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To understand how Valiant came to be you have to know what happened to Jim Shooter in the mid to late 80's.
Jim Shooter was promoted to Editor in Chief at Marvel Comics in 1978 and stayed there until 1987. Though things went very well
for Marvel during the time of Jim Shooter'sleadership, Shooter's relationship with upper-management was very strained. Shooter left Marvel in 1987 after many
bitter arguements. In 1988 he decided to try and buy the company that had ousted him at the auction block, but came in second
to the winning bidder, Ronald Perelman.
So, Jim Shooter, along with then partners Steven J. Massarsky and Winston Fowlkes decided to start their own comic book company. They
founded Voyager communications in 1989 with the financing coming from a venture capitalist company named Triumph. After
securing the financing, Jim Shooter got comic book greats Bob Layton and Barry Windsor-Smith to join him as the creative team of Valiant Comics.
Voyager Communications began publishing under the "Valiant"
banner in 1990. It started with licensed products such as Nintendo Characters and WWF (World Wrestling Federation)
Characters. Even though Valiant was reaching a wider and newer fan-base with the Nintendo and WWF books Shooter wanted
to make good on a promise from an old friend at Gold Key Comics who had promised him some of their dormant characters,
should Jim ever start his own company. Once the deal was done Voyager had aquired Magnus the Robot Fighter, Turok and
Solar, Man of the Atom.
In 1991 Valiant re-introduced Magnus the Robot fighter back to Comic fans after a 14 year
absence with a print run of Approximately 90,000 copies. In September of 1991 Valiant published it's second title, Solar
Man of the Atom with a Approx. print run of about 60,000 copies. The following month, in October 1991 Valiant Published
it first original character, introducing RAI to the comic world in a "flip book" with Magnus the Robot Fighter #5 .
The Valiant Craze began.
Due mainly to good story-lines and creative storytelling , Valiant comics picked
up alot of Momentum in the early days, bringing back comic fans who had gotten tired of the same old comics and new fans who
were drawn to the different artwork. Valiant was the first to introduce "Variant" covers and "incentive"
covers including Gold covers, Chromium covers. Fans could collect Coupons from Magnus issues 1 through 8 to redeem
a copy of Magnus #0 or the could collect coupons from Harbinger #'s 1 through 6 to redeem a copy of Harbinger #0.
Fans went crazy and soon Valiant was selling hundreds of thousands of copies of their books every month, topping out with
a print run of 1,750,000 for Turok #1 in July 1993.
In 1992, now that the company was making money and the company
was on it's feet, the Venture capitalist company Triumph, who was financing Valiant wanted to sell out. Jim Shooter ,
after trying to secure better contracts during the transition was fired along with Janet "jay Jay' Jackson and some
other "Shooter Loyalists"
After Jim Shooter's abrupt departure from Valiant, comic book legend Bob Layton was promoted to Editor in Chief where he led Valiant through it's most profitable times. Things were going very
well for Valiant. They were the first independent comic company to threaten Marvel and DC for the top spots every month and
were the third top comics company in the business for a few years.
Then, they were sold to Acclaim entertainment
in June 1994 for a whopping $65 million. Though comics sales had slumped in sales, Acclaim management thought by
putting out a crossover that would span all of the Valiant titles and putting those books out twice a month that sales would
soar. They were wrong. Even though they had secured the top names in comics at the time by paying them more than
ever before sales just did not rise and in 1996 Valiant titles ceased production altogether with X-O Manowar #68, for
a major revamp of the titles.
With a new Editor in Chief and new idea's, Accliam started producing comics under
the Acclaim Comics banner Starting With X-O Manowar Vol.2 #1 in October 1996. Acclaim was trying to gear the characters
in a direction which would work better for their video games and had moderate success, but the Comics industry was still slumped
and sales were at an all time low for Acclaim. Even though Acclaim did a second revamp of a few characters sales did
not increase and in September 2000 with Turok 3 : Shadow of Oblivion Acclaim ceased production altogeter.
Acclaim
closed it's doors for good and filed for bankruptcy in 2004. All assets were then auctioned off on 2005, going to high
bidder Valiant Entertainment Inc. (VEI).
In August of 2007 VEI published it's first book, re-introducing Harbinger
in the "Harbinger the Beginning" hardback. Interest in Valiant has risen since VEI obtained
the rights to all of the original Valiant characters with the exception of the Gold key properties Magnus,
Solar and Turok, which are owned by different companies now.
For those of us who collected the books during
the first Valiant craze this is especially satisfying. Knowing that the stories aren't finished yet. That our wait was
worth it. That we know what may come and that we are ready for it.
That Valiant is back
www.valiantentertainment.com
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