Re-Reading: Solar #8

[xoken]

I thought we could do a book a day (that way people can read one every day or catch up on weekends), talk about it on its own, in the context of whats next, in regards to what expectations it creates and vote on how good it is. I don't have to be the one that posts everyday. If I miss a day or if someone wants to take over please do

For voting think of your single favourite comic book (not just VALIANT) as the benchmark - thats a 10 - and grade according to that.

Make sure to mention what you like'd about the book, what you didn't, what you wish they would have done, your favourite panels, lines of dialogue, little bits of trivia etc.

Solar #8

[magnusr]

This comic starts with showing how tight the continuity was between the different titles. Also a bit ironical as it comments on the title-wide absence of our heroes that Shooter once said was a fix because of an over-sight in XO. There's a bit of closure to the spider alien story-line plus an interesting side-story. If one can forgive that Harada and Solar happen to go after the same threat at once, then there are lots of little pearls in this story.

/Magnus

[Todd Luck]

This comic starts with showing how tight the continuity was between the different titles. Also a bit ironical as it comments on the title-wide absence of our heroes that Shooter once said was a fix because of an over-sight in XO.
/Magnus

Actually can anyone explain to me what that over-sight was? I know that Shooter said that Englehart's script had Aric walking from South America to New York and treated it as if it happened in no time flat. And Shooter's usually dead-on with the things he says but clearly Aric DIDN"T walk to New York in X-O 1. He flew there on a plane. So what the heck is Shooter talking about?

My best guess, and I'm not familar with the geography of South America, is that maybe their were parts in the plot that Aric walked long distances in South America (which would take monthes) and that should have been noted somewhere in the dialog.

Here's the incident in Shooter's own words from "THE Jim Shooter Interview" on Petrilak's site:

I had to literally plot it in 2 hours. Barry demanded a plot page-by-page and pretty much panel-by-panel, so I did it, and once it became apparent somewhere in the second hour that the story would go too long, I didn't have time to go back and rewrite it to make it shorter. That happened a lot, because I was writing all this stuff flying by the seat of my pants, on every single one. I didn't have time to sit down and go through the process of plotting it out, and if it's 26 pages, rewriting it to make it fit (many of the pre-Unity books ran over 21 pages and no one ever knew why). But I was doing all of it by the seat of my pants and keeping all the continuity in my head. They ran long, but I got the plot for X-O #1 off to Barry and he liked it and drew it. I wrote the first 6 pages of the book... I was desperate to get out of the writer's seat. Good writers are hard to come by. Steve Engelhart turned up and needed work and I gave him a try. So he picked X-O #1 up from page 7 on and wrote it for a while, but Steve just wasn't interested in keeping continuity. He wasn’t used to dealing with realistic science, and it just was the wrong fit. He's good writer, but did not fit with what we were trying to do.

As a matter of fact, he posed some incredible continuity problems for me that I went through hell fixing. He'd plot a story and it would be drawn, then I'd realize- wait a second- X-O walks from South America to New York? Okay... Steve treated it like he’d arrived the next day, and has events in #2, 3, and 4, which he plotted, which suggested that what must have been a long journey happened overnight, but I've got characters interacting with X-O over here, and if his arrival was say, 8 months after what happened in the related books, so what did they do for 8 months?? So, I had to do this elaborate thing where Solar gets lost in space... for months, the Harbinger kids are on the moon... for months- all of this maneuvering to accommodate Steve’s total disregard for continuity- all by the seat of my pants, trying to remember where everyone is and is going.

http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/joe/shooter/

[Todd Luck]

And finally my thoughts on the issue...

When I first got this issue back in the day I really enjoyed it but thought it was anti-climatic. No fleet, hardly any aliens, and the battle's over.

Looking at it now, I see the ending to this plotline is just...different and that makes it interesting. Again we see real science and real life in play as Solar's sojourn into space takes him away from Earth for a year (acknowledging the vastness of space most comics ignore) and that you can't just dissappear for a long time and not expect it to have major consequences in your life (acknowledging common sense that's often ignored in most comics ). Shooter skillfully acknowledges these things without letting the book get dragged down by them (it was clever to have Phil's "cover story" be that he was abducted).

But the main event here that makes this issue great is that we get to see "a day at the office" for Harada. The opening is fascinating. A great tease for the other books, but it also shows how vast Harada's concerns are and his ability to monitor them all. Harada just oozed power in the scene. And it really drives home that his motivation is to protect the world and that his enemies are nut-jobs, criminals, or monsters in his eyes.

And then the "I think I'll walk" panel is still one of my favorite panels in Valiant comics. Just such a sense of wonder. Note how, like most flying panels at Shooter-era Valiant, there's a large focus on a realistic background. This puts the flying in perspective that just creates a wonderful sense of awe.

The confrontation with Kama is cool. It's great how Shooter effortlessly finds a way to give Solar a challenge every issue while still keeping the series grounded in real science. Kama, like Sosa in Shadowman 3, has powers but explaination as to why. I assume both are Harbingers of some sort.

Anyway, great issue . A 9.

Continuity Notes: There's a lot of alien bases left around Earth that'll be dealt with. A couple months after this issue, over in X-O, it looks like they'ld pretty much destroyed them all except for the moon base from Harbinger 3 and 4. Unfortunately, after Shooter leaves, that turns out not to be true and we discover endless amounts of alien survivors in every Valiant title imaginable in stories too painful to recount .

Obviously the aliens do return with a full fleet in 4001 for the storyline in Magnus 5-8 where Solar sacrifices himself to utterly destroy the entire fleet.

[magnusr]

Actually can anyone explain to me what that over-sight was? I know that Shooter said that Englehart's script had Aric walking from South America to New York and treated it as if it happened in time flat. And Shooter's usually dead-on with the things he says but clearly Aric DIDN"T walk to New York in X-O 1. He flew there on a plane. So what the heck is the Shooter talking about?

Whoa. You're right. I guess the whole thing originated on page 11 where Lydia says "How long do you suppose it will take him to walk to New England from Peru?". But then he doesn't! Could it all be a misunderstanding of the script? XO 1 was a february issue. Harbinger 3 and Solar 8 are april issues. I guess they were on a tight schedule. It is also note-worthy that XO 1 was published same month as Solar 6. And Shooter says that what happens in the beginning of XO 1 has to happen as the same time as something in other titles. So, despite the "geographical" difference, there could be some correlation between Solar confronting the spaceships near Saturn and the fate of the ship Aric was on.

Interesting...

/Magnus

[jedimarley]

Great art and story again. 9

Shooter is a master storyteller.

[Todd Luck]

It is also note-worthy that XO 1 was published same month as Solar 6. And Shooter says that what happens in the beginning of XO 1 has to happen as the same time as something in other titles. So, despite the "geographical" difference, there could be some correlation between Solar confronting the spaceships near Saturn and the fate of the ship Aric was on.

Interesting...

/Magnus

I assume you're refering to the difference in the fleet positions in Solar (near Saturn) and X-O (near Earth). I came up with my "no-prize explaniation" for that one in the bloopers thread awhile back but rereading Solar, it makes more sense. The first couple pages of X-O seem to be refering to Solar destroying the fleet which we see at the beginning of Solar 8. Phil gets interupted by "Exo." While the fight may seem like it's long, in reality it would've only taken a few minutes and the fleet started it's escape right at the end.

So it's entirely possible for Aric to begin fighting his way through the ship as Solar destroyed the fleet and then fought "Exo" and to finally make it to the X-O armor just as the fleet happens to be running past Earth on there way out of the system. That's the simplist explaination. It's a bit much, but Shooter was doing this by the seat of his pants

Now where's my no-prize?

[magnusr]

The VCB synopsis:

In the Tokyo headquarters of the Harbinger Foundation, Toyo Harada attends a briefing. He is informed that Solar apparently vanished the day after his confrontation with Harada. The briefing also touches on the activities of the Harbinger Renegades, the Spider Aliens, and X-O Manowar, whom the Harbinger operatives mistakenly believe to be an armored alien warrior. Harada decides to contract a special operative to confront the armored alien. Harada is then informed of Kama, the “Dragon of Bangkok”. She is known to have dealings with the aliens and previous Harbinger agents investigating her have disappeared. Harada decides to deal with Kama personally.
At the Edgewater facility, Gayle and Jorge discuss how Phil Seleski has been missing for about a year. Gayle seems emotionally disturbed at the thought and she storms off, running into Edgewater’s unpleasant new NRC watchdog, Mr Drahushuk. Drahushuk then goes to ask Dr Dobson about Gayle’s relationship with the missing Seleski. He also rides Dobson about his alcoholism. Drahushuk then goes to speak with Erica Pierce, but finds her door locked. Inside, Pierce is burning with energies she doesn’t understand and wishing Seleski were back to help her. Apparently, the energies in the containment building affected her as well as Seleski, but he had the advantage of melding with his other self to learn how to control his powers.
At the home of John Veerhusen, Big John finds he cannot sleep. He steps out into the night air and wonders how his missing friend fared against the alien fleet. Then, he sees Solar approach like a falling star. It has taken so long for Solar to find his way home that he has trouble speaking as he’s unused to breathing again. He tells John that he chased the fleet away and must now expunge all the terrestrial alien bases.
Solar goes to check the Chicago alien base. He finds it cleaned out, but a contingent of FBI agents await within. They attack Solar, to no avail, but Solar does deduce that the government knows about the aliens. So he travels to the FBI headquarters and raids their computer files. Discovering the high-priority listing for Kama’s Bangkok location, Solar proceeds there. Arriving in Bangkok, Solar is just in time to see Harada enter Kama’s brothel/bar.
Harada seats himself in the strip-club establishment and waits. Drawn by his powerful presence, Kama joins Harada at his table. She tells Harada that she cannot shut out his mental probing, but that, once in her mind, he will experience the depravities that she has commited. Harada may have power over the will, but Kama’s is the power to erode the will. And Harada finds himself surrendering to passion as Kama’s women gather round and caress him.
Suddenly, Solar blasts into the club. On his way in, he was attacked by Kama’s bouncers, some of whom were armed with Spider Alien technology. Now Solar demands where they obtained such weapons. But Kama seemingly transforms into a dragon while the bar becomes a skull-strewn landscape. The dragon holds Gayle in its grasp and demands of Solar how many more must die because of him? Solar’s resolve to fight falters until Harada enters the dreamlike scene and urges him to strike. He cuts loose with his power and, suddenly, he is back in the bar with Kama and her men laid low by his energy blast.
Harada has now regained his strength. He reveals to Solar that Kama was supplying the aliens with humans to feed off of while helping stranded aliens find safe havens. Harada continues that he finds Solar to be just as great an evil and will, one day, take action against Solar.
Returning, at last, to Edgewater, Seleski is questioned by Drahushuk. He tells the NRC man that he was kidnapped by the aliens, but managed to escape. Knowing about the aliens from his government contacts, Drahushuk buys the story, but will require a more detailed explanation in the future. And he allows Phil to get back to his normal duties. The issue ends with Phil paying a condolence call to the household of Ettice Cunningham’s family.

/Magnus