Another week has brought the results of another one of Valiant Entertainment’s “Hero of the Week” polls. The victor is none other than Peter Stanchek, the de facto leader of the Harbinger Renegades. A powerful psiot, Stanchek is one of the biggest threats within the Valiant Univere -- and he’s a good guy. Psiots themselves are the most prominent super-power figures in the Valiant Universe and Peter’s actions are instrumental in both protecting them against another who would exploit them and empowering them against a world that wishes to see them dead.
Here is a psionic description of what all the psiot species can do, as well as the history of their greatest champion.
Peter Stanchek
In the rebooted Valiant comic book continuity, Peter Stanchek is a teen living life on the streets, surviving through his still-developing mental powers. He even uses these abilities to manipulate his “friend” Kris into being his girlfriend. Stanchek’s moral ambiguity is eventually challenged, however, when he's recruited by the far more corrupt Toyo Harada and his Harbinger Organization. Harada plans to use Peter and other psiots like him as an armed race to topple human society and remake the world in Harada’s image.
Finally having a way and reason to use his powers for good, Peter and Kris recruit a rag tag team of young psiots to wage war against Harada, all the while keeping others like them out of Harbinger’s clutches. Peter is given the “superhero name” of Sting by the geeky Faith. This is in reference to his mental powers -- namely those involving mind manipulation -- having a painful effect on their targets. Despite the less-than-powerful sounding name, Stanchek is one of the most powerful psiots. Even untrained and still unsure of the extent of his abilities, he is the only known psiot who can possibly rival Harada.
All In the Mind
Psiots -- or Harbingers as they are sometimes called -- are essentially Valiant’s equivalent to Marvel’s mutants and the X-Men. Whereas mutants have a physiologically diverse powerset, psiots’ abilities are all derived from psionics. Also unlike their Marvel counterparts, psiots do not typically develop their powers naturally. Instead, they must have their powers activated through external and typically extraordinarily painful means, often resulting in death. Exceptions include Toyo Harada -- who activated himself -- and Peter Stanchek, who was born activated.
Psiots are the next step in human evolution in the Valiant Universe, posing an existential threat to humanity as it is. This was bolstered in the 1970s when the Harbinger Foundation began a eugenics program to match couples who would produce psiot children. The existence of the species was once an extremely rare phenomenon, though events such as weaponization of atomic and nuclear radiation began to make it commonplace in the modern day.
The events of the Harbinger comic book series made the existence of psiots public knowledge, subsequently leading to intense fear and scrutiny directed toward them. It also increased the number of attempts to artificially activate one’s powers, resulting in several young psiots literally dying to become empowered.
The species' typical powers reflect their mental origin. They include astral projection, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis, mind control, and teleportation. Some psiots have more physical abilities as well, such as the pyrokinetic Flamingo or the super-strong Torque. It’s even suggested in the original Valiant continuity that Bloodshot survived the experiments that transformed him due to a psiot-derived dexterity. Unfortunately for humanity, no one can tell from the surface who is a psiot and many activated psiots initially find their new powers unwieldy and dangerous. This makes the next evolution in life on Earth potentially its biggest threat yet.