EXCLUSIVE: Valiant Execs Face Forward While Looking Back for 25th Anniversary

[CBR News]

Dinesh Shamdasani, Fred Pierce and Warren Simons discuss the importance of Valiant's 25th Anniversary, and balancing nostalgia with innovation.


Full article here.

[Winterboy]

Lots of cool stuff!

[Captain Craig]

Good read. Not super informative really but you can sense their enthusiasm in what they are doing.

[ksbord]

Always great to hear from the brains at Valiant! I really love the enthusiasm they show towards their work!

That art from The Valiant #3 is just amazing. If I was to buy one piece of original artwork, it would be that scene with all the characters.

[hondobrode]

I love their enthusiasm and am right there with them, but it bothers me to look at the Diamond charts and Valiant is way, way behind lots of others. I wonder if their sales are exceptionally strong in other areas we're not seeing, like digital ?

[ksbord]

I love their enthusiasm and am right there with them, but it bothers me to look at the Diamond charts and Valiant is way, way behind lots of others. I wonder if their sales are exceptionally strong in other areas we're not seeing, like digital ?

I don't know if we can say "exceptionally strong," but I would say that they are doing much better than the snapshot view that Diamond provides.

[Joshua]

Valiant is my favorite thing about comics right now. I've liked everything they've done since the relaunch . The Valiant has been great, too. Looking forward to Bloodshot: Reborn and Ninjak.

Good interview. They seem like regular people. The company is in good hands.

[DriedFruit]

I love their enthusiasm and am right there with them, but it bothers me to look at the Diamond charts and Valiant is way, way behind lots of others. I wonder if their sales are exceptionally strong in other areas we're not seeing, like digital ?

This statistic is misleading. Remember, Valiant only publishes NINE titles a month. That's it. The others ahead of them in the numbers do at least double that (most at least x3 times that number), yet they're only ahead of Valiant by 1.5-3% of the market share. What that says is Valiant's x9 titles sell pretty deep, whereas other publishers' books must be selling very low runs to be putting out 2-3 times as much product a month, but not gaining much more market share. I think I read somewhere earlier this month they're the #3 publisher in terms of unit share and sell-through?

[TheFerg714]

I love their enthusiasm and am right there with them, but it bothers me to look at the Diamond charts and Valiant is way, way behind lots of others. I wonder if their sales are exceptionally strong in other areas we're not seeing, like digital ?

I know they're not doing amazing, but I think it's important to compare them to their competitors. The sales numbers almost always point to:
A- Marvel & DC
B- Image
C- Dark Horse & IDW
D- Boom & Dynamite
E- Everyone else.
Valiant is pretty consistently beating Oni, Zenescope, Viz, Titan, Avatar, and Random House in total units, but they tend to lose to Eaglemoss, Avatar, and Viz in "overall dollars," for whatever reason. They tend to win every other category though, and I'd say that's a good thing. They should conquer to low-tier before trying to take down Boom and Dynamite (which they actually have a good chance of doing once X-O, Unity, and the Valiant Next ongoings are in full swing).

It's also worth mentioning that they've landed 8 out of 9 of their monthly books on the Top 300 for (approximately) the last year. Now that Dr. Mirage is over, and Valiant Next has begun, they'll probably get every title on that list all through 2015. I'd say 9/9 ain't bad!