Re-Reading: X-O Manowar #28

[xoken]

I thought we could do a book a day (that way people can read one every day or catch up on weekends), talk about it on its own, in the context of whats next, in regards to what expectations it creates and vote on how good it is. I don't have to be the one that posts everyday. If I miss a day or if someone wants to take over please do

For voting think of your single favourite comic book (not just VALIANT) as the benchmark - thats a 10 - and grade according to that.

Make sure to mention what you like'd about the book, what you didn't, what you wish they would have done, your favourite panels, lines of dialogue, little bits of trivia etc.

X-O Manowar #28

[Todd Luck]

Because everyone else was doing it at the time...Aric's armor gets blown up.

First of all the good. Gotta give them props for finally having the bugs do something right. The plan was actually quite clever. There's a nice ominious tension here; we know something's wrong with the armor. And, even if we know he'll probably be back in full armor in a couple issues, the scene were they blow up the Manowar is dramatic.

But it could've been better. You'ld think they could've left the X-O with enough juice to put up a fight and go out in a blaze of glory. It seems like the armor's either invincible or completely helpless, there's no inbetween.

And it's hard to square the aliens being smart enough to destroy the armor with a scene where dozens of armed aliens in a living room can't take a woman with a sword and a guy with a pistol. Looking at how the scene is drawn, they should've shot or overwhelmed Randy and Paul within seconds. Oh, and when did the aliens get stupid enough to feed in the middle of a battle?

A 7.

[magnusr]

Lots of action, and the spider aliens are a menace again.

/Magnus

[Daniel Jackson]

You know, here we are only up to issue #28 and Valiant feels the need to shake things up again. Personally I think this was a bad move getting rid of the original suit at this point in time. It was a decent story, but I think they should have delayed doing something like this for a quite a while.

[jedimarley]

Good issue. Can't go wrong with death, destruction, and spider aliens.

Good story. Jorge Gonzalez, to me, is one of the better post-Shooter writers.

7

[tarheelmarine]

I didn't care for the destruction of the suit because of all the journeys that Aric and Shan-hara had from the beginning. I also didn't buy the look of the new armor when it merged with Paul. Shan-hara had to evolve to the modern look over 2,000 years as Aric was in stasis. When Pol-Bek-Hara (new armor) came along I expected it to be much simpler looking. It would have been interesting to know if each host influenced the initial design of the armor, but I was under the impression that each suit should evolve at the same rate.

Any other thoughts?

[Todd Luck]

I didn't care for the destruction of the suit because of all the journeys that Aric and Shan-hara had from the beginning. I also didn't buy the look of the new armor when it merged with Paul. Shan-hara had to evolve to the modern look over 2,000 years as Aric was in stasis. When Pol-Bek-Hara (new armor) came along I expected it to be much simpler looking. It would have been interesting to know if each host influenced the initial design of the armor, but I was under the impression that each suit should evolve at the same rate.

Any other thoughts?

Didn't X-O #0 show the armor looking exactly the same when it was born as it did in X-O 1 (1000's of years later)? The new armor looks mostly like X-O orginally looked and didn't morph into the modern look for some reason that Shanhara ended up with after X-O 10. Maybe it did later during the Accliam era.

But here's why replacing the armor was dumb. It's not just that it was part of the most annoying trend of the 90's to blow up, maim, kill, retire, redo, replace, ect everything they could to get higher sales.

We know Aric is going to be wearing an armor for a long time. Not just because of Rai 0 but because the name of the damn book is X-O Manowar. Ofcourse he's going to get another one.

And X-O's are uniform, other than some minor cosmetic differences, they're all the same. What's supposed to be exciting about him getting a new armor? "Wow! Look, he has different boots now..." Yeah I know they'll eventually have Paul start talking to Aric but I wasn't really wild about that either.

And they spent a couple years building up how unique and rare this armor is. Aric goes, what, a couple days before he gets a second Manowar?

And part of the mystique of armor was that it was ancient and alien, which this kind of under cuts.

[tarheelmarine]

I agree with all that you say and that is why I really disliked this issue because when they destroyed Shan-hara they threw away the history that Aric had with his original armor.

This is where I feel Valiant started going downhill with the X-O issues.