When things started to go wrong

Looking Again · Post by **Looking Again** » Mon May 03, 2004 12:13 am

Hi everyone,

Just wondering what people thought about when things started to go south for the stories. I see some people for Harbinger pick #25, for Magnus pick #25. I was curious what people thought about Solar and X-O

myron · Post by **myron** » Mon May 03, 2004 8:05 am

Looking Again wrote:Hi everyone,

Just wondering what people thought about when things started to go south for the stories. I see some people for Harbinger pick #25, for Magnus pick #25. I was curious what people thought about Solar and X-O

I would agree with Harbinger...later for magnus though...just started my Solar read...let you know when it happens...most of the other runs that I've read have really digressed around Birthquake...

Shakespeare · Post by **Shakespeare** » Mon May 03, 2004 12:12 pm

Solar lost it at about issue #14...I mean, really...vs. Master Darque? Virtual Reality? I'd say it was the earliest book to go south. And the issue after he defeated Erica, he creates Dr. Eclipse? C'MON!!!!!!!

comxfan · Post by **comxfan** » Mon May 03, 2004 1:51 pm

I tried to find the good in all the issues, but when Keith Giffen took over the writing, it totally lost it to me. Expecially toward the end, it seemed to me that what little dialogue there was was pretty crappy.
He was great with JLA, but I didn't believe he ever got a good grasp on the character.

x-omatic · Post by **x-omatic** » Mon May 03, 2004 2:49 pm

The day the stories Shooter laid out were used up.

andrew · Post by **andrew** » Mon May 03, 2004 2:53 pm

Solar's one of my favorite characters (I don't even have the early books. Haha!), but I think most of it post-Unity is terrible. Shakespeare nailed it. Solar was so powerful and they made him fight enemies that shouldn't even be in a Punisher book.

Looking Again · Post by **Looking Again** » Mon May 03, 2004 4:32 pm

x-omatic wrote:The day the stories Shooter laid out were used up.

How can I find out which issues these are for each title?

greg · Post by **greg** » Mon May 03, 2004 4:50 pm

Looking Again wrote:
x-omatic wrote:The day the stories Shooter laid out were used up.
How can I find out which issues these are for each title?

I think it would be October 1992 or November 1992 depending
on who you ask... any book after those dates is "post-Shooter".
(He may have contributed concepts to later books, but not directly.)

BodaZoffa · Post by **BodaZoffa** » Mon May 03, 2004 6:08 pm

I personally started to loose interest after X-O #15. Issues #6-#10 had me captivated, & I could hardly wait to read the next months issue. After #15, I became discouraged, & started to collect Valiant soley for the potential market value.

Boda

Sector3600 · Post by **Sector3600** » Tue May 04, 2004 10:09 am

For me

X-O

lost it soon after returning from the 'seeding' story, the book had a great potential by keeping Aric in the past for 6 month then maybe another 6 months lost in space. The thing I didn't like is that only the armor seems to evolve all those years, but Aric didn't. He seemed just a more educated barbarian.

Once Aric returned from the seeding, the stories were more of the direction that "I've been to the past, I hate the Spider Aliens, Hi - Turok, you make my time bearable!, let's go native."

There were a few potential gems in the muck:

1.) The 'government' to build the Armorine project out of #18-19. But come on, how the heck were those 'simple' suits going to beat a X-O? To me, it would have been better if the government built a new form of X-O that would give Aric a run for his money. Maybe a suit that was a mix of alien technology and the Blood of Heroes technology.
2.) X-O #27-32 were interesting, but it never truly explained (besides its tie to Rai #0) why Aric got another armor. I really felt that the new armor would have needed time to work with Aric.
3.) X-O #49, 50-X, 50-O, WOW one of the more entertaining issues of the late run. I felt it was TOO short, in terms of it someone could take over the new X-O armor and yet Aric wins it over again. That was the weak part, it was a relatively new armor so Aric would have to fight more to win it back.

Solar

1.) "Fender" Bender, the potential to be one of the most powerful anti-Solar villains and it failed. I also believe it was too soon for yet another 'trip' to the power source of Solar. What it was like, "Duh! Phil, how many times do you screw up by letting someone learn of your powers?"
2.) I liked the Seedling x-over with X-O. It was an interesting tie to the Valiant mythos, in regards to setting up the data needed for the Destroyer and the view on the X-O role.
3.) Once Master Darque forced the birth of the Destroyer and revealed that Solar was a 'destroyer' of worlds. The rest of the Series seemed to fall apart too quickly. Harada had the potential to wipe out Phil during this time and it made me wonder, why didn't Phil kill Harada after learning he survived Solar #3??????

Magnus

The Maleev War, when without any explanation Magnus had to be sporting battle armor?!?!?!? Come on, it should have been revealed that Magnus now needed it to live or something. Imagine how much better it could have been it the first thing the Maleev's did was leave Magnus for dead in a near-fatal starship crash or direct attack. Magnus needed the battle armor to protect his wounds because of his Harbinger abilities he couldn't be healed with normal medical procedures at the time.
The potential gems: The 41st Century X-O Manowar, the tribe of Turok (or Aric?), and the battle with the Immortal Enemy!

Ax · Post by Ax » Tue May 04, 2004 12:29 pm

If they had focused XO Manowar around the ring instead of Aric then there would have been fresh material to keep the series interesting. And have Aric regain the ring in time for the events of Rai#0. They also could have just jumped the XO series into the future to follow the armor that Magnus had.

Hoosierdaddy · Post by **Hoosierdaddy** » Tue May 04, 2004 1:32 pm

My two cents? I don't think the stories went to pot after Shooter stopped WRITING so much as after Shooter DEPARTED. After all, Jim handpicked Bob Layton to take over as editor-in-chief and still maintained secondary editorial control right up until the time of the hostile takeover. So the arc remained strong and most of the stories were still VERY much "Shooter approved" long after his byline stopped appearing on the books. However, after he left (anyone remember his angry 'open letter' to Wizard at the time?) I could see a NOTICEABLE decline in story quality and the overall arc just fell to pieces. Sad.

BloodOfHeroes · Post by **BloodOfHeroes** » Tue May 04, 2004 5:55 pm

Sector3600 wrote:Harada had the potential to wipe out Phil during this time and it made me wonder, why didn't Phil kill Harada after learning he survived Solar #3??????

Phil was, simply put, messed up. He was fanboy personified. The "Doctor Solar" part of him would never let him kill anyone intentionally. He couldn't even kill Ravenous or Eclipse, after all.

BoH

BloodOfHeroes · Post by **BloodOfHeroes** » Tue May 04, 2004 8:52 pm

Knightt_333 wrote:All stories after Shooter left and Bloodshot #40 after Kevin Vanhook left.

Once Kevin quit as an editor, there was a HUGE slide in quality on ALL titles.

BoH

BloodOfHeroes · Post by **BloodOfHeroes** » Wed May 05, 2004 2:35 pm

Knightt_333 wrote:Kevin KNOWS how to write gangster/mob stories and that was one quality of Bloodshot that I liked. I re-read Ninjak #1 last night and really liked it (again) and guess who was editor-in-chief for the book ? Kevin Vanhook.

I just got in The Visitor #3 completing my Visitor run... cant wait to read these issues (I never picked them up back in the day) after I finish Ninjak.

I am re-reading all my completed Valiant titles (still needing last issue of Turok to be at 100% for everything) and I have noticed that I really like Kevin's and Jim Shooter's work. VERY good story tellers and THAT, my friends is what comics are all about and why Valiant was so great... story telling.

Amen, kind sir. Amen. Check out some of Kevin's non-Valiant work. You won't be disappointed. He's da man.

BoH

Jaknife · Post by **Jaknife** » Wed May 05, 2004 2:48 pm

list some of his works. i havent seen anything by him latley, mainly cuz i havent looked, but ah, whattaya gonna do?

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When things started to go wrong

When things started to go wrong

Re: When things started to go wrong

When X-O lost it