Valiant: Zeroes and Origins, Volume 1

by James Asmus (Writer), Joshua Dysart (Writer), Tom Fowler (Writer, Artist)

At last – the essential origins and early adventures of Valiant’s most powerful heroes and allies, collected between two covers for the first time anywhere!

Celebrate 25 years of the largest independent superhero universe in comics with these all-star explorations of Valiant’s indelible comics book icons, including X-O MANOWAR, HARBINGER, BLOODSHOT, ARCHER & ARMSTRONG, SHADOWMAN, and many more! Who they are, how they came to be, and what they fear the most… This is your essential one-stop guide to the biggest heroes, villains, and super-teams that the Valiant Universe has to offer, just in time for Valiant’s 25th anniversary celebration!

Collecting: Archer & Armstrong 0, Bloodshot 0, Harbinger 0, Punk Mambo 0, Quantum & Woody: The Goat 0, Shadowman 0, Unity 0, X-O Manowar 0, and material from Archer & Armstrong 25, Bloodshot 25, Harbinger 25, X-O Manowar 25, and FCBD 2014: Valiant Universe Handbook 1

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2015

About the author

James began writing for live theater; creating sketch comedy, stand-up, plays and musicals. After a few years writing and performing in New Orleans and Chicago, a run of one his shows in New York garnered an offer to write for Marvel Comics' X-Men. A lifelong comics fan, James pounced on the opportunity and would go on to write Marvel titles like Uncanny X-Men, Captain America & Bucky, Gambit, Runaways, Generation Hope, Deadpool Team-Up and more.
His work for other comics publishers includes Thief of Thieves with Robert Kirkman (creator of the Walking Dead) and The End Times of Bram & Ben (which he co-created with Jim Festante) for Image Comics. In 2014 James signed a year-long exclusive deal with Valiant Entertainment where he wrote The Delinquents and Quantum & Woody - the latter of which received 6 nominations at the 2014 Harvey Awards; including Best Writer, Best New Talent, and Special Award for Humor noms for James.
He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Mara and son Devlin. There, James has written for film, television, and video games. But he plans to create comics as long as you'll have him.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read some of these before and some of these I haven't. Most of them are pretty good origin stories though that Quantum & Woody thing doesn't hold a candle to my recollections of the original run. As it is, taking a few such character and origin stories out of context is more like a raw sampling, and while little in here was bad, I think they work better when placed in context of their regular series work.

[4VazquezVictor · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of the stories were gas but others were cool

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a good introduction to the series I think. I preferred the Faith story so far. Though out of this I really enjoyed the Punk Voodou priestess. Nice back story and a good ending for the rest of her series.