The Valiant

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.

When the Valiant Universe returned a few years back with some of the most entertaining and engaging superhero comics on the stands, I think we all knew that it was only a matter of time before some world-shaking calamity brought a bunch of the heroes together in a big ol' crossover event. That's exactly what's happening in the form of The Valiant, in which Ninjak and other, less important heroes are gathering to prevent a scary monster from plunging the world into a new dark age. It's pretty exciting stuff -- five years ago, I don't think any of us would've expected to see a big superhero event comic written by Jeff Lemire and Matt Kindt -- but the biggest draw for me is the art team of Paolo Rivera and Joe Rivera. Thanks to his work on books like Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil, Paolo Rivera is easily one of the best artists in comics today -- and when he draws Bloodshot kicking the living crap out of a door, it looks amazing. Check it out in an unlettered preview below!

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.

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).