Was it the Valiant Universe or was Shooter's Storytelling?

stuccio · Post by **stuccio** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:54 pm

Hey PPL,

I use a slow internet connection and only have a couple of hours per week for doing webbing. I try to take the most of it and usually I use it to clear my doubts. So... Was it the Valiant Universe as a whole or were Shooter's stories, ideas, and accurate (I'm not a nerd but...) science concepts that made the Valiant Universe what it was? I'm asking this because I've browsed the web for Defiant related sites and there ain't any. At least good ones. I guess that everybody knows that Defiant was Shooter's great comeback after he got kicked out of Valiant (Was this how it work? I can never tell...). A new universe with great science fiction and humane characters at it's core it was, well, short, but good. Warriors of Plasm was it's main title and a good one too. It was also Defiant's doom. It arose a Copywright fight with the big M and, though Defiant won it was depleted, wasted, dead after it. Anyway for me Valiant is really good and it has a sense of eighties gettin' in the nineties kind of feeling that I enjoy but what is not of Shooters doin' is kind of gooey, you know? It seems too childish. And though Shooter's writting is sometimes childish also, it has it's kick reality checks -- in an eighties kind of way. okay. I'm way outta my league and head here so bottom line: Was the writting's by Jim Shooter the great cornerstone of the Valiant U or was the contribuition of all the other artists, and, if so, who where the most innovative and talented of them? All for now. S.

dave · Post by **dave** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:51 pm

i believe they caught lightning in a bottle.

i am a huge shooter fan, but he did not do this alone...

thye had many great talents, many veterans and yet not so many that they couldn't take a chance with unproven guys (like lapham). i think that many of the people in the early days wanted to do something VERY different than what marvel was doing-and they changed the industry! then they looked at image's success with the fans and tried to duplicate it, which was their undoing...

this is all just my opinion though

dave · Post by **dave** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 7:51 pm

y'all need to step up to the plate here-new guy from portugal-with valiant related questions...c'mon!

don't "boone" doggle him...maybe he'll stay

Geomancer · Post by **Geomancer** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:57 pm

I've wondered myself why Defiant didn't take off.

I think Valiant's success put a scare into the big kids on the boock, so that it became harder for newer companies to make the kind of big splash that Valiant and Image did.

Not that other companies didn't try. It was a lot easier for Defiant to get lost in the shuffle.

So I'd say a lot of it had to do with timing.

Jim Shooter was a huge part of valiant's initial success. He found and brought in some great talent. There was a void in the comics shelves that valiant fit.

The marketplace was different when defiant came out.

With a lot of new companies, there's this fear that you try getting invested in a new character/new universe, that will fade away and never be seen again. So you can enjoy it while it lasts, or spend that money, time etc. on something you think will last.

I haven't thought back to that time period much in a while, so i may be missing some important factors.

Its just my take on it.

Vault-Keeper · Post by **Vault-Keeper** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:25 am

Defiant's downfall was due to a combination of overambition, a bad co-partner (River Group), plus bad timing and the Marvel lawsuit.

Valiant may have been a success due to the combination of talents, BUT Valiant wouldn't have ever existed without Jim Shooter. Period. They wouldn't have lasted beyond their first year without Shooter's writing. Period.

It was Shooter's belief in 1993 that the comic market took 18 months to 'adjust' from any current day trends. He predicted that Valiant would have to 'pay the piper' for their part of inflating the speculator boom. 18 months later, he was right.

Too bad no one from Acclaim was listening to Jim's words of wisdom. It could have saved them 65 million. Of course, Acclaim thought they were getting a good deal, because just a year earlier, Valiant had a deal to sell for $125 million, but it fell through (according to Bob Layton). The whole market crashed so hard between late 1993 to 1996, it's a wonder there are still comics being published today.---Steve

Heath · Post by **Heath** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:04 am

I had quite a lengthy post written comparing Valiant's effect on the comic industry to Babylon 5's effect on sci-fi television and how both offered something compelling and dynamic in their respective static and bland industries. But I lost it and it's gone now and I don't feel like going through that much effort again.

But anyway, I think Dave was right - they captured lightning in a bottle. It was a perfect mix of all the factors involved - story telling, art, characters, market conditions, etc - and I don't think anything like Valiant will happen again.

Although I think Shooter deserves a huge deal of credit for Valiant's appeal and early success, if you remove any one of the "ingredients" from that mix I don't think you'll anything as special as what Valiant was.

As important as Shooter was, you wouldn't have had Valiant without Bob Layton or Dave Lapham or BWS or Don Perlin, etc. It wouldn't have been the same if they had licensed Seaboard/Atlas characters instead of Dell/Gold Key. Improve the quality of DC's and Marvel's offerings at the time, or alter the market conditions and they may not have formed the company to begin with. There are just too many variables to pick one and say "That's what made Valiant great." It was the way all of the variables worked together.

Defiant, for me, was a pale imitation of Valiant. It seemed a forced attempt to recapture that lighting for the wrong reasons and they just couldn't do it. All of the various factors weren't perfectly lined up this time. I wanted to like Plasm more than I actually did (I was reminded of that recently when I re-read the Previews insert). That whole world was just icky and it was difficult for me to get through all the lingo. It came across as a rip-off of Magnus - a different world with it's own special lingo with wildly seperated classes of people and a hero who comes from the upper class but begins to question his world. Valiant had a supernatural book with Shadowman, so Defiant had one with Dark Dominion. And we need a team of misfit characters - Harbinger is taken so let's call them "The Good Guys." The whole Defiant venture just seemed to me like Shooter was lashing out at Valiant.

jsbt · Post by **jsbt** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:53 am

I suspect some people thought Plasm was just too esoteric. I know when I was a kid and I picked it up b/c it was connected to Valiant, the concepts and dialogue, like those in Solar, went way over my head at the time and I was fairly intimidated. Re-reading it a while back I thought it was brilliant...but still nothing I'd go out and collect a la Valiant, simply because I feel I've seen it done better.

Likewise, I initially thought the Good Guys premise with the contest and the winners being the characters, not to mention a lot of the first issue, was heinously cheesy and stupid - but I also found a certain Shooter charm in that #1 even then and was endeared to it despite very dodgy art. I've thought about picking up more of it sometime. However, I expect a lot of other people were also really turned off by GG to GG, and to Defiant as well.

The Schism x-over did sound neat, though. From the synopses I read, he did indeed plan to once again enact sweeping change, like, I think, knocking off a few of the Good Guys.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:29 pm

jsbt wrote:
The Schism x-over did sound neat, though. From the synopses I read, he did indeed plan to once again enact sweeping change, like, I think, knocking off a few of the Good Guys.

Nope. Galahad (from Dark Dominion) dies and Nudge (from Plasm) dies (sort of). No Good guys die in Schism.

Scrag, who was going to leave the team or get kicked off after Schism, would've died in the finale of Dogs of War if I remember correctly.

Todd Luck · Post by **Todd Luck** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:56 pm

stuccio wrote:Was the writting's by Jim Shooter the great cornerstone of the Valiant U or was the contribuition of all the other artists, and, if so, who where the most innovative and talented of them? All for now. S.

Was Shooter's writing the cornerstone? Of course. For years, there were so many concepts and ideas from Shooter's run at Valiant we saw repeated over and over agian. The "real world" concept was what set Valiant apart from other companies even after Shooter left.

Some creators did some skillful and respectful additions to what had been established before (Hall, BWS, etc) but, but in other instances, it felt like Valiant was taking a butcher's knife to the concepts while constantly changing direction. The later happened a lot by the time Chaos Effect rolled around. You could barely even recognize the Valiant Universe by then but, of course, it didn't matter because everyone had dropped the books by then anyway.

But all that isn't the only reason why Valiant was successful and then died. The rise and fall in sales had as much (sometimes more) to do with trends in the marketplace and sheer luck than quality of the product.

stuccio · Post by **stuccio** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:57 pm

Hey PPL!

First I would like to thanx you guys for an unofficial welcoming into the fold. I enjoyed that. i also enjoyed the stuff I'm learning about Valiant and listening to everyones opinions is great. I real would like to read the Babylon 5 / Valiant Universe comparision and dissertion but I can't find it anywhere. Can someone point it to me? Do you guys think that we will ever see Solar Magnus, the Harbringers and all the other heros in the future? Perhaps published by some other company? If not why...? Can't we buy them and bring them back just for kicks... It's an idea!

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 4:09 pm

stuccio wrote:Do you guys think that we will ever see Solar Magnus, the Harbringers and all the other heros in the future?

That's what most everyone here is hoping for.

Perhaps published by some other company? If not why...? Can't we buy them and bring them back just for kicks... It's an idea!

Right now, two different parties are involved in two different areas of ownership of the Valiant properties. Also, Solar, Magnus, and Turok were originally owned by Western Media (Gold Key) and Valiant was using them under license. Again, most everyone here hopes the new Valiant can get ahold of the same usage rights the old Valiant had with these characters.

There are many threads on this site dealing with these two very subjects, just do a little poking around (or maybe someone here will link up.)

-slym

VHMMV · Post by **VHMMV** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:55 pm

I can't help but compare Valiant's big three - Shooter, Layton, and Windsor-Smith - to Marvel's big three - Lee, Kirby, and Ditko - in that order. Where would Marvel be today if Stan Lee had been fired in 1963? Still around? Fondly remembered but non-existent? Even though Lee eventually passed on titles (and the EIC chair) to other people, as late as the mid-Seventies he had a role in deciding what Marvel's covers looked like, so he was still active with the company in a tangible way.

People like to point out that Marvel Comics wasn't just Stan Lee just like Valiant wasn't just Jim Shooter, but really, Kirby and Ditko didn't have any commercial successes without Lee in the post-Marvel era, whereas Lee was successful with any number of other artists - Gene Colan, Dick Ayers, Don Heck, Bill Everett, etc. - in the Marvel Era and beyond. Okay, those artists might not have co-created the mainstays of the Marvel Universe, but still, the books which they worked on were successful. Compare that to Kirby's work at DC: every single book got cancelled. Same with Ditko's Charlton and DC work. People might like the New Gods mythos and think that the Creeper and Hawk and Dove and Captain Atom were good books, but they all failed commercially, and at best, those characters have only been able to sustain themselves as in supporting roles to this day. Compare that to Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, etc.. They're all still being made, and they're all still doing well.

Likewise, Valiant survived the departure of Jim Shooter, but not for long. More than a few people have said that the quality of the books declined after he was fired. One can only wonder if Valiant would have ridden out the mid-90s comics bust like Dark Horse and Image did if Shooter had still been in charge. Maybe we'd still be reading XO and Harbinger today, or maybe nothing could have saved Valiant. In retrospect, firing him seems like a stupid mistake to have made, and I bet Valiant was secretly cheering Marvel on when it sued Defiant over Plasm. After all, a potentially successful Defiant would have eaten into Valiant's sales, too, probably moreso than Marvel's. But whether it was Shooter or Valiant that was the reason for Valiant's success... well, the company existed both with and without him, so there's plenty of evidence available for comparison.

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:50 am

VHMMV wrote:One can only wonder if Valiant would have ridden out the mid-90s comics bust like Dark Horse and Image did if Shooter had still been in charge. Maybe we'd still be reading XO and Harbinger today, or maybe nothing could have saved Valiant. In retrospect, firing him seems like a stupid mistake to have made, without him, so there's plenty of.

Yes, it was a very stupid mistake on their part. Valiant managed to ride the wave Jim created for a short period of time after he was ejected, but their shortsightedness would cost them dearly.

Valiant (and later Acclaim) learned the hard way that it was indeed Jim's great storytelling and solid continuity that made Valiant what it was. Hiring a myriad of hot flashy artists and one gimmick after another just wasn't enough to keep the fans interested.The books had just become pale shadows of what they once were and what they were doing with these characters (especially towards the end) was laughable. And fans started bailing out in droves.

I guess we’ll never know now, but personally I believe that Valiant would still be around to this day if Jim would have stayed in charge.

depluto · Post by **depluto** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:53 am

What issue numbers would they be up to by now? Maybe 170 or so for Magnus?

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:01 am

Pretty close, I think Magnus would be somewhere around 184 issues by now.

Vault-Keeper · Post by **Vault-Keeper** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:13 am

VHMMV wrote:I can't help but compare Valiant's big three - Shooter, Layton, and Windsor-Smith - to Marvel's big three - Lee, Kirby, and Ditko - in that order. Where would Marvel be today if Stan Lee had been fired in 1963? Still around? Fondly remembered but non-existent? Even though Lee eventually passed on titles (and the EIC chair) to other people, as late as the mid-Seventies he had a role in deciding what Marvel's covers looked like, so he was still active with the company in a tangible way.

People like to point out that Marvel Comics wasn't just Stan Lee just like Valiant wasn't just Jim Shooter, but really, Kirby and Ditko didn't have any commercial successes without Lee in the post-Marvel era, whereas Lee was successful with any number of other artists - Gene Colan, Dick Ayers, Don Heck, Bill Everett, etc. - in the Marvel Era and beyond. Okay, those artists might not have co-created the mainstays of the Marvel Universe, but still, the books which they worked on were successful. Compare that to Kirby's work at DC: every single book got cancelled. Same with Ditko's Charlton and DC work. People might like the New Gods mythos and think that the Creeper and Hawk and Dove and Captain Atom were good books, but they all failed commercially, and at best, those characters have only been able to sustain themselves as in supporting roles to this day. Compare that to Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, etc.. They're all still being made, and they're all still doing well.

Likewise, Valiant survived the departure of Jim Shooter, but not for long. More than a few people have said that the quality of the books declined after he was fired. One can only wonder if Valiant would have ridden out the mid-90s comics bust like Dark Horse and Image did if Shooter had still been in charge. Maybe we'd still be reading XO and Harbinger today, or maybe nothing could have saved Valiant. In retrospect, firing him seems like a stupid mistake to have made, and I bet Valiant was secretly cheering Marvel on when it sued Defiant over Plasm. After all, a potentially successful Defiant would have eaten into Valiant's sales, too, probably moreso than Marvel's. But whether it was Shooter or Valiant that was the reason for Valiant's success... well, the company existed both with and without him, so there's plenty of evidence available for comparison.

Very good post. I agree with most of your comparisons between Valiant and Marvel.

There are a couple of other points that should be mentioned about Marvel, and Stan's relationships with his peers.

First off, Marvel was nothing new in 1961. Stan, Jack, and others had been cranking out comics for decades. The release of Fantastic Four was actually a last gasp for Stan writing super hero stuff.

Stan was Martin Goodman's (publisher) hatchet man in 1957, when Atlas all but closed their doors. This left alot of people feeling bitter towards Stan. Many estabished artists begrudgingly worked for Stan in the 1960's, because he had the work for them.

In 1966, Carl Burgos, arguably the creator of The Human Torch, lost a lawsuit against Stan for the rights to the character. Carl was pi$$ed that Stan incorporated the "Human Torch" to his superhero team, the Fantastic Four, with Carl not making a dime in royalties. When he lost the lawsuit, Stan rubbed it in his face by doing Fantastic Four Annual #4, in which the original Human Torch fights the Torch from FF. This pi$$ed Carl off so bad that he BURNED all of his original artwork he did of the Human Torch, from the 1940's.

The writing was on the wall at that point, and the same lessons were learned the hard way by Kirby and Ditko later on. We all love Stan, but he really wasn't a nice guy when it came to business. At least Jim Shooter DID try to make repairations during his tenure as EIC at Marvel. On the flip side, Valiant didn't have the same 'history' as Marvel beyond when Shooter, Layton and Smith worked together there.---Steve

wrunow · Post by **wrunow** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:19 am

VHMMV wrote:I can't help but compare Valiant's big three - Shooter, Layton, and Windsor-Smith - to Marvel's big three - Lee, Kirby, and Ditko - in that order. Where would Marvel be today if Stan Lee had been fired in 1963? Still around? Fondly remembered but non-existent? Even though Lee eventually passed on titles (and the EIC chair) to other people, as late as the mid-Seventies he had a role in deciding what Marvel's covers looked like, so he was still active with the company in a tangible way.

People like to point out that Marvel Comics wasn't just Stan Lee just like Valiant wasn't just Jim Shooter, but really, Kirby and Ditko didn't have any commercial successes without Lee in the post-Marvel era, whereas Lee was successful with any number of other artists - Gene Colan, Dick Ayers, Don Heck, Bill Everett, etc. - in the Marvel Era and beyond. Okay, those artists might not have co-created the mainstays of the Marvel Universe, but still, the books which they worked on were successful. Compare that to Kirby's work at DC: every single book got cancelled. Same with Ditko's Charlton and DC work. People might like the New Gods mythos and think that the Creeper and Hawk and Dove and Captain Atom were good books, but they all failed commercially, and at best, those characters have only been able to sustain themselves as in supporting roles to this day. Compare that to Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, etc.. They're all still being made, and they're all still doing well.

Likewise, Valiant survived the departure of Jim Shooter, but not for long. More than a few people have said that the quality of the books declined after he was fired. One can only wonder if Valiant would have ridden out the mid-90s comics bust like Dark Horse and Image did if Shooter had still been in charge. Maybe we'd still be reading XO and Harbinger today, or maybe nothing could have saved Valiant. In retrospect, firing him seems like a stupid mistake to have made, and I bet Valiant was secretly cheering Marvel on when it sued Defiant over Plasm. After all, a potentially successful Defiant would have eaten into Valiant's sales, too, probably moreso than Marvel's. But whether it was Shooter or Valiant that was the reason for Valiant's success... well, the company existed both with and without him, so there's plenty of evidence available for comparison.

I think the main reason Image and Dark Horse are around today is that their business models were totally different than that of VALIANT. Image, which really didn't ride ride out the bust all that well when you consider Jim Lee sold out (I am sure he wouldn't have sold to DC if his studio was making him millions like Toddy) and Leifield imploded and was kicked out, and Dark Horse, which really didn't print much except for X-Files and maybe "Sin City", but made millions by working deals on properties such as "The Mask", "Men In Black" , "Timecop", and more recently "Hellboy".

Now whether or not Shooter would have realized that the money wasn't in printing comics but was in maximizing the exposure of the VALIANT intellectual properties to make the company profitable in television or movies would be the real question, because these companies cannot really compete against the media giants like Marvel and DC by printing comics only. I think once Marvel realized that printing comics was really all about advertizing their intellectual properties and less about making money on comics, it pretty much spelled doom for all the little guys who were gonna try to compete with them because they were getting beat over the head with liscensing and media profits they didn't have access too. I think the "Plasm" lawsuit was a perfect example of that.

VHMMV · Post by **VHMMV** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:54 pm

Marvel and DC have the advantage of owning properties which people grew up with, and the nostalgia factor is extremely important when it comes to off-the-page merchandising. Would as many people have seen the Spider-Man movies if S-Man had been created the same time as Spawn? I don't think so. Even Spawn, for all its millions, isn't that well known by people in the street.

If Valiant hadn't gone under, we'd only now be getting to the point where people would be looking back at their childhoods and saying, "Hey, I remember X-O Manowar!" That doesn't mean that an X-O movie would rake in big bucks, either. Hellboy did okay, but the true money for anything created in the past fifteen years is in DVD sales. There would definitely be money there for Valiant to take advantage of, but how much, and how much relative to the costs of running a business? And how much of that money would Valiant actually see after the movie company took its cut? One of the things which hurts major comic book companies is that they have to have a lot of dough just to keep the machinery of business in place, so profits get eaten up by rent, bills, etc., that smaller publishers just don't have.

I'm not convinced that Valiant would be able to take advantage of their intellectual properties outside of comics. Even Daredevil, which has been around for a while, didn't do so well, and yes, I know that the movie sucked, but do we have any reason to believe that a Valiant movie would be done any better?

wrunow · Post by **wrunow** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:41 pm

VHMMV wrote:Marvel and DC have the advantage of owning properties which people grew up with, and the nostalgia factor is extremely important when it comes to off-the-page merchandising. Would as many people have seen the Spider-Man movies if S-Man had been created the same time as Spawn? I don't think so. Even Spawn, for all its millions, isn't that well known by people in the street.

Spawn did pretty well if I remember correctly and I don't know why the VALIANT properties couldn't have also. Spawn wasn't a household name, and neither was The Mask or Men In Black, not even to mention The Crow. They may not have been as big as the Spidey movie, but they did pretty well. I would think a Shadowman tv series would've been pretty good, not to mention a Magnus movie.

VHMMV wrote:If Valiant hadn't gone under, we'd only now be getting to the point where people would be looking back at their childhoods and saying, "Hey, I remember X-O Manowar!"

If VALIANT had survived hopefully many of us would be still reading the titles like many adults read the Marvel and DC titles.

VHMMV wrote:That doesn't mean that an X-O movie would rake in big bucks, either. Hellboy did okay, but the true money for anything created in the past fifteen years is in DVD sales. There would definitely be money there for Valiant to take advantage of, but how much, and how much relative to the costs of running a business? And how much of that money would Valiant actually see after the movie company took its cut? One of the things which hurts major comic book companies is that they have to have a lot of dough just to keep the machinery of business in place, so profits get eaten up by rent, bills, etc., that smaller publishers just don't have.

I would think the costs of running a small comic company have plummeted in the last 15 years or so with the internet, file sharing and transfers, and such. My buddy works here in town for Cisco Systems, 5 years ago he was on a plane to San Jose every week or two, now he goes once a month, maybe. Spend the day videoconferencing and doing powerpoint presentations from home. It's saved his company millions in decreased travel expensed and increased productivity. I would think using these technologies you could run a small comic company out of a 6-8 room office with the editors receiving pages over the internet from artists on a daily basis.

VHMMV wrote:I'm not convinced that Valiant would be able to take advantage of their intellectual properties outside of comics. Even Daredevil, which has been around for a while, didn't do so well, and yes, I know that the movie sucked, but do we have any reason to believe that a Valiant movie would be done any better?

Why not a VALIANT movie? This argument makes no sense. I mean, Judge Dredd with Sly Stallone really sucked, but that's not because Daredevil sucked. Actually, I didn't think DD was all that bad, or the Punisher for that matter. Every movie doesn't have to be a blockbuster like Spidey or Xmen to be successful or meaningful. I mean, I was happy to see these characters on the screen in some kind of a decent representation. I think Shadowman would have made a pretty good tv miniseries, I would've been happy with that if it was of decent quality.

VHMMV · Post by **VHMMV** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:35 pm

The argument makes sense when you look at it this way: the Valiant properties aren't that well known, and comic book movies suck more often than not (at least, that's my opinion). Plus, it would cost a fortune to make a Valiant movie, and the producers can't bank on the fact that there's a substantial built-in audience that has been waiting for years for a particular character to make it onto the big screen. A Valiant movie would require a lot of special effects (unless it was Shadowman or Archer & Armstrong), and that means big bucks to make, plus if it sucks (as comic book movies usually do), people won't go back to see it again and again and will tell their friends to stay away.

And even if it was a great movie, that's no guarantee that it would catch on. Lots of good movies get passed over by audiences all the time. It's a very big financial risk which would only make a very small number of people happy. That's not to say that a Valiant movie couldn't be made, but nothing in Hollywood ever gets made because someone says, "Why not?" It's always, "Why?" when tens of millions of dollars are at stake. Given the track record of comic book movies, I tend to be realistic about them and think that they'll all suck unless they can prove otherwise. But that's just me - your own mileage may vary.

I do agree that it costs less to run a comic book company today, though. Unfortunately, the first thing that a lot of "new major" comic book companies do is line up investor capital, rent expensive office space, buy furniture, etc.. It helped kill Crossgen, and it'll kill any future company that follows that pattern. Boot-strapping is the only way to go, but ego prevents a lot of publishers from doing it. If Valiant hadn't been bought by Acclaim, it wouldn't have been run out of Bob Layton's basement, that's for sure. Look at what happened to Future Comics - it gushed blood. I predict the same for any comic book company that follows that model, and wonder where companies like Narwain will be in a few years.

mrwoogieman · Post by **mrwoogieman** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:42 pm

Jim Shooter wrote this:

mrwoogieman · Post by **mrwoogieman** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:44 pm

...and the one on the left, written by Jim Shooter!

ZephyrWasHOT!! · Post by **ZephyrWasHOT!!** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:35 pm

Heath wrote:
But anyway, I think Dave was right - they captured lightning in a bottle. It was a perfect mix of all the factors involved - story telling, art, characters, market conditions, etc - and I don't think anything like Valiant will happen again.

Well....to be fair, it happened to DC around 1938...

And Marvel around 1961....

And Valiant around 1991....

Give it another 10-15 years, it'll be due.

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:41 pm

ZephyrWasHOT!! wrote:
Heath wrote:
But anyway, I think Dave was right - they captured lightning in a bottle. It was a perfect mix of all the factors involved - story telling, art, characters, market conditions, etc - and I don't think anything like Valiant will happen again.
Well....to be fair, it happened to DC around 1938...

And Marvel around 1961....

And Valiant around 1991....

Give it another 10-15 years, it'll be due.

-slym (maybe that's when we'll see new VALIANTs???)

ZephyrWasHOT!! · Post by **ZephyrWasHOT!!** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:14 pm

mrwoogieman wrote:...and the one on the left, written by Jim Shooter!

That one on the left is the cover to Spectacular Spiderman #.....3? 11? One of the two.

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