COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS, NOT PAYING CREATORS

[GammaJosh]

You guys are so committed to this narrative as if the sales attrition was not already there before Dinesh got booted. Valiant was putting out some of the best books in the industry with great creators and sales went down, down, down pretty much the whole time.

They also put out some great books with solid creators and no detectible "wokeness" after the DMG buyout, and they didn't budge the needle at all. I don't know why Valiant couldn't sell Dan Abnett's Rai, for instance, but it didn't have anything to do with whatever you guys are talking about. If some perceived "wokeness" did drive away some old readers, I don't believe it was enough to keep the sales out of the toilet where they were already headed.

This is all an unnecessary tangent anyway. DMG has the money to pay creators, even if Valiant technically doesn't. We're probably talking about hundreds of dollars in some cases; no more than a couple thousand. Dan Mintz could probably pay these people with his monthly sushi budget.

[Ryan]

Man, the "SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) vs SGWs (Social Grievance Warriors) War" jumped the shark for me a few years ago. Can we bring nuance back?

The new Valiant had the opportunity to right the historical wrong of Vh1 cutting off it's own head (for greed) just as they were about to become a very strong no. 3 universe to DC and Marvel. 90%+ of the fans in 2008 wanted something that took the best of pre-Unity and brought it forward. Something with reverence and deep understanding of what worked in early VALIANT, and maybe a mix of the original creators with new young talent.

Instead they took the risk of a total reboot with new creators who mostly hadn't read VALIANT before, and surely didn't have a reverence for the material from past experience, just using the original universe as plot points that they would make new stories around. If it works, it gives a perfect blueprint for movies and TV to follow. If it doesn't work you've not only not brought in a legion of new fans, you've also alienated the old fans and effectively buried the original universe.

Just my perspective. Maybe I'm being overly cynical. I'm open to other opinions on how this played out and where Valiant goes from here, if anywhere.

[GammaJosh]

Man, the "SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) vs SGWs (Social Grievance Warriors) War" jumped the shark for me a few years ago. Can we bring nuance back?

The new Valiant had the opportunity to right the historical wrong of Vh1 cutting off it's own head (for greed) just as they were about to become a very strong no. 3 universe to DC and Marvel. 90%+ of the fans in 2008 wanted something that took the best of pre-Unity and brought it forward. Something with reverence and deep understanding of what worked in early VALIANT, and maybe a mix of the original creators with new young talent.

Instead they took the risk of a total reboot with new creators who mostly hadn't read VALIANT before, and surely didn't have a reverence from past experience, just using the original universe as plot point that they would make new stories around. If it works, it gives a perfect blueprint for movies and TV to follow. If it doesn't work you've not only not brought in a legion of new fans, you've also alienated the old fans and effectively buried the original universe.

Just my perspective. Maybe I'm being overly cynical. I'm open to other opinions on how this played out and where Valiant goes from here, if anywhere.

I've gotta disagree here. I thought the VEI reboot was adequately respectful of the original concepts. Continuing old continuity from 15 years prior seems like a really tough nut to crack and asking a lot of readers.

In the end I'm not sure it ever mattered what VEI did. For every one person I meet who loves old school Valiant for all the reasons we all do, I meet three who have it psychologically tied up with bad '90s comics, Wizard magazine, the collector bubble, etc. Those people were never going to give Valiant a chance anymore than they were going to give a Youngblood reboot a chance.

[Ryan]

I've gotta disagree here. I thought the VEI reboot was adequately respectful of the original concepts. Continuing old continuity from 15 years prior seems like a bad idea.

I'm not talking about being respectful to the concepts. Definitely Harbinger, X-0, and Ninjak we're nearly copies of the original concepts. I'm not talking about only continuity either.

IMO they just read the books and took the plot points to make slower paced, 'edgier' versions (example in OG Harb 1 it's hinted that Pete could use his powers to take advantage of women, but he wouldn't do that because he's essentially a good guy. In VEI Harb Pete is actually a r*pist, making Pete edgier but also irredeemable as a hero).

There's lots of examples like that but I haven't read the books in a long while. But I know most people on here put VEI above VH1 and I respect that, so we can agree to disagree. Just offering my perspective as more of a fan of the OG stuff.

In the end I'm not sure it ever mattered what VEI did. For every one person I meet who loves old school Valiant for all the reasons we all do, I meet three who have it psychologically tied up with bad '90s comics, Wizard magazine, the collector bubble, etc. Those people were never going to give Valiant a chance anymore than they were going to give a Youngblood reboot a chance.

I disagree that it never mattered what they did. I think that's overly pessimistic. Sure there's plenty of people that would have no interest in characters from the 90s, but I will never believe that there's no way possible that these characters couldn't recapture the interest of a dedicated group of readers old and new.

You could say they did that, that all these characters had left in them was the 5 year VEI run we got. And I would counter with ok then where are all the fans re-reading and discussing these comics? This fanbase was super active and dynamic with no new comics from 2000-2010. Maybe everyone just aged out of it? I don't mean to keep re-litigating VEI, I'm more interested in what these characters will do going forward (if anything), but understanding what really happened here with VEI and DMG is important to whatever could come next.

[Ryan]

Just to clarify what I meant about the best of early VALIANT and bringing it forward. It's not about specific characters, concepts, or continuity. It's about storytelling.

This isn't a critique only about the new Valiant, but mostly all of modern comics. IMO modern mainstream comics are way too reliant on a number of bad storytelling and marketing techniques:
1. Alan Moore post-modern cynicism = realism
2. Grant Morrison pretentious weirdness = smart
3. Decompression
4. Stories that focus on shock value and cheap cliffhangers over real characterization and depth
5. Flashy illustrations instead of art that tells a story and grounds the fictional world
6. Marketing hype over substance

That's not to say any of these things can't be done well, they can when used at the right times and in the right amounts.

If there was one defining feature of early original VALIANT that set it apart from everything else at the time, it was storytelling. The characters and the plot points weren't anything very different from standard genre fare (teenage team with powers, atomic man, man with super armor, alien invasion, etc.), the difference was in the execution. Stories that focused on characterization and attention to detail to a main overarching storyline while still delivering genre excitement. Artwork that was focused on telling the story clearly and creating a consistent and credible world instead of following the latest flashy fad.

Early VALIANT was basically doing a grown up version of 60's Marvel while the rest of the industry was trying to do McFarlane/Liefeld/Lee flashy Image comics. The contrast was huge. The new Valiant has always seemed much more similar to everything else in the market.