Valiant Previews for 1/21 – Ivar, Timewalker and The Valiant
Wednesday sees a couple of new issues from Valiant – a series launch and a prestige-format issue.
First up is Ivar, Timewalker #1, from Fred Van Lente and Clayton Henry. We’ve already seen the character pop up in Archer & Armstrong, but it’s exciting to spend some quality time with him. Ivar is the brother of Gilad and Aram Ani-Padda, three brothers from Mesopotamia cursed with immortality. Valiant fans know Gilad as the Eternal Warrior, sworn to do the will of the Earth for thousands of years. Aram goes by Armstrong now, and has spent the last 4-5,000 years hammered out of his skull. Floating between his brothers’ asceticism and aestheticism is Ivar. Ivar has the ability to find and use time arcs, holes in the fabric of space and time. The only problem is, he never knows where he’ll wind up when he goes, or when he’ll next have a chance to come home.
If this all sounds a bit like Doctor Who and Quantum Leap had a baby, well, it kind of is. In fact, the character’s old green trench coat has been hung up for a look that floats somewhere between the Eighth and Tenth Doctor. But Valiant’s always been about taking genre tropes and finding exciting spins on them. All three of the Ani-Paddas have massive potential for storytelling depth. It’s not uncommon to flash back to something that happened to them decades, centuries, or millenia ago and draw parallels to what’s happening now, or show how old injuries color their outlook on new situations. With Ivar, though, it can ALL be happening “now,” and seeing his disjointed life weave in and out of everyone else’s promises to be a lot of fun.
The old Ivar only ever wanted to return to Cleopatra. This one seems out to save the world, but it’ll be exciting to see what else he’s after.
Next up is issue 2 of Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire, and Paolo Rivera’s fantastic The Valiant. The series focuses on the resurgence of the Immortal Enemy – a demon who has arisen from the Earth, slain the Earth’s speaker, and scarred the Earth’s warrior, time and time again. The best stories about Gilad grapple with his weariness, his struggle with despair and resignation after millenia of fighting. The Valiant certainly delivers on that, but it gives so much more. It finally brings back Kay McHenry, who showed up early on in the new Valiant Universe, promptly proved that the scrappy publisher could do interesting female heroes as well or better than the big dogs, and then kinda disappeared. It also seems set to span the whole of the Valiant U in a way that not even their big crossover events have, as well as deliver Bloodshot to whatever dark place Lemire is going to pick up from in Bloodshot Reborn.
The series is being made out to be a big deal – prestige format, no ads, thick cover, (and a slightly higher price). I picked up the first issue cynical about whether it would be what they were making it out to be, but it definitely won me over by the end.
Even though the story does draw from all over the world they’ve been building, it’s also a deliberate effort at telling a story you can jump in on right away. If you’re intrigued, you should be able to find issue 1 at your local comic shop and jump on board next Wednesday.
