A Valiant comeback

Valiant’s the that major

that’s because

I’ve they’re fighting each other. Here’s the deal: Toyo Harada, the most powerful psychic in the world, and the heart of the book Harbinger, assembles a bunch of powerful folks in the first issue to take out Aric of Dacia, the guy wearing the powerful alien armour in X-O Manowar.

Aric, you see, is a Visigoth who was kidnapped by aliens in AD402 – as Einstein predicted, time passes differently in deep space – and, after stealing their most powerful weapon and escaping, has returned to Earth and set himself up as the king of traditional Dacia ... what we now call Romania. That has freaked out the world’s governments, and Harada – who usually works behind the scenes – has taken it upon himself to eliminate Aric and his armour before the Russians go nuclear on Budapest.

On Harada’s “team” are Ninjak, an assassin-ninja-secret agent usually in the employ of Britain’s MI-6; Gilad AnniPadda, an immortal soldier born in Ur thousands of years ago, and the star of Eternal Warrior; and Livewire, another psychic – this one can communicate and control machines – first seen in Harbinger.

That leaves out any characters from Valiant titles like Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot And H.A.R.D. Corps, Quantum And Woody and Shadowman.

But I sure don’t rule out any characters from those titles appearing, because Unity is an extremely fluid title. Most of this gang may have started out battling X-O Manowar, but as of the third issue, just about everybody has flipped, turning on Harada! That’s like – oh, let’s see: the XMen battling Professor X, I guess. It sounds like a terrible betrayal, but in context of the story, it seems reasonable. Because, honestly, there’s something very, very wrong with Harada.

That situation is supposed to climax in the fourth issue, which was released two weeks ago. And after that ... well, it’s hard to say. But we have some clues.

Publishers provide covers and content descriptions to retailers a couple of months in advance, information which, of course, immediately finds its way to the