Re-Reading: Solar #9

A week-to-week plan is available for re-reading VALIANT from the beginning...
start anytime, go at your own pace.

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How would you rate this book?

10
2
33%
9
2
33%
8
2
33%
7
0
No votes
6
0
No votes
5
0
No votes
4
0
No votes
3
0
No votes
2
0
No votes
1
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 6

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xoken
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Re-Reading: Solar #9

Post by 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 #9
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magnusr
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Re: Re-Reading: Solar #9

Post by magnusr »

This issue takes some of themes to the extreme. Maybe even slightly over the top. Most of all it explores the issue of power in the hands of someone who can't control it. But it also shows that the human mind, even when not developed, is more important than the form that happens to hold it. Finally it goes into the territory of when lives should be saved or not, weighing the good of one against the good of many. Solar pretty much reasons the same way as Harada usually is reasoning against him. A very interesting self-contained issue that is very important for future events.

/Magnus

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Daniel Jackson
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Post by Daniel Jackson »

Nice book, but I did not care too much for the idea of a "Baby Solar". Still, it gives a good glimpse into Erica's frame of mind and why she is so messed up.

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jedimarley
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Post by jedimarley »

I liked the idea of what the baby Solar represents...The power of God in the hands of someone who can not handle it.

Great story and solid art. 9 :thumb:

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Todd Luck
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Post by Todd Luck »

We've seen god babies before but they usually are born with uber intelligence as well as uber power. This is the first I've seen someone born with power but with the mind of a normal baby. It's brillant:thumb:

The story that follows is unique, fascinating, funny, tense, tragic, and extremely powerful. Solar's put in the classic situation Shooter puts a lot of his heroes in where he has to decide between a single life and the life of millions. The answer in Shooter's stories is never clear or easy and the hero always chooses the greater good because that what real heroes do. And all this made even more twisted and tragic by an all too real cycle of violence that's left Pierce a battered, broken woman.

Incredible stuff. This is what Valiant was all about. A 10 :thumb: .

Continuity Notes: So both versions of Erica got the same power as Phil from his reactor, his "wish machine." But why? We know being Solar was Phil's wish but it certainly wouldn't have been Erica's.

So how did she get the power? Because, just as Phil subconciously wished himself powers, he also did so for Erica too. Remember in Solar 12 he says "If I made you to play a role in my "psychotic fantasy'... then, you're the evil I was meant to destroy." I don't think he was talking metaphorically...
Last edited by Todd Luck on Wed Dec 07, 2005 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by jedimarley »

Todd Luck wrote:So how did she get the power? Because, just as Phil subconciously wished himself powers, he also did so for Erica too. Remember in Solar 12 he says "If I made you to play a role in my "psychotic fantasy'... then, you're the evil I was meant to destroy." I don't think he was talking metaphorically...
:think:

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magnusr
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Post by magnusr »

The VCB synopsis:

Above the Nazca plains of Peru, Solar obliterates a Spider Alien craft and its crew. Able to home in on alien gravimetric propulsion units, Solar found the aliens making a desperate effort to leave earth. With their destruction, Solar hopes these are the last of the aliens.
Returning to Muskogee, Phil Seleski sheds his Solar costume and joins his co-workers at the Edgewater Fusion research facility. He tells no one where he was during his long absence in space. However, since Gayle knows that he is secretly Solar, he asks her out for dinner to tell her about it. Then, Erica Pierce requests that Seleski speak with her privately. She has been experiencing intense heat-flashes since being in the containment chamber with Seleski during the Edgewater “incident”. Phil examines her with his powers. He finds that Erica has, within her, an unborn child that is manifesting itself as energy. It leaves Pierce’s body, and flies away from the Edgewater facility. With Gayle watching over Pierce, Phil dons the Solar guise and pursues the “godchild”. Solar finds the child inside the reactor, feeding off the energy and developing at an accelerated rate. But the child evades him yet again.
Returning to the offices, Phil finds that Erica has already gone. He tracks her down to her favorite bar and explains to her that she is becoming an energy-being like himself. She has difficulty accepting this, as well as the fact that her baby is gone. Leaving Phil, she heads for home. It turns out that the baby had returned to Erica, and she was harboring it within herself. When she extrudes it inside her home, her husband panics and strikes at the embryonic child. The child flees for space.
Seeing the godchild heading for the sun, Solar chases after it. He finds that the child has gorged itself on solar energy and is dangerously powerful. The child injures Solar, then heads back to Earth. The godchild finds Erica Pierce at a shopping center. By the time Solar catches up, the godchild has wreaked horrible damage and killed scores of shoppers. Erica was unable to control her destructive progeny. So, Solar battles the child until it loses enough energy and dissipates. When the paramedics arrive, they find Erica Pierce emotionally traumatized, but physically unhurt, while those around her all lie dead. Pierce is now focused one one thing alone: her hatred for the killer of her child; Solar.

/Magnus


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