Harbinger Wars #4 – Review

Joshua Dysart, Duane Swierczynski (Writers), Clayton Henry (Artist), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: The many players in the game converge in order to go toward the prize: the psiots children. Chaos, violence and events ensues.

The Review: Crossovers can be many things. Some of the time, they can be merely fun stories that shows the departure between two characters or teams that depict their differences and their similarities in celebration of what they are. Other times, they can be crucial in the development of one or several plot points in a series, making the story move forward in a more or less organic way in order to shake up the status of one or both the book involved. However, when said crossover is also an event, it can complicate things as it can sometime feels like they are trying really hard to do both.

In the case of Harbinger Wars, it really feel like this is what they tried to do, while adding even more. The Valiant universe is still very young, in need of some key moments or events that may yet develop some of the characters or set up some further stories in its future. As the series advanced, it tried to become a bridge and a progression toward two books, Bloodshot and Harbingers, yet somewhat failed in doing so in a way that resonated in a single book. It connected several elements in ways that made sense, yet there are some places in which this crossover event failed.

Bloodshot #12 – Review

By: Duane Swierczynski (Writer), Barry Kitson, Stefano Gaudiano (Artists), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: Bloodshot, in search for food and proteins, gets ambushed by Kuretich as he is on the verge of death.

The Review: I didn’t have many positive things to say about the last issue. As the title is caught in the big crossover known as Harbinger Wars, it gave us a rehashing of events in ways that didn’t altogether made sense sometime. It was an example of a bad tie-in issue and was a rare misstep for a series that was giving its readers plenty of big fun and violent action for them to enjoy.

Thankfully, this issue makes amends for that latest one by propelling the story quite a lot as it gives us a focus on the character of Bloodshot. Here, we see just how exactly the character can move forward in its concept as we are given something that has been a long time coming for those that followed the title: the confrontation with Dr. Kuretich. In many ways, that character had been a presence in the book as he had been a thorn in the side of Bloodshot, always trying to manipulate him toward one goal or another. Here, we get to see them confront each other as we see Kuretich’s side of the medal.

Harbinger Wars #3 – Review

By: Joshua Dysart, Duane Swierczynski (Writers), Clayton Henry (Artist), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: Bloodshot heals from his encounter with Toyo Harada, while the Renegades arrive in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, so does H.A.R.D corps…

The Review: I am a bit torn with this issue. In many ways, it does a lot of things really well, which does bode good things for the Valiant universe in terms of quality, yet it also does some mistakes that bring some scenes down in term of pure enjoyment.

Beginning with the good stuff, I can fairly say that Joshua Dysart brings his great characterization from Harbinger here. With the issue heavily featuring the Renegades, each of them brings with them their unique voice that makes them fun to follow, with Peter being always so torn with what he should do or Faith always being the optimistic and cheerful one. He even brings some good characterization to the new characters introduced that are parts of the H.A.R.D corps, which makes them a lot more interesting to follow.

Bloodshot #11 – Review

By: Duane Swierczynski (Writer), Barry Kitson, Stefano Gaudiano (Artists), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: We delve a little bit further into the Harada protocol as Bloodshot fights Toyo Harada. Meanwhile, we see how Kara tries to take care of the psiot kids.

The Review: Tie-in issues can be both blessing and curses sometimes, albeit it is unfortunately much more frequent to see the latter than the former. While it is a possibility to see a book regain focus as it takes advantage of a greater situation in the universe they are set in, it can also unfortunately kill the momentum that a book had by injecting various elements that don’t quite match up with what was going on before the event was launched. Thankfully, this event was brought up with what went up in both Bloodshot and Harbinger, which makes this crossover quite organic to the growth of both titles.

However, it seems that all the important plot advancement is set in the Harbinger Wars title as we get to see some more details of particular events from the crossover in the titles connected to it. It is a risky move that can actually pay off as we get some deeper analysis on how these characters think and feels through these scenes from the main comic, yet here it is mostly wasted, as it brings close to nothing new to the table, unfortunately.

Harbinger Wars #2 – Review

By: Joshua Dysart, Duane Swierczynski (Writers), Clayton Henry (Artist), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: The kids from Generation Zero prepare for their final stand against whosoever would wish to bring them back in, as Bloodshot prepare to fight against Toyo Harada.

The Review: Before we even get down to it and review this little issue, I strongly urge people to actually go ahead and read the recap page, even if they think they got a pretty strong handle on things. Just look at it and see how many characters we’ve got in this event comic, as close to everyone here actually gets a scene, with close being the keyword here.

Bloodshot #10 – Review

By: Duane Swierzcynski (Writer), Barry Kitson, Stefano Gaudiano (Artists), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: Bloodshot is moving toward a new destination with the psiot kids as he tries to defend and take care of them.

The Review: This title is something that is actually quite uncommon these days, with many noir, criminal, super heroes, sci-fi and other genre being completely covered with a multitude of books, it seems that there is one genre that is not as widely covered as we would think: pure action.

Harbinger #11 – Review

By: Joshua Dysart (Writer), Khari Evans, Trevor Hairsine (Artists), Ian Hannin (Colorist)

The Story: We get to know a little bit more about the ties between Project Rising Spirit and the Hayada Corporation, while we get some more exploration of the renegades and their plans for the future.

The Review: Harbinger has been a kind of weird title in the renewed Valiant universe. With most titles already having a direction of some kind, with X-O Manowar and the fight against the Vine, Bloodshot with Project Rising Spirits and so forth, they had a pretty strong direction providing us with a great plot and some very neat concepts for their part in the Valiant universe. However, Harbinger has been the odd duck in the row, with the antagonist being set up, albeit in an ambiguous way, as well as with its protagonists, giving us a book that evolved very slowly through its first year.

This may sound like an insult to the title, but it’s the contrary in fact, as this weird direction has been one of its greatest strength. By giving us an ambiguous villain in Toyo Harada and more human and definitely flawed characters with Peter Stanchek and the others, Joshua Dysart has given us a title that lets its readers get information while the story focuses a lot more on the characters. By making us much more aware of who these characters are Dysart makes the story more about them, making us care about what they go through and what they want as they experience and show us the world of the Harbingers and their weird power.

Harbinger Wars #1 – Review

By: Joshua Dysart, Duane Swierczynski (Writers), Clayton Henry, Clayton Crain, Mico Suayan (Artists), Brian Reber (Colorist)

The Story: Project Rising Spirit is coping with the losses that resulted with Bloodshot removal of several of their psiot children, while Peter Stanchek is being prepared for his role in the upcoming conflict concerning those psiot children.

The Review: There are many types of event comics. There are those that grow naturally from a story, yet are much too big to just encompass their respective titles and there are those that are just big concepts that encompass the larger universe and that cannot be tattered to a single book to be told effectively. This may seem like a simplistic way to view the juggernauts that are event comics, but it is effective nonetheless. Valiant comics very first event, that is also a huge crossover, symbolizing the unification of their still building universe, is a little bit of both. Harbinger Wars grows from the storylines found in both Bloodshot and Harbinger, yet also entails a concept that is too large to be just told in any of these titles respectively.