Aric, Visigoth Metal Superstar

By Popular demand, the X-O theme music is available for download here in all of it’s high file quality glory:

MP3 file: Episode 65 intro – X-O Manowar Metal

(right click/save as to save the file)

This is the opening music from Episode 65, X-O Manowar’s greatest hits.

Before we get to the meat and potatoes of the episode, we also discuss some recent Valiant news (minus yesterday’s exciting announcement), including recent images from Valiant’s Tumblr, the Valiant christmas card, and The Vine.

Some of the greatest hits we cover:

• Lotsa love for Pre-Unity X-O
• X-O #0
• X-O’s Unity arc
• Aric returns to 400 A.D.
• Seed Of Destruction
• Teaming up with Turok
• Destruction of the armor, and the new armor
• Wolfbridge Affair
• The Grand Finale (last three issues)

Also:

• No good guy buttons
• We recap Secret Weapons
• Socrates talks to us about time
• Wyld Stallyns Rule!
• Nobody likes Turok
• Yellow stain of fear
• Buried in Rome, unearthed in the Northeast
• Feel my power!
• Master Darque’s terrible return
• suffering from aBendisitis
• We balance Plato with them not so smarts
• Somehow, more Shadowman controversy
• Some love for Operation Stormbringer
• They all fight nazis, even in the future
• If you like Youngblood, you’ll love the last 20 issues of X-O

We are all pretty darn excited, so of course we discuss this news as much as possible. Listen now!

Also:

• We argue over the efficacy of lightning swords
• homonyms vs. heteronyms, though there’s nothing wrong with that!
• Grandpa tells a story that will “peak” your interest
• Stan Lee principles are applied! You new folks will not be lost!
• Harbinger Hangups, and the lack thereof
• Craigslist, new weapon of the Harbinger foundation
• The fate of the local comic shops
• Comparison of the New Valiant publishing schedule and the Dark Horse Gold Key publishing schedule
• A new “Unity” type crossover? How likely is this?
• Cops love Amarillo
• Mullets – a pretty bad disability
• Is bloodshot without lightning bolts still Bloodshot?
• Aric on the moon! Or in cotton land…
• Obligatory Star Trek reference, and a good alternative
• We introduce a new way to get off track: James Bond
• …then things go Youngblood, and we call it quits

Valiant Comics FCBD 2012 Cover

The news we’ve been patiently waiting for is here.

Valiant Comics will return in 2012 on Free Comic Book Day

For those of you marking your calendars now, Free Comic Book Day is May 5, 2012. My calendar is marked.

Looks like the FCBD issue will be a sort of preview book, with info about characters, creators, and such. It seems that it will definitely include X-O Manowar (obviously), Harbinger, and Bloodshot.

The cover to this Free Comic Book Day issue is by Jelena Kevic-Djurjevic. The redesigned X-O Manowar looks pretty sweet!

It also looks new issues of comics featuring these characters will be hitting the store shelves around the same time. May is looking to be a very good month indeed.

Dude! X-O Manowar is holding a sword made out of lightning!

Here’s a nice long quote of quotables and information:

“This has been an event a decade in the making, and we’re approaching this with dedication, passion and a commitment to excellence,” said Executive Editor Warren Simons. “We’ve lined up some colossally talented colleagues – both new and old friends alike – and if you have a love for great comics and innovative stories, we’ve got some great stuff in store for you.”

Featuring a cover of the brand new X-O Manowar by superstar artist Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic, this sneak peek into Valiant’s extraordinary first year comes packed with never-before-seen stories, character redesigns, and interviews with Valiant’s team of visionary creators.

“We couldn’t be happier to be partnering with comics retailers, Diamond and ComicsPro for Free Comic Book Day 2012, the most exciting day in comics,” said Publisher Fred Pierce. “In 2012, fans and retailers can expect some of the best books in all of comics to be shipping monthly from Valiant.”

Valiant’s Free Comic Book Day special edition is just the first title that the publisher has lined up for the month of May. Look for announcements regarding the full array of new titles, creative teams, and shipping dates to be released in the New Year.

“Free Comic Book Day is just the beginning,” said Valiant Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani. “For anyone who loves comics and top-notch storytelling, the return of the Valiant Universe will be an event not to be missed.”

Valiant Entertainment is a character-based publishing and licensing company that owns and controls some of the most cherished comic characters ever created across all media worldwide. Since their creation in 1989, Valiant characters have sold 80 million comic books and have been the basis of a number of successful video game franchises. Valiant’s extensive library includes over 1,500 characters, such as X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, and Ninjak. Visit:

ValiantUniverse.com

www.facebook.com/ValiantComics

www.twitter.com/ValiantComics

In this episode, we discuss the Eternal Warrior 27 – 50, Wings Special, Fist and Steel, and Yearbook 2. There are some hits, and a few more misses, we discuss our thoughts on these so-so issues about this great character.

In addition:

• We don’t need no stinking intros!
• The Force! Not just for Star Wars anymore
• Your daily dose of decapitation
• All my children… are psychopaths
• Without the Geomancer, things fall apart for Gilad
• Bridges with piles of dead bodies, take the next bridge, Attila
• Back you Dogs! Or I’ll litter the street with your bones!
• Tiny moments of depth. And hoochie dresses.
• Newt Gingrich, radical right terrorist!
• Boba Fett, also radical right terrorist!
• And Jackson Guice, Eternal Warrior penciller, also radical right terrorist!
• First Hand, West Texas encounters with the radical militias
• Gilad misses out on many valuable trademark and copyright oppurtunities
• Meet the pirate Darth Vader, who wields a mighty bat’leth
• Little known fact, Gilad is also Bigby Wolf
• Magic v. Micro-Circuitry
• TUFF
• The REAL secret of Chiclo
• Legacy, and how it defines the Valiant universe

Some notes:

Wiki on the real-life Orval Faubus (as referenced in Eternal Warrior 43).

Sorry for the inconvenience!

The Only The Valiant crew is stranded on a desert island, with nothing but a few comics, and hopefully a Starbucks and internet cafe.

Luckily, we were able to package up a few of our favorite comics before our boat crashed during what was supposed to be just a three hour tour.

The professor quickly put together a podcast recorder out of a couple coconut shells, so we’re able to record this podcast message and bring it to you, straight from the comic-filled desert island

We’ve got our three favorite runs of comics, and one of those runs is a Valiant Comics run. Between the four of us, we’ve got a ton of reading material on this island.

Tune in now to learn what we brought with us, and why! This is a long one, with tons of great comics talk.

We’ve taken a step away from the usual Valiant discussion for this episode, to talk about this event, because it is has been a huge event for the comic book industry.

In addition to our thoughts on this exciting event:

• Each book reviewed with the Official OTV ranking system, Yes/Meh/Sucks
• Throw your hands in the air for the Ladies! Or, was this all just atrociously done and disrespectful to women readers?
• What reading these books tells us about what we like
• Burn out!
• Nobody agrees on ratings, ie. there’s something for everyone
• and 357 other things!

Some notes:

Justice League #1 Edited

DC Comics is bad at Math

Super Friends for the win!

So far, I’ve received the first 27 of those 52 books. Some I really enjoyed (Action Comics, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Stormwatch, Batwoman), others I didn’t like very much. I didn’t expect to like them all, so I’m not too disappointed.

I have been disappointed that almost every book has been a very quick read. There isn’t a lot of story contained in each issue.

The first title that DC relaunched was Justice League. After reading some previews, and on a hunch, I started a stopwatch when I sat down to read it. It is 24 pages long, cost $3.99 cover price, and it took a little over 8 minutes to read.

That’s fifty cents a minute.

Decompression

There has been a trend in comics, developing over the last 10 to 12 years, to decompress the comics. This means stories are spread out over several issues, rather than packed into one issue. While this has led to some improvements in storytelling, allowing comics to be more cinematic, and use storytelling with nuance and more emotional impact, it has also resulted in less amount of story in each comic.

Most of these new DC Comics are heavily decompressed. In a lot of the comics, not much happens in the first issue. After I finish reading most of these comics, even many of the issues I really enjoyed, I feel like I haven’t really gotten my money’s worth in terms of the amount of storytelling included.

The experiment

I have noticed that a lot of the attitude towards decompressed storytelling is a reluctant acceptance. It is considered “just the way it is”, or the price to pay for better quality comics.

I’m not convinced, so I recompressed Justice League #1.

I edited the entire comic, moved some panels, removed other panels, moved word balloons, etc., to see if the story that was told in 24 pages could have been effectively told in fewer pages.

Every word balloon in the original comic is included in this (except for one, can you figure out which?), and I tried to be respectful of things like splash pages, and other story beats. I did overlay some panels over existing splash pages, since I don’t think that two splash pages, and one double-page splash are necessary for quality storytelling. Also, the last three pages are unchanged, because I couldn’t find a good way to edit the three pages down to two, and maintain the cool final splash page of Superman.

It is a little rough in places, since these panels were not drawn to fit on the page in the size, order, and placement that I put them, this was meant to illustrate a point, not be a final product.

As it is, my edited version of Justice League is 16 pages, compared to the published version which is 24 pages.

This is an experiment, to see what people think. Please let me know, do you think the edited pages convey the story as well as the original?

I think that they do, and I think that we could have had an additional 8 pages of Superman squaring off against Batman included in this comic.

I might be wrong though, and my tastes may just be different, and I very well may have butchered this thing to the point of neutering the quality of the original. This is, after all just an experiment.

The Results

I’m not gonna display the whole darn comic on this site, here are a couple pages as an example.

First, the original four pages of comic are from the middle of the story, and introduce the character of Vic Stone. These are the original pages, unedited, as they appear in Justice League #1

ORIGINAL PAGES:

Justice League #1, page 18, as originally published

Justice League #1, page 19, as originally published

Justice League #1, page 20, as originally published

Justice League #1, page 21, as originally published

Now, the edited version. I edited the above sequence down to 2 pages.

EDITED PAGES:

Justice League #1, page 12 in the compressed, edited version

Justice League #1, page 13 in the compressed, edited version

What do you think? Does the storytelling hold up in the edited version? Does it lose anything in the edited version? If it loses something, are you willing to lose that to gain an additional 8 pages of story in this comic?

Judge For Yourself

Here’s the whole thing. All 16 pages of Justice League #1, edited down from the 24 published pages seen if you bought the comic off the rack.

Now, PLEASE, before you check this out, GO BUY THE ORIGINAL. This comic has been wildly successful, and DC quickly printed 2nd and 3rd prints when the comic immediately sold out. You should be able to get this book at your local comic book retailer, or you can buy a digital copy and read it on your computer.

This is a cool issue, and Jim Lee’s art is amazing. In fact, the most difficult thing about this project was removing the awesome Jim Lee art. I’ve been a fan of Jim Lee since I bought my first X-Men comic (Uncanny X-Men 274) back when I was 12.

The reason I took the time to do this is that I like the DC Comics characters, and I will continue to buy DC comics, as long as I feel like I am getting a good value. I haven’t felt that way about most of these, and this experiment is meant to demonstrate why.

So please, buy the comic! This edit isn’t meant to replace the original, only as a means of demonstrating an opinion, based on having read the original.

Now, here’s the complete edited version.

Check it out while it’s hot, before I have to take it down or something.

This is another episode in a series of discussions about the comics published by Valiant in the later years of their publishing tenure. Shadowman is one of the gems of the “Birthquake era” of Valiant Comics.

In addition to our overall discussion, we cover:

• The TWO Shadowmans!
• Villains: Blister! Night Monster! Ishmael! Sandria? Where is Master Darque?
• Birthquake – what the heck was it?
• Details that made the book work
• Supporting cast: Nettie, Maxim, Marcia

This episode is a musical jam fest, with musical interludes, including:

• Hard Bop Jazz
• Zydeco Jams
• and the OTV Rap Crew!

Musical notes:

Rap interlude is the OTV Rap Crew, The Shadowman Rap

Jazz interlude is Wayne Shorter, JuJu, from the album JuJu

Zydeco interlude is Boozoo Chavis, Paper in my Shoe

Mobsters! Rampage! Other fake Bloodshots! Deathangel! Guns! Creepy babies! These issues are loaded, but are they loaded with the goods, or do they fall flat? Opinions vary (as always), and we hash out what we liked, and what we didn’t like about these issues.

Pick up your issues, read along, and listen.

• Chiclo has become… Electronic. Supersonic.
• Do you use a “90′s filter”?
• Senseless violence! Or is throwing a man in a trash compactor perfectly reasonable?
• Nothing stands out
• Bimbo? Or competant MI-6 agent?
• Everybody gets a drug lord!
• What books to avoid, unless you want to stab yourself with a pencil
• Once again, Ultraverse leads the way down a path of badness
• Creepy babies (worth mentioning twice)
• Bangs make a book great

Show links/notes:

Zlad: Elektronik Supersonik

EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: Why is Chiclo so happy?

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