OPINIONS: Undervalued Modern Books

[mcd-migration]

There is some truth to what you say. The main difference being that Valiant had far superior characters than the New Universe. Thats the reason it was more successful IMHO.

 

Yeah, that & the fact that the teeny tiny print runs sucked in the speculators early on, & they were able to ride that wave for 2 or 3 years before crumbling over the final 2.

[joe_collector]

Wizard was the reason why Valiant was successful. I remember when Valiants were a poor-selling, high quality line that older collectors were very interested in. These were far from popular, but had nice stories and Shooter had a firm strategy.

 

Then Wizard started pumping the "ultra low print runs" and "incredible investment opportunity" these comics presented. Then all the kids and specs starting jumping on board, paying insane amounts for just about any Valiant, and upping demand for new issues.

 

Then came the speculator-driven Turok and Bloodshot and the party was pretty well over.

[supapimp]

Wizard was the reason why Valiant was successful.

 

ditto, and the suckers took the bait

[ninanina]

And that's one of the reasons I can't stand Wizard. Are there still modern collectors getting sucked into Wizard's market manipulation?

 

And, is it Wizard's fault?

 

After all, are they not giving the masses what they want?

 

And those rediculous market prices?

 

Don't get me started

 

Sorry Darth.

[vic6string]

Actually, I think Wizard had more to do with the demise of Valiant. Had they not hyped up the collectability so much, the speculators wouldn;t have gone nuts, and the print runs would have stayed low, and only the real readers would have bought the books. The Valiant Universe was fantastic. Cohesive, consistent, and original, the Valiant universe was everything Marvel and DC have wanted to be for years. But because of Wizard, too many people were buying the books and not even reading them. It really is a shame. Unity was the greatest cross-over ever....without any competition. It is what Crisis, Zero Hour, and Onslaught wanted to be. It brought together an entire line of comics in a way that was believable and easy to follow. I hope it keeps falling out of favor so I can make my full run of every title for pennies!

[joe_collector]

Actually, Valiant played right along with the Wizard game, and put out foil-embossed covers, plenty of #1 issues, mail-in offers and other crapola that the kiddie-specs were looking for.

 

Wizard is just a magazine, and Valiant could have just kept to their business plan, and upping print runs slightly to match demand. Instead, the company took it to the next level and really tried to make a killing. Wizard and Valiant, hand-in-hand, walking the speculators to their doom.

 

Or, as the old saying goes, you need two to tango.

[fiendish]

Maybe this one's better filed under "Undiscovered" rather than "Undervalued":

 

Anyone remember "OZ Squad?" It was a great (but short) B&W series that parodied the (then) modern Dark Knight/X-Men sensibility by reimagining Dorothy, Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion as a team of superpowered misfits. Tin Man even had a Cyclopean visor. The writing very carefully maintained a deadpan tone and never winked too strongly at the reader.

[vic6string]

Valiant did indeed follow suit...but they didn't print huge numbers just to see if the books would sell, the books were ordered in those numbers. I remember here in Miami there were shop owners that ordered 200 copies of every Valiant book (not #1's, we're talking just any random issue of Archer and Armstrong or Rai and the Future Force!!) If they got orders for 500,000 copies on a book, they had to print 500,000 (or more) copies of the book. Unfortunately, about half the people buying the books never even openned them, they were just buying the books to put away. That gets old after a while (making it boring) and the print runs insured no collectability (leading to downward spirals in prices). Once the speculators started jumping ship, the real collectors got upset that the books they shelled out 200 bucks for were going for 50, so they started selling off the stuff. After a while, it looked like Valiant was a sinking ship, and many of the artists/writers didn't want to be associated with the ship, and they took off. After that, it was over. I think for the most part they stuck to their plan as best they could. They got the money to do some creative stuff like the chromium covers, but didn't go overboard with them (remember, at that time Marvel and DC put out a dozen special covers a month for even regular issues of lame titles, Valiant kept it to a couple of milestone issues like the #1s and Magnus 25) Had the prices not boomed so high so fast, leading to speculator frenzy (every issue of Wizard for months said "buy now, buy lots!") They would have kept growing their reader base, and would probably still be here today.

[joe_collector]

>>Valiant did indeed follow suit...but they didn't print huge numbers just to see if the books would sell, the books were ordered in those numbers.

 

Sure, but did they really need to release and mass-promote a book like their foil-embossed Bloodshot? What did that character have to do with Valiant?

 

I think Wizard took the lead, but Valiant played right along, and changed their focus from reader-based to speculator fodder. Sure demand spiked, but Valiant also helped it along through their super-hyped Turok and Bloodshot #1 issue releases, which really sealed their fate.

[vic6string]

Did you ever even read the Valiant books? Turok and Bloodshot were incredibly popular secondary characters that were introduced in earlier books (Magnus and Rai). To say there was no need to give them their own titles is like saying Wolverine and Punisher should have just remained popular cameos for Hulk and Spidey. Turok may have even been planned out from the onset of the company as Valiant was started by using old lesser known Silver age characters (Solar, Magnus, and some others) and Turok fits that description as he has been around since the 50's (in the same Dell comics that one could find Solar and Magnus) As for Bloodshot, he was basically the replacement for Rai after Unity (at least until the return of Rai in Rai and the Future Force). My guess is they had both Bloodshot and Turok planned to have their own books even before the Valiant hype explosion. The hype machine may have sped the process, or afforded them the money to make the special covers, but like I said, if you remember the period EVERYBODY was making those special covers for just about any reason (#1, #50, #75, #500...die-cut, foil, embossed, glow in the dark, etc) All they did was follow what the market obviously wanted. Now some of the books they put out after that were a wasted effort, but those came after Jim Shooter and Barry Windsor Smith and the other creators jumped ship.

[joe_collector]

I'm not referring to the characters themselves, but to the way they were marketed and promoted. I'm sure you remember the debut of Solar and Magnus, which were non-events and I only started picking them up due to a friend of mine.

 

These early issues were a fun read and I basically collected them because I liked the creators and thought the books were a good read. I wasn't a hardcore Valiant fan by any means, but I did like them.

 

Then Valiant started believing their own hype, promoting comics as speculative investments, and once the "hot collector's item" Turok and Bloodshot came out, I was gone and I believe I traded my Valiant books (one copy per - I never spec'd) THE DAY Bloodshot #1 appeared. I saw a quantum shift in how Valiant was perceived and how they perceived themselves, and got out while the getting was good.

 

I also see a lot of parallels between Valiant and Ultimate Spider-man, if that's any advice to newbie speculators.

[Ares]

I still have all my Valiants and they are a good read.

 

I cried well almost cried when Turok met up with his old pal Andar(?).

I enjoyed the HArd Corps. soemtiems I pull em out to read em again

 

[vic6string]

Solar and Magnus debuted to little fanfare because Valiant was a small upstart company. You are blaming them for being successful. Comic publishers have always hyped their first issues, even back in the Silver age and before. The difference being that back then they would just add a few extra pages to the book or throw a "fabulous first issue" line on the cover or something along those lines. This is like when small label bands suddenly hit it big, half of their fans leave them because they call them "sell outs". Take Metallica. They put out a few albums and had a hard core following. With no radio play they still sold out shows and sold tons of records. Their fans always told everyone that they had to hear the stuff. THey always said that if radio stations gave it a chance, they would be superstars. So what happened? Radio stations gave them a chance and the became superstars.Then all of a sudden alot of their old fans said they "sold out" to the media and started believing their own hype. It was the same band playing the same type of music written by the same people, but now it was no longer the cool little secret. If Valiant had the money, they probably would have put foil wraparound covers on Magnus #1 too. They didn't believe their own hype, they used it to sell more books. That is what a publisher does. And it worked if you look at the sales numbers. The problem was many of those books were never opened. All the can do is sell the books, not make people read them.

[joe_collector]

Hey, they're long gone and I'm still here, and I'll just leave it at that.

[dam60]

Sorry I am a little late here with the Valiant, but as an in-house Valiant afficionado (dotcom guy is bar far the authority - check out http://www.valiantcomics.com - its his site) but I would say that for all of you who haven't read a Valiant comic, I highly recommend it - especially pre-Unity issues.

 

BTW - if anyone wants a FREE X-O Manowar #14 and 15, in my opinion two of the greatest comics ever, please PM me.

 

Regarding the demise of Valiant because of the Wizard hype, while it does take 2 to tango, Valiant was by far the least guilty of all the foil/chromium/blah/blah/blah cover hype of the day. Valiant gave customers what they wanted - namely special covers.

 

Again, I would encourage you all to read a Valiant comic today, I'll guarantee that you will enjoy teh read!

 

DAM

[diablo508]

I sell comics to a guy that runs a valiant web site and he is a SERIOUS collector of the old Valiants....I sell him like 20 copies of certian issues all the time and he pays top dollar!...wish there were more like him out there!!!!!!

 

 

 

[musicmeta]

Yes, I have nearly all the Valiant comics and they indeed were terrific reads.

Great stories and art with only a few losers.

[shadroch]

Black and White Nexus #1,Comico Primer2,Grendal #!

Big elfquests and early Mangazines are books I think will stand tall long after their comrades have faded away.

[Lofwyr]

Sandman- Neil gaimen. Reprinted a lot in vertigo "essentials?" and trade paperback but the original issues had fairly low print run. The series comes back once in awhile with self contained storylines so the interest is always there. The depth of sandman and its mark on comic book history will be remembered long after we're all dead.

 

Elfquest - Second/third whoever mentioned this series. Another awesome comic literary classic. Reprinted lots but the original issues are great collector's items. I read the original trade paperbacks when I was 9-10 years old and boy did it warp my mind.

 

Preacher - Another must own run for obvious reasons. Ennis is the man and that's all there is to it.

 

I don't own complete original runs of either of these yet but when I have money saved up they will be mine for sure.

 

Swamp thing - Alan Moore issues. Way underrated in my opinion.

 

A few select early valiant runs were worth owning. Archer & Armstrong, Magnus, Solar, X-O, and Eternal warrior were decent reads. I didn't like hardcorps, harbinger, rai, bloodshot, etc. as much though. Despite the new speculator hype Shooter did produce some interesting storylines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin Boyd]

As much as I like the Valiants I will agree that there was a quantum shift at the top of Valiant's management when the line became popular. This change was mostly due to the departure of Jim Shooter, the very short tenure of Barry Windsor-Smith and then Bob Layton. The company's true owners saw the writing on the wall:

 

- more new characters

- more number ones

- more licensing "stunts" like Unity 0 & 1, special logo covers, et al.

- specialty covers

 

I do feel that they did reserve the specialty covers for only the true special issues such as new #1's and 0's, the remainder of the line were your standard comics and were priced as such.

 

Bloodshot was designed to be a success (and most of us except for Joe_Collector) ate it up. Turok was a great character and his appearance in X-0 Manowar 14 & 15 are some great early 90's comics. They were the preview books for Turok 1 and I was definitely hooked.

 

After that, there was always a lot of speculation (as in interest) as to what would be the next Valiant title, so people were always looking thru the books trying to find characters that might be worthy of new titles. (Which was part of the fun of early Valiants).

 

I would say though that Valiant "jumped the shark" with the publication of "Secret Weapons #1" a deplorable title that was conceived to be Valiant's answer to the Avengers or JLA and failed miserably because none of the characters were really team players. Hard Corps, Armorines, etc. all lacked what the early characters had going for them and came across as potential toy lines rather than fully realized concepts.

 

Some comparisons have been made between Valiant and Atlas Comics. While there are some similarities I see the current heir to the Valiant "burn bright then fade away" mantle is CrossGen comics. It may be whats holding older readers from looking at their books seriously, and why many of us feel that CrossGen will not be around for long.

 

Kev