Eternal Warrior

While other superhero comics publishers are mining their pasts for big crossover events this spring and summer, Valiant is blasting ahead into the future, specifically, its characters' end times. The new, four-issue event series Book of Death, written by Robert Venditti and with art by Robert Gill and Doug Braithwaite, promises to reveal how characters including Ninjak, Bloodshot, X-O Manowar, Toyo Harada and others will bite it, be redeemed, be replaced, or otherwise change in the future.

A few weeks ago, we covered the announcement of Eternal Warrior: Days of Steel, the new miniseries from Valiant by Peter Milligan and Cary Nord, and showed off some of Nord's absolutely stunning art. If, however, you are one of our more sharp-eyed readers, you may have thought "hey, these pages don't have the color or lettering that I usually see in my superhero comics! I wonder what they'd look like if they were finished?" Wonder no more, dear reader! Today, you can have a look at the first six pages of the story in beautiful color, complete with Milligan's dialogue. The story focuses on an adventure from the early days of Gilad Anni-Pada, one of a trio of immortal brothers that also includes Armstrong (of Archer & Armstrong), and it gives Nord's artwork an amazing opportunity to shine.

When I talked to writers Matt Kindt and Jeff Lemire about their new Valiant Comics miniseries The Valiant at San Diego Comic-Con this year, they said that the kernel of the story, the real heart of it, was something small and personal. It's not that I don't believe them -- the new, nine-page preview of the series released by Valiant this week includes one page in which Geomancer has a conversation with an unseen person in a library, and it's fairly quiet -- but the eight other pages are full of historical battles, prehistoric battles, future battles, and mythical battles. There are a lot of battles, with Eternal Warrior in the center of some, and Bloodshot in a few others. Artist Paolo Rivera makes it all seem gigantic.

Following the successful launch of a Valiant Comics roleplaying game on DriveThruRPG.com, the publisher announced this week that it will partner with the RPG site's sister site, DriveThruComics.com, to offer its entire comics library -- the old and the new -- DRM-free, as PDFs. New comics will be available day-and-date. Not only that, but for the next 30 days, Valiant will offer eight of its number-one issues for free through the DriveThruComics website; Archer and Armstrong, Unity, Bloodshot, Eternal Warrior, Harbinger, Quantum and Woody, Shadowman and X-O Manowar.

I think we can all agree that the biggest problem with modern life is that there's just aren't enough violent barbarians severing heads for our amusement and enjoyment. It's a problem, but fortunately, the fine people over at Valiant are stepping up to the plate to help out. This November, Valiant is launching Eternal Warrior: Days of Steel a new three-issue miniseries by the team of Peter Milligan and Cary Nord, focusing on Gilad, one of a trio of immortal brothers, and a mysterious mission that he undertook in the tenth century that will presumably result in severed heads. Alot of severed heads.

Matt Kindt and Jeff Lemire, the co-writers of the upcoming miniseries The Valiant -- a prestige-format miniseries featuring Bloodshot, Geomancer and Eternal Warrior -- have each done superhero work in the past, but they've really made their names with creator-owned work that they wrote and drew. Kindt's Mind MGMT has taken off, and Lemire struck a chord with series including Sweet Tooth and Trillium. Those credentials are part of why Valiant invited the two creators to work on the new miniseries -- one that's being touted as an entry point for new readers, but also as a turning point for the whole Valiant Universe. They've been given some wiggle room to develop a character-based story and put their creative voices to work. The result is something both writers seem really proud of, not to mention a story that's bound to look good, with artwork by Paolo Rivera. We sat down with Lemire and Kindt at San Diego Comic-Con International to ask them about their collaboration, how their backgrounds in cartooning inform their superhero work, and how Valiant's universe differs from others.

Never let it be said that Valiant Comics doesn't try new things with its characters. The publisher's latest experiment is something you don't see a lot of in comics any more: An "entirely self-contained" prestige-format miniseries titled The Valiant. It's certainly a project loaded with talent. It's co-written by Matt Kindt (Mind MGMT) and Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), and features art by Paolo Rivera (Daredevil).