Valiant Comics is not necessarily a household name, but they’re well-known by nerds. Founded in the late ’80s, they were both the beneficiary and victim of the ’90s comics boom, and their recent 2012 relaunch has been a particular favorite in our Comics of Note columns. And they’re about to get a higher profile, thanks to a multimillion dollar deal with a Chinese investor.
Specifically, they’re in business with DMG, a company that co-financed Iron Man 3, which apparently left that company with a lot of cash. The specifics of the deal are two-fold: First, Valiant is getting an eight-figure sum to build its international business, and a separate, nine-figure round of funding will build its cinematic universe.
As you might expect, there’s a catch or two: DMG is a Chinese company, and they’re looking for movies that will launch simultaneously in China and the US. Also, with that much money on the table, it’s difficult to see some of Valiant’s titles arriving on the screen intact: We’re talking about a company whose flagship character is a Roman-era leader of a Germanic tribe who was abducted by aliens and escaped with a suit of armor said aliens worship as a god. I’d love to see that movie, but I’m not quite sure how you market that.
That said, there are Valiant titles that have slightly more mainstream appeal. Harbinger is a superb book about teenage psychics rebelling against a power-mad older man, written with particular intelligence and sensitivity by Joshua Dysart, and Archer & Armstrong is a buddy comedy about a straight-laced and naive martial artist and his immortal, drunken, lecherous best friend. That said, we hope they make Quantum and Woody a movie, if for no other reason than we don’t see enough superintelligent goats who can kill you with beams from their eyes on film. We’ll keep on top of the Valiant cinematic universe as it takes shape.
