I thought I would take last month off because of the special surprise that we had in store for you all. Now that our editor has gathered control of her mind we are back to normal once again. For this month's Random Read, I thought I would look at the reboot of a comic from a company that has just rebooted itself. The book, X-O Manowar; and the company, Valiant. X-O Manowar initially came out back in the early 1990's as one of the flagship titles for the old Valiant Comics. I got into it at the time because I was looking for more books like Iron Man and I could not find anything I liked until I came upon this title. The original books premise was that a Barbarian found this suit of armor that belonged to a race of spider aliens that were trying to take over the Earth. When the Barbarian got back to earth, he found himself not in the early centuries AD, but instead in the late twentieth century. From there it was just him battling the spider aliens and getting used to twentieth century life.

The Cover

There were four different covers offered for this book and I got the one that was meant for the general public consumption. This cover was done by Esad Ribic and he does a good job taking us back to the early covers of the old Valiant comics. There is no real extraneous stuff on the cover just the title in white letters in some new type of font taking up about three-quarters of the top of the cover, and the company logo and issue number in the upper left hand corner. The company logo mixes the old sort of gold compass that they had on the old titles with a two toned (red and white) stylized 'V'. I guess they were going for a mix of old and new to symbolize this new era of Valiant Comics. The action on the cover looks like it was a photograph captured in a moment if time. It has our human character in the armor that has made some sort of long sword out of electricity kicking and punching the spider aliens outside a space ship. The spider aliens look a lot different than the sort of hairy ones that were in the old book. The cover is a great action shot and I hope that this would set the tone for the entire issue. On the inside of the cover we get a sort of time line of what is going on as well as silhouettes of the weapons and the average profile of a warrior of the Visigoths and Romans. What this has to do with the book I have no idea.

The Book Itself

The book itself is an okay read. Most of the issue is spent on the battle of the Visigoths and the Romans or on characterizations of the human players in this first issue. Not what I was expecting, and is actually kind of boring. If it had been one battle I would have been all over it, but then they have to have another battle before they get to the alien part. It is not until about two-thirds of the way through the book that we actually see the spider aliens who the Visigoths think are working with the Romans. While the Visigoths are fighting the aliens some of the aliens sneak into the camp and implant a undercover baby spider alien that allows them to carry off the human baby. The survivors of this battle are taken aboard the alien ship where two of them break apart from the line of prisoners and kill one of the guards escorting them. They duck into a hiding place where they see the aliens worshiping some sort of blue and yellow ball that their best warrior takes control of the armor. Our Visigoth heroes are captured by the aliens and then we see the armor reject the warrior and kill it. The aliens see this as a sign that the warrior was not the best fit for the armor and they say they will try again. At the end of the issue we have the leader of the Visigoths carted away to a prison cell with the other humans and we learn that he is going to get them out of there and take them back to Earth.

Overall Impressions

Writing: This was an okay first issue. It would have been even better if the writer for the issue, Robert Venditti, had spent less time with the Visigoths and Romans and more time possibly getting to the meat of the story rather than giving us the gristle right off the bat. The dialog seems to me to be okay, but I'm not an ancient historian and have no idea how they talked back then. Having the spider aliens worship the manowar armor seems like that for all their technological advancement with spaceships and things like that they still are kind of an ass backwards society. That or they think the armor is a gift from the gods and worship it like some religious text in their society says. Also what was the deal with the aliens carrying off the baby of the leader of the Visigoths and leaving a sort of sleeper baby in the camp? Could this mean that the human baby is going to take control of the armor not the young leader? Art: The interior art is well done. It is done by Cary Nord and while not on the level of the original Barry Winsor-Smith art, I think it is an acceptable substitute. The only thing that I did not like about this whole thing was that the cover seems to imply there will be an appearance of a human in the armor and there is not. I'm okay with that because it is done on virtually every comic these days. Colors and Letters: I think this has to do with the colors and letters, but whole book seems to have a bit of a dark vibe running through it with the inks, and I'm wondering if that was intentional or if the whole process just ran away with them and they thought it was a good choice. I would have liked to see more color in the whole book, but I guess when you are dealing with Visigoths, Romans and Aliens; color is not high on the priority list. Otherwise, the colors by Moose Baumann convey everything that needs to be shown with a minimal palate. The letters, by Dave Lamphear, are done very well and with the exception of a few panels that seem to have a lot of stuff crammed into a speech bubble, they do not block the art all that much.

Final Thoughts

The book is an okay start for a new series and for a whole new generation that is being introduced to the Valiant characters for the first time. Old timers like me would have liked to have more action in the book, but a lot was done in the issue. I did not like the fact that the back third of the book was filled with in-house advertising and a preview of Harbinger, the next new Valiant tile that is due out this month. Some of that could have been taken away and instead given us more story to X-O Manowar. I don't know about you, but I could care less about the reboot of Harbinger when I bought a book called X-O Manowar. Look for another Random Read next month. I don't know what it'll be, but it'll be something random put out in June.

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Copyright © 2012 Mathew "thehammer" Bredfeldt About the Author