Review: Quantum and Woody Vol. 1: The World's Worst Superhero Team trade paperback (Valiant Entertainment)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

After Valiant Comics was bought out and became Acclaim Comics, very few of its new concepts received much attention ... except for Quantum and Woody, created by industry veterans Christopher Priest and Mark Bright. The tale of two mismatched adopted siblings who must make contact every twenty-four hours to keep their powers was an anarchic ride beloved by many readers. The recent relaunch of the title was one of Valiant Entertainment’s very few gaffes -- namely, it was perceived by fans that Valiant shouldn’t technically own Quantum and Woody and the rights should have returned to Priest and Bright. To their credit, Valiant ironed out the details immediately, allowing the original creators to put together their own upcoming mini-series while going ahead with the issues collected in Quantum and Woody Vol. 1: The World’s Worst Superhero Team.

Consider this: since Valiant puts out only about a dozen books a month, roughly 20 to 25% of their material is comedy. They can get away with it thanks to the strong reception of both Archer and Armstrong and Quantum and Woody, who will cross over later this year in The Delinquents. James Asmus did as much research into the past of his characters as any other Valiant writer. Pretty much everything from the original series is back, from the personalities of the main characters to the presence of their pet goat. Only Quantum’s old love interest is gone, but that’s mostly because racial politics are slightly less important in this version of the title.

Asmus even makes an effort to write like Priest, with large black semi-descriptive caption boxes serving as scene transitions. The original series is now up in its entirety on Comixology, and while I haven’t been able to read much of it yet, I can tell that Asmus is doing his best to match the tone of the original while modernizing the concept and going in his own direction. Most of The World’s Worst Superhero Team is dedicated to the origin of the main characters (which is why the title’s first zero issue tells the origin of Vincent Van Goat). It can feel a little decompressed at times, but it takes this long due to numerous flashbacks to the title characters’ childhoods. Eric (Quantum) Henderson and his father did their best to set Woody Van Chelton on the right track and it’s Dr. Henderson’s death which brings them back together.

What really makes the book work is how the Eric and Woody each have their skills and imperfections. It would have been easy to make Eric absolutely perfect, but while he’s more intelligent than Woody, he’s also a failure at various jobs. Woody has been changed from a slacker to a grifter, and it’s a modification for the better, giving him lots of funny background stories and strong core traits. The accident which gives them their powers ends up tailoring those abilities to their personalities, granting Eric defensive shields and Woody energy blasts. The exact consequences of what will happen to them if they don’t “KLANG” their bracelets together (with the name taken from the sound effect it generates) are spelled out very quickly. It’s essentially The Odd Couple mixed with Captain Mar-Vell.

Asmus also made a great move in creating one of the wackiest villainous groups in any comic book universe to go up against Quantum and Woody. Known as Edison’s Radical Acquisitions, they’re a secret society of misfit science experiments who slow down the rate of technology until humanity is ready for advancement. Their mission ties directly into the brothers’ origin story, and it turns out the real Thomas Edison was an unpleasant enough person to have plausibly come up with such a ruthless concept. I think Asmus tried to tie everything together a little too neatly by having the ERA also be involved with some of the supporting characters, leading to some clone confusion, but I’d rather have too much cohesion over less. While it hasn’t been stated outright, I’m fairly sure the ERA are part of the Sect coalition of villains in Archer and Armstrong; it wouldn’t surprise me if The Delinquents takes this route.

Tom Fowler’s artwork matches the tone of the story nicely. It’s very expressive, and while some of the energy effects early-on tend to obscure the action, it’s clear that he just needed a few issues to get everything straightened out. I’m fairly certain that Jordie Bellaire is the colorist on 75% of the comics I read on a monthly basis, and her bright colors accentuate the mood, especially when she uses sepia tones to illustrate an ancient ERA filmstrip. Dave Lanphear, one of Valiant’s go-to letterers, had extra work to do for Quantum and Woody due to the frequent caption boxes, and the resulting captions have a great “title card” look to them. Also included in the trade are a series of brief web-comics that Valiant put up to promote the series. They break the fourth wall constantly and poke fun at some of the controversy around the title’s start.

The award for “my second-favorite Valiant book” tends to flip-flop between X-O Manowar and Quantum and Woody depending on the arc. I can safely say that the series collected in Quantum and Woody Vol. 1: World's Worst Superhero Team is one of the most consistently funny comics on the shelf, and I applaud Valiant Entertainment for taking a risk in bringing it to fruition. Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday, and Valiant is putting out two books for it -- a preview of the upcoming Armor Hunters crossover and, to my delight, a Valiant Handbook. Make sure to check them out.

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Review: X-O Manowar Vol. 1: By the Sword trade paperback (Valiant Entertainment)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

Everything that happens in X-O Manowar Vol. 1: By The Sword occurred by page four in the first collection of the series' 1990s run, X-O Manowar: Retribution. However, this isn’t a case of a decompressed comic; instead, this is the kind of origin story that the character should have always had. For the Valiant relaunch of X-O Manowar, writer Robert Venditti went through the original run, found the parts that worked, and emphasized them to make the rebooted version successful. The idea of a fish-out-of-water superhero works better once we know who he actually is; a full issue goes by before ancient warrior Aric gets abducted by aliens, instead setting up his role in the war against the Romans. It’s not too complex, but it’s much more background than Retribution ever gave him.

One key change, if possibly unintentional, is that Aric is smarter this time around. It was hard to gauge the classic Aric’s intelligence because he was still learning English, but even his internal monologue sounded a little ... dulled. The new Aric is a competent warrior and strategist; his flaw in battle isn’t a lack of intelligence, but an excess of anger and pride. He’s a prince who badly wants to be king in a very violent warrior society and who is protective of his people to the point of making foolish choices. This set of flaws will guide much of the later action of both this book and the whole rebooted Valiant universe. Venditti uses the armor’s established telepathic abilities to catch Aric up on the passage of time without overly-clunky exposition.

His foes have also received a major upgrade. The old Spider-Aliens are now known as “The Vine," and the change is explained well. In one of the coolest bits of world-building I’ve seen in comics, the Vine worship fruit, kidnapping slaves from other worlds to use as slaves in their star-bound orchards. This is a much better origin than “they want to take over Earth and eat humans." Further issues delve into the religious practices of the Vine, including what they do -- or don’t do -- with the fruit and how it relates to the Manowar armor. While the Vine do have allies on Earth, By The Sword sticks with some of the Vine aboard the ship which captured Aric, including a conflicted priest and a ruthless captain. The only complaint I have is that no matter the artist, the Vine all look alike, so it’s hard to tell who’s who unless they’re wearing a specific outfit. (It happens in Predator comics all the time too.)

This new origin also explains why Aric was able to find the world’s most powerful suit of armor in the middle of a random spaceship. It ties into the Vine’s religion: whoever dons the armor is prophesized to be their savior. Each brave warrior takes their turn trying on the armor, and in turn, it kills them. The fact that Aric can wield the armor, known as Shanhara, and is dead-set on destroying the Vine is something they hadn’t accounted for. Thankfully, the Vine have lost the dreadlocks and pot-bellied suits, gaining a creepy redesigned face in the process. The armor itself is a little slimmer than before but still recognizable as a modernized X-O Manowar.

Since a common description of X-O Manowar’s premise is “Iron Man plus Conan the Barbarian," Valiant Entertainment made the smart move of bringing in Cary Nord, previously the artist on Dark Horse’s Conan title. Nord was the biggest artistic name in the relaunch and Venditti gives him many opportunities to prove that he can draw far more than just barbarian hordes. While I enjoyed Conan, I thought the color was a little washed out, and switching to new colorist Moose Baumann helped to create clearer artwork. The cover of the trade makes it look like the armor has switched to a white-and-yellow color scheme, but rest assured that it’s still blue-and-yellow in the comic.

One of the most interesting tropes on TV Tropes is called “Growing The Beard," referring to how Star Trek: The Next Generation got better around the same time as Will Riker grew a goatee. I find it interesting that Valiant Entertainment is fitting that trope in both ways, as not only are the revamped titles so much better, but beards factor into many of the character redesigns. In the old Valiant, Aric was mostly clean-shaven; here, it’s reversed, with him clean-shaven in his youth and then growing it out during his time aboard the Vine ship. Toyo Harada, the chief villain of the Valiant line, and Armstrong of Archer and Armstrong are also sporting beards. To me, it’s a sign that Valiant is aiming at an older audience while other comic book companies refuse to age their characters.

Essentially, X-O Manowar: By The Sword and the modern series render the previous series obsolete. Valiant Comics was ahead of its time in a declining industry and I believe that they did the best that they could with their resources and talents. It’s fun to look back at their old work, and I understand why the old Valiant books are beloved. But Valiant Entertainment’s version of X-O Manowar blows the old version out of the water. Its pace is far more even, its characters are far more well-defined, and there aren’t offensive caricatures like Ken running around. Valiant does have a lack of representation when it comes to characters other than straight white males, but that comes from a need to bring back as many of the old concepts as they can, and the original line-up wasn’t exactly minority-laden either. The reinvention of Livewire as an African American and the upcoming launches of Rai and Doctor Mirage have set out to address this deficiency.

Now that I’m back to reviewing good comics, next week I’ll finally take a look at Midnight Nation. Until then, Happy Passover!

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Uncollected Editions: Deathmate (Valiant/Image Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

Valiant was robbed.

When you look at the six-issue Deathmate crossover between the 1990s Valiant and Image Comics universes and the industry crash it precipitated, it was Valiant that unfairly took the most damage. They put out their issues on time and did the best with what they were given. Their losses forced them to be bought out by Acclaim and their titles were revised to make them more viable for video game tie-ins. Yet Image, whose books were months late and heavily oversold, went on to launch numerous animated series, films, and toy lines. The fact that I can get an action figure of Rob Liefeld’s Shaft for six bucks on eBay while Archer and Armstrong remain confined to the printed page is an insult.

Considering that Deathmate’s cheerleader at Valiant was one of their financial backers, there was probably no way it would ever work out as a creative masterpiece. But a major issue popped up immediately due to Image’s multi-studio structure. Only Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Marc Silvestri, and Whilce Portacio participated (and even then, Wetworks hadn’t debuted, so his characters wouldn’t be in it). That removed Image’s two best writer-artists, Erik Larsen and Jim Valentino, from the equation, along with Todd McFarlane, the biggest name at the company. More importantly, it meant that Image’s three major solo superhero titles -- Savage Dragon, Shadowhawk, and Spawn -- weren’t involved.

This left the team books to be divvied up and matched with the Valiant characters, and if you’ve ever read an Image team book, you can see the fatal flaw. Most of the characters blend into one another, with the gruff leaders, strong guys, silent loner guys, and poorly-designed women all blurring into basic shapes after a while. I can maybe name three Youngblood members off the top of my head and I’m at a total loss with Brigade. The only reason I know who’s in WildC.A.T.s and Cyber Force is because I’ve reviewed their books. Bafflingly, Gen13 made their debut in the crossover, which must have been completely alienating for both Image and Valiant readers.

It’s made clear that none of the Image writers know anything about the Valiant characters and vice-versa. They’re all thrown together in a multitude of underwhelming “invade the base" and “randomly attack each other" plots. Everything is set off by an incomprehensible sequence in the Deathmate Prologue wherein Solar’s girlfriend kills herself (or he kills her, it’s hard to tell), and then he combines with his future counterpart (I think) and meets Void, a member of WildC.A.T.s. They fall in love instantly, have sex, and their respective universes explode and combine. None of this is explained, nor are any issue references given so that we can know who these people are. And that was the part done by Valiant! The Image half just consists of disparate configurations of Image and Valiant characters with random philosophical ramblings on top.

This sequence, by the way, is infamous for Valiant’s Bob Layton having to fly out to Rob Liefeld’s house in California, where he sat on Liefeld’s porch until he finished drawing it. Then he inked it in his hotel bathroom.

Design-wise, the Image and Valiant characters are incompatible, a second fatal flaw. Turok gets turned into Nightwolf from the Mortal Kombat games in the Black issue, and as for Valiant’s take on Image . . . remember in the Tin Men of War review when I promised I would show you the silliest panel in all of comics? Well, here it is:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Morgan Stryker simultaneously reaching out for a female teammate, cocking a gun, and holding his head, which I keep thinking looks like a facepalm. It’s the perfect metaphor to explain why these art styles just don’t mix. A rubric I use for many kinds of media is whether it makes me want to buy its merchandise. After reading Grendel, I searched for a figure of Hunter Rose because I was impressed by the character’s complexity. After reading Deathmate, I searched for the Stryker action figure for the sole purpose of recreating that exact pose. (Livewire, incidentally, is now a main character in Unity and one of Valiant’s most intriguing heroes, so at least she got an upgrade.)

Now we get into the last fatal flaw, and the reason why I refer to Deathmate as an “Uncollectable Edition." Instead of regular issues, each issue was given a color; naturally, these are chromium-printed around the edges. You could theoretically read these in any order -- a good thing, since Image’s contributions were many months late. In practice, it meant that there was no hope of having a cohesive narrative. I honestly can’t tell if these are supposed to be four alternate universes or one universe from four different perspectives. Because I’m a Power Rangers nut, I first read the issues in morphing order -- Black, Blue, Yellow, and Red. It didn’t make sense. Then I did them in publishing order; it still didn’t make sense. Then I just closed my eyes and randomly picked, and once more, no sense was made.

There’s no good way to collect Deathmate . . . and really, there’s no reason to do so. Image has progressed far past this point as a company, and Valiant is a completely different organization. Dozens if not hundreds of contracts would have to be signed to get a trade produced, from people like Liefeld, Layton, and some guy named “Anthony Bedard" who never really did anything after this. I actually met Tony Bedard at Miami Supercon last year and considered having him and Layton sign my Deathmate issues, but I was worried they’d kill me. The prologue and epilogue each cost $2.95 and each issue cost $4.95 . . . that’s an amazing amount with inflation considered, especially since each book feels like it’s halfway full of ads. I bought all six books for $5 in a bundle at a sale and I still feel ripped off.

Next week, Robert Kirkman saves Image with a book I’ve been meaning to review since I started writing for Collected Editions.

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Review: X-O Manowar: Retribution paperback (Valiant Entertainment)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

When exploring the rise, fall and resurrection of the Valiant characters, one of the natural places to start is X-O Manowar. As much as I enjoy Archer & Armstrong, very little of its original run is collected affordably, while X-O Manowar: Retribution clogs comic book store shelves and vendor bins to this day. Some copies even come with a free copy of the X-O Database, an Iron Manual-style guide to the armored hero. The Retribution trade was published a few years into the title’s run, as evidenced by a two-page spread in the middle featuring all the characters who had appeared in the title so far. These include bionic dinosaurs who sadly don’t make an appearance here.

Four of Valiant’s major creators are at the heart of these first four issues: Jim Shooter, Bob Layton, Steve Englehart, and Barry Windsor-Smith. Layton was the main generator of the X-O Manowar concept, but he was so busy with other Valiant titles that he never really got a chance to write for his own co-creation, instead providing finishes for issue #1 and inks for issue #2.

In a perfect world, Layton could have brought in David Michelinie so that the two could resurrect their partnership on another armored title. Instead, the writing duties fell to Shooter and Englehart. I don’t have much to complain about with Steve Engelhart, but Jim Shooter, despite being an excellent editor and a source of good concepts, may be one of the worst dialogue writers in comics. You can tell when the two switch off because once Shooter starts writing, everyone talks in exclamation points! It’s such an annoying trope that I could only get through four issues of the original Secret Wars before giving up!

Shooter and Englehart give the reader no time to learn the basic idea of what’s going on: namely, that a Visigoth from the 5th century, Aric of Dacia, has been abducted by aliens. Instead, the comic opens with Aric already fighting against a Spider-Alien; he’s back on Earth in the present day by page six. The plot moves forward at a breakneck pace so that what could be an entire four-issue arc is told in about forty pages. Normally I wouldn’t harp on about this so much, but Shooter was infamous at Marvel for promoting the idea that every issue was a new reader’s first issue, so basic plot points had to be restated over and over, often to a book’s detriment. For proof of this, count how many times “Midgard” is defined in Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor. Don’t do it as a drinking game. You’ll conk out before the third trade. How funny that Shooter ignored his own rule once he started his own company.

The writers made some questionable choices in setting up Aric’s status quo. What could have been an interesting supporting cast -- the South American villagers who find him after he crashes -- were killed off as soon as they’re introduced. Instead, we get Ken ... one of the most blatantly offensive gay caricatures I’ve ever seen. He’s a member of the Spider-Aliens’ Orb company on Earth who basically falls in love with Aric at first sight. In one sense, this could be subversive, perhaps invoking Steve Trevor’s infatuation with Wonder Woman. But that doesn’t excuse how swishy, whiny, and useless Ken is. He helps Aric adjust somewhat to modern times, but the armor arguably does more through its mental link.

As for the Spider-Aliens, they make for okay foes. From what I understand, they become a much bigger threat later, but here they spend too much time bickering to really be an effective organization. Their grand plan to trick Aric is to dress up in ancient costumes, a ploy I enjoyed in the German film Good Bye Lenin but that's out of place here. They’re ushered out to make room for appearances by Toyo Harada and the Renegades from Harbinger (who aren’t properly introduced either). Harada does bring in Sniper, a man whose arms can become a variety of guns by attaching extra bits to them and who is awesomely arrogant about it; I hope they can revive him and make room for him in the upcoming Armor Hunters crossover.

What also helped set Valiant apart from other publishers in the '90s was the art style, which kept much of the '80s Marvel style pioneered by Layton and Windsor-Smith. Sal Velluto and Mike Manley pencil the third and fourth issues, but they’re so in tune with the house style that it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference. One plus is that the female head villain, Lydia, turns out to not have a shapely female body once her clothes are ripped off; instead, she’s a Spider-Alien all the way through, and I admire the resistance to indulge in some cheesecake. One minus is that the Spider-Alien minions look ridiculous. Their visored helmets are rendered silly by their dreadlocks and their armor makes them look potbellied. Also, the computer coloring is a little off, but that was universal in the early '90s.

There’s a hardcover version of this trade, X-O Manowar: Birth, with more issues, including an issue #0 which probably provides a better start. I know I’m complaining a lot, but X-O Manowar: Retribution has the seeds of greatness. You can get it for a penny on Amazon or shell out the full three dollars to get the Database with it, which has a cool see-through acetate diagram to show the armor’s various layers. For me, the title truly bloomed with the 2012 revival, which I’ll get to very soon, and it’s fascinating to read both versions. First, though, I’m going to take a look at a classic Image book. If you know your comic book history, then you know what I’m eventually getting to, and yes, it won’t be pretty.

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Review: Archer and Armstrong Vol. 1: The Michelangelo Code trade paperback (Valiant Entertainment)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

For about the last year or so, I’ve been railing on DC for rebooting its characters and focusing on retelling origin stories. As a result, I feel a little hypocritical for enjoying the relaunch of Valiant Comics (now Valiant Entertainment) to the point of near-addiction. The key difference is that DC keeps throwing away potentially great concepts and titles while Valiant is using its comparatively limited resources to put together the best line-ups possible. That’s not taking purely business-related factors into account, of course. Valiant’s titles had to be rebooted due to the original company’s messy end, a situation I’ll be looking into over the next few weeks.

When assembling the initial line-up for the relaunch, the Valiant's editorial and marketing teams made some interesting choices. It was logical to bring back three of the old publisher’s biggest titles: the flagship book Harbinger, popular vigilante Bloodshot, and the one with perhaps the highest level of visibility, X-O Manowar. Putting Archer & Armstrong in as the fourth title was a bold move. While the original book was well-regarded, it was also launched later in the publisher’s life and often relied on crossovers (in fact, it launched during the first Valiant crossover, Unity). This decision has paid off as the series' first collection, Archer & Armstrong Vol. 1: The Michelangelo Code, is easily the best book of the new Valiant, followed closely by X-O Manowar and Quantum and Woody.

Much of the success in Michelangelo Code rests in writer Fred Van Lente, who brings both his comedic sensibilities and his superhero-writing talents to Archer & Armstrong. There’s no doubt that this book wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t funny, and while Van Lente occasionally goes a little too broad with the comedy, it eventually evens out as the book goes on. It’s fairly obvious that Van Lente was chosen because he worked on another book in which an immortal party animal teams up with a gifted but awkward young man. Archer & Armstrong is essentially a stealth revival of the much-missed Incredible Hercules, which in turn might have been influenced by the original run of A&A.

The fundamentals of this reboot are the same: Armstrong (real name “Aram”), a Babylonian imbued with immortality and healing from his brother’s experiments, has stumbled through history interacting with famous people and earning the ire of the Sect, a collection of conspiracies. The Sect, in turn, are hunting him, believing him to be the greatest evil in the world. Exactly why they believe this won’t be explained until the recently-released fourth trade, and despite some of the oddities present in this book, it all fits together. For now, they want Armstrong because he holds the key to finding and reassembling the Boon, the alien machine which gave him his powers. Very little has been changed with Armstrong physically; most notably, he now has a beard, which makes him look more like Hercules (and like Silent Bob, for that matter).

Obadiah Archer has gone through a lot more revision. Both versions were the sons of Sect members masquerading as evangelical Christians, but while the original went through extensive Buddhist training to become a monk, the new one is just leaving the Sect for the "real world" as The Michelangelo Code begins. The most striking visual change is that Archer now has blonde hair while the original wass bald. As it turns out, this becomes part of a plot point related to Archer’s origins, but again, that’s in a later volume. Fred Van Lente hits against fundamentalist Christianity pretty hard in this volume. It got a little too silly at one point ... and then I read about how some Creationists deny the validity of an ancient version of the Noah narrative because the shape of it is different than what’s written in the Bible. At that point, I decided that Van Lente might have been too gentle.

It’s not that Van Lente has is only mocking Creationists, either. The Sect’s member cults include the One Percent, who worship and manipulate the stock market while wearing bear and bull masks, and the Green Dragon Lamas, who ... Actually, I’m not going to spoil what makes the Green Dragon Lamas so great, apart from them possibly being a reference to the Golden Age superhero. As the title implies, The Michelangelo Code is a take on The Da Vinci Code, with Archer and Armstrong going around the world to find the pieces of the Boon and keep them out of the hands of the Sect. Michelangelo does come into play; it turns out that Armstrong was the model for his Moses (and thus partially responsible in this story for the myth that Jews have horns).

Assisting in all of the fun is artist Clayton Henry, whose clean and crisp art is incredibly kinetic. Colorist Matt Milla knew what kind of book he was working on and he keeps the color palette bright. Letterer Dave Lanphear contributes one of the book’s most unique touches. Because Archer knows every martial arts skill -- and is capable of learning new ones instantly -- each skill is called out with a dictionary-style definition. This is an inventive way to use narrative captions without making them feel like they take up too much of the page.

The new Valiant definitely lives up to the potential of the old one. They’ve kept the same standards of continuity and tight scheduling, to the point where the next trade in a series is already solicited on the final page of the current trade. Archer & Armstrong Vol. 1: The Michaelangelo Code was my entry point into this fantastic publisher, and like all first trades for Valiant, it’s priced at $9.99. Valiant is taking the Image approach of producing cheap first trades to draw the reader in, and it certainly worked for me. Even as the later trades are locked in at $14.99, it's a price I’m willing to pay for four to six issues depending on the title, especially for books of this quality.

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