Valiant Comics

Perhaps anticipating the exodus of the Image Comics founders three years later, Valiant was former Marvel Comics' editor-in-chief Jim Shooter's 1989 attempt to make a wave in the North American superhero comic book industry without the bloated drag factor and deadweight plaguing the doomed and bankrupt Marvel Comics (bereft of the benign hands-off patronage DC enjoyed from WB) in that period. The biggest splashes the company made were with revived Dell and Gold Key comics characters (eg. Dr. Solar, Turok: Son of Stone, and Magnus, Robot Fighter) but it also managed to make some well-received comics with original characters (for instance Rai, Shadow Man, X-O Manowar, Bloodshot, Ninjak, Archer & Armstrong.)

This company's original comics characters haven't, by and large, persisted in the popular imagination, but you do see them represented in early artpacks due to the early-'90s window (through Valiant's 1994 acquisition by video game company [Acclaim Entertainment]) of both coinciding in time. [Wizard Magazine] definitely expected big things from Valiant!