Valiant Comics: Resurgence or Ruin?
Is Valiant Comics getting a new birth under Alien Books or is it more of the same spiral?
by Travis Westman
The once monumental brand of 1993 is making yet another attempt to crawl out of the bottom of the comic market to claim its spot in your pull box. Valiant Entertainment certainly hopes so. I believe they are making too many mistakes. Valiant’s newest initiative is underway, but will it be enough to get them out of the rut? Road to Resurgence, Valiant Entertainment’s 2024 effort to revitalize the brand, was announced back on March 29th. Several months later, we are seeing Valiant & Alien Books opening act to entice audiences to get on board. Audiences do not seem to be there.
I want to be as transparent as possible with you as possible. I’ve been a fan of Valiant since the 90’s. I remember cracking open issue 1 of Bloodshot and being drawn in by the action and violence. I read as many Valiant titles as I could get my hands on. I played their video games for hours on end. I am a long-time fan. Like many other fans, I saw the rise and fall of Valiant’s best era and championed their eventual revival in 2012. Valiant came out of the gate swinging against DC’s New 52 juggernaut and Marvel’s MCU peak mass appeal. Sales reflected fairly well for the resurrected company. Fast forward to a little under a decade, and Valiant managed to get a Bloodshot film into theaters.
Where does this put Valiant today? It seems like Valiant is stuck in a ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ cycle. They start off strong, an outside influence changes their direction for the worse, and then they crash miserably. In the late ’90s, Acclaim Studios bought the publisher, and by 2001, Acclaim Comics was shuttered. Their last comic was a tie-in to the critically panned Turok Evolution. In 2018, the Chinese-owned DMG entertainment company became the controlling partner of Valiant after forcing then-CEO Dinesh Shamdasani out of the company. The comics that came out after Harbinger Wars 2, in my opinion, were a mixed bag of good and garbage. In March of 2020, Valiant announced industry legacy editor Lysa Hawkins and industry super-villain Heather Antos to their editorial staff.
The differences between their books were as stark of a contrast as a satellite image of North and South Korea.
Heather oversaw the colorful cringefest of Harbinger and the bullshit XO Manowar mini-series that turned Aric from philosopher savage into MCU bumbling idiot Thor. Lysa was in charge of the sleeper hit Shadowman series with Cullen Bunn as writer and the highly esteemed Rai series by Dan Abnett. It didn’t come as a shock that when Valiant was making transitions, Valiant kept Lysa on staff but more on that in a bit.
We can’t ignore the other massive plague that would hurt Valiant further, Covid 19. The worldwide pandemic hurt the global economy in ways that civilization will feel for decades. Valiant was no different; not only did it lead to a pencils-down halt on comic creations, but VEI shut down their NYC offices for good. In addition, the terrible timing of their major motion picture, Bloodshot, had its opening weekend at the start of the pandemic lockdown. On the comic side, this led to Heather and Lysa operating as editors out of their own homes. Clownfish TV covered this topic three years ago in greater detail.
I can’t ignore the glaring mistakes in Valiant’s hiring practices. The confederacy of dunces that may or may not have been paid include the muppet of a man Daniel Kibblesmith, bed bug queen Mags Vissaggio, and factual internet asshole on display Robbi Rodriguez in addition to Heather Antos. Every single one of them came with backlash that turned off potential audiences who were not interested in funding left-wing fundamentalist douchebags. Even Mags managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when he-she-they took to Twitter to bitch about a Valiant editor being professionally direct about their writing. Mag’s stint on Doctor Mirage managed to get positive shrugs from some of the dude’s detractors. Personally, it wasn’t the worst Valiant comic I’ve read, nor was it the worst Mags comic. Now we know why.
Now that isn’t to say everything under Dinesh was candy and butterflies. We can’t forget the pile of garbage “Faith meets Hillary Clinton”.
So, where does this leave the company and audiences now?
Valiant Needs to Change.
There is a reason I put that in bold. It needs to be said loud and clear. Behind the scenes of this article, I asked Jon del Arroz to reach out to Lysa Hawkins and others at Valiant and Alien before writing this article. This article has been cooking since early June, and I will finish it before July 4th. Jon received zero responses back. There was not even a decline in the offer from some. While the quote is recently contested, the sentiment of the Michael Jordan quote stands, “Even Republicans buy sneakers, too.” If the recent boom in the indie comic scene with Comicsgate professionals and Eric July wasn’t an indicator: “Republicans buy comics, too.” The industry needs to acknowledge it needs the paying customer more than the personal politics and biases. It is a clear path to ruin if Valiant continues to follow Marvel and DC comic trends. If Valiant wants to succeed, they need to follow the example of Todd McFarland and Robert Kirkman. I’ll be blunt, Todd has way more to lose after talking to Jon than anyone at Valiant if there was something to lose. Lysa openly admitted on a small channel that the Valiant comic division is cash-poor. Good will and word of mouth are free, Valiant just needs to participate.
My opinion doesn’t stand alone; Bleeding Cool’s Rod Lamberti recently wrote about Todd achieving in comics what Marvel cannot. Todd McFarland is setting forth an effort in the mainstream comic ecosystem with a sustaining result. Valiant seems to be opting for micro runs and one-offs, with large gaps in the timeline. The idea of 500 issue runs is possible. This means Valiant needs to settle on one of its titles to be the definitive flagship comic that runs unbroken. This thru-line gives audiences an anchor inside the Valiant Universe to engage with while allowing them to buy into other titles.
The number one takeaway from Kirkman’s recent acquisition of Transformers and G.I. Joes: Get back to fun. So far, Valiant/Alien Books comics are trying to achieve that, but their starting titles are sputtering misfires. Punk Mambo and Faith are not strong characters. Rai took too long to get out. According to a fan response, Ninjak needed to be pulled out of a tail spin from a previous arc. Aside from that, too many creators and companies are tripping over themselves to put out some political stance or opinion, often with a heavy Left-leaning bent. So far, Skybound has pulled away from controversy, and it’s paying off. Thankfully, nothing in the Valiant schedule points towards a “ Faith and Joe Biden save Democracy” arc; it would be best for Valiant to stay disengaged from contemporary politics. There is no reason to ruin a brand and audience's confidence on behalf of any politician or demographic. I believe that the intellectually and emotionally damaged grifters are the only ones who crave that kind of self-affirming entertainment.
In this high-inflation economy, where people are beginning to skip meals to pay bills, my point goes to Valiant and every other comic creator: When it comes to mainstream comics, you cannot afford to be a Democrat, Republican, Socialist, or Communist. You can only afford to be a storyteller. Storytellers sell books.
Let us know what you think. Do you think Valiant will make the course corrections necessary to become successful, or will they pass out over the course of 2025?
Valiant under Dinesh was awesome.
Valiant after Dinesh was ungraciously kicked to the curb (with the exception of Rai, that will now most likely never finish that story) sucked. Seriously, when Valiant was under Dinesh, I bought every line and book. It was a refreshing world compared to Marvel and DC. I was more excited for the movie release of Ninjack takes on the Valiant Universe than I was for Endgame, at the time. And then DMG...
Ninjack was my gateway into Valiant. I bought everything Ninjack, even from the first iteration of Valiant and Acclaim. But after DMG took over... I couldn't buy it. The art was horrible. With the exception of Rai, all of the art was horrible. We went from these glossy and high dynamic images to Scott Pilgrim level art that didn't fit the books at all.
I know Alien has the publishing rights now but I'm probably not going back. Dinesh was the core reason that Valiant was so great and I don't think Valiant will ever see that again.