Mark Millar Stopped Netflix Buying Valiant, So The Chinese Bought It?

[buff-beardo]

Google the subject. Article recently posted on bleeding cool. Interesting in a sad way. What could have been?

[valiantdude]

wow just looked at the article, back in the day that would have been instantly on the forum.. dinesh is so full of it he's so full of it look at this ridiculous quote.
"That's true. Netflix almost saved Valiant from falling into the hands of the Chinese. As we were getting serious about making a deal though, Mark Millar got in Ted Sarandos ear about Valiant being unnecessary post Millarworld acquisition."

Falling into the hands of the chinese? Give me a break, it was his fault by putting out substandard books that nobody wanted nobody wanted fake gender swapping roll swapping rehashes of valiant characters that didn't even mimic the original successful version ever. It was the dumbest decisions it was the dumbest editorial decisions it was the dumbest writing decision the guy's a freaking moron.. *SQUEE* roku?? dude the tv player already had that name and it just made you look stupid.. do you remember when I posted on here over a year before and gave you the idea to have a solar analog and a Turok analog, well you blew those both too..
Cool you made millions of dollars you get to buy all the comics and original art Pages you've ever wanted that doesn't change the fact that you were the birthday cake boy who pooped on everybody including jim shooter, these books sucked the vei books sucked, he's a cop out, he's copping out trying to divert blame.. it's his fault it went to the Chinese, he could have had a billion dollar company but you're not smart enough for that..

Hey cool you made your little bit of money you get to do stupid interviews for the rest of your life awesome! You made a stupid cosplay home movie version of Valiant characters.
awesome! you get to watch that over and over on Loop for the rest of your life, what a tool, what a fool.
and the bad idea books blow.. sorry it was a bad idea for you to synch up with dmg..
Anyone who cared at all about China's human rights violations and other s*** would not have wanted to take Chinese money but someone who was a moron who didn't give a s*** at all would take the money..
You see it was a bad idea to not think intelligently and just let money run the show because that's what shallow people do.

[TheFerg714]

what a sh!t take.

[Phantom]

Business is business. Dino brought something back from the dead and flipped it. He could probably buy it back at a fraction of the cost. And could probably do it again.
I enjoyed the ride. I enjoyed the energy and new stories. I enjoyed the books and all the characters. Even the stories people slated / slagged off.

All that time, effort and financial risk. And he made money! Oh no. What a bad guy. Employing all those artists, writers and support staff.
Shame on him.

If Netflix wanted it, they can buy it at a fraction of the cost now.

Badidea is very profitable for whomever is involved. I liked it when shipped to comic shops. Now all this kickstarter stuff is not my style. But badidea is raking in the cash with far less effort. Artists and writers probably being paid more than they ever have previously.

Why is it when someone works their backside off, and achieves something, people just shot them down.

[Phantom]

If you are so anti China due to human rights, through away your phone, gaming platform, and most of you clothes

[Phantom]

Sorry.
Thankyou for posting that new info. Have a great day

[dino]

wow just looked at the article, back in the day that would have been instantly on the forum.. dinesh is so full of it he's so full of it look at this ridiculous quote.
"That's true. Netflix almost saved Valiant from falling into the hands of the Chinese. As we were getting serious about making a deal though, Mark Millar got in Ted Sarandos ear about Valiant being unnecessary post Millarworld acquisition."

Falling into the hands of the chinese? Give me a break, it was his fault by putting out substandard books that nobody wanted nobody wanted fake gender swapping roll swapping rehashes of valiant characters that didn't even mimic the original successful version ever. It was the dumbest decisions it was the dumbest editorial decisions it was the dumbest writing decision the guy's a freaking moron.. *SQUEE* roku?? dude the tv player already had that name and it just made you look stupid.. do you remember when I posted on here over a year before and gave you the idea to have a solar analog and a Turok analog, well you blew those both too..
Cool you made millions of dollars you get to buy all the comics and original art Pages you've ever wanted that doesn't change the fact that you were the birthday cake boy who pooped on everybody including jim shooter, these books sucked the vei books sucked, he's a cop out, he's copping out trying to divert blame.. it's his fault it went to the Chinese, he could have had a billion dollar company but you're not smart enough for that..

Hey cool you made your little bit of money you get to do stupid interviews for the rest of your life awesome! You made a stupid cosplay home movie version of Valiant characters.
awesome! you get to watch that over and over on Loop for the rest of your life, what a tool, what a fool.
and the bad idea books blow.. sorry it was a bad idea for you to synch up with dmg..
Anyone who cared at all about China's human rights violations and other s*** would not have wanted to take Chinese money but someone who was a moron who didn't give a s*** at all would take the money..
You see it was a bad idea to not think intelligently and just let money run the show because that's what shallow people do.

Hell yeah bro! Finally someone who isn't afraid to be a real one. So sick of that Dinesh guy. Thinks he's so smart just because he wears glasses. Bet he doesn't even need them!

[valiantdude]

look man..you just did it wrong.. period.. its your fault this happened.. just own it.. hands of the chinese???
dude what part of your brain did not get that the books that sold millions of copies were the characters people wanted, comic geniuses made those characters.. Bob laytons version was a disaster, VH2 failed commercially, VH3 failed commercially, your thing started strong when you were actually mimicking the old stories.. training wheels were off.. crashed..

any person with any business sense would notice where the success was - dude you know laytons books were only successful because of the hype and quality of Vh1, but instead you were like.. *SQUEE* it.. do what every other company failed at..reboot! and! without any characterizations of the the successful books.. but i'm not going to fail.. ha!

and! how tf do you have anything but reverence for Jim after you hire him.. so hes quirky, older, okay... hes a creative legend.. make it work..

it was a simple forumla update and recreate VH1 - the books that captivated millions of people - do whatever jim shooter says.

how did you not grasp that?

its dead now and we have the retarded valiant books that are like not even good for toilet paper becasue they dont absorb..

[ManofTheAtom]

wow just looked at the article, back in the day that would have been instantly on the forum.. dinesh is so full of it he's so full of it look at this ridiculous quote.
"That's true. Netflix almost saved Valiant from falling into the hands of the Chinese. As we were getting serious about making a deal though, Mark Millar got in Ted Sarandos ear about Valiant being unnecessary post Millarworld acquisition."

Falling into the hands of the chinese? Give me a break, it was his fault by putting out substandard books that nobody wanted nobody wanted fake gender swapping roll swapping rehashes of valiant characters that didn't even mimic the original successful version ever. It was the dumbest decisions it was the dumbest editorial decisions it was the dumbest writing decision the guy's a freaking moron.. *SQUEE* roku?? dude the tv player already had that name and it just made you look stupid.. do you remember when I posted on here over a year before and gave you the idea to have a solar analog and a Turok analog, well you blew those both too..
Cool you made millions of dollars you get to buy all the comics and original art Pages you've ever wanted that doesn't change the fact that you were the birthday cake boy who pooped on everybody including jim shooter, these books sucked the vei books sucked, he's a cop out, he's copping out trying to divert blame.. it's his fault it went to the Chinese, he could have had a billion dollar company but you're not smart enough for that..

Hey cool you made your little bit of money you get to do stupid interviews for the rest of your life awesome! You made a stupid cosplay home movie version of Valiant characters.
awesome! you get to watch that over and over on Loop for the rest of your life, what a tool, what a fool.
and the bad idea books blow.. sorry it was a bad idea for you to synch up with dmg..
Anyone who cared at all about China's human rights violations and other s*** would not have wanted to take Chinese money but someone who was a moron who didn't give a s*** at all would take the money..
You see it was a bad idea to not think intelligently and just let money run the show because that's what shallow people do.

Hell yeah bro! Finally someone who isn't afraid to be a real one. So sick of that Dinesh guy. Thinks he's so smart just because he wears glasses. Bet he doesn't even need them!

[ManofTheAtom]

look man..you just did it wrong.. period.. its your fault this happened.. just own it.. hands of the chinese???
dude what part of your brain did not get that the books that sold millions of copies were the characters people wanted, comic geniuses made those characters.. Bob laytons version was a disaster, VH2 failed commercially, VH3 failed commercially, your thing started strong when you were actually mimicking the old stories.. training wheels were off.. crashed..

any person with any business sense would notice where the success was - dude you know laytons books were only successful because of the hype and quality of Vh1, but instead you were like.. *SQUEE* it.. do what every other company failed at..reboot! and! without any characterizations of the the successful books.. but i'm not going to fail.. ha!

and! how tf do you have anything but reverence for Jim after you hire him.. so hes quirky, older, okay... hes a creative legend.. make it work..

it was a simple forumla update and recreate VH1 - the books that captivated millions of people - do whatever jim shooter says.

how did you not grasp that?

its dead now and we have the retarded valiant books that are like not even good for toilet paper becasue they dont absorb..

Your assessment of VEI is off, man.

I was not initially onboard with the idea of a reboot, I would have much preferred for things to pick up from where they left off, but in the end what Dinesh and his team did knocked it out of the park.

They managed to revive and modernize the VALIANT characters, even if the narrative tracks were not the same as before.

It was like listening to a cover of an old song where the lyrics are the same but the music and rhythm differed, whereas VH 2 was like the Weird Al version of the same song.

[valiantdude]

mark millar looks like a *SQUEE* pedo...
im not saying there wasnt like good comics within vei.. at the beginning there was. I was buying all of them until i found out what happen with jim shooter..
Im saying the VEI books were foundationally flawed, because thet couldnt grasp why all of the other companies failed.

very easy to ultimate style the VH1 stories, tell them in the same way, same characters, update them.
couldve even had an updated unity. continue on. those specific characters in that way they were originaly set up is what was burned in peoples consciousness..

why tf does spiderman look like the same spider man from 1963? how many times did they updated the character, but its still in 2024 peter parker, looking the same, shooting webs, etc..

Jim shooter gave them a universe that could rival marvel and DC.. the dude bought it, and was like nahhh.. let's remake it our own way..
im sure he got bullied a lot by writers, artists, partners... only way this makes sense. but JC, just own the fact that you totally messed up. when people die, all that matters is the work they did.. money? meaningless - materiel *SQUEE*? meaningless.
you know what i mean?

[ManofTheAtom]

mark millar looks like a *SQUEE* pedo...
im not saying there wasnt like good comics within vei.. at the beginning there was. I was buying all of them until i found out what happen with jim shooter..
Im saying the VEI books were foundationally flawed, because thet couldnt grasp why all of the other companies failed.

very easy to ultimate style the VH1 stories, tell them in the same way, same characters, update them.
couldve even had an updated unity. continue on. those specific characters in that way they were originaly set up is what was burned in peoples consciousness..

why tf does spiderman look like the same spider man from 1963? how many times did they updated the character, but its still in 2024 peter parker, looking the same, shooting webs, etc..

Jim shooter gave them a universe that could rival marvel and DC.. the dude bought it, and was like nahhh.. let's remake it our own way..
im sure he got bullied a lot by writers, artists, partners... only way this makes sense. but JC, just own the fact that you totally messed up. when people die, all that matters is the work they did.. money? meaningless - materiel *SQUEE*? meaningless.
you know what i mean?

Ignoring the vitriol and anger, I'll say that, in many ways, VEI did the Ultimate version of VH-1. And, in many ways, did a much better job than Marvel.

If there was anything missing from VEI compared to VH-1, I'd say it was a matter of tone, i.e., the original was more grounded than the Ultimate VEI version. That doesn't mean that what VEI did was or is "fundamentally flawed".

Compared to VH-2, they did a considerably much better job.

We're lucky DMG didn't do to VEI what Acclaim did to VH-1 with VH-2.

[valiantdude]

look.. let's take a second and imagine a world where Jim shooter was treated correctly let's just start there,

every day that he came into work the people applauded they literally named one of the offices the jim shooter room. Whatever Jim said was gold. whatever Jim needed within reason he got. So let's imagine that. Now Flash Forward to 2009 -10 era, when Dark Horse got the rights to gold key, and Jim's relationship with vei was amazing.. Jim finds out Mike Richardson has the rights to the gold key characters and isn't it interesting that Jim happens to be working at Valiant, editor-in-chief, and is treated so amazingly by the company, everyone, they absolutely love him and worship the ground he walks on in a way within reason. They just love working with the guy and make him feel really special, and then all the sudden you realize wow Valiant and gold key could be together again since Dark Horse had the rights, bang! with Jim shooter now editor of the new Valiant comics.
Then as a relationship between vei and Dark Horse grows as they essentially combine the characters and combine universes in a way, then all of the Hollywood offers that Dinesh was trying to manipulate Mike Richardson into giving him access to in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, as per the podcast episode, he would have had access to all of that.. the energy would have been amazing.. And everything would have been in place. That was the Fatal error. That's just the beginning and really the first aspect a lot of things could have been different in a way, but that's kind of what killed the true magic that could have happened..
think about that.

[Chiclo]

mark millar looks like a *SQUEE* pedo...
im not saying there wasnt like good comics within vei.. at the beginning there was. I was buying all of them until i found out what happen with jim shooter..
Im saying the VEI books were foundationally flawed, because thet couldnt grasp why all of the other companies failed.

very easy to ultimate style the VH1 stories, tell them in the same way, same characters, update them.
couldve even had an updated unity. continue on. those specific characters in that way they were originaly set up is what was burned in peoples consciousness..

why tf does spiderman look like the same spider man from 1963? how many times did they updated the character, but its still in 2024 peter parker, looking the same, shooting webs, etc..

Jim shooter gave them a universe that could rival marvel and DC.. the dude bought it, and was like nahhh.. let's remake it our own way..
im sure he got bullied a lot by writers, artists, partners... only way this makes sense. but JC, just own the fact that you totally messed up. when people die, all that matters is the work they did.. money? meaningless - materiel *SQUEE*? meaningless.
you know what i mean?

Hos mad.

[ManofTheAtom]

look.. let's take a second and imagine a world where Jim shooter was treated correctly let's just start there,

every day that he came into work the people applauded they literally named one of the offices the jim shooter room. Whatever Jim said was gold. whatever Jim needed within reason he got. So let's imagine that. Now Flash Forward to 2009 -10 era, when Dark Horse got the rights to gold key, and Jim's relationship with vei was amazing.. Jim finds out Mike Richardson has the rights to the gold key characters and isn't it interesting that Jim happens to be working at Valiant, editor-in-chief, and is treated so amazingly by the company, everyone, they absolutely love him and worship the ground he walks on in a way within reason. They just love working with the guy and make him feel really special, and then all the sudden you realize wow Valiant and gold key could be together again since Dark Horse had the rights, bang! with Jim shooter now editor of the new Valiant comics.
Then as a relationship between vei and Dark Horse grows as they essentially combine the characters and combine universes in a way, then all of the Hollywood offers that Dinesh was trying to manipulate Mike Richardson into giving him access to in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, as per the podcast episode, he would have had access to all of that.. the energy would have been amazing.. And everything would have been in place. That was the Fatal error. That's just the beginning and really the first aspect a lot of things could have been different in a way, but that's kind of what killed the true magic that could have happened..
think about that.

In an ideal world, Shooter would have remained with VEI and they would have found a way to integrate the Gold Key characters into their relaunch and/or reboot of VALIANT, but, for myriad reasons, it was not meant to be.

Whatever Shooter may have been involved with at VEI could have been as good or better than it was when he launched it at Voyager. We may never know.

What VEI ended up doing, though, was great on its own merits, and seems to have only faltered when DMG got involved.

[Ryan]

look man..you just did it wrong.. period.. its your fault this happened.. just own it.. hands of the chinese???
dude what part of your brain did not get that the books that sold millions of copies were the characters people wanted, comic geniuses made those characters.. Bob laytons version was a disaster, VH2 failed commercially, VH3 failed commercially, your thing started strong when you were actually mimicking the old stories.. training wheels were off.. crashed..

any person with any business sense would notice where the success was - dude you know laytons books were only successful because of the hype and quality of Vh1, but instead you were like.. *SQUEE* it.. do what every other company failed at..reboot! and! without any characterizations of the the successful books.. but i'm not going to fail.. ha!

and! how tf do you have anything but reverence for Jim after you hire him.. so hes quirky, older, okay... hes a creative legend.. make it work..

it was a simple forumla update and recreate VH1 - the books that captivated millions of people - do whatever jim shooter says.

how did you not grasp that?

its dead now and we have the retarded valiant books that are like not even good for toilet paper becasue they dont absorb..

I don't agree with everything you say or necessarily the way you express it... but there's certainly some grains of truth in what you're saying.

I just prefer to assess the comics themselves and not make it a personal argument. Most of the people I've met in the comic world are super nice people trying to do their best work, I'm sure the VEI dudes are the same.

But that doesn't mean the work itself is above rigorous evaluation and scrutiny, especially given the current dire state of the fandom.

[Dallow Spicer1]

Some insane takes in this thread!

Shooters Valiant was excellent but it was a long time ago and for a very short period. VEI surpassed it in terms of sustained quality.

At its peak VEI with Venditti, Dysart, Kindt, Lemire, La Rosa and so many others was comics at its finest. That was down to Dinesh pure and simple.

Did they get caught up in the wrong side of the culture war later on…yes but not as badly as Marvel and DC.

I hope Dinesh buys Valiant back at some point. I believe he would’ve got the media deals to kick Valiant into another level.

[Ryan]

Shooters Valiant was excellent but it was a long time ago and for a very short period. VEI surpassed it in terms of sustained quality.

A short period but loaded with genuine classics. Solar Alpha and Omega. Solar Second Death. Magnus Steel Nation. Magnus/Rai Invasion. Harbinger Children of the Eight Day. X-O Retribution. Solar First Strike. Unity.

Without those stories there's no way Valiant would have even still been being discussed in 2008. The fan energy and excitement due to people loving those original stories was a huge factor in why VEI was a successful venture at all. It's funny how now all the VEI fans feel the need to diminish pre-Unity and VH1.

If VEI surpassed VH1 in terms of quality, can I get a list of the classic storylines that people are still re-reading and discussing today?

[Dallow Spicer1]

Shooters Valiant was excellent but it was a long time ago and for a very short period. VEI surpassed it in terms of sustained quality.

A short period but loaded with genuine classics. Solar Alpha and Omega. Solar Second Death. Magnus Steel Nation. Magnus/Rai Invasion. Harbinger Children of the Eight Day. X-O Retribution. Solar First Strike. Unity.

Without those stories there's no way Valiant would have even still been being discussed in 2008. The fan energy and excitement due to people loving those original stories was a huge factor in why VEI was a successful venture at all. It's funny how now all the VEI fans feel the need to diminish pre-Unity and VH1.

If VEI surpassed VH1 in terms of quality, can I get a list of the classic storylines that people are still re-reading and discussing today?

I’m not so much diminishing it as putting it into perspective. Yes I agree without VH1 there’s no VEI (obviously).

As for VH1 v VEI ….

Best XO storyline = Armour Hunters
Best Harbinger/Bloodshot story = Harbinger Wars
Best Bloodshot run = Lemire’s run
Best Harbinger run = Dysart’s trilogy Harbinger/Imperium/ Life & Death Toyo Harada =
Best Shadowman run = probably the Acclaim stuff

But at the same time I acknowledge that without the VH1 concepts to build on then VEI doesn’t happen…but VEI had more modern and better writers.

[Ryan]

I’m not so much diminishing it as putting it into perspective. Yes I agree without VH1 there’s no VEI (obviously).

As for VH1 v VEI ….

Best XO storyline = Armour Hunters
Best Harbinger/Bloodshot story = Harbinger Wars
Best Bloodshot run = Lemire’s run
Best Harbinger run = Dysart’s trilogy Harbinger/Imperium/ Life & Death Toyo Harada =
Best Shadowman run = probably the Acclaim stuff

But at the same time I acknowledge that without the VH1 concepts to build on then VEI doesn’t happen…but VEI had more modern and better writers.

Best Shadowman is the Acclaim stuff Ok we're obviously coming from different planets on this. But everyone's entitled to like whatever version they like, that wasn't my point.

My point was, where are the classic storylines? Classic meaning they stand the test of time. Why is nobody re-reading and discussing the VEI comics like all the old-school fans did with VH1?

By my estimation in 2008 there were actually more Valiant fans than there were 2000 when Acclaim ceased publishing. The classic storylines got better with each re-read because there was actual depth to the world building and they were so well thought out (pre-Unity and kind of up until Chaos Effect).

I just disagree that VEI was better written, and I just don't believe any of the stories or runs you mention have reached any kind of classic status in the broader Valiant fandom or with the general comic reader.

Best X-O storyline - Retribution
Best Bloodshot run - Vanhook/Perlin
Best Harbinger run - Shooter/Lapham
Best Shadowmn run - Bob Hall by miles

Diversity of opinion is a strength of a discussion board, I'm glad everyone has different opinions.

[syzhang28]

look.. let's take a second and imagine a world where Jim shooter was treated correctly let's just start there,

every day that he came into work the people applauded they literally named one of the offices the jim shooter room. Whatever Jim said was gold. whatever Jim needed within reason he got. So let's imagine that. Now Flash Forward to 2009 -10 era, when Dark Horse got the rights to gold key, and Jim's relationship with vei was amazing.. Jim finds out Mike Richardson has the rights to the gold key characters and isn't it interesting that Jim happens to be working at Valiant, editor-in-chief, and is treated so amazingly by the company, everyone, they absolutely love him and worship the ground he walks on in a way within reason. They just love working with the guy and make him feel really special, and then all the sudden you realize wow Valiant and gold key could be together again since Dark Horse had the rights, bang! with Jim shooter now editor of the new Valiant comics.
Then as a relationship between vei and Dark Horse grows as they essentially combine the characters and combine universes in a way, then all of the Hollywood offers that Dinesh was trying to manipulate Mike Richardson into giving him access to in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, as per the podcast episode, he would have had access to all of that.. the energy would have been amazing.. And everything would have been in place. That was the Fatal error. That's just the beginning and really the first aspect a lot of things could have been different in a way, but that's kind of what killed the true magic that could have happened..
think about that.

Are you insane? Or maybe you're actually Jim Shooter. Shooter very publicly cheated and lied to VEI. Even a judge agreed or have you forgot about that ugly lawsuit? Shooter stole the license deal for the gold key characters from VEI through lies and brought them over to Dark Horse. The head of Dark Horse later apologized and said he had no idea. That's how bad it was. I think you should be imagining how much better VEI could have been if they had been able to avoid Shooter and those character license had happened. If Shooter can't ever do any wrong how is he famous for being a bully and a tyrant? How were the Dark Horse gold key books terrible and a sales failure? So bad that Dark Horse doesn't work with Shooter anymore. Marvel doesn't work with him anymore. Even DMG Valiant didn't think it was worth working with Shooter. Even Alien hasn't. No one will hire the guy. I love his work at Marvel and especially Valiant but I'm not going to pretend his decades long run of being called a bad guy by basically everyone who worked with him isn't real.

[syzhang28]

I’m not so much diminishing it as putting it into perspective. Yes I agree without VH1 there’s no VEI (obviously).

As for VH1 v VEI ….

Best XO storyline = Armour Hunters
Best Harbinger/Bloodshot story = Harbinger Wars
Best Bloodshot run = Lemire’s run
Best Harbinger run = Dysart’s trilogy Harbinger/Imperium/ Life & Death Toyo Harada =
Best Shadowman run = probably the Acclaim stuff

But at the same time I acknowledge that without the VH1 concepts to build on then VEI doesn’t happen…but VEI had more modern and better writers.

Best Shadowman is the Acclaim stuff Ok we're obviously coming from different planets on this. But everyone's entitled to like whatever version they like, that wasn't my point.

My point was, where are the classic storylines? Classic meaning they stand the test of time. Why is nobody re-reading and discussing the VEI comics like all the old-school fans did with VH1?

By my estimation in 2008 there were actually more Valiant fans than there were 2000 when Acclaim ceased publishing. The classic storylines got better with each re-read because there was actual depth to the world building and they were so well thought out (pre-Unity and kind of up until Chaos Effect).

I just disagree that VEI was better written, and I just don't believe any of the stories or runs you mention have reached any kind of classic status in the broader Valiant fandom or with the general comic reader.

Best X-O storyline - Retribution
Best Bloodshot run - Vanhook/Perlin
Best Harbinger run - Shooter/Lapham
Best Shadowmn run - Bob Hall by miles

Diversity of opinion is a strength of a discussion board, I'm glad everyone has different opinions.

This is great. Two great and equally strong arguments for who is better. Because they were both great. And Valiant isn't one or the other. It's characters that have had two great periods and hopefully have another one day. Which is better? Personal preference. And that's the way it should be. I love VH1 but I think VEI is better personally. It's like Terminator 1 or Terminator 2. Which is better? No answer, they are both amazing. Personal preference.

Why aren't people reading and discussing it like VH1? I have three answers.

1. They are and more than VH1 is being discussed today. Just not here, check out Valiant on Facebook, discord, telegram. Lots of chatter about the great VEI books. This forum is a VH1 stronghold. And is pretty dead. VEI gets talked about more than VH1 but I don't think that actually means much. We've discussed all the VH1 discussions here already. Why rehash? VEI still has discussions to be had.

2. It's not yet time. It's barely been a decade since VEI started. A decade after VH1 it was deader the dead. NO conversation. Everything popular goes through that cycle. I think VEI will have a big nostalgia bump in another 10 or 15 years. Until then the fanbase if very strong considering how bad Valiant is now. Which leads to answer three.

3. DMG and Alien really make it hard to love Valiant right now and that means most people don't really feel the urge to talk about the characters. Better books will result in more conversation.

Those are my three answers to your question but I have my own question that I think about. What will the future fandom of Valiant be. I think and I hope that it will understand that Valiant is all things that have been in its past. Most importantly Jim Shooter's VH1 and Dinesh Shamdasani's VEI. And that we are lucky to have had both. I love both the way I love Terminator and Terminator 2. My favorite stories for each character changes. Right now VH1 inches it out but that could change next year or even tomorrow. Depends how I wake up and feel.

[syzhang28]

For what it's worth, here are my answers.

Best X-O storyline - Armor Hunters followed closely by VH1 X-O Manowar #0
Best Bloodshot run - Bloodshot Reborn
Best Harbinger run - Dysart by a mile which pains and brings me joy to say because Shooter/Lapham was perfection for me growing up
Best Shadowmn run - Shadowman #0 from VEI. I think the character is still waiting his best story but this was close

[valiantdude]

lets be real here.. all day at shops and cons in my town, portland, or.. all the vei books are .50, look on ebay all worthless.. they may have had more output and some decent books, but there is waaay more to comics than that..
they are not talked about outside this specific valiant fandom, which the pre u vh1 are.. none of those creators are considered legends.. it was best comic book universe devised, and captivated everyone.. the vei books were just another indie companies output and are now totally forgotten

[syzhang28]

lets be real here.. all day at shops and cons in my town, portland, or.. all the vei books are .50, look on ebay all worthless.. they may have had more output and some decent books, but there is waaay more to comics than that..
they are not talked about outside this specific valiant fandom, which the pre u vh1 are.. none of those creators are considered legends.. it was best comic book universe devised, and captivated everyone.. the vei books were just another indie companies output and are now totally forgotten

Remember 10 years after VH1 when everything you just said was being said about them and worse.

Secondly, I don't agree with your premise. I'll give you a list of 100 VEI books I still need for my collection that you can't get for $50 let alone .50c. Is the "more to comics" you refer to the speculation bubble of the 90s? What more is there than good comics?

They are talked about outside of Valiant fandom for sure. Facebook is littered with conversations. Conversely, I don't see VH1 that much outside of spec forums.

Legends take time. I think many creators that VEI either broke or popularized could attain that level in time. Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, Lewis LaRosa, Tomas Giorello, Robert Venditti, Clayton Crain, Clayton Henry, Pere Perez, CAFU, Juan Jose Ryp, Rafa Sandavol are all doing incredible work with the biggest characters. Most of them because of VEI.