The last time I was truly excited about modern comics was in 91-92 with the birth of the Valiant Comics Group. A brief history on Valiant is that it was a start up comics company that was formed largely through a partnership of Jim Shooter and Steven Massarsky.
Shooter had originally come into comics as a teenage wunderkind who wrote comics that were published by DC when he was 13 years old, most notably Adventure Comics which featured the Legion of Super-Heroes.
In 1987 Shooter had been fired from Marvel Comics where he was editor in chief. He later got some financial backers and made an attempt to buy Marvel which was unsuccessful. He was introduced to Massarsky, who had a somewhat successful career as an agent representing rock groups, and they in turn got the financial backing to start Valiant.
Because money in the beginning was in short supply, Shooter used the Stan Lee Marvel Comics model in Valiant's infancy of introducing a new book every few months and emphasizing story, characterization, and continuity.
He had obtained the rights to the old gold key characters: Dr Solar, Turok, and also Magnus Robot Fighter which was published as Valiant's first super-hero comic. Money was so tight that Shooter, an admitted rank amateur artist, drew early issues under the pseudonym of "Paul Creddick".
A lot of negative things have been said about Shooter by other people in the comics industry accusing him of being an overbearing, controlling, ego maniac; but make no mistake, the man was an expert, maybe even a genius in his craft. His work as writer and editor of every Valiant book in these first two years was and remains the pinnacle of his career. He used story telling techniques that had not been used by the big two; Marvel and DC, in decades. Comic Book artists had become like rock stars and were making huge salaries and the result was that a large group of them started their own company called "Image Comics" where they would own all the rights to their comic book creations.
The difference between the two young companies was that "Image Comics" was all about flamboyant art and not so much about content. Shooter's "Valiant" produced an extremely crisp comic that was told in old fashioned six panel grids. Again using the Marvel model he had characters crossing over into other characters books and was able to maintain subplots with incredibly tight continuity. These books were simply just a great read; every one of them. The artwork was mostly produced by newcomers in the industry and they were drawn in clear, concise layouts that perfectly illustrated Shooter's plots. No guessing if you were looking at somebody's head or an elbow because of pretentious and self indulgent artwork that was popular at the time. The stories were told in clear concise panels. Shooter also had an astute command of science and was able to write it in a way that entertained and did not come across to his readers as implausible.
Valiant was catching on and took off after a cover story by Wizard Magazine. Early back issues skyrocketed in price. Just as it seemed that Shooter could sit back and bask in the glow of what he created...he was fired. The upshot of it, is that Shooter's partners were in the business to make a company, then sell it for a big profit. When he resisted signing a new deal with more backers that he thought would give him less control over his comic books he was forced out. Just like that it was over.
Valiant sold more books after Shooter left because of the popularity of the characters that he infused such life into, and also because Valiant was an instigator of the the comic speculator boom in the early 90's. As their comics became more and more like the rest of the industry with flashy art in three and four panel pages the content of the stories became less and less important. What made Valiant stand out from the pack was that quality story telling was the nucleus of every book. Valiant sadly replaced great content with gimmicks like foil embossed and variant covers.
Shooter railed against gimmicks but he actually started it all off with the "0" issue which could only be obtained by purchasing enough issues that included coupons which could be mailed in and redeemed with a comic that wasn't sold in the comic shops. Soon every comic company was producing a "0" issue with enhanced variant covers that speculators who weren't really fans bought and bought and bought. The boom predictably crashed which almost ended the whole industry. All of the duplicate books that had variant covers or were shipped in plastic bags that speculators and fans bought multiples of were actually worthless and quickly filled up the quarter boxes in the shops.
The fans of the early Shooter produced Valiant books clamored for copies that had now dropped low enough in price where they could be obtained and enjoyed over and over. Valiant was eventually sold to a company called "Acclaim" that wanted to use the characters as video games. The Gold Key characters: Magnus, Solar, Turok reverted back to their original copy write owners. Jim Shooter would go on a couple of more times to start a new universe of comics, but wasn't able to duplicate the same magic as Valiant and failed. Shooter most recently finished a run on the Legion of Super-Heroes where he started his career.
