VH 3 Artwork

[Ryan]

The trouble with that kind of thinking (“going back and truly understanding what made Valiant successful”) is that it is highly subjective - your idea of what was great about Valiant back then may be different from my idea of what was great about it back then. Which one of us is right if we differ? Neither one, since there is a personal experience factor involved that is different for you and I.

Sure we can collectively come to a kind of general consensus in opinion on some elements of the old books that would be great to pull forward and apply to modern sensibilities - but even that is difficult. Ultimately I don’t personally believe you can ever look backwards and pull something forward through time completely intact. I think the “classic” early 90’s Valiant books are great for their time… but I don’t think they would be considered equally great now by a modern audience if they were published exactly the same today. We all love ‘em because we were there *at the time* they were new and experienced them in their place in pop culture history.

Certainly it's subjective, and I've never thought that 'everything from 90's Valiant' should be pulled forward completely intact. Just a deeper understanding of the core principles that made Valiant unique and successful at the time.

An example that always comes to mind is the Street Fighter series. Compare Street Fighter II to SF VI. 1991 vs 2023. SF II is obviously more primitive in many ways, but it still plays well today. SF VI doesn't try to completely reinvent itself just because 3D fighters like Tekken have been successful. SF VI also doesn't do retro graphics just to stay true to the original. It uses modern graphics and the modern tools to enhance and deepen the SF experience without losing or totally changing the core gameplay experience that people loved in SF II.

Yeah it's subjective as far as what are the core principles and what are the aspects of the originals that should be kept and which ones should be modernized. But that's exactly the main point we're discussing.

And I’m not talking about whether or not there’s enough “woke/(insert whatever other trigger word here)” content, I just mean that times and tastes and methods and zeitgeists change. We learn things collectively over time and some stuff just falls by the wayside and/or dates itself. We can cling to the past but that ultimately leads to stagnation of thought too.

I’m not picking on you for saying anything above, Ryan - just trying to continue thinking critically here (probably mixed with a heavy dose of personal opinion too - plus rambling on a philosophical tangent ).

I do actually agree with your point about copying current trends - there is a kind of industry peer pressure aspect to chasing sales figures that I also think leads to a certain brand of laziness in following “successful” trends first over considering quality of content.

Definitely. There's a sort of groupthink within the industry that forms a 'conventional wisdom' about what good and bad comics are, which again is very subjective and of the moment. If Valiant just follows those trends they'll never distinguish themselves from everything else out there.