PunX

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 3:53 pm

What in the world was Valiant thinking with this? I was looking through some of my stuff and ran across the first three issues and reread them. It seems kind of like “Mad Magazine goes Valiant” only a lot less funny. It’s hard to believe this made it past the word go. It has a poor excuse for a story backdrop with a very confusing script and super lame characters. Plus, there are a lot of inside jokes and internal jabs at various Valiant staff members along the way that are kinda stale at best (with a few exceptions). This may have made a cute little one-shot, but not a total of four books with a $2.50 price tag on them (plus they were soliciting even more of these things).

Did anybody actually like this stuff?

dellamorte · Post by **dellamorte** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:02 pm

I did. I look at it kinda how I look at the Vh2 stuff, it's good on its own but not a part of the original Valiant U.

Bernard Changs Bad Girls With Butts To Die For was funny. Followed by Layton in his boxers. Good stuff.

betterthanezra · Post by **betterthanezra** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:04 pm

It defin. had moments......i think it would have been better if all the issue's had been released after being solicited...

-Brian

Will · Post by **Will** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:44 pm

...

Yeah, I liked it too. I think it was Keith Giffen being Keith Giffen. You either think that's funny, or you don't. It wasn't VALIANT, but it was Giffen doing what he does, and I liked it.

myron · Post by **myron** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 4:50 pm

I'm not a fan of Giffens work at all...his destruction of magnus was terrible...his Trencher comic was awful...couldn't tell WHAT was going on in either the story or the art and punx reminds me of that...

VHMMV · Post by **VHMMV** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:15 pm

PunX wasn't really a Valiant comic. It was published by Valiant, but it could've been published by any publisher. It was a Keith Giffen comic that just happened to be published by Valiant, just like Trencher just happened to be published by Image and Lobo just happened to be published by DC. And when you're a big star - which Keith Giffen was then (and is again now) - the publisher is just happy to have you lend some name recognition to their line.

I'll bet that a lot of people who bought PunX weren't "Valiant" fans at all, and thus the publisher accomplished its goal of expanding its fanbase to people who weren't already buying its product. I know that a lot of fans can get possessive over companies or product lines, and start to treat them as a private club, which is exactly what the publisher doesn't want. The number of people that buy every single book that a publisher makes is actually pretty small, and it wants to avoid the appearance that you have to do so in order to follow any one of their products. So books like PunX send a clear signal that you don't have to buy a publisher's books as a block, but can pick and choose what you want, especially if you're not currently buying any of them.

Think of it like cable tv packages. Wouldn't it be nice if you could pick and choose individual channels instead of purchasing a block of channels just to get the one that you want?

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:37 pm

myron wrote:I'm not a fan of Giffens work at all...his destruction of magnus was terrible...his Trencher comic was awful...couldn't tell WHAT was going on in either the story or the art and punx reminds me of that...

I'm with you, I've read Trencher as well and thought it was along the same lines as PunX. Both were awful IMO. Even the style of art is horrible.

Heath · Post by **Heath** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:38 pm

Will wrote:...

Yeah, I liked it too. I think it was Keith Giffen being Keith Giffen. You either think that's funny, or you don't. It wasn't VALIANT, but it was Giffen doing what he does, and I liked it.

I completely agree. It was Giffen doing what Giffen does. And remember, this came out about the time Ron Marz got his hands on X-O, staple books like Harbinger, and Rai were being cancelled, etc. Things were going downhill pretty fast at Valiant about this time. And sadly, this was one of the best books they were putting out (that fact in itself speaks volumes about how bad things were then). I haven't re-read the series since it was first released, so I may feel differently about it now if I were to re-read it.

jsbt · Post by **jsbt** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 12:21 am

I am biased towards Keith Giffen. Though I am not that familiar with his classic Justice League stuff, I grew up with and loved Giffen's otherwise very, very unpopular run writing the volume 4 "adult Legion" with the Bierbaums, in the days when the team was all thirtysomething, unshaven and in Legionnaire teamster jackets. I picked up some Giffen late-era Magnus along with some of Steel Nation and Invasion recently, and I have to say for all the talk about how horrid his Magnus work was, I was pretty impressed with some of Giffen's pacing and writing with the Magnus stories. It bore out the fact that Giffen was primarily responsible for the similar slow, melancholy pace of the Legion stuff I used to read.

I will probably pick up Punx despite the strangeness - I never got into Trencher, for example - but what was the supposed Harbinger connection to the book supposed to be?

Redtrax · Post by **Redtrax** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 12:45 am

jsbt wrote:I am biased towards Keith Giffen. Though I am not that familiar with his classic Justice League stuff, I grew up with and loved Giffen's otherwise very, very unpopular run writing the volume 4 "adult Legion" with the Bierbaums, in the days when the team was all thirtysomething, unshaven and in Legionnaire teamster jackets. I picked up some Giffen late-era Magnus along with some of Steel Nation and Invasion recently, and I have to say for all the talk about how horrid his Magnus work was, I was pretty impressed with some of Giffen's pacing and writing with the Magnus stories. It bore out the fact that Giffen was primarily responsible for the similar slow, melancholy pace of the Legion stuff I used to read.

I will probably pick up Punx despite the strangeness - I never got into Trencher, for example - but what was the supposed Harbinger connection to the book supposed to be?

I absolutely enjoyed his recent Drax miniseries for Marvel.

dave · Post by **dave** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:53 pm

i must admit that as far as fitting into the valiant universe it only barely does...but i thought it was pretty dang funny. the parts with the little scott mc clooud in them were a riot-but as far as an actual story or plot the whole thing was weak.

as an excuse though-i've only read 1 and 2-haven't gotten around to 3 or the manga thing...

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:54 pm

jsbt wrote: but what was the supposed Harbinger connection to the book supposed to be?

It was a pretty confusing read, but I noticed they mentioned Harada and Harbinger a few times. I never really got the connection though. They were supposed to have an #4 issue which might have explained it more, but it was canceled (thank goodness).

dave · Post by **dave** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:03 pm

i kinda thought that one of harada's henchmen starred in the books, as a leader of some of those guys-and he was trying to figure out where harada was etc. he came across a kid who had all the answers (because he read the issue!) and then that guy was trying to find his own copy...

not that that will help to clear anything up...

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:28 pm

dave wrote:i kinda thought that one of harada's henchmen starred in the books, as a leader of some of those guys-and he was trying to figure out where harada was etc. he came across a kid who had all the answers (because he read the issue!) and then that guy was trying to find his own copy...

not that that will help to clear anything up...

Yeah, that's about as clear as mud.