Harbinger: The Beginning Review

This Review was submitted by Dennis Feeback

By Jim Shooter, David Lapham, and Bob Hall

The Scoop: This 192-page deluxe hardcover edition collects the full Harbinger origin story from Harbinger issues 0-7 digitally recolored and remastered, and also features an all-new "Origin of Harada" story written by comics legend JIM SHOOTER and illustrated by BOB HALL (Shadowman). This "Origin of Harada" story includes its own original cover and features the first appearance of a new character in the Valiant Universe! Valiant's goal is to make this deluxe hardcover edition something special for Valiant fans and a great introduction to the Harbinger saga for new Valiant fans. The book retails for $24.95.

The Package: The book has a really nice dust jacket featuring artwork of the main character and the main villain. Back cover has a description of the contents. The books cover is black with the Harbinger logo embossed on the front with the new Valiant logo on the back.

The book its self is pretty nice, it contains Harbinger #’s 0-7 completely recolored with the newest technology. This is the part I was most worried about before seeing the book, as I thought the colors on the original books were just fine and really unique for the time. However, I had nothing to worry about. It is recolored with more detail added; it is VERY faithful to what came before.

Now what didn’t I like? Not much. The only problem I had with the book at all was some of the pages were awfully rough. It felt like they didn’t have good materials to scan from. Issue 5 seemed to be the worst example of this. For a book that’s only about 15 years old, this just seems like the book was rushed. But really, this is just me nit picking.

Final Thoughts: I don’t think there was a bigger Valiant fan back in the 90’s than me. I loved and lived this stuff. I even went crazy and bought all the variants and gold covers. I was all about Valiant until Jim Shooter was canned.

Harbinger was one of my faves at the time, so it was nice to revisit the book again. It would be really nice to see more of these collections but due to the legal wrangling between two factions of Valiant this may never happen. This collection contains story lines that pretty much kick off the entire valiant cross continuity, so hopefully this can be followed up on.

As for the new 8 pager? Well, it was pretty good. In some ways it was like Big Jim Shooter never left. It certainly felt like a classic Valiant story. Jim slipped right back into writing Harada. But will this new character ever be seen again? Will Big Jim return for new Valiant comics? The answers to all these questions are unknown.

Final Rating: B. One letter grade was removed for the poorly scanned pages from the later issues.

B.P.R.D. - Garden of Souls #1-5

Writer(s): Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art: Guy Davis

The story starts off with a flashback to London, 1859. There is a mummy’s unrolling at the focus of a socialite party, upon unwrapping though….well… the mummy is found to still be ALIVE. Flash forward to present day wherein Abe Sapien receives a delivery, a cigar case with the intials L.E.C. In past stories it has been hinted that Abe Sapien once was a man named Langdon Everett Caul, what’s more Caul also was at the “unrolling” party in 1859. As you progress through the issues bits of story slowly start coming together more and more, until Abe reaches an island where he hopes to have some questions answered. There is more but, I’d rather not ruin it for you.

So bottom line, is this worth taking the time to pick up? Maybe. The story starts off a bit rough, you have three or four different plotlines in the works which makes it hard, for a “newb” to BPRD, to understand what’s going on. The inside cover page breaking down each member of the BPRD and their current status helps a little but…yeah…this is not a book to just pick up lightly. By the third issue you get a little more of a understanding of what all is going on and more depth/insight into certain characters. What’s a tad disappointing throughout the whole story is, your never really given a clear concise background on what type of person Abe had been before his transformation, sure there are bits but, I just wanted more. The side-plot involving Liz Sherman didn’t seem to really connect to anything relative to this story. Captain Benjamin Daimio’s story while interesting seems a tad underused, and better utilized in a story focused more on his own past, then in a storyline that seemingly is about Abe Sapien’s past.

The artwork within these issues is great. Guy Davis draws some tight, sharp lines, helping to give each panel the hard grittiness that has become a staple in Mignola projects. Oh as a complete aside…Davis can draw some bad-assed ole' school robots (before it was all the cool “new-thing” in Bioshock)

Kudos go to Dave Stewart and his coloring of these issues as well.

So, in closing, though intriguing in story and in art, this story is intended for those already grooving on the BPRD mojo, all of you new to BPRD, read BPRD: The Dead first, then come back and read this sucker. B+