When Nostalgia Strikes...

I haven't been able to afford weekly comics for about a year now, but I still get the itch for some four-colored glory. My dad still has all of my old comics from when I was in 4th grade/junior high, so I dug through them just to see if I was actually into anything worth reading in the nineties. There were a lot of the usual suspects. Image and X-Books abound! Mostly the books you can't give away these days. Hell, try to burn them, and the fire just spits them out at your feet.

I also found all of my Valiant books. Now, when I was a kid, I was one of those weird ones who would gravitate towards Valiant over Image. I loved Magnus and Turok the most, and I think that I responded to the adventure aspects that these Tarzan ripoffs provided (also, Tim Truman). Looking at them today, I can't help but feel like they were really on to something with these characters. It really felt fresh back then compared to everything else that was on the American market. Flipping through the copies, though, I got a sinking feeling as I got closer and closer to the Akklaim comics days, and everything just fell apart seemingly overnight. Crossovers, too. Ouch.

Remembering Alan Moore's dalliance with Image (where he produced some pretty good stuff, all things considered), I couldn't help but feel a pang of "what-could-have-been" thinking of what some better talent could have made of Valiant comics. Given Moore's sensibilities, I would think that Valiant would have been a better fit for that period of his career (I remember him saying in an interview that he wanted to make adventure comics for thirteen year-olds back then), especially the Tom Strong/Tarzan-esque adventure characters Magnus and Turok. Or Grant Morrison on Solar, even.

Shame.

I think that there's some legal stuff keeping something like that from happening, actually. I seem to remember something like that being mentioned before. I even recall seeing some new Magnus artwork a year or two ago, but I don't think an actual series ever materialized. Valiant was also a very schizophrenic company. They wanted a big continuity, which they tried to create through crossovers and the like, but there was a lot of creative turnover on their books, so new (and usually unnecessary) takes were pretty common. Turok started pretty strongly, despite the Bart Sears artwork, and really got cooking when Tim Truman took over the book, trading art chores with Rags Morales. Those Truman/Morales comics were some of the best stuff going back then.

Oddly I could never get into X-O Manowar. I think that was too old for me at the time, and I could never get into the concept like I could with Magnus and Turok, which were pretty boy-friendly as far as base ideas go.

I couldn't get into Savage Dragon when I was a kid. I have read and enjoyed bits and pieces of the series here and there, though. Dragon's brand of humor went over my head when I was a kid, and the book just came off as silly to me. I was more into adventure stuff (like I've been saying) like Turok, and the only superheroes I was really into were the big 3: Superman, Batman, and Spidey. A lot of the stuff that Dragon tips its hat to is stuff from before my time, stuff that I never experienced or appreciated (thanks to collected editions) until much later.