Valiant Universe: Harbinger, Unity, Rai, A&A; current state & future prospects

[TheFerg714]

Something i'd like to say about the Valiant Universe right now, which is problem that has bothered it in all three incarnations.

Not enough good villains.

A superhero universe lives and dies by its antagonists and other than Masgter Darque and Harada who do we really have?

Wheres our Sabertooth and Doctor Doom and Reverse Flash and Joker and Mandarin and all the rest?

If they want people to keep reading Valiant they are gonna have to seriously up their game on the villains front.

X-O Manowar- The Vine, Commander Trill, the Armor Hunters, Dead Hand, the Torment.
Harbinger- Toyo Harada (one of the greatest villains of all time)
Bloodshot- PRS, Kozol, Gamma
A&A- The Sect, Mary Maria, General Redacted, The Null
Shadowman- Master Darque (not the most interesting villain in the world imo, but extremely ominous and foreboding nonetheless)
Q&W- Edison's Radical Acquisitions
Eternal Warrior- The Dying One (looks to be growing into one of the best villains so far)
Unity- Dr. Silk (not much characterization so far, but he's super creepy and conniving)
Rai- Father/XI
Ivar, Timewalker- The Mistress
Ninjak- Roku, the Shadow Seven
Faith- Chris Chriswell (not sure if this should count yet)
The Valiant- The Immortal Enemy

So, yea, I would agree that Valiant needs to work on it's villains, but I also think that there's quite a few quality villains that have shown up. And also, more importantly, often times, the "heroes" of the story are often the bad guys. X-O literally takes over a country just because he can. Bloodshot is intermittently used as the antagonist, or at least the scary killing machine (Harbinger Wars, side stories in Duane's run, Mission: Improbable, The Glitch). Pete is essentially a drug-addled lowlife, who only does good because he has people that he feels responsible for. Jack (Shadowman) is frequently his own worst enemy. Armstrong, while adorably douche-y, is just that: a complete douche. Ninjak (until recently) does good things sometimes, but not because it's the right thing to do. It's almost like he's just bored. Ivar is charming and ultimately heroic, but manipulates and uses people without even realizing he's doing so. I mean, for the love of god, Imperium is literally a book about monsters (an amoral Lovecraftian horror; an alien with a literal insatiable bloodlust; a terrorist who knows it; and comic's most heroic evil-doer of all time). It's all about challenging your perception and asking yourself whether evil can ever be worth it.
I guess my whole point is that Valiant may be lacking villains, but Valiant's not really about heroes vs. villains in the first place. Every character has the propensity for good and evil, including the protagonists.

[Muadib]

X-O Manowar- The Vine, Commander Trill, the Armor Hunters, Dead Hand, the Torment.
Harbinger- Toyo Harada (one of the greatest villains of all time)
Bloodshot- PRS, Kozol, Gamma
A&A- The Sect, Mary Maria, General Redacted, The Null
Shadowman- Master Darque (not the most interesting villain in the world imo, but extremely ominous and foreboding nonetheless)
Q&W- Edison's Radical Acquisitions
Eternal Warrior- The Dying One (looks to be growing into one of the best villains so far)
Unity- Dr. Silk (not much characterization so far, but he's super creepy and conniving)
Rai- Father/XI
Ivar, Timewalker- The Mistress
Ninjak- Roku, the Shadow Seven
Faith- Chris Chriswell (not sure if this should count yet)
The Valiant- The Immortal Enemy

So, yea, I would agree that Valiant needs to work on it's villains, but I also think that there's quite a few quality villains that have shown up. And also, more importantly, often times, the "heroes" of the story are often the bad guys. X-O literally takes over a country just because he can. Bloodshot is intermittently used as the antagonist, or at least the scary killing machine (Harbinger Wars, side stories in Duane's run, Mission: Improbable, The Glitch). Pete is essentially a drug-addled lowlife, who only does good because he has people that he feels responsible for. Jack (Shadowman) is frequently his own worst enemy. Armstrong, while adorably douche-y, is just that: a complete douche. Ninjak (until recently) does good things sometimes, but not because it's the right thing to do. It's almost like he's just bored. Ivar is charming and ultimately heroic, but manipulates and uses people without even realizing he's doing so. I mean, for the love of god, Imperium is literally a book about monsters (an amoral Lovecraftian horror; an alien with a literal insatiable bloodlust; a terrorist who knows it; and comic's most heroic evil-doer of all time). It's all about challenging your perception and asking yourself whether evil can ever be worth it.
I guess my whole point is that Valiant may be lacking villains, but Valiant's not really about heroes vs. villains in the first place. Every character has the propensity for good and evil, including the protagonists.

I agree that progress has been made in this iteration, but i remember something Mark Gruenwald said, that a hero needs at least a dozen or so regular a-list villains to be successful in his opinion and i agreed with him then and agree with him now. I also concede the decompressed style works against the rapid introduction of good villains.

It is cool how the heroes of Valiant can be the antagonists as well as protagonists. But i still feel we have a long way to go before Valiant has a good and deep villain catalogue IMHO.

[JediKage]

Define A-list. I don't think Even Bats or Spidey hits a Dozen A-Listers.

[Muadib]

Define A-list. I don't think Even Bats or Spidey hits a Dozen A-Listers.

A-list is probably the wrong word for it, but a dozen or so villains who are interesting and reuseable.Wikipedia refers to them as Central Rogues Gallery, lets go with that.

For Batman we have:

Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Riddler, Black Mask, Hush, Bane, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Man Bat, Clayface. Then we go to recurring antagonists and so on.

Granted all those villains were done over decades, but as i said, this issue was there from the first Valiant iteration and has lingered since then. The list Ferg714 was kind enough to do shows us work is being done, and i hoe the work continues. Valiant is pretty much the only books i am reading regularly now. And i look forward to the stories yet to come.

I just think, esecially in Unity's case, we havent seen a deep run of villains being produced to test our heroes. This needs to be addressed with a little more urgency imo.

[Dark-Flux]

There is the issue of their being very little incentive for creators to create characters theyre not gonna own.
Not saying it doesnt happen, but Id imagine most arnt gonna put too much effort into creating truely imaginative, unique or potentially iconic villains if theyre just gonna sign them away.

[TheFerg714]

A-list is probably the wrong word for it, but a dozen or so villains who are interesting and reuseable.Wikipedia refers to them as Central Rogues Gallery, lets go with that.

For Batman we have:

Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Riddler, Black Mask, Hush, Bane, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Man Bat, Clayface. Then we go to recurring antagonists and so on.

But honestly, those bolded characters, I think, are really the only ones that you can put on the "Central Rogues Gallery" pedestal. And Batman is pretty much an outlier when it comes to amazing rogues gallery. No other superhero (besides maybe Spidey) comes even close to that. Captain America's been around forever and the only villains that really matter are Red Skull, Zola, Zemo, and I guess Winter Soldier. Iron Man only has one villain that stands out to me with the Mandarin. Wonder Woman's arch-enemy is apparently the Cheetah and I don't think I've even heard of a story with her (besides the one going on now). Sure, villains are important, but I just don't think that they make the superhero like you do.
EDIT: Just look at Superman, the original superhero. Even he has a fairly limited A-list villain roster: Zod, Doomsday, Bizarro, Brainiac, and Lex Luthor.

Granted all those villains were done over decades, but as i said, this issue was there from the first Valiant iteration and has lingered since then. The list Ferg714 was kind enough to do shows us work is being done, and i hoe the work continues. Valiant is pretty much the only books i am reading regularly now. And i look forward to the stories yet to come.
I just think, esecially in Unity's case, we havent seen a deep run of villains being produced to test our heroes. This needs to be addressed with a little more urgency imo.

Yea, I know I'm being argumentative, and although I disagree that a hero needs a rogues gallery to be legit, I 100% agree that Valiant needs to step their game up in regards to arch-villains specifically, but I think Harada, Roku, Master Darque (although the comic he was in isn't great), Myshka (can't believe I forgot her in my last post), Chris Chriswell, Commander Trill, The Dying One, The Mistress, and Father are doing good enough of a job so far.

[scribbleMind]

Bloodshot was great as everyone has said.
X-O was good, but generally speaking when an individual gets absorbed the results are pretty predictable. I don't know what's going to happen, but if what happens is what I think might happen, well, that's why I wasn't as excited about the issue. I'm really concerned about where the Vine are going to end up when it's all over. The fact that so many lives are constantly at stake in a very present and real way is one of the things that makes the X-O book great. A lot of times you're read a story about saving the world that's just a guy breaking into a room, taking out some goons, and stopping the bad guy, but with X-O what he is saving or attempting to save is often right there on the page, which makes it so much better imo.
4001 ended how I believe most of us predicted it would end, but at the same time it is exactly what I wanted to happen. Now all the world building during the event doesn't go to waste. I am more excited for what happens next than I have ever been in a Rai book.

Now, as far as villains, as was discussed once, Valiant characters aren't superheroes. As such, they wouldn't have a long list of villains because most of them aren't actively looking for them, but the villains they DO have are more developed and their interactions are generally more personal than that of a typical villain. In time, most of the characters rogue's will grow, I'm sure, but I prefer the slow methodical pacing of really defining these villains and developing their relationship with our protagonists than just throwing in a number of mostly inconsequential villains and seeing what sticks.

[Shadowras]

I think those two cosmonauts is gonna cause some Thanos level chaos in Divinity 3.

[TheFerg714]

4001 ended how I believe most of us predicted it would end, but at the same time it is exactly what I wanted to happen. Now all the world building during the event doesn't go to waste. I am more excited for what happens next than I have ever been in a Rai book.

Me too.

Now, as far as villains, as was discussed once, Valiant characters aren't superheroes. As such, they wouldn't have a long list of villains because most of them aren't actively looking for them, but the villains they DO have are more developed and their interactions are generally more personal than that of a typical villain. In time, most of the characters rogue's will grow, I'm sure, but I prefer the slow methodical pacing of really defining these villains and developing their relationship with our protagonists than just throwing in a number of mostly inconsequential villains and seeing what sticks.

Yup. Agreed.

[JasonTodd428]

Now, as far as villains, as was discussed once, Valiant characters aren't superheroes. As such, they wouldn't have a long list of villains because most of them aren't actively looking for them, but the villains they DO have are more developed and their interactions are generally more personal than that of a typical villain. In time, most of the characters rogue's will grow, I'm sure, but I prefer the slow methodical pacing of really defining these villains and developing their relationship with our protagonists than just throwing in a number of mostly inconsequential villains and seeing what sticks.

I agree with you there. I'd much rather Valiant continue to slowly and methodically build up the villains they have and once those are clearly established move on to others. Most of the current big name villains in DC and Marvel's stables were developed over the course of years so its not really something that happens over night generally anyway. Besides with people like the Vine, Harada, PRS, Father and the Divinities out there I feel Valiant is doing just fine on the major villain front anyway.

[JasonTodd428]

I think those two cosmonauts is gonna cause some Thanos level chaos in Divinity 3.

I'm given to agree.

[Muadib]

Read War Mother, interested to see where it goes, reminds me of Biopunk novels i have read, with a little Rogue Trooper tossed in and some other influences.

Look forward to seeing Savage, tho i wish the character wasnt a teen for some reason, but i suppose i can live with it. Now VEI has replaced the old Gold Key characters i am quite interested to see whats next.

Also are we seeing the third Cosmonaut in Divinity III?

[TheFerg714]

Read War Mother, interested to see where it goes, reminds me of Biopunk novels i have read, with a little Rogue Trooper tossed in and some other influences.

Look forward to seeing Savage, tho i wish the character wasnt a teen for some reason, but i suppose i can live with it. Now VEI has replaced the old Gold Key characters i am quite interested to see whats next.

Also are we seeing the third Cosmonaut in Divinity III?

They haven't made a Magnus analog yet. We'll see if that ever comes to fruition. And yea, it looks like the third guy will show up in Divinity III. I'm sure we'll find out for certain in a few weeks when the December solicitations come out. I'm hoping he'll be on the cover of issue 1.

[Shadowras]

They haven't made a Magnus analog yet. We'll see if that ever comes to fruition. And yea, it looks like the third guy will show up in Divinity III. I'm sure we'll find out for certain in a few weeks when the December solicitations come out. I'm hoping he'll be on the cover of issue 1.

I think War Mother could be our Magnus analog with a little twist.
Great interview about Savage here: http://www.newsarama.com/30855-valia...que-title.html
It seems young Sauvage has two siblings back in England.

[sifighter]

I think War Mother could be our Magnus analog with a little twist.
Great interview about Savage here: http://www.newsarama.com/30855-valia...que-title.html
It seems young Sauvage has two siblings back in England.

I hope him being connected to England will allow for some sort of teamup between Savage and Ninjak further down the line. Because honestly, who wouldn't want to see a teenage dinosaur hunter fight a ninja in the streets of London.