Rai (pronounced “rye”) appeared in books published by Valiant Comics. Rai was the first original hero created by Valiant and had its beginning as a flipbook back-up feature in Magnus Robot Fighter issues #5-8. The popularity of the flipbook back-up story later led to an ongoing series. Valiant Entertainment is the current owner of Rai and the rest of the original Valiant Comics characters.
In his original incarnation, Rai is the spirit guardian that protects the nation of Japan in the 41st century. It is a mantle passed down from father to son through the generations. As such, the series chronicled a number of protagonists.
A new Rai ongoing series was launched in April 2014 by the creative team of writer Matt Kindt and artist Clayton Crain, selling out of its initial print run.
In 1991, Jim Shooter obtained rights to three Gold Key characters: Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; Turok, Son of Stone; and Magnus, Robot Fighter. He intended to use those characters to launch his new comic book line, Valiant Comics. Several months later, the company launched Magnus, Robot Fighter.
The series began where the original one left off. The artists took great care to replicate the setting and trappings of the original stories. But as the new series progressed, it began to deviate from the original concept.The term “Freewills” appeared in the Valiant run, introducing the concept that the rogue robots seen previously were not simply the product of random malfunctions, but were the result of a common phenomenon which allowed robots to become sentient. While some of them are malevolent, others merely want to be free. It was also learned that 1A is a freewill. With Magnus’s help, a colony of benevolent Freewills is established called the “Steel Nation.” At the same time, Magnus becomes disgusted with North Am’s elite. He journeys to the lower levels of North Am and befriends a group of social outcasts known as Gophs.
The Hernandez brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981, but since 1982 it has been published by Fantagraphics Books. The magazine temporarily ceased publication in 1996 after the release of issue #50, while Gilbert and Jaime went on to do separate series involving many of the same characters. However, in 2001 Los Bros revived the series as Love and Rockets Volume 2.
Love and Rockets contains several ongoing serial narratives, the most prominent being Gilbert’s Palomar stories and Jaime’s Hoppers 13(aka Locas) stories. It also contains one-offs, shorter stories, surrealist jokes, and more.
Palomar tells the story of a fictional village in Latin America and its inhabitants. Its vibrant characters and sometimes-fantastic events are sometimes compared to the magical realism literary style of authors such as Gabriel García Márquez. The series is also sometimes referred to as Heartbreak Soup, after the first story set in Palomar.
Hoppers 13 follows the tangled lives of a group of primarily chicano characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day. (Hoppers, or Huerta, is a fictional city based on the Hernandezes’s home town of Oxnard, California.) The series is also often called Locas (Spanish for “crazy women”) because of the many quirky female characters depicted.
Starring Dave Steven’s classic Pulp-inspired character The Rockeeter (later made into a big-budget Hollywood movie). Guest-stars other clasiic Pulp Characters (The Shadow, Doc Savage, etc.) and Bettie Page. Beautiful art & a thrilling storyline. Includes “Brucilla The Muscle: Galactic Girl Guide” by Elaine Lee & Michael Kaluta as a back-up feature.
This story picks up after the end of “Morning in America” with United States Senator Adam Van Helsing using his political power to wage war against the world-wide forces of the Cult of Chaos and Vampirella and her friend Pendragon serving as his foremost shock-troops. Vampirella and Pendragon travel to Europe where they discover that Chaos’s tendrils reach to the highest level of the European Union’s leadership, and that their old foe Dracula is poised to seize control of the Continent on behalf of the Mad God he serves.
Gilad Anni-Padda, also known as the Eternal Warrior, is a superhero published by Valiant Comics and created by Jim Shooter and Don Perlin. Introduced in 1992, he was then rebooted in 1996 after Acclaim Entertainment bought Valiant Comics. He was rebooted again by Valiant Entertainment, Inc. in 2012. An ageless master fighter with enhanced abilities, Gilad helps protect Earth and humanity from various threats over his long life, often using methods considered ruthless by others.
Shadowman debuted in 1992 as a flagship title in the Valiant Universe and became one of the industry’s most popular comic books. After one year in publication, Shadowman was selling over 100,000 comics books a month. By its second year, Shadowman was outselling long-standing industry stalwarts from Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
Shadowman continued strongly with sales in the hundreds of thousands of books per month (ultimately selling more than 5 million copies altogether) until 1996 when Acclaim Entertainment, which bought Valiant for $65 million, started a new Shadowman series under the Acclaim Comics banner.
X-O Manowar began as an original character by Valiant Comics with issue #1 with a cover date of February 1992. Less than a year after it began, with the Unity crossover and quality storytelling bringing attention to Valiant books, back issue prices rose dramatically due to limited early print runs. With comic book speculators buying multiple copies of each issue, sales reached as high as 800,000 copies for X-O Manowar #0 (August 1993) before dropping off. This original series ran for 68 issues before being canceled after the Sept. 1996 issue, of which only approximately 14,000 were printed.
Adventures into the Unknown is an amazing collection of science-fiction / horror / “twilight zone-ish” stories from writers during the 1940’s through the 1970’s. Featuring the storytelling talents of; Roger Broughton, Adam Barr, Tom Himes & Nicola Cuti.
With artwork featuring legends; Frank Frazetta, Joe Staton, Kenneth Landau, Mike Zeck, Tom Sutton, Enrique Nieto & Sam Glanzman.
Adventures into the Unknown #1 CGC 9.8 White Pages $79
Adventures into the Unknown #2 CGC 9.8 White Pages $59
Squee! was a four-issue series by Jhonen Vasquez, published by Slave Labor Graphics, featuring a supporting character from Vasquez’s previous series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. The series focuses on a young boy named Todd Casil, otherwise known as Squee. An introverted and bullied little kid with a less than supportive family, Squee has been forced to mature a bit more quickly than his peers. He is fond of writing, but only receives criticism from his teacher and taunting from his classmates. Any attempts he makes to deflect these hostilities only results in being shoved into the dirt or otherwise further humiliated. Squee’s mother is addicted to some form of pill and spends a lot of time lying around in a nearly incoherent state. She often forgets who Squee is, or that she even has a child. His father, painfully aware of Squee’s existence, loathes the boy and never forgets to mention that he blames Squee for “ruining” his life, claiming that he “hasn’t smiled once since [Squee] was born”. Having little patience for anything Squee says or does, he eventually becomes convinced that Squee is mentally unstable, and by the end of the series, has him committed to the “Defective Head Meat Institute”. Squee also has a grandfather who justifiably believes his children are only waiting for him to die to collect some kind of inheritance. His grandfather claims to keep healthy and young by consuming his children’s first-borns, and subsequently attempts to devour Squee, only to reveal in horrifying fashion that he is in fact a cyborg and quite possibly insane.
EHT Comics 