VH 3 Artwork

[ManofTheAtom]

Long ago someone posted artwork from the unreleased Doctor Mirage one-shot. Does anyone know how to find it on the board, and if it is still visible after all this time?

These are the images for VH 3 Bloodshot I could find in an archive of the Blood of Heroes page using the Wayback Machine.

v301.jpg

v302.jpg

v303.jpg

[ManofTheAtom]

v304.jpg

[Ryan]

Those look cool. I like the designs on him and the costume's not bad.

I do prefer when Valiant uses realistic weaponry though. This looks like they were going for a more sci-fantasy take.

I think Pat Quinn is the same guy who did a Solar redesign from around the same time, with Sean Clauretie and Chris Sotomayor doing Magnus. Found the link from Sonicdan's site https://sonicdan.com/valiant/solarmagnus.html



2002 so around the same time as VH3, but I think this was a separate attempt to license the GK characters. Unfortunately looks like the Quinn Solar image is gone, but I have it saved somewhere.

I remember seeing the info about the Doctor Mirage one-shot, don't remember where though.

[ManofTheAtom]

Those look cool. I like the designs on him and the costume's not bad.

I do prefer when Valiant uses realistic weaponry though. This looks like they were going for a more sci-fantasy take.

I think Pat Quinn is the same guy who did a Solar redesign from around the same time, with Sean Clauretie and Chris Sotomayor doing Magnus. Found the link from Sonicdan's site https://sonicdan.com/valiant/solarmagnus.html



2002 so around the same time as VH3, but I think this was a separate attempt to license the GK characters. Unfortunately looks like the Quinn Solar image is gone, but I have it saved somewhere.

I remember seeing the info about the Doctor Mirage one-shot, don't remember where though.

These I've had on my PC since then, heh. But, yeah, I think they were from conflicting Magnus reboots. I've seen interior pages of the one your image comes from.

MagnusVH3-3.jpg

MagnusVH3-2.jpg

MagnusVH3.jpg

[Ryan]

Yup that's the one. I think I lump all of that into VH3. Everything from 1999 - 2003 or so. It's a big mishmash of misfit toys that don't quite fit together.

Shadowman Vol. 3, Armorines Vol. 2, Turok Evolution were all made to tie into their video games. Then Unity 2000, the James Perham attempted reboot and the Sotomayor Gold Key attempted reboot.

[ManofTheAtom]

Yup that's the one. I think I lump all of that into VH3. Everything from 1999 - 2003 or so. It's a big mishmash of misfit toys that don't quite fit together.

Shadowman Vol. 3, Armorines Vol. 2, Turok Evolution were all made to tie into their video games. Then Unity 2000, the James Perham attempted reboot and the Sotomayor Gold Key attempted reboot.

And the only one that came out was the iBooks one-shot.

[ManofTheAtom]

SonicDan has the Magnus pages.

[ManofTheAtom]

I just remembered I have these.

carmenmiragevh3.jpg

carmen mirage vh 3.jpg

[nycjadie]

Love this stuff. Thanks all for sharing.

[ManofTheAtom]

I know I had an image of Quinn's Solar, but I cannot find it.

[ManofTheAtom]

Love this stuff. Thanks all for sharing.

No problem.

[Ryan]

Yup that's the one. I think I lump all of that into VH3. Everything from 1999 - 2003 or so. It's a big mishmash of misfit toys that don't quite fit together.

Shadowman Vol. 3, Armorines Vol. 2, Turok Evolution were all made to tie into their video games. Then Unity 2000, the James Perham attempted reboot and the Sotomayor Gold Key attempted reboot.

And the only one that came out was the iBooks one-shot.

Yup and it was really bad . Poor Magnus, he's had so many reboots by now.

Just looking at the Armorines vol. 2, was it the last appearance of the original Spider-Aliens? There's also VH2 X-O, so I'm a little confused which continuity it takes place in. Can't bother to read it though.

[ManofTheAtom]

Yup that's the one. I think I lump all of that into VH3. Everything from 1999 - 2003 or so. It's a big mishmash of misfit toys that don't quite fit together.

Shadowman Vol. 3, Armorines Vol. 2, Turok Evolution were all made to tie into their video games. Then Unity 2000, the James Perham attempted reboot and the Sotomayor Gold Key attempted reboot.

And the only one that came out was the iBooks one-shot.

Yup and it was really bad . Poor Magnus, he's had so many reboots by now.

Just looking at the Armorines vol. 2, was it the last appearance of the original Spider-Aliens? There's also VH2 X-O, so I'm a little confused which continuity it takes place in. Can't bother to read it though.

I think yeah, the Armorines mini was the last time we saw the Spider-Aliens.

[Ryan]

I know I had an image of Quinn's Solar, but I cannot find it.

I have that on my computer somewhere, I'll dig it up tonight.

[Ryan]

solar.jpg

This is the biggest version I have. Pretty cool design.

[ManofTheAtom]

solar.jpg
This is the biggest version I have. Pretty cool design.

Nice!

I think I recall also seeing interior pages of that one once.

[Ryan]

solar.jpg
This is the biggest version I have. Pretty cool design.

Nice!

I think I recall also seeing interior pages of that one once.

Hmm I have a vague memory of that too. Anybody have those saved?

All the 'VH3' art is pretty nice, but honestly it leans a little too fantastical for me, not enough 'world outside your window'.

Another question, what about the short stories produced for the early VEI hardcovers, before they decided to reboot? The Shooter ones (Harbinger and A&A) were meant to take place in VH1 continuity I think. I never got the X-O hardcover so I never saw that one. They probably fit better in the Unity 2000 world. Perhaps they fit in VH3 as well.

[Ryan]

I just remembered I have these.
carmenmiragevh3.jpg
carmen mirage vh 3.jpg

That actually sounds pretty cool. Wish we could have seen more of Perham's work.

[Ryan]

Found this Jim Perham interview from October 2000 (https://www.cbr.com/a-valiant-effort-wi ... interview/)

Some interesting stuff

On Birthquake:

MICHAEL DAVID THOMAS: A lot of botched decisions, wrong time, wrong person...

JIM PERHAM: The thing I would wholehearted agree with Jim Shooter on is that this has been a tragedy. These are some really top-notch characters and this was a company that could have done so many incredible things and gone somewhere. We shot ourselves in the foot so many times that it seems to be a broken record, over and over. Every time you think you're going to get out of the jungle, BOOM! there it is again.

MDT: I think Shooter said, "Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory."

JP: Very much so... We had our chance to turn it all around with Birthquake.

Acclaim had just bought us. Acclaim was willing to give us the money if we could show them how we'd spend it. They said, "Look, we're going to bring in these guys and we're going to make a name for ourselves and we're going to take off." But what happened is, instead of bringing in the top-top level guys that they were originally shooting for, when they couldn't get them, they got the next level guys. But they paid them so much that it hurt the industry across the board. Because now these guys' page rates have been elevated to the point that everybody else is calling for the same thing. You suddenly get these editors who didn't feel they could edit these people.

MDT: They just gave them carte blanche.

JP: It's like, "Oh, don't worry, they'll do good stuff." And, it's like, no, you need editors. You need somebody to stand there and it doesn't matter who it is, but you need a second opinion... And that wasn't there. There was no kind of guidance.

That was our opportunity. Wasted. [We] wasted an opportunity and [we] wasted a lot of Acclaim's money.

So true. At the time it was announced, Birthquake felt like it was going to be VALIANT's big chance to right their wrongs and get back to the top. Instead of going back to what made pre-Unity great, and hiring the best writers they could get and cook up a great story, they bought new mansions for B-list star artists like Bart Sears and Dan Jurgens, and they phoned it in.


On the comics industry 23 years ago:

MDT: Fabian Nicieza has said that -- while he was doing a lot of writing there and editor-in-chief -- the bulk of his job there was licensing the characters for Hollywood and other media outlets (video games, animation and others). How much of Acclaim's mission to make money licensing rather than in comic book publishing?

JP: To be totally honest with you, with the way the industry is now, I'm not sure if we -- at the position we are in -- can expect to make money off of comic book operations and sales. We have a goal trying to break even or come as close as possible. If we could make money that would be fantastic.

It's crazy how so little has changed.

MDT: Like their context would be screwed up if they were just in a video game or in a Hollywood.

JP: Yes. [You] can still do so many incredible things with comic books. You can do [them] in video games... but it's going to cost you a ton of money. The beauty of the comic book is the fact is that I have the entire world to play with. In a video game, it's going to take a lot of time and money. A budget for a comic book is $10-15,000 at the low end. A budget for a video game is [$500,000 to $1 million].

Your risk is infinitely greater with a video game. Having comic books to show -- especially with Hollywood because their visual people -- ... helps them a lot better to understand these things and see the potential of a property than to just hand them a written proposal.

This is still basically what VEI-DMG-etc. have been trying to do.

On Unity 2000:

MDT:Shooter started writing Unity 2000 when?

JP: I believe it was the summer of '99. Because it was at San Diego of 1999 when the power that be started pushing the fact that Shooter was coming back to do it.

MDT: What kind of expectations did the company have?

JP: What they were hoping was to use this as jumping point to bigger and better things. It was a chance to give the fans what they wanted, to bring Jim back and give him a go at the characters again. And use that as a starting point for a whole new set of adventures.

That was the expectations. Did it meet expectations? No, of course not. Unity 2000 has been nothing but a nightmare. That's not Jim Shooter's fault at all. [It's] been our fault.

MDT: What happened?

JP: It started off with our new stuff, which just wasn't working. People didn't seem to be interested in them. This was coming off of VH2, the Valiant universe that Fabian had spearheaded.

The folks at the time said, "OK, what can we do?" There's still this core fan following, that, even though they didn't like the VH2 books, liked the characters enough that they were buying the books. That was the amazing thing. We have a core fan following of 8,000-10,000 people and these people are going to buy the books in whatever format they are.

You've got to say that it's a tribute to the early work that Jim [Shooter] did and the early work of Valiant that these people believed in it so much and are sticking through it through all this madness. The thing was, what those fans wanted -- plain and simple -- [was] Rai #0 and the early Valiant and even through the later VH1 universe for lack of a better term, things like the death of Shadowman, Jack Boniface, in the year 1999.

There was some big event that was supposed to happen in 1999. This was what they were looking for, that this big event would lead to his death. And unfortunately, that was sort of transposed and became this Crisis on Infinite Earths wannabe 2000.

It's not what the people wanted. I think there were some misconceptions with what the people who were running comics wanted and what the fans wanted. The fans weren't looking for a new universe. It's now to the point where they won't have a choice.

Interesting stuff. 8-10,000 diehard fans, now down to 1,000? 500?


On VH3:

MDT: What do you have planned in general for post-Unity?

JP: The universe that is set-up post Unity just doesn't work. We have a way around it that I won't go into, but it won't cost anybody anymore money to find out. "OK, this is Unity 2000. And here's Unity 2000 the untold story, 8-issue mini-series that costs $4.95 per issue..." You've squeezed the people for money for so long, stop it. We have something specific in mind.

As far as what's coming out of it. The idea is to take some of these characters and put them in situations that I hope will make for some compelling stories. And that is going to get them interested in picking them up. The new universe is not VH1, not VH2.

The characters, some of them are going to be similar to what was done in VH1. Because that was the universe that I was with for the longest time and those are the characters I believe in. But I was also there for Fabian's VH2 and there were some cool things that were done in there. Some of that is going to carry over. But a lot of it's going to be similar to the first universe.

On Doctor Mirage VH3:

As far as specific projects we have in mind. First and foremost in December, the Second Life of Doctor Mirage returns. We're doing something a little different with it. The original concept when Bob Layton came up with it, was that Doctor Mirage was going to be the -- for lack of a better term -- the Sorcerer Supreme of the Valiant universe. I was lucky enough to write the last five issues of Doctor Mirage. I really fell in love with those characters and there was a lot of stuff we were building towards that unfortunately -- when we had that big implosion and we canceled half the line back in 1995 -- Mirage was one of the books that got it. We were building towards things that we didn't get a chance to do.

OK, what would you do if you could start all over and you've got all the characters, but you could do something different with it? OK, suppose instead of it being one guy who happens to get the power, suppose he's a legacy character. There's been Doctor Mirages for a long time. And when Mirage -- the character that we know -- something happens to him. In the first series, it was that he was alive and then he was dead, died and then he became a ghost. in this one, it's the fact that his wife knew nothing about his second life. She thought he was this mild mannered archeologist. She suddenly finds out that he's most powerful sorcerer on Earth. She finds out that these evil forces he's been fighting so long and now they're after her.

I think it's going to be a lot of fun. A different take on the series. I think people are going to enjoy it a lot. The art's being done by a guy named Jack Jadson, who has done some work with Image, for Chaos. He's one of those Studio 3 guys down in Brazil. I've gotten 10 pages in so far and it looks absolutely incredible. I think it's going to be a real rockin' book.

[magnusr]

Poor Magnus, he's had so many reboots by now.

Just might be the character that has been published by the most number of publishers.

/Magnus

[syzhang28]

I just remembered I have these.
carmenmiragevh3.jpg
carmen mirage vh 3.jpg

I wish they made this. It's too superhero imo for Second Life but I would have been interested to check it out.

Do we have a full list of what books were meant to be in VH3?

[ManofTheAtom]

solar.jpg
This is the biggest version I have. Pretty cool design.

Nice!

I think I recall also seeing interior pages of that one once.

Hmm I have a vague memory of that too. Anybody have those saved?

All the 'VH3' art is pretty nice, but honestly it leans a little too fantastical for me, not enough 'world outside your window'.

Another question, what about the short stories produced for the early VEI hardcovers, before they decided to reboot? The Shooter ones (Harbinger and A&A) were meant to take place in VH1 continuity I think. I never got the X-O hardcover so I never saw that one. They probably fit better in the Unity 2000 world. Perhaps they fit in VH3 as well.

Those stories, and the one in the Bloodshot HC (the only one I haven't read) can be considered to be for VH 1 what Q2 was for VH 2.

[ManofTheAtom]

Found this Jim Perham interview from October 2000 (https://www.cbr.com/a-valiant-effort-wi ... interview/)

Some interesting stuff

On Birthquake:

MICHAEL DAVID THOMAS: A lot of botched decisions, wrong time, wrong person...

JIM PERHAM: The thing I would wholehearted agree with Jim Shooter on is that this has been a tragedy. These are some really top-notch characters and this was a company that could have done so many incredible things and gone somewhere. We shot ourselves in the foot so many times that it seems to be a broken record, over and over. Every time you think you're going to get out of the jungle, BOOM! there it is again.

MDT: I think Shooter said, "Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory."

JP: Very much so... We had our chance to turn it all around with Birthquake.

Acclaim had just bought us. Acclaim was willing to give us the money if we could show them how we'd spend it. They said, "Look, we're going to bring in these guys and we're going to make a name for ourselves and we're going to take off." But what happened is, instead of bringing in the top-top level guys that they were originally shooting for, when they couldn't get them, they got the next level guys. But they paid them so much that it hurt the industry across the board. Because now these guys' page rates have been elevated to the point that everybody else is calling for the same thing. You suddenly get these editors who didn't feel they could edit these people.

MDT: They just gave them carte blanche.

JP: It's like, "Oh, don't worry, they'll do good stuff." And, it's like, no, you need editors. You need somebody to stand there and it doesn't matter who it is, but you need a second opinion... And that wasn't there. There was no kind of guidance.

That was our opportunity. Wasted. [We] wasted an opportunity and [we] wasted a lot of Acclaim's money.

So true. At the time it was announced, Birthquake felt like it was going to be VALIANT's big chance to right their wrongs and get back to the top. Instead of going back to what made pre-Unity great, and hiring the best writers they could get and cook up a great story, they bought new mansions for B-list star artists like Bart Sears and Dan Jurgens, and they phoned it in.

Birthquake was the start of VALIANT turning into DC Lite.

I read this interview when it was first posted, and it was discussed here and/or on the mailing list at the time too.

On the comics industry 23 years ago:

MDT: Fabian Nicieza has said that -- while he was doing a lot of writing there and editor-in-chief -- the bulk of his job there was licensing the characters for Hollywood and other media outlets (video games, animation and others). How much of Acclaim's mission to make money licensing rather than in comic book publishing?

JP: To be totally honest with you, with the way the industry is now, I'm not sure if we -- at the position we are in -- can expect to make money off of comic book operations and sales. We have a goal trying to break even or come as close as possible. If we could make money that would be fantastic.

It's crazy how so little has changed.

Indeed.

MDT: Like their context would be screwed up if they were just in a video game or in a Hollywood.

JP: Yes. [You] can still do so many incredible things with comic books. You can do [them] in video games... but it's going to cost you a ton of money. The beauty of the comic book is the fact is that I have the entire world to play with. In a video game, it's going to take a lot of time and money. A budget for a comic book is $10-15,000 at the low end. A budget for a video game is [$500,000 to $1 million].

Your risk is infinitely greater with a video game. Having comic books to show -- especially with Hollywood because their visual people -- ... helps them a lot better to understand these things and see the potential of a property than to just hand them a written proposal.

This is still basically what VEI-DMG-etc. have been trying to do.

Yep. I cannot fault them for it, though. These characters belong in other media.

On Unity 2000:

MDT:Shooter started writing Unity 2000 when?

JP: I believe it was the summer of '99. Because it was at San Diego of 1999 when the power that be started pushing the fact that Shooter was coming back to do it.

MDT: What kind of expectations did the company have?

JP: What they were hoping was to use this as jumping point to bigger and better things. It was a chance to give the fans what they wanted, to bring Jim back and give him a go at the characters again. And use that as a starting point for a whole new set of adventures.

That was the expectations. Did it meet expectations? No, of course not. Unity 2000 has been nothing but a nightmare. That's not Jim Shooter's fault at all. [It's] been our fault.

MDT: What happened?

JP: It started off with our new stuff, which just wasn't working. People didn't seem to be interested in them. This was coming off of VH2, the Valiant universe that Fabian had spearheaded.

The folks at the time said, "OK, what can we do?" There's still this core fan following, that, even though they didn't like the VH2 books, liked the characters enough that they were buying the books. That was the amazing thing. We have a core fan following of 8,000-10,000 people and these people are going to buy the books in whatever format they are.

You've got to say that it's a tribute to the early work that Jim [Shooter] did and the early work of Valiant that these people believed in it so much and are sticking through it through all this madness. The thing was, what those fans wanted -- plain and simple -- [was] Rai #0 and the early Valiant and even through the later VH1 universe for lack of a better term, things like the death of Shadowman, Jack Boniface, in the year 1999.

There was some big event that was supposed to happen in 1999. This was what they were looking for, that this big event would lead to his death. And unfortunately, that was sort of transposed and became this Crisis on Infinite Earths wannabe 2000.

It's not what the people wanted. I think there were some misconceptions with what the people who were running comics wanted and what the fans wanted. The fans weren't looking for a new universe. It's now to the point where they won't have a choice.

Interesting stuff. 8-10,000 diehard fans, now down to 1,000? 500?

Damn.

On VH3:

MDT: What do you have planned in general for post-Unity?

JP: The universe that is set-up post Unity just doesn't work. We have a way around it that I won't go into, but it won't cost anybody anymore money to find out. "OK, this is Unity 2000. And here's Unity 2000 the untold story, 8-issue mini-series that costs $4.95 per issue..." You've squeezed the people for money for so long, stop it. We have something specific in mind.

As far as what's coming out of it. The idea is to take some of these characters and put them in situations that I hope will make for some compelling stories. And that is going to get them interested in picking them up. The new universe is not VH1, not VH2.

The characters, some of them are going to be similar to what was done in VH1. Because that was the universe that I was with for the longest time and those are the characters I believe in. But I was also there for Fabian's VH2 and there were some cool things that were done in there. Some of that is going to carry over. But a lot of it's going to be similar to the first universe.

Yeah, but as we've seen with the Doctor Mirage pages that were posted here and that Bloodshot art, it wasn't that similar to VH 1.

On Doctor Mirage VH3:

As far as specific projects we have in mind. First and foremost in December, the Second Life of Doctor Mirage returns. We're doing something a little different with it. The original concept when Bob Layton came up with it, was that Doctor Mirage was going to be the -- for lack of a better term -- the Sorcerer Supreme of the Valiant universe. I was lucky enough to write the last five issues of Doctor Mirage. I really fell in love with those characters and there was a lot of stuff we were building towards that unfortunately -- when we had that big implosion and we canceled half the line back in 1995 -- Mirage was one of the books that got it. We were building towards things that we didn't get a chance to do.

OK, what would you do if you could start all over and you've got all the characters, but you could do something different with it? OK, suppose instead of it being one guy who happens to get the power, suppose he's a legacy character. There's been Doctor Mirages for a long time. And when Mirage -- the character that we know -- something happens to him. In the first series, it was that he was alive and then he was dead, died and then he became a ghost. in this one, it's the fact that his wife knew nothing about his second life. She thought he was this mild mannered archeologist. She suddenly finds out that he's most powerful sorcerer on Earth. She finds out that these evil forces he's been fighting so long and now they're after her.

I think it's going to be a lot of fun. A different take on the series. I think people are going to enjoy it a lot. The art's being done by a guy named Jack Jadson, who has done some work with Image, for Chaos. He's one of those Studio 3 guys down in Brazil. I've gotten 10 pages in so far and it looks absolutely incredible. I think it's going to be a real rockin' book.

VH 3 Armstrong also appeared in the pages for that Doctor Mirage one-shot that were posted here.

[ManofTheAtom]

I just remembered I have these.
carmenmiragevh3.jpg
carmen mirage vh 3.jpg

I wish they made this. It's too superhero imo for Second Life but I would have been interested to check it out.

Do we have a full list of what books were meant to be in VH3?

Not per se, but I recall that it was also going to include Harbinger.

So, it was Magnus, Solar, Bloodshot, Doctor Mirage, and Harbinger.

I imagine Turok was going to be included as well.

[ManofTheAtom]

Poor Magnus, he's had so many reboots by now.

Just might be the character that has been published by the most number of publishers.

/Magnus

Yeah, heh.

I was going to comment on Facebook that you might have confused the VH 3 Magnus reboot with the Sotomayor pitch that's been discussed here SonicDan has on his website in the link posted above.

Clearly, they have different art and design styles.

I'll post this on the FB page so others can see it too.