Picked up from Gosh! Comics in London, the moment I saw the incredible chromium cover of X-O Manowar #0, I couldn’t resist it. The wraparound cover (yes, it’s chromium on the front and back too) is metallic, textured and gorgeously coloured; a photo just doesn’t do it justice.

So how’s the actual story then? It’s a pretty good tale, starting on another planet with some truly freakish, cosmically twisted, really alien artwork, in which we witness something being created. What it is doesn’t become apparent immediately, because first we flash back to the fourth century on Earth, and a decades-long rampage of revenge is set up when young Aric’s family are attacked by marauding Romans. As an adult, he stumbles upon a horrific, otherworldly scene, and he’s taken offworld with his contemporaries, before attempting escape. Time dilation and space travel results in his arrival back on Earth in modern times (as in, the 1990s), and his usual adventures begin as this story ends.

This was a fantastic origin story which, desp rushing through numerous beats and skipping many years of Aric’s life at a time, nevertheless hits everything it needs to in order to move the pieces in place and set up the heroic tales of X-O Manowar.

The art is gorgeous, with early work by Joe Quesada, and though the alien opening sequence is a little impenetrable, it all becomes clearer later in the story. I really didn’t like the treatment of women in this story, however, with them depicted as mere plot devices to facilitate revenge or as ‘rewards’; it feels like the tale could have been told without its misogynistic elements and still easily justify Aric’s actions.

That said, it honestly makes me a little sad that I didn’t get to read any Valiant comics back in the day; these are streets ahead, at least in a narrative coherence sense, than most of what the big publishers were releasing at the same time. Had I discovered Valiant at the time, I probably wouldn’t have lost interest in comics so rapidly when they became so obviously style-over-substance in the 90s.

X-O Manowar #0 does succumb to the worst excesses of the era in its treatment of women (as well as that gimmicky, but beautiful chromium cover), but is narratively sound in all other respects, and definitely whets the appetite for the full series.

Hi! I’m Jason, and I write for midlifegamergeek.com, every single day. If you’re interested in supporting original, regularly published, human created content (which has never been plagiarised or otherwise copied from the hard work of other writers), you can donate and help me to keep this site running.

Not only do I earn no income from my writing here (though I may earn small fees from affiliate links posted on my pages; as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from these links), but it seems that my work has, at times, been stolen and re-used by lazy, morally bankrupt idiots.

There’s no pressure of course, but I’d be truly grateful for any support that you could offer – and it’s easy to do so at either of these links: Ko-Fi.com/geekmid or PayPal.

Any donations are truly appreciated – and I also appreciate you taking the time to read my articles. Remember: this whole article was by Jason Brown, and appeared on midlifegamergeek.com. Take that, Skynet!