just got through Chaos Effect

[Schmakt]

and yuck.

I'm in the middle of reading the entire Valiant Universe. Up through Unity (and slightly thereafter), the comics really had a great sense of community, continuity, and storytelling... Although some of the books got tiresome pre-Chaos, I was hoping Chaos was going to pull things together again and give a better sense of community. (Should have known better... "Chaos"... of course)

Just... yuck... I've found myself counting the number of issues left of certain series... just hoping that I'm almost finished reading them.
- It's good that Archer & Armstrong ended in Chaos.
- Secret Weapons never should have gone through the roster change... it's a real chore to try and read that crap.
- Eternal Warrior is usually a fun read
- Geomancer has potential, but I think it's going to fall down
- Solar... wtf. It just got crazy. Destroyer/Solar/1994/4201... geez.
- Turok bores me too, and I'm really *SQUEE* that I have so many issues left to read. I imagine it's due to the video games... it could pick up tho
- Magnus quickly went downhill. Magnus in 1994 could be cool, but I totally don't care about Torque.
- Rai... again, potential. Rai is such a cool character. The post-Malev art turns me off, but it's still a great character.
- Bloodshot is... fine.
- Timewalker also has tons of potential and I'm hopeful for it.
- Shadowman is, perhaps, the best read of the entire Valiant line. Bob Hall did a great great job with a character that seemed to me to be a B-list character at best
- X-O was a great character too... I'm scared of the later issues based on the covers, but it's still a decent read around Chaos
- Hard Corps needs to end.
- Harbinger needs to end. After Pete left, Harbinger became extremely uninteresting. Hopefully this and Hard Corps are building to something good.
- Psi-Lords is awful. Decent ideas, but I really hate reading this series.
- Armorines should have never been made. Ok, if overused, idea, but the story and scripting are very unexciting.
- Ninjak is also kind of unoriginal, but it still has some pretty basic "cool" potential. I still haven't started caring about the character tho. And the loss of Quesada on art doesn't help.
- I've always liked Dr. Mirage for some reason, but I'm getting tired of this too. And the soap opera guest star was just dumb.

I think that's about it... I'm definitely going to continue reading everything just so I will have read every issue, but it is FAR less enjoyable than it used to be. It might also be just a matter of too many titles for me to care about them all.

As for Chaos itself... it seemed to be some mixed up version of War of the Worlds. too many dangling plotlines... too much unexplained. I'm usually a fan of major crossovers, but this one sucked.

[Daniel Jackson]

As for Chaos itself... it seemed to be some mixed up version of War of the Worlds. too many dangling plotlines... too much unexplained. I'm usually a fan of major crossovers, but this one sucked.

Yep.

[jedimarley]

As for Chaos itself... it seemed to be some mixed up version of War of the Worlds. too many dangling plotlines... too much unexplained. I'm usually a fan of major crossovers, but this one sucked.

Yep.

Valiant thought they could pull off another "Unity" like crossover.
Boy, were they wrong.

[Eric Jackson]

so, moving on to birthquake now? you should be real excited for that one!

[Daniel Jackson]

As for Chaos itself... it seemed to be some mixed up version of War of the Worlds. too many dangling plotlines... too much unexplained. I'm usually a fan of major crossovers, but this one sucked.

Yep.

Valiant thought they could pull off another "Unity" like crossover.
Boy, were they wrong.

Yeah, they needed a guy named Jim Shooter to accomplish something like that.

[Schmakt]

so, moving on to birthquake now? you should be real excited for that one!

that's what I hear over on the CBR boards... *groan*

maybe I'll lose the final few copies of Secret Weapons before I have to finish that series so I can get to birthquake faster.

[jedimarley]

As for Chaos itself... it seemed to be some mixed up version of War of the Worlds. too many dangling plotlines... too much unexplained. I'm usually a fan of major crossovers, but this one sucked.

Yep.

Valiant thought they could pull off another "Unity" like crossover.
Boy, were they wrong.

Yeah, they needed a guy named Jim Shooter to accomplish something like that.

Yep.

[Todd Luck]

Yeah I really enjoyed the Shadowman parts of the crossover. I enjoyed EW too but I was a little disappointed to finally see more of Malloch, only to have it be a fist fight he "dies" from at the end.

The rest that I've read so far, I haven't liked. I still don't understand why the explaination for what the "Chaos Effect" was doing to the Earth was given in given Harbinger only. I thought that necromatic energy was Solar's kryptonite until I finally found the explaination that it disrupted the Earth's magnetic field, thus negating electricity and other forms of energy on Earth (is that even possible?).

I liked the PsiLords issues I've found so far. They're not perfect but I've enjoyed them. However, I don't have the Chaos Effect issue yet. It has Destroyer in it so I bet I would hate it.

[Manowar Class]

CE wasn't Bad, but it definitely wasn't UNITY! Alpha, cool. It's Free, it sets the stage, could have used another penciller, but hey, not bad.

Beta: The meat of the CE. Characters of Necromantic power. Cool! Could have done more with Max St. James though. You don't really see enough of him and I think he was cool!

From here on, only one or two issues in each Greek letter were good...

In the case of the Gamma issues, Bloodshot and Ninjak! Ninjak #8 was very cool...plus I love Mme. Noir!

Delta...I guess harbinger was cool...the rest was just a bug-hunt above the earth.

Epsilon: The future issues were cool, but Solar was lacking to me. I like seeing Destroyer slice throught the Psi-Lords' ship and one of them kick Solar in the plasma only to reveal a bloody stump!

Omega: pretty cool, tied it up. I guess the necromantic stuff always confused me though for guys like Darque, Mirage, and Shadowman, etc...Wouldn't they absorb enough to say, keep fighting like madmen and stay solid and stuff? (Actually, I don't remember much about Mirage post Chaos).

Finally, the Epilogues...Magnus in the 20th Century...? pretty cool to me...especially if you go back to harbinger #6! That was a cool ad to see magnus, Harbinger Fighter!

Not a bad crossover, but nowhere near as sad as everybody else's attempts...*cough* DC *cough*Zero Hour at the time.

[Todd Luck]

Omega: pretty cool, tied it up. I guess the necromantic stuff always confused me though for guys like Darque, Mirage, and Shadowman, etc...Wouldn't they absorb enough to say, keep fighting like madmen and stay solid and stuff? (Actually, I don't remember much about Mirage post Chaos).

Yes Dr. Mirage stayed solid after Chaos but could assume his ghost form at any time (for some reason he could only use his powers in his ghost forum...yeah, it made a ton of sense ).

Shadowman kept the vast amount of power he got from Chaos even though the guy he would've use it on (Darque) was now gone (Jack was way to powerful to fight common criminals now but it still happened).

The power Darque gained was irrelevant. Max St. James sucked him into the shadow portal in his chest and attempted to keep him there (didn't work, of course, and Darque came back later when the comics where so crappy and out-of-character that it barely even resembled him).

Omega is definately one of the most painful reads in Valiant for me. The evil Shadowman clone declaring Archer, Armstrong, and Geoff as Master Darque's greatest enemies?!? We find out that the Lost land is made of necromatic energy?!? Ugh... :x

[Manowar Class]

Yeah, The fake Jack reminded me of those loser guards in issue #19 that kept saying "we are....still....security...". They were good for a laugh at least. Fake Jack was just stupid. I haven't read the later Shadowman in a while...what happened to fake jack?

[Todd Luck]

Yeah, The fake Jack reminded me of those loser guards in issue #19 that kept saying "we are....still....security...". They were good for a laugh at least. Fake Jack was just stupid. I haven't read the later Shadowman in a while...what happened to fake jack?

Nothing. He never appeared in the actual Shadowman title.

There is a drawings by Bob Layton of a Shadowman of the Lost Land, who was to star in a Shadowman annual that was never made. The character appeared to be an older version of "fake Jack" (I have a feeling "fake Jack" may have been a Layton idea).

http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/artwork.asp?cn=233

[Byrneout]

Nothing. He never appeared in the actual Shadowman title.

Thank all that is holy.

[Todd Luck]

Nothing. He never appeared in the actual Shadowman title.

Thank all that is holy.

I agree