By the time a short while later that KNIGHTS ON BROADWAY #1 was launched, the bloom was already off the rose at Broadway Comics, Jim Shooter's latest and last attempt to start up another successful comic book publishing company. Jim had been ousted from first Marvel and then Valiant, and his attempt to build Defiant … Continue reading Brand Echh: KNIGHTS ON BROADWAY #1
The second comic book release put out by Jim Shooter's last new comic book company Broadway Comics was SHADOW STATE #1. And to begin with, what a lousy cover--badly composed, poorly colored, overly designed. A real eyesore, for all that it definitely did the job of making a prospective buyer's eye linger on it on … Continue reading Brand Echh: SHADOW STATE #1
By the time that he launched BROADWAY COMICS in 1995, one gets the sense that EIC and Chief Creative Officer Jim Shooter was getting a little bit tired. After being ousted from Marvel Comics in 1987, he's launched an unsuccessful bid to buy Marvel, pivoted into founding VALIANT when that proved unsuccessful, then was forced … Continue reading Brand Echh: POWERS THAT BE #1
Having been publishing super hero comic books for about a year, Valiant editor in chief Jim Shooter was about to unveil his master stroke. Jim had scored massive numbers writing MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS years before, the very first company-wide crossover series, and its success must have been top of mind as he and … Continue reading Brand Echh: UNITY #0
While Valiant had had some middling success up to this point, it was really HARBINGER #1 that put the company on the map in terms of being a presence in the field. HARBINGER was the first fully-original super hero concept that was put forward by Valiant, and it shared enough of its DNA with X-MEN … Continue reading Brand Echh: HARBINGER #1
The second super hero title in Valiant's new line of books was SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM #1. Like MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER, the series was a revival of a property that had been published in the 1960s and 1970s by Gold Key: DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM. But unlike MAGNUS, SOLAR wasn't set up … Continue reading Brand Echh: SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM #1
The VALIANT line of interconnected super hero titles were really the successors to Marvel's New Universe efforts. They evidenced a similarity of ethos, though they were both better conceived and better produced for the most part--and thus were a lot more successful. Whether this was due to Valiant EIC and lead writer Jim Shooter having … Continue reading Brand Echh: MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER #1
