Writer: Jim Shooter
Pencilers: David Lapham, Bob Hall
Cover Artist: Bob Layton
Publisher: VALIANT Entertainment
Publication Date: 2007
Format: Hardcover

While all opinions of value on a singular subject reflect personal observation - either shared or so penetrating or whimsical to claim true originality - it is something that is thought that needs to be controlled, reigned in for the purposes of achieving a balance of that and a degree of the impossibility of objectivity I believe in those words but choose to and admit that they will not apply here. This will not be a search of highs and lows, the critical eye here is misty in rare satisfaction witnessing a moment of medium-perfection, where sensibly and creativity combine to create modern classics. I and many speak highly of contemporary super hero-based books like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Miracleman, Planetary, Miracleman, Robinson‘s Starman, and what we find are reactions - indeed reactions as quick and sharp that cause the counters to look as if they occurred - should have occurred - before the first blow, but still reactions. Even something like DC’s Identity Crisis or Morrison’s run on X-Men were/are new platforms by any definition, are built on the brick of retort. This is not a review, nor a retort. This is a letter…

The modern blueprint for team books - with respects to the Challengers of the Unknown - is Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Why is this? The introduction of storylines that were as much about family as it was fighting crime, and at the beginning we were given explorers, more than just scientist exposed to powers, but explorers of the world we all traverse. Later, after a couple of tries, the X-Men would successfully add the angst of fitting in and prejudice from multiple sides. The creative teams of both of these books would influence the generation afterwards (indeed Byrne was influenced by the Fantastic Four only to extend the same shadow after he helmed the title himself) again in response, and that generation though armed with guns larger than torsos that carried easily the burden of seemingly thousands of pockets in which a multitude of ammunition could be stored for use - many were misses.

The first page of Harbinger #1 is a splash page, the backdrop is mundane: a traffic jam, trees, a helicopter hovering above, this is the real world, the world that you and I live in, a chaotic world but to a degree we have been able to account for with some sense of false order in our minds - in our world oddities occur, even atrocities and comics in this era would attempt to remind us of these grim elements to attempt to parallel our experiences, but on the first page Harbinger goes a different route, it attempts to instill something so fundamental the word alone was a title of a comic in out industry’s Golden Age, we have multiple characters: boys, girls, canines, even animated twins, that carried the name, and if anything it is what drew us to famous lines like, “look up in the sky, it’s…”. Harbinger, in a time when pubescent and fanciful definitions of grit being passed off as realism were prevalent, appealed to our lost sense, the one that is unique to us - our wonder. From the first page we are thrown into a already fluid story, we are both going somewhere and know that something has already occurred, a bit of a microcosm of the VALIANT Universe that plays all across its own time-line while being linear and occurring in real time, our wonder is not isolated in the now or the future but is in concert with the what has been the initial mystery in just meeting someone who naturally has a past, life does not begin in these initial pages. Above that aforementioned prosaic backdrop and in the direction of the unseen fingers pointing from the ground, a car is flying - and we know immediately we are a part of a story that will touch on places with roads we know and stories that have no use for them.

The title ‘Harbinger’ relates to a couple of aspects, one is the simple decision and two is that those called Harbingers that embody the former. Essentially, Harbingers were the next turn for humanity, beings of some diverse powers, though for the most part the abilities were dormant. It is also the name of the foundation that will serve as the adversary in the title and the VALIANT universe as a whole - thus it is rather unique in that is a comic that could be construed as being named after the antagonists and the fact illustrates the duality of the story if one ever wishes to go beyond the adventures of super-powered teenagers trying to do right while being pursued by a corporation of similar beings who are chasing them. In many ways, the second generation of VALIANT’s line was Peter Stanchek’s story (though there is something to be said about the meta-frame that was Solar) and that of his family. His first family are the group we follow within Harbinger: The Beginning a hardcover released in 2007 by VALIANT Entertainment that reprints issue 0-7 that featured the creative team of Jim Shooter and Dave Lapham. In these pages you will be introduced to family, you will experience the growth of that family, and you will suffer from a loss in that family as we meet a group of kids who had enough troubles finding themselves to begin with. The Harbinger part of VALIANT universe is rather simple in that corporation that recognizes people of ability searches them and collect them to train them in their ability in order to pave the way to a better world that humanity has or will squander. The Harbinger Corporation was founded and is led by one Toyo Harada who in several ways is one the most powerful people on the planet - a statement he makes around the ‘other two’ and none seem inclined to correct him - as his foundation is an economic power and more importantly that he is an Omega Harbinger. Harbingers to this point have come into their power only by their potential being unlocked or activated by an Omega Harbingers. Omega Harbingers are those able to use their abilities by their own will without need of an ‘activation’ and upon finding another like him - Peter Stanchek - it becomes his mission to bring him into the fold. Going back to the duality of the title and how it can be applied, Harada himself is at times a character one can empathize with and in the issues Shooter goes out of his way to illustrate that he and his followers nor only believe they are doing the right thing - but also compares them to the actions of Peter and his friends in a manner that makes the readers view the Harbinger kids as ‘kids’ involved in a rather petty rebellion and not seeing the big picture and on several occasions they arrive to further their ‘goals’ at inopportune times when Harada is indeed trying to handle important matters (like saving the life of a member of his organization). You see the distinction brought into full effect when the character Solar arrives - a real Superhero - and indeed points it out to Peter and the reader. The reason why Harada wants Peter dead is not out of jealousy but he deems him to uncontrolled and a danger and what you get in this title are two powerful individuals who think they are the correct answer but on different level, it’s just that one knows, or rather thinks he knows what the answer implies beyond the question. Harada is affective because in truth he’s consistory the most reasonable, lucid and rational figure in the title.

The Harbinger kids themselves are a motley band even if familiar archetypes. Pete - aka Sting - the de facto leader, like Harada is one of the most potent individuals on the plant - an Omega Harbinger he has at his disposal psionic abilities that are only rivaled by Harada and his abilities are vast and growing. Faith - aka Zephyr - is one of those quirk that gives the title a unique element. It’s not that her ability is to fly - it’s that she is a tubby kid, a bit of an oddity in an era where all female superheroes had a likely fallback as models. body builders, or porn stars. Charlene - aka Flamingo - is basically the human Torch and the aforementioned likely future adult star. Kris, who is not a harbinger, but play the role of non-powered foil and also becomes the catalyst of VALIANT legacy characters and John Torkelson - aka Torque - who is the strong guy of the group whose rendering (by Lapham) really brings us back to faith and all the characters. Lapham drew these characters and made them look like kids, like people which played into the bigger desire for VALIANT to be and look like the world that is or could be outside of your window. You get a bit of a Claremont-type feel where you just sense multiple plot lines being developed for later fruition - or not - and half the fun is the knowledge of exploring those further but yet you never are taken away from what is a story about teenagers with powers - the plot moves, things, happen and like all VALIANT titles they ripple into other books.

If there is an issue for today’s reader concerning Harbinger: The Beginning it is that the dialogue dates itself and not just with particular references to things like Nintendo, but in that it at times doesn’t just forward the story but attempt to aid the art to describe what is occurring as a narrative which seems odd not only due to current readers just don’t need or prefer that anymore as the age - and hopefully comprehension - increases but also because even at this point in his career Lapham is able to tell sequential storytelling without the crutch but you feel what seems to be a Shooter mandate of being very easy assimilation of what is occurring. One would hope and suspect in the event of future incarnation that this will be eliminated but at least for myself it served as what may be the last top shelf example of the way superhero stories used to be told - a reflection of the ‘80s MARVEL sensibility brought over by Shooter when he was their Editor-in-Chief for a number of years, but I don’t back-away from the idea that nostalgia plays a role in that, one that isn’t particularly relevant. I do want to point to point out what seems to be an often repeated saying: “there were Image kids and VALIANT kids, you go to Image for the art and if you want well written you go to VALIANT“. Not even to point some quality titles that had and would come out of IMAGE - this is a statement that I find to be fundamentally incredulous. Who were some people that contributed art to VALIANT? Barry Windsor Smith, Dave Lapham, Frank Miller, Steve Ditko, Bob Layton, Walter Simonson, Joe Quesada, and Tom Mandrake - just to name a few. To continue my previous thought however, it does strike a rather unique balance of having layered storylines both within single titles and as a line and it creates a story complexity and dram without being neither avant-garde or my least favorite adjective to describe fiction - ‘gritty’. It recognizes ideals exist but certainly does not use that as mold and while there is redemption, there are also permanent prices to pay. This is where the zero issues come to play and while I fully understand the choice of leading off these hardcovers with them, I think they lose a certain nuance - albeit only if you are familiar with the original reading experience - of their power. I think in many ways this order tends to take away from the message the first page of Harbinger#1 offers and I think this applies for any VALIANT title and their zero issue. To be able to go back and see where Pete came from - to see a darkness to him that is not at all abnormal, but is deviant - acting on hormones and issues of control someone his age would have causes one to be able to cast the story they just read in another light. And in my mind simply adds to the story in a manner that it doesn’t when they lead-off the hardcovers. In an interview we see Shooter thought much the same (at least at that time)

“Too many times, especially in comic books, you get the feeling the characters are just hanging around waiting for the story to start. Like they were doing absolutely nothing before this story started and they have no other reason for being than being bitten by the radioactive water buffalo so they can go charging around butting into trucks. So I tried to give the sense that stuff had gone on before. I wanted to try to get people interested in the characters, and also to take through the building of the team. So maybe I didn’t do it very well…my motives were good.

And people have asked “well why didn’t you do issue #0 as issue #1?” Because issue #0 is really intensive to one character, to Sting. And I felt that if that were the first issue, it wouldn’t be until the
third issue or so that they’d really be a team. No, let me start further down the pike, and come back and fill that in. I mean, isn’t that how people really are? If you meet someone, you know what’s going
on NOW, and sometime later, in a bar or something you’re sitting there talking and you find out how they got that way. I mean I’ve done it both ways. I’ve started with the origin and moved on, and I’ve started in the middle. The goal is to make these characters come alive and be as real to everyone as they are to us. There’s probably a lot of ways to get there.”

Given that, for myself these early Harbinger issues represent a point where the last time a throw-back superhero team book was arguably the best (superhero) book on the market and it dwells in and may be the sole representative of the transition from 1980’s MARVEL storytelling and what would we would now call modern storytelling employed by people like Johns and Bendis in books pointed at the mainstream comic reader and in some ways represent the best of both world while carrying some baggage from the former and less refinement of the latter that may actually (as noted above) a refinement of the reader and for this achieves a charming quality but not to the depths where it has to become a guilty pleasure.

The new material in the collection is The Origin of Harada and is new material written by Shooter and penciled by Bob Hall. It is a rather effective ending to a collection in some way speaks to the zero issue being used first as using the two Omega’s as bookends to a presentation. This is essentially the first new real VALAINT material in over a decade and by real VALIANT, this reviewer means VALIANT through Unity and perhaps a year beyond with some titles - as one simply can’t deny Barry Windsor Smith’s Archer and Armstrong which was post Unity - and was simply a striking 8 page story that is a no frills yet haunting eight pager that has relevance to readers old and new. and like the first page of the first issue, Shooter again gets it - stories are based on questions and what’s revealed contradicts information in this very review and also reinforces what is probably Shooter’s original vision of Harada that may have been deviated from when he was ousted from the company.

Harbinger: The Beginning is a story of life evolved, not of the day after, two days - these are the children of the eight day, of this world as sure as those of the sixth day but like those they would have to succeed and suffer through a world that’s evolution not only was represented by them, but hinged on them. To call Harbinger the X-Men of VALIANT has some accuracy to it on the surface even to the point that their arch-nemesis , Magneto, is also an antagonist that has the quality of being reasonable and both deal with a group who may represent the next step in evolution but they are also much like the VALIANT’s Fantastic Four, in that they are our first family and where titles like Solar, Magnus and Rai set the stage and were top shelf stories in their own right and served as our introduction to a new line and world to explore, it was Harbinger that turned visitors and tourist into inhabitants - it was the ground we needed to settle on while we watched stories of far future invasions and when spectators became participants. To this day VALIANT fans may at times visit Gotham or look up at New York City skylines and catch a glimpse of a webslinger, but we do so reading from the comfort of our home, where wonder still stirs - where faith can fly.

Dear me,

This was a love letter.

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Topics: David Lapham, Harbinger, Harbinger: The Beginning, Jim Shooter, VALIANT Entertainment