In honor of Valiant's 25th Anniversary, we're counting down your picks for the twenty-five greatest Valiant Comics stories.

You all voted, now here are the results!

Enjoy!

15. "Renegades" (Harbinger Vol.2 #6-10)

One of the most compelling changes that Joshua Dysart made in his reboot of Harbinger is that he pretty much remade the character of Kris Hathaway from someone with very little agency in the original Harbinger to someone whose viewpoints on the world end up actually driving the creation of the Renegades, the group of potential superpowered beings that she gets Pete Stanchek to activate the powers within them so that they can form a team to take down Toyo Harada. I love how Kris announces herself to Toyo Harada by tricking him into coming to her home and then catching him on video using his powers (which he had hidden to the world at this point in time). But then the other shoe drops, she's not just relying on blackmail, she notified his rivals, Project Spirit Rising, of his whereabouts...









Dysart does fine work updating the various members of the Renegades from their original versions, with perhaps the new take on Torque being the best (a young boy whose legs are too weak to move immerses himself in a fantasy world where he is a big, strong guy - as it turns out, his latent power allows him to transform himself psionically INTO that guy). The whole thing works as a great set-up for the rest of the series. The artwork for the storyline featured a variety of pencilers, from Phil Briones to Barry Kitson to Lee Garbett to Pere Perez to Matthew Clark.

14. "Far Faraway" (Archer and Armstrong #10-13)

Throughout Archer and Armstrong's series, a driving force is the mystical device known as the Boon, which is what gave Armstrong his immortality and is what Archer's family (who are involved in one of a series of evil cults) want to gain access to for the power it can provide them. The Boon comes from a distant dimension known as the "Faraway," and in this arc, Archer and Armstrong (and Archer's "sister" Mary-Maria (who is currently sharing her body with the spirits of her and Archer's evil, dead adopted parents) get sucked into a portal sending them to the Faraway, where we discover that pretty much anyone in history who has "disappeared" from Earth has actually ended up on the Faraway, including the Dinosaurs, the settlers at Roanoke, the planes that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, Amelia Earhart, all of them.

A group of aliens captured a Cold War era general (who was also a founder of Project Spirit Rising, the group that later created Bloodshot) who then took control of the aliens and is now the big bad guy in the Faraway, while meanwhile Archer has run into long-lost writer Ambrose Bierce and the two run into a cult based around Archer himself (as the Faraway has different rules for time, as the people from the past don't age, but so, too, can people from the FUTURE enter the Faraway)....









This arc perfectly merges together writer Fred Van Lente's interest in history along with his interest in writing really cool, twisted and funny characters (the Cold War era General is an awesome character, especially his interactions with the aliens. He has come to love getting probed). Pere Perez does a great job on art.

13. "Death of a Renegade" (Harbinger Vol.2 #22-25)

Since the formation of the Renegades, Joshua Dysart had made it clear the Renegades were very much fighting an uphill battle against the forces of Toyo Harada, but at the same time, there was always sort of a sense that if they just planned well enough and tried hard enough that they would be able to pull things off, and this seemed to be the case early in this story (drawn by Clayton Henry and Khari Evans) where Harada himself shows up to stop the plan of the Renegades only to find out that he's been duped...









However, even if they succeed, Dysart wants to make it clear that this is not just fun and games, they are fighting a war and in a war, people die - and it is clear that as much as the Renegades understand the danger that they're in, they won't REALLY understand it until they bury one of their own, and the repercussions of that happening help tear the team apart. It's a very well done examination on the effects of loss on a group.

Read on to the next page for #12-9!

12. "To Kill a King" (Unity Vol.2 #1-4)

Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite combine for this striking combination of the Valiant Universe. The concept is simple enough - now that he has his people from the alien planet that kidnapped them over a thousand years ago, Aric (the Visigoth who now holds the X-O Manowar armor) wants to take some land for his people. He declares himself king. As you might imagine, the world is not exactly thrilled with the idea of a guy from over a thousand years ago with powerful weapons taking control of land in the middle of Europe.

So Toyo Harada (who, of course, has his own agenda) puts together a team to take X-O Manowar down, including the special operative Ninjak, the ancient warrior Gilad (the Eternal Warrior) and Livewire, a superpowered being who can talk to metal and had been one of Harada's closest allies for years before recently betraying him.

The issue is that Aric doesn't really grasp modern warfare, and his actions are about to lead the world to nuclear devastation, unless Harada and his team step in...









But if they succeed in stopping Aric and his powerful suit of armor, just who do you think plans to use that weapon for himself? So the Unity team suddenly finds themselves in a situation where they must trust the man they were initially sent to take down. Kindt is a master at these complicated types of stories. And Braithwaite has always been a great artist.

11. "Omega Rising" (Harbinger Vol.2 #1-5)

The opening arc on Harbinger is another example of a modern Valiant book smartly decompressing the narrative of the story when rebooting the title. By pulling back and going deep into examining what makes Peter Stanchek tick, we get a greater sense of his turmoil before any sort of team is formed.

The was Dysart and artist Khari Evans depict Pete's telepathic powers is awesome, as Dysart really cuts to the heart of how overwhelming Pete's situation is...









All Pete has is his friend Joe, and by the end of this first arc, he doesn't even have Joe anymore.

In the original Harbinger series, Pete essentially brainwashed cheerleader Kris Hathaway into loving him. He does something similar here, but Kris Hathaway is nowhere near the character she was in the original series (it's a change for the better) and unlike the original series, the whole "stripping Kris of her free will" is really concentrated on, which I think the original series glossed over a bit.

Beyond the strong character work, this is also a very well-constructed arc by Dysart, having Peter go to essentially Harbinger school is good, because it introduces to a lot of characters that we "need" to know, including Toyo Harada, the head of the Harbinger Foundation.

10. "The Musketeers!" (Eternal Warrior/Archer and Armstrong Vol.1 #8)

In one of the best examples of storytelling in a single issue, Valiant tried an experimental approach with the eighth issue of Eternal Warrior and Archer and Armstrong. Rather than each having a #8, they decided to do an extra-sized #8 that both books shared, which allowed Barry Windsor-Smith (inked by Bob Wiacek) to do an epic tale of the three immortal brothers, Gilad (Eternal Warrior), Aram (Armstrong) and Ivar (the Timewalker, making his debut in this issue) being revealed to be the Three Musketeers of legend, with an Archer lookalike being D'Artagnan. It had an awesome double cover...



The story in the issue is a twist on "The Man in the Iron Mask," as the Geomancer at the time convinces Gilad (who always serves the Geomancers) to get his brothers to switch the King of France with his twin brother. Of course, once they set the plan into motion, they discover that the Man in the Iron Mask was in the Iron Mask for a good reason...







It's an interesting twist. Windsor-Smith did not mess around with the brutality of the era, including a chilling sequence where the imposter king forces himself on D'Artagnan's girlfriend, a maid (she gets a measure of revenge here before he kills her). The story shows how cold Gilad can be, where he will do whatever the Geomancers wants, no matter the cost to human lives. Plus, this story introduces Ivar, who was an intriguing character (due to his time-traveling, Aram has a polaroid photograph of the Three Muskeeteers).

9. "Steel Nation" (Magnus: Robot Fighter Vol.2 #1-4)

This is the arc that launched the Valiant Universe. It's interesting, we talk about the modern Valiant universe and how each of them have interesting updated takes on the classic Valiant characters of the 1990s, and that was exactly what Jim Shooter did in this story, he did an interesting updated take on the Gold Key Magnus stories. Shooter, though, did his with perhaps a slightly higher degree of difficulty, since he actually made a point to make his new Magnus series follow directly from Gold Key's original Magnus series. As the series begins, Magnus is the same famed fighter of robots that he was during Russ Manning's legendary series. The big twist is that in Manning's series, the evil robots Magnus fights are caused by malfunctions. Here, Shooter goes further and explains that the "malfunctions" are actually the robots gaining sentience. Some handle sentience better than others. Slowly but surely, nearly 10 million of the 15 million robots who serve the people of the future have gained sentience, which leads to the question, "Is it okay for Magnus to kill them all?"









It's a really great hook, as Magnus is torn between the world that reveres him as a hero and a world which looks at him as a murderer. Which is the TRUE Magnus? By the end of the arc, he's not sure about anything exactly except that for the first time in his life, he is his own man.

Art Nichols and Bob Layton did the art for the series - Nichols was a strong storyteller.

Read on to the next page for #8-6!

8. "Director's Cut" (Quantum and Woody Vol.1 #1-4)

There was this period, around late 1996, about the time Heroes Reborn started, when the pickings were pretty damn slim if you were a fan of superhero titles. Then, in the span of a few months, Warren Ellis took over Stormwatch, Grant Morrison took over JLA, Kurt Busiek launched Thunderbolts and Christopher Priest and MD Bright launched Quantum and Woody. So as good as this book is (and it is good) it stood out even more due to the time it was released, where things looked bleak.

The concept of the book is that Eric Henderson and Woodrow "Woody" Van Chelton were best friends whose fathers worked together as scientists, and they both went to the same exclusive private school. One day, Woody disappears without a word. Another boy tells Eric it is because Eric was black. It really was because of the divorce of Woody's parents.

When their fathers die in a suspicious helicopter accident, Eric and Woody meet for the first time since they were teenagers. While investigating their fathers' murder, they come across metal bracelets. Each one takes one bracelet, but when the bracelets come into contact with each other, a huge explosion occurs. They were both now turned into pure energy. Now, to avoid dissipating into incorporeal energy, the two must make contact with each other's bracelet every 24 hours.

The bracelets themselves have powers, so since they have to be with each other all the time, anyways, and they still want to solve their parents' death, the two decide to become superheroes, of sort. Eric takes the codename Quantum, and essentially becomes Batman, while Woody just wears a matching bodysuit and carries a gun and a zippo.

The book was a striking mixture of humor with drama, and the first four issues capture this mixture well.

For instance, there was the repeated comedic demonstrations of the difference in style between the two heroes...







but also stuff like the use of the n-word, which they even break the fourth wall to explain how they tried to use the actual word to make a point in the issue but they had to compromise with using the word "noogie" every time they want to use the other word. Whether you agreed with him or not, Priest was trying to say some things with this book. It was an impressive series. Bright's artwork was great.

Oh, and also, it introduced us to...the Goat! When they're trying to track down an arms dealer (who it turns out was not even the guy they were meant to be after, but hey, these guys are new at being heroes), they enlist the help of a goat, in a strange way...





The Goat ends up becoming a recurring character. When the whole Valiant Universe fell apart a couple of years later, Quantum and Woody was really the only book that they tried to bring back.

7. "The Blood of Heroes" (Rai Vol.1 #0)

In this bold issue so epic that it took four men to plot it (Jim Shooter, Bob Layton, David Lapham and Jon Hartz), we follow the entire history of the Valiant Universe throughout the years until we get to the point in the future where the new Rai is formed, just in time for Rai's book to become Rai and the Future Force.

As I mentioned, this was just epic storytelling, as scripter Bob Layton and artists David Lapham and Tom Ryder show us the fates of pretty much all of the major Valiant heroes of the present, from Archer to the Renegades of Harbinger to X-O Manowar.

The fight continues into the future (as a body-jumping Toyo Harada continues to torment our heroes)...









It's a bold gambit to show the whole fate of the Valiant Universe just to set up a new series, but it worked really well here.

6. "First Impressions" (Archer and Armstrong #0-6)

The original Archer and Armstrong was devised by Jim Shooter and Bob Layton, with them plotting and scripting the early issues with art by Barry Windsor-Smith. The books were good, and it did a fine job establishing the basic concept (Archer was a young boy who discovered his parents were molesting kids. He tried to stop them but they instead tried to murder him. He survived and then went to a Buddhist monastary where he trained himself to take down his parents and any other evildoers he can find. He is manipulated by a representative of an international group known as The Sect into attacking a boorish immortal known as Armstrong. When he discovers Armstrong is a good guy, the two team up to take down the Sect) but it really took off when Barry Windsor-Smith took over writing and art duties, as he fully embraced the craziness that is inherent in a group that has infiltrated all manner of organizations, like the Catholic Church and more. Here, Archer and Armstrong are in Vatican City when they meet the Sisters of Doom!









Windsor-Smith was on a real roll with the book (he was inked by Bob Wiacek).

Come back tomorrow for the top five!