'll concede, Matt is strongest when writing books more sci-fi geared, but considering there is an element of Sci-Fi/Cosmic in the Valiant universe at this point, I think writing him off over Hw2 is a little unfair. If he continues his work at Valiant, I would think the smarter move would be to let him focus his work on books like Divinity/Eternity, and expanding the Cosmic universe in Valiant. Let others focus on Shadowman, Bloodshot, Harbingers, etc.

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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by SuperMage »

markie7235 wrote:
jmatt wrote:Taken in its entirety, this was a flop. Mostly because Valiant doesn't have any villains so they are left pitting the heroes against each other. And the villains they do have, they ignore.
THIS....This is my biggest concern and issue with Valiant at this point (this disaster of an event series aside). Valiant has no real villains, and most of the interesting ones they try to come up with they kill off or turn into some neutral group. Look at Eternity....Are there Villains, are there not? I get that everything isn't so black & white, but these are comic books, you should at least have a group you side with.

The original Harbinger Wars worked, but how many times can you essentially do "Marvel Civil War". At some point, you need more than your heroes beating the snot out of each other. Harada works as a Villain. Darque is an awesome villain. David Camp "could" be a good villain. After that, most of them get killed off after they serve their purpose or are rather boring. While investing in your heroes are great, I'd rather they spend more creative energy on developing and creating new main stay villains and less on how can we spin hero X's origin story in a new direction for the umpteenth time. I swear to god every Valiant hero has like 20 origin stories...Do we really need more?

I feel like the core issue is that there isn't much focus on developing existing characters. Too many organizations of faceless villains with ambiguous motivations, too many throwaway villains, and too many characters with potential who get killed off for no reason. Did they really need to kill Kozol, Cronus, Telic, Primary Reebo, Archer's parents, TADD, etc. Stop killing characters, and let them grow. Character deaths don't mean anything if we haven't had time to connect with the characters, and no, a single volume is not enough time to become attached to a character. Look at all of the best DC/Marvel villains. They're great characters not just because of their motivations and their powers, but because of their history. History is what makes a character iconic, and difficult to replace. If you kill your characters only four years after their first appearance, then obviously they won't have much history. Morris Kozol was slowly becoming a great antagonist for Valiant heroes. He was the leader of PRS who stirred up trouble for the Renegades, Harada, Archer & Armstrong, and Bloodshot. Each time he appeared it usually in the same role, but from a different perspective that made him feel dynamic and fun. I loved Morris Kozol, great character with the potential to become Valiant's own Lex Luther or Norman Osborn. Then Jeff Lemire kills him. Why? What did that accomplish? He died just so that he could be a replaced with a "gritty" ersatz version of himself leading an ersatz version of PRS. It wasn't possible for Omen, and PRS to both be active at the same time? Someone had to die for "drama".

Harbinger Wars II was an excellent opportunity to develop some new antagonist with Solomon, and The Stormbringer. Solomon had/has potential to be a great antagonist because he's a character who works towards his own personal agenda which coincidentally conflicts the goals of the heroes. Perfect. Then he's completely absent from the event A VCR podcast a while back for X-O pretty much hit the nail on the head with Valiant's rotating door problem. We're just overloaded with new characters constantly, but there's never any time taken to actually develop those characters.

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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by kinggirlfriend »

SuperMage wrote:
markie7235 wrote:
jmatt wrote:Taken in its entirety, this was a flop. Mostly because Valiant doesn't have any villains so they are left pitting the heroes against each other. And the villains they do have, they ignore.
THIS....This is my biggest concern and issue with Valiant at this point (this disaster of an event series aside). Valiant has no real villains, and most of the interesting ones they try to come up with they kill off or turn into some neutral group. Look at Eternity....Are there Villains, are there not? I get that everything isn't so black & white, but these are comic books, you should at least have a group you side with.

The original Harbinger Wars worked, but how many times can you essentially do "Marvel Civil War". At some point, you need more than your heroes beating the snot out of each other. Harada works as a Villain. Darque is an awesome villain. David Camp "could" be a good villain. After that, most of them get killed off after they serve their purpose or are rather boring. While investing in your heroes are great, I'd rather they spend more creative energy on developing and creating new main stay villains and less on how can we spin hero X's origin story in a new direction for the umpteenth time. I swear to god every Valiant hero has like 20 origin stories...Do we really need more?

I feel like the core issue is that there isn't much focus on developing existing characters. Too many organizations of faceless villains with ambiguous motivations, too many throwaway villains, and too many characters with potential who get killed off for no reason. Did they really need to kill Kozol, Cronus, Telic, Primary Reebo, Archer's parents, TADD, etc. Stop killing characters, and let them grow. Character deaths don't mean anything if we haven't had time to connect with the characters, and no, a single volume is not enough time to become attached to a character. Look at all of the best DC/Marvel villains. They're great characters not just because of their motivations and their powers, but because of their history. History is what makes a character iconic, and difficult to replace. If you kill your characters only four years after their first appearance, then obviously they won't have much history. Morris Kozol was slowly becoming a great antagonist for Valiant heroes. He was the leader of PRS who stirred up trouble for the Renegades, Harada, Archer & Armstrong, and Bloodshot. Each time he appeared it usually in the same role, but from a different perspective that made him feel dynamic and fun. I loved Morris Kozol, great character with the potential to become Valiant's own Lex Luther or Norman Osborn. Then Jeff Lemire kills him. Why? What did that accomplish? He died just so that he could be a replaced with a "gritty" ersatz version of himself leading an ersatz version of PRS. It wasn't possible for Omen, and PRS to both be active at the same time? Someone had to die for "drama".

Harbinger Wars II was an excellent opportunity to develop some new antagonist with Solomon, and The Stormbringer. Solomon had/has potential to be a great antagonist because he's a character who works towards his own personal agenda which coincidentally conflicts the goals of the heroes. Perfect. Then he's completely absent from the event A VCR podcast a while back for X-O pretty much hit the nail on the head with Valiant's rotating door problem. We're just overloaded with new characters constantly, but there's never any time taken to actually develop those characters.
Agreed. And very much co-sign what you said about Kozol. Why did they introduce his relationship with Granite if they were both going to get killed off? All those you mentioned along with Gamete, that one stings the worst for me. What on earth was the purpose of introducing such a unique character only to kill her (it?)? There was obviously a bigger plan I'd like to hope. Seems very shortsighted.

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Re: Harbinger Wars II #4

Post by Jace »

DBS and I break down Harbinger Wars issue #4 and the Aftermath issue as well. What went wrong? Why did it go wrong and whose to blame? Where does Valiant go from here and specifically Livewire? Join us for the latest episode of valiant Sunday,

https://lrmonline.com/news/episode-523/


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