Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bloodshot, Comics, entertainment, Harbinger, valiant, x-o manowar

Reading Valiant In Order, Month 3 – X-O #3, Harbinger #2, Bloodshot #1

Month three in our chronological re-reading (or in come cases first-read) of the new Valiant Universe, in totality. And that means X-O Manowar #3, Harbinger #2 and Bloodshot #1.

Part One , Part Two

X-O Manowar #3 by Robert Vendetti, Cary Nord, Stefano Guadiano, Moose Baumann

It's the moment a kid picks up a gun and points it at his parents. It's Boo Boo the monkey with its finger on the nuclear button. It's the surgeon about to operate on you that you realised you taught when he was in kindergarten. And that is Aric the visigoth, encased in the X-O armour.

And things are kicking off. A big fight between the human, the aliens and Aric. And there is a slaughter on all sides.

But there is no real debate here. Aric is ruthless, but he is on the side of right, he is on the side of the just, and he has to kill his way through the alien soldiers and priests to return home and take revenge.

Of course everyone else dies. Would he have been a greater hero to have kept them alive, but enslaved?

And he succeeds. Somehow he does it, takes the armour, fights his way out and returns home. Where that pesky lightspeed (probably) has taken a toll on his timeline so that it is the modern day.

So who's the bad guy now? His world has gone, he is now the alien invader, looking to enslave humanity. He has the potential to become exactly what he strove against for all those centuries.

From the darkness into the light….

It's a question that Harbinger #2 by Joshua Dysart, Khari Evans, Lewis LaRosa, Ian Hannin and Moose Baumann is all up in. Peter's powers are blossoming, you can't even shoot him by surprise from an helicopter anymore.

Inside his head he is the hero, trying to survive against those who wish him and his friends harm, by causing harm. But, just like Aric, it's not just the aliens who suffer, but his friends as well. As his mental powers over Kath are lifted, and she suddenly realises that she is no longer in love with him. And Peter is a rapist.

Even his slacker best friend turns, and paints Peter as the bad guy. Because, well, he is. And it's a situation that Peter is unable to understand, let alone accept.

No one wants to be the bad guy. But both Peter and Aric have become something terrifying, have betrayed those around them, but remain the protagonist. For Bloodshot, it's a different reality.

Bloodshot #1 by Duane Swierczynski, Manuel Garcia, Arturo Lozzi and Stefano Guadiano gives us a Bloodshot who is a hero, at least that's what his life tells him. Except this nanite-filled supersoldier's entire experience is a lie.

A Total Recall GI Joe, his actions are just as violent as Aric's, again with the fervent belief that what he is doing is the right thing, and fighting for his country, his family. But like Aric's reality, those beliefs are based on something that isn't there.It has long since gone, if it was ever there in the first place.

The bad guy here is the military, using him as a machine, a disposable piece of hardware that they can just reboot, dehumanising everything about him, and losing any morality behind their actions as a result. It works as a parallel to how many soldiers feel about their lot, reduced to a number a statistic in a game of Risk, as replaceable as a bullet being fired out of a gun.

But Bloodshot comes out of this better than anyone, in that his actions are not those of conscious choice, he is as much a victim is Katie is of the real monsters. What he does with hat information, if he is allowed to retain it, will be the real test.

Also a highlight is the way the home life is portrayed in a much softer fashion by the artists, rejecting the hard black lines of war to a softer, washier reality that just does not exist…

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