"Then and Now"
Writer: Robert Venditti
Artist: Cary Nord
Inker: Stefano Gaudiano
Colourist: Moose Bauman
The flagship title of the new Valiant Universe continues
this week as Aric of Dacia finds himself faced with an armed response to his
sudden arrival in the modern age. Robert Venditti and Cary Nord’s relaunched
X-O Manowar series has been excellent so far, and from an action perspective,
this issue once again delivers as Aric shows off what the Manowar armor can do
when faced with modern military hardware.
Storywise, Venditti continues to develop the schism within
the Vine as the religious and military factions disagree about what to with our
time-displaced protagonist. We also get to see a meeting between the Vine
admiral and what I’m assuming are the descendants of the Vine babies we saw in
Issue #1; a scene that seems to be sowing seeds of unrest among the Vine’s
sleeper agents that have been stationed on Earth.
Despite how great it was to see the Manowar armor in action
again, I found the scenes between the Vine factions in this issue to be the
most intriguing. As antagonists, The Vine are a vast improvement over the
Spider Aliens from the original series,
as their motivations are not completely black or white( or even really all that
known to us, yet) and their culture is much more nuanced. I feel like we still
have a lot to learn about this alien race, but Venditti is keeping the real
progression of his story a secret, as small layers are revealed to us issue by
issue.
If I have one minor gripe with this issue, it is this: when
Aric rips the pilot of the Eurofighter out of his jet and demands he tell him
where the Emperor is, he speaks to the pilot in English and the pilot responds IN ENGLISH. First of all, they are in Italy, and the pilot is
Italian, ergo, they should be speaking Italian. Secondly, Aric of Dacia is a
Visigoth. His language predates English by more than a thousand years! I'll have to re-read the first few issues and see if there was any indication that
the armor was working as a translator, but as I was reading this issue this really bugged me.
This is extremely nitpicky, I know. I should be able to use my suspension of disbelief when
reading a comic about a barbarian in power armor fighting aliens, but in the
original series they made a big deal out of the fact that once he entered the
modern era, Aric had to actually learn how to read and speak English. He was an uncultured, violent, illiterate barbarian. In this
issue, the helmet transmits 16 centuries of human history directly into Aric’s
brain. Boom. I can assume, therefore, that it is also acting as a universal translator, but personally, having the character adapt so quickly to the present day makes him less interesting.
Granted, in this new series Aric seems to have been branded a terrorist for the incident in Rome, so it remains to be seen exactly how adjusted Aric becomes.
Some readers might
find the pacing of X-O Manowar to be too decompressed, since very little has
happened so far beyond the book’s initial premise, but I feel like with every
issue of this series I have gotten my money’s worth in entertainment value. There is a really nice balance in this series between plot, character development, action and exposition. It feels very deliberately paced, and though some might find that frustrating, to me it's an indication that the series is building towards something.
This is definitely a
series that will read better once it has been collected in a trade paperback or
hardcover collection, but each issue has done a great job in packing a ton of
action into the book, interesting details about the aliens, the armor, and Aric
himself to bring you into the world of the story, and just enough of the plot
to keep things intriguing and leaving you wanting more.
The Summer of Valiant is almost over but this series shows every indication that it will continue to improve as the year continues. Since these first four issues have basically just retold the
origin of X-O Manowar, I am really excited to see where the book goes from
here.
