REVIEW: Valiant High #4

For those who don’t know, Valiant High is a separate universe in the Valiant mythos, where all of our beloved heroes are taken back to Riverda- whoops, I mean high school and experience the throws of puberty. The final issue came out a while ago, and I am not sure why it’s taking me this long to get this review out, but to all those waiting, I apologize. Now, if you have been following my prior three reviews of the series, then it will not come to any surprise that I, again, loved this book. Daniel’s writing was well structured and concise. Which was accented from both artists Derek and David, who’s linework and colors (respectively) flowed seamlessly from panel to panel. Unlike the issues leading up to this, however, issue four was not without its faults.

Amidst Daniel’s fantastic dialogue, subplots, and character developments there spawned, in my opinion, an ill-formed superhero beat-em-up halfway through. I mean, the major villain cameo was fun to see, but not worth the unnecessary fight scene. It just felt like the whole thing was phoned in. Thankfully, though, the whole thing was brief enough to be easily recovered. Daniel absolutely nailed the interactions betwixt Peter, Kris, and Charlene. Not to mention the incredible ending to the ‘Big Game’, which SHOULD have been the main event instead of that awful fight scene.

As always, I have nothing but amazing things to say about the line artist Derek and the color artist David. Both of these guys have blown me awayÂ since issue 1, and nothing has changed. Even during that fight scene, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the panels were rendered.

Since this is the last issue (or is it?), instead of a boring conclusion, I am going to leave you all with a story. A couple weeks ago I was at my local liquor store picking up some cheap beer and a pack of smokes. This is my usual weekly run, and as such I know everyone that works there. Except for this time, there was a new guy at the counter. Before I could squeeze out a quick ‘Hello!’ this man took one look at my ball cap and says, ‘I love Valiant!’. This is the first time, outside of my LCS, that this has happened. So we started talking shop. We went through Bloodshot, Harbinger, Rai, etc… The conversation was pretty fun, until he said, ‘I am not a fan of that Valiant High book. It’s too silly compared to Ninjak and Divinity.’ I had to stop him there and told him ‘The beauty of a book like Valiant High is that it displays Valiant’s tenacity to publish quality books regardless of the audience. So it’s not your average, brain-dead, cookie cutter action book, but who cares. It’s a good series regardless.’ And as this man was checking me out, he agreed to give Valiant High another shot. I urge you, the reader, to do the same. I give this issue a 4 out of 5 stars, and the series 5 out of 5.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Written byÂ Daniel Kibblesmith Art byÂ Derek Charm Cover byÂ David Lafuente

Author Profile

Dylan Hicks

I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.