Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got four new comics:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Harbinger” Issues 0, 8-10, and Harbinger Wars 1 by Joshua Dysart and a different artist every issue.

Since I read all of these issues of “Harbinger” together I thought I’d write a blog about them. The first one is a “Zero” issue that tells the origin story of the super-villain who runs the Harbinger corporation. He was a kid in Hiroshima when the city was destroyed by an atomic bomb. There was some pretty horrible stuff going on in these flashbacks especially knowing that real horrible stuff went on then. But Toyo Harada, the main villain, discovered his super-powers because of the chaos and devastation. The rest of the story takes place in the present day as Harada is using another child with super-powers to complete a violent mission. It’s a good story and a good comic that’s loaded with layers of grey. “Harbinger” is not your regular good versus evil super-hero story.

Issues eight through ten of the regular series bring us back to the present day story of Peter Stancek, a super-powered teenager recruited by Harada, who is recruiting a team of other super powers teenagers (who Stancek “Activates”) to fight against Harada and his corporation. There is a real order versus chaos thing going on in this comic. It blurs the line between good and evil. Harada is the villain but he’s also on the side of order. He wants to remake the world so it’s a better place but he’s going about it by being violent and using people. The kids are chaos. They’re untrained and therefore dangerous and don’t really have any kind of plan besides to fight Harada and his plans. So far they haven’t needed a plan since Harada has been after them. Sometimes I feel for Harada’s point of view but when the weight of his violence comes down on people that feeling goes out the window. These three issues were the best of the bunch. It’s well done stuff.

“Harbinger Wars” number one is a mini-series cross-over story with another Valiant published comic “Bloodshot”. This was the weakest issue of the bunch. That’s mostly because it spent it’s time telling the story of what has been happening in the two series over the last bunch of issues. If you’re coming to “Harbinger Wars” cold it sure has a bunch of story info that you need but if you’re not then it looks like the story will start for real in issue two.

All of Valiant’s comics have been of pretty high quality since their relaunch. Despite their being a different art team for each of theses issues they were all solid. If you’re in the mood for modern super-hero-ish comics check these out.