Eternal Warrior

I'm not a major superhero kinda guy. I came to comics fairly late, and never managed to dive that much into the superhero realm. I think I always thought it was too big, with too much to catch up on, and a lot of the superhero books I read when I was younger always seemed like they knew something I didn't. That whole lore and world existed way before I was even born. I even came to Valiant's rebooted universe pretty late, only catching up with it recently. But with Valiant, I found a superhero universe I could actually jump into.

If you're already familiar with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, that classic piece of Arthurian Lore, then you're no doubt aware that it's a pretty weird story. It's built around strange trickery and tests of loyalty, suspiciously non-fatal beheadings, and, of course, Christmas. But despite the best efforts of the 14th century, it does not involve time travelers, the Eternal Warrior, or glowing sunglasses. Until now! Next month, Fred Van Lente and Cary Nord's Immortal Brothers: The Tale of the Green Knight, in which Faith is down with a bit of con crud and Archer (of & Armstrong fame) tells her a story of chivalry and knighthood that bears a suspicious resemblance to Valiant's three immortal brothers.

Good news for those of you who enjoy your Arthurian legends mixed up with superheroes: Last week, Valiant announced Immortal Brothers: The Tale of the Green Knight, a new 48-page one-shot from Fred Van Lente and Cary Nord that retells the story of Sir Gawain through the lens of the Valiant Universe's three immortal brothers. Inspired by Barry Windsor-Smith's take on the Three Musketeers from 1993, this one finds Aram, Ivar, and Gilad --- alias Armstrong, the Timewalker, and the Eternal Warrior -- involved with a life-and-death wager against the mysterious Green Knight. To find out more, ComicsAlliance spoke to Van Lente about his inspiration for the story, the ease of mapping the brothers to their Arthurian counterparts, and why a story so weird makes for a great superhero comic.

You know, one assumes that with a thousand lifetimes spent battling evil, Gilad Anni-Padda has probably had ample opportunity to get angry. But if you really want to see someone get mad, you should check out what they do when their first-born son is kidnapped by demons and taken to literal Hell. That's bound to provoke a pretty extreme reaction, and in Robert Venditti, Robert Gill, and Michael Spicer's Wrath of the Eternal Warrior, we're getting to see it for ourselves. Check out a preview of next week's issue below!

Over the course of the past month or so Valiant Entertainment has been teasing the announcement of a project featuring live action actors, but the exact details have been kept under wraps until now. Today at New York Comic Con, the publisher unveiled a new division known as Valiant Digital, aimed at creating digital-first short film content, and debuted the trailer for a blockbuster six-part webseries titled Ninjak vs The Valiant Universe.

Listen: I kind of love The Dying One. I mean, of course I would, right? He's a supervillain who dedicated years - decades, even! - to building a massive underground labyrinth full of deathtraps that are designed explicitly for killing a man who literally cannot die. That's the kind of dedication I love in my antagonists. But then he had to go and ruin it. In next week's issue, as the Dying One finally comes face to face with the Eternal Warrior for bargaining and a fight to the death, he went and opened his big mouth and committed the ultimate sin: He talked smack about Ninjak. Obviously this cannot stand. Check out a preview (including this heinous act) and the start of Gilad's biggest throwdown yet below!

When Ninjak #18 hits shelves in August, it's kicking off the time-bending The Fist & The Steel crossover, in which the Eternal Warrior teams up with Ninjak for futuristic immortal ninja action.

Here's the thing about being one of a trio of immortal brothers who have spent the past few thousand years roaming around and having adventures: Unless you're the one who spends the majority of his time passed out drunk or trying to bring the newsboy cap back into style, you're going to make an awful lot of enemies. And odds are, some of those enemies are going to end up being the kind of immortal masterminds who have an awful lot of time on their hands to plan out their revenge. And in the pages of Wrath of the Eternal Warrior #7, that's exactly what's happening to Gilad Anni-Padda, as he finds himself trapped in what Valiant describes as "the most impenetrable deathtrap ever conceived": A massive, underground maze designed for the sole purpose of destroying the Eternal Warrior. Check out a preview below!

In the three-plus years since Valiant Comics once again became a mainstay on comic shop shelves, The Eternal Warrior has emerged as a central character in the Valiant Universe, serving as the anchor for several series and events. Since starring in an eight-issue solo series by writer Greg Pak and artist Robert Gill, Gilad, the immortal protector of the geomancers, has taken on even more significance in the Valiant U. Wrath of the Eternal Warrior, out next month from writer Robert Venditti and artist Raul Allen, puts the de facto star of Book of Death and The Valiant in a whole new set of circumstances, facing down ancient, terrifying creatures in an "off-world" setting. To find out more about the character's strange new situation, we sat down with Venditti to get the scoop on how this strange environment will affect Gilad, the fallout from Book of Death, and writing a very personal story about a 5,000-year-old character.

The thing about holding a grudge is that there's kind of a time limit on it. I mean, we are, after all, creatures of finite life spans, so on a purely functional level, you can really only be mad for so long before you either stop being mad or stop being anything. Unless, of course, you're Gilad Anni-Pada, better known as the Eternal Warrior, who has an entire immortal lifespan of a couple thousand years to just keep on getting madder and madder. What I'm getting at here is that when you've got a book titled Wrath of the Eternal Warrior, then you are promising a pretty extreme level of anger, and that's something that I'm really hoping to get out of Robert Venditti and Raul Allen's new take on the character as he journeys through an alien hellscape. Check out a preview.