VALIANT Revival: What We'd Like To See...

dave · Post by **dave** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 10:03 pm

sounds pretty cool...i din't get in on the chat...i was able to once-but never again...i thought it might be a java aps problem, so i just finished downloading j2ee 1.4 sdk but that did not help i guess.

you're going to post a transcript right?

did he ask about solar 2004? did you make sure you get to control the rights to it? make sure to protect yourself!

ManofTheAtom · Post by **ManofTheAtom** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 10:05 pm

dave wrote:sounds pretty cool...i din't get in on the chat...i was able to once-but never again...i thought it might be a java aps problem, so i just finished downloading j2ee 1.4 sdk but that did not help i guess.

you're going to post a transcript right?

did he ask about solar 2004? did you make sure you get to control the rights to it? make sure to protect yourself!

Heh, nah, it didn't come up.

And yeah, Greg's got the transcript now, so it should be up soon as he formats it.

ManofTheAtom · Post by **ManofTheAtom** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:04 pm

Knightt · Post by **Knightt** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 9:02 pm

double bump

iggy101us · Post by **iggy101us** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:38 pm

ManofTheAtom wrote:Based on tonight's chat, I think that if Taddeo wins the bid what we're most likely to end up seeing is a Harbinger mini series by Jim Shooter and an X-O Manowar by Bob Layton... that is, if things go the way he wants them to.

Since Taddeo wants to work with those two, and that's the original concepts they each brough to the table, it's my feeling that those are the ones they may end up wanting to work on.

That's incredible, MOTA!!!

That's basically what happened with the HCs and the new short-stories.

So what are next week's lottery numbers?

BloodOfHeroes · Post by **BloodOfHeroes** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 9:05 pm

iggy101us wrote:That's incredible, MOTA!!! That's basically what happened with the HCs and the new short-stories.

So what are next week's lottery numbers?

He tells you what someone else implied and *he's* the psychic?

Solitude · Post by **Solitude** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:02 pm

We begin with Harbinger. It's the most logical place to start, given the movie buzz. I'd begin with Harada, telling the story from within the Harbinger Foundation. With modern storytelling, the rift between Harada and Pete would take more time to develop. You'd start off with a "Oh my God! The place is so awesome and Harada is so rich and everything is so cool and awesome" feeling. As Harada opens up to Pete, the feeling becomes uneasy... until it's ultimately obvious that they have opposing philosophies (or rather, that Harada has a philosophy that Pete doesn't like). Harada ought to be more insidious and veiled in his approach; killing Pete's friend, I thought, was too overt an action for a long-view tactician like Harada.

One thing that struck me about Harada back when I first read the books is that the character takes Peter Parker's "With great power comes great responsibility" axiom to a ridiculous extreme. It's not that Harada /wants/ to take over the world because he's a megalomanical bad guy; he wants to take over the world because he sees it as his responsibility. That's a big responsibility, but then, he's got a lot of power. There's a real dilemma within the book of the ends justifying the means. Given the climate of the world today, those themes could easily be ramped up and explored in a compelling way.

Next is X-O. It obviously has to be Aric in the armor, and I loved the whole Iron Man meets Conan aspect of the book. Aric would be the head of a multi-national weapons development company. The premise with this is that he's seen the spider aliens, and he's doing what he can to prepare for their inevitable invasion. That is not to say he intends to save America or the world or anything silly like that; he intends to use his company to defeat the spider aliens /after/ they've invaded, setting himself up as Emperor of whatever land he can take afterward. That kind of mentality would soften as the story progressed, but would make initial interactions dicey. The main point of divergence would be in the armor; it wouldn't be able to interpret Aric's mental commands very well. After all, the organism is "meant" to be worn by spider aliens, so presumably there would be a difference in how the brain works. On some level, Aric would be aware that the suit wasn't strictly mechanical, and that leads him to ask fellow billionaire Harada if he knew of anyone that could help him with a "mechanical problem". Naturally, this is where Ax would be introduced, and he would be more interested in getting the X-O off of Aric than "solving" its species problem.

That sets the stage for a breakdown of communications and an uncomfortable silent conflict between weapons hardware maker Aric and bio-weapons trainer Harada. Did Harada send Ax to steal the armor? Did Aric try to poach Harada's man? Neither wants to come out and ask, but both would have suspicions. As for themes within X-O, what I would want to focus on is the decision to place self above community. Aric, in the modern age, has no tribe or village. He doesn't belong anywhere, and so naturally thinks of himself before others because to him they are /others/ in every sense.

The third connection is Bloodshot. In this universe, the funding and research that go into Project Rising Spirit come from Aric's company. The idea here is that with the horrible experience with Ax, Aric is trying to create/modify a more docile, malleable person to interface with his armor. The nanites that go into Bloodshot would be at least partially based on "cells" taken from Shanhara (forgive misspelling; I'm going off the top of my head), to help explain the ridiculously high level of tech required to create Bloodshot. From there, the story is more familiar -- Bloodshot goes ape and tears things up escaping, and you get the whole Frankenstein/drive to be a better man thing.

Which is where the Eternal Warrior comes in. That book would open with Giliad serving in Iraq under an assumed name. When he's injured, it generates some paperwork, and that paperwork sends up a red flag. Using a false identity to get into a warzone? Can you imagine the hell someone would catch for doing something like that? But Gil doesn't need to worry about that. What does concern him though is that someone apparently knows who he is, and has a job they want him to do. The alternative is simple: He'll be encased in a concrete slab and dropped into the ocean, presumably until plate tectonics swallow him up in a few million years. The job? Track down an escaped labrat codenamed Bloodshot. What Gil doesn't know is that he's working for Aric. Aric, of course, knows that getting stabbed or shot isn't enough to do in Gil, which is why he'd use him to recover Bloodshot.

Eternal Warrior would be kind of cloak and daggery, focusing more on Gil tracking Bloodshot and waiting for the right time to strike, while at the same time trying to clandestinely figure out who tapped him for the job. After all, he's not supposed to be a hired gun, and his status as an immortal isn't exactly public knowledge. Things get thornier when Gil finds out that the one who made Bloodshot's escape possible was Geomancer Geoff McHenry... If Bloodshot was /supposed/ to get out, then is he running against his calling by trying to recapture the man?

In other words, I'd want to see what made Valiant great in the first place: Comics that are mature enough to have levels of moral ambiguity in them. Main characters who aren't necessarily always heroic, who's failings make them relateable. A cohesive universe with logical, tight interconnections.

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:14 pm

Welcome abroad, and what a great first post!

Please stick around and post more!!!

-slym

xodacia81 · Post by **xodacia81** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:19 pm

Solitude wrote:We begin with Harbinger. It's the most logical place to start, given the movie buzz. I'd begin with Harada, telling the story from within the Harbinger Foundation. With modern storytelling, the rift between Harada and Pete would take more time to develop. You'd start off with a "Oh my God! The place is so awesome and Harada is so rich and everything is so cool and awesome" feeling. As Harada opens up to Pete, the feeling becomes uneasy... until it's ultimately obvious that they have opposing philosophies (or rather, that Harada has a philosophy that Pete doesn't like). Harada ought to be more insidious and veiled in his approach; killing Pete's friend, I thought, was too overt an action for a long-view tactician like Harada.

One thing that struck me about Harada back when I first read the books is that the character takes Peter Parker's "With great power comes great responsibility" axiom to a ridiculous extreme. It's not that Harada /wants/ to take over the world because he's a megalomanical bad guy; he wants to take over the world because he sees it as his responsibility. That's a big responsibility, but then, he's got a lot of power. There's a real dilemma within the book of the ends justifying the means. Given the climate of the world today, those themes could easily be ramped up and explored in a compelling way.

Next is X-O. It obviously has to be Aric in the armor, and I loved the whole Iron Man meets Conan aspect of the book. Aric would be the head of a multi-national weapons development company. The premise with this is that he's seen the spider aliens, and he's doing what he can to prepare for their inevitable invasion. That is not to say he intends to save America or the world or anything silly like that; he intends to use his company to defeat the spider aliens /after/ they've invaded, setting himself up as Emperor of whatever land he can take afterward. That kind of mentality would soften as the story progressed, but would make initial interactions dicey. The main point of divergence would be in the armor; it wouldn't be able to interpret Aric's mental commands very well. After all, the organism is "meant" to be worn by spider aliens, so presumably there would be a difference in how the brain works. On some level, Aric would be aware that the suit wasn't strictly mechanical, and that leads him to ask fellow billionaire Harada if he knew of anyone that could help him with a "mechanical problem". Naturally, this is where Ax would be introduced, and he would be more interested in getting the X-O off of Aric than "solving" its species problem.

That sets the stage for a breakdown of communications and an uncomfortable silent conflict between weapons hardware maker Aric and bio-weapons trainer Harada. Did Harada send Ax to steal the armor? Did Aric try to poach Harada's man? Neither wants to come out and ask, but both would have suspicions. As for themes within X-O, what I would want to focus on is the decision to place self above community. Aric, in the modern age, has no tribe or village. He doesn't belong anywhere, and so naturally thinks of himself before others because to him they are /others/ in every sense.

The third connection is Bloodshot. In this universe, the funding and research that go into Project Rising Spirit come from Aric's company. The idea here is that with the horrible experience with Ax, Aric is trying to create/modify a more docile, malleable person to interface with his armor. The nanites that go into Bloodshot would be at least partially based on "cells" taken from Shanhara (forgive misspelling; I'm going off the top of my head), to help explain the ridiculously high level of tech required to create Bloodshot. From there, the story is more familiar -- Bloodshot goes ape and tears things up escaping, and you get the whole Frankenstein/drive to be a better man thing.

Which is where the Eternal Warrior comes in. That book would open with Giliad serving in Iraq under an assumed name. When he's injured, it generates some paperwork, and that paperwork sends up a red flag. Using a false identity to get into a warzone? Can you imagine the hell someone would catch for doing something like that? But Gil doesn't need to worry about that. What does concern him though is that someone apparently knows who he is, and has a job they want him to do. The alternative is simple: He'll be encased in a concrete slab and dropped into the ocean, presumably until plate tectonics swallow him up in a few million years. The job? Track down an escaped labrat codenamed Bloodshot. What Gil doesn't know is that he's working for Aric. Aric, of course, knows that getting stabbed or shot isn't enough to do in Gil, which is why he'd use him to recover Bloodshot.

Eternal Warrior would be kind of cloak and daggery, focusing more on Gil tracking Bloodshot and waiting for the right time to strike, while at the same time trying to clandestinely figure out who tapped him for the job. After all, he's not supposed to be a hired gun, and his status as an immortal isn't exactly public knowledge. Things get thornier when Gil finds out that the one who made Bloodshot's escape possible was Geomancer Geoff McHenry... If Bloodshot was /supposed/ to get out, then is he running against his calling by trying to recapture the man?

In other words, I'd want to see what made Valiant great in the first place: Comics that are mature enough to have levels of moral ambiguity in them. Main characters who aren't necessarily always heroic, who's failings make them relateable. A cohesive universe with logical, tight interconnections.

MOTA is gonna LOVE this guy

But, hey man...GREAT first post and some AWESOME ideas

BloodOfHeroes · Post by **BloodOfHeroes** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:09 am

Solitude wrote:The third connection is Bloodshot. In this universe, the funding and research that go into Project Rising Spirit come from Aric's company.

Some very cool concepts, here.

So you're advocating a total reboot, then?

Welcome!

BOH

dave · Post by **dave** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:03 am

nice post-you've got some neat ideas, welcome!

Dr. Solar · Post by **Dr. Solar** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:33 am

Solitude wrote: [snipped for brevity]

Nice. I don't necessarily agree with all of the ideas, there are some things I would want to mix up differently, I like the spirit of the post, which is to make kick @$$ stories with the characters we love.

Solitude · Post by **Solitude** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:41 pm

BloodOfHeroes wrote:So you're advocating a total reboot, then?

Absolutely.

I figure a lot of the people that would be interested in Valiant are like me -- I got into it when X-O started up. Not quite in at the birth with Magnus, but not that far off. I loved everything, but started to flake out around Chaos Effect and Birthquake. I'm familiar with the original characters. When I read about Acclaim's changes to X-O, I'm left dumbfounded.

I read about this universe, that universe, Unity 2000... It's all too convoluted. I don't know how DC fans put up with their continuity being jacked up every other year, but I would have a hard time imagining a cohesive Valiant universe that follows from the iterations that have staggered over themselves. Instead of trying to work around that messy situation, it would be more palatable to go "This is what the official universe is going to be now", and leave it at that.

To put it another way, Jack Boniface is the only Shadowman I want to see. 1999 be damned :)

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:32 pm

Solitude wrote:
To put it another way, Jack Boniface is the only Shadowman I want to see. 1999 be damned

If VEI decides to keep Jack, that's fine with me, but I think there is a place for all of the Shadowmen.

MoonChild · Post by **MoonChild** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:46 am

Daniel Jackson wrote:
Solitude wrote:
To put it another way, Jack Boniface is the only Shadowman I want to see. 1999 be damned
If VEI decides to keep Jack, that's fine with me, but I think there is a place for all of the Shadowmen.

agreed

MoonChild · Post by **MoonChild** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:47 am

Good post Solitude. feelin the creativity...and makes you imagine how you would do it..

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:03 am

There were other Shadowmen after Jack?

-slym

dave · Post by **dave** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:39 am

stop spreading vicious rumors slym!

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:14 am

dave wrote:stop spreading vicious rumors slym!

Don't encourage him.....

xodacia81 · Post by **xodacia81** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:36 am

Daniel Jackson wrote:
dave wrote:stop spreading vicious rumors slym!
Don't encourage him.....

I don't think he needs encouraging. He's this way naturally.

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:07 pm

xodacia81 wrote:
Daniel Jackson wrote:
dave wrote:stop spreading vicious rumors slym!
Don't encourage him.....
I don't think he needs encouraging. He's this way naturally.

I spread rumours like P. Hilton spreads VD.

-slym

xodacia81 · Post by **xodacia81** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:53 pm

slym2none wrote:
xodacia81 wrote:
Daniel Jackson wrote:
dave wrote:stop spreading vicious rumors slym!
Don't encourage him.....
I don't think he needs encouraging. He's this way naturally.
I spread rumours like P. Hilton spreads VD.

-slym

So, just call you Typhoid Slym?

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:46 pm

xodacia81 wrote:
slym2none wrote:
xodacia81 wrote:
Daniel Jackson wrote:
dave wrote:stop spreading vicious rumors slym!
Don't encourage him.....
I don't think he needs encouraging. He's this way naturally.
I spread rumours like P. Hilton spreads VD.

-slym
So, just call you Typhoid Slym?

Actually, that's a fallacy - Paris Hilton, while seemingly as accommodating as the hotel she gets her namesake from, is "clean."

And there is my joke - I don't spread rumours.

-slym

Daniel Jackson · Post by **Daniel Jackson** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:05 pm

I seem to remember Paris suffering "a mysterious health problem" when she was in jail. Wonder what that could have been.....

slym2none · Post by **slym2none** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:06 pm

Daniel Jackson wrote:I seem to remember Paris suffering "a mysterious health problem" when she was in jail. Wonder what that could have been.....

An excuse for her to get out of jail.

-slym