First Look/Look Back at Harbinger

Few things geek me out quite so much as Harbinger, which along with the rest of the early Valiant comics is one of my true comicbook weaknesses. I starting buying Valiant books in 1992, just as the hype for Unity was heating up. I tracked down the issues I missed as quickly as possible, paying what at the time seemed like high prices, but still way below the peaks many of those comics eventually went for, and I even took scissors to the coupon inserts and sent them away to get the special Harbinger #0, which I had signed by creators Jim Shooter and David Lapham at the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con.

I was surprised to see so many comments to the previous post on this book, but apparently the time is right for these characters to return. A lot of that may be nostalgia, given that the cycle runs about 15 to 20 years behind. The rights to these characters may end up being particularly valuable as film and television properties. New universes and libraries of characters don't come along that often, especially ones as entertainment-friendly and good as these.

So with Valiant sending out a look at the first six recolored pages of upcoming hardcover collection, "Harbinger: The Beginning," this seems like a good opportunity to take a look at the new pages next to the old.

The remastered pages (click on the images for a closer look):

 

The original pages, scanned from a copy of Harbinger #1:

From the press release, here's some more info on the remastering and recoloring process:

The deluxe hardcover is digitally remastered in a unique way, as Jim Shooter himself approved continuity corrections in Harbinger issues #0 - 7 that allows the hardcover collection to present the origin story more cohesively than it originally appeared in 1992.

In addition, all digital recoloring was overseen by former Valiant colorists who had an insider's view on the original intention of Harbinger's creative team.  The integrity of the original look was preserved, while adding depth, special effects, and corrections using the latest digital techniques.  The melding of classic storytelling and modern execution more accurately showcases the intended vision for Harbinger issues #0-7 than ever before.

"It's fantastic for me to return to the Valiant Universe and revisit Harbinger with Starlight Runner digital color," said Jeff Gomez, former Valiant editor and current CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a major coloring team on the project.

One of Valiant’s hallmarks has always been its artistic coloring style. Since the original art assets were no longer available, a unique process was developed to strip the color from the comics, reconstruct the inks, and apply digital color to the prints.

And now, for die hards only, I'll include after the jump a review I wrote of the first seven issues almost 10 years ago in the pages of fanzine Comic Effect #21. This article is reproduced here with the blessing of CE editor Jim Kingman.

Originally published in Comic Effect #21, Fall 1998. This review is copyright Thomas J. McLean.

Harbinger Nos. 0-7— Valiant Comics
Jan.-July 1992
Reviewed by Tom McLean
In 1992, just about all anyone interested in comic books could talk about was Image Comics. And thanks to Image's infamous inability to get its books out in those early days, talking about Image Comics— as opposed to reading Image Comics— was all anyone could do. But instead of filling the time with old favorites from Marvel or DC, a lot of fans began to notice another new publisher, one that produced comics with thoughtful, satisfying stories and got its books to the racks on time. That was Valiant Comics, and its breakout hit was a series called Harbinger, written by industry veteran Jim Shooter and penciled by the then-unknown David Lapham.
Given the market in those days, it may not be so obvious to those unfamiliar with it why Harbinger was such a hit. It had no "grim and gritty" heroes, no foil covers, no bagged multiple editions (it did have a coupon offer for issue 0, but a free comic for those who try the first six issues is more legitimate than a trick cover, in my opinion). It did have a well-written superhero story that hooked readers with a thoughtful and convincing story about young people struggling with complex moral issues.
Harbinger is about Peter Stanchek, a young and powerful telepath and telekinetic who turned to the Harbinger Foundation for help on the advice of his best friend, Joe Irons. The foundation is run by Toyo Harada, a shrewd and successful businessman whose powers are identical to Pete's in both ability and power. Harada uses the foundation to recruit and train the superpowered harbingers of humanity's future and to employ them to further his own goals and personal power. Harada offers legitimate help to those who will follow his cause, but he has no compunctions about doing whatever is necessary to protect himself and crush his enemies. Pete is drawn into the Harbinger Foundation and enjoys the attention paid to him. But the foundation's life of easy luxury begins to influence and corrupt Pete, who abuses his powers by forcing beautiful and popular Kris Hathaway to be his girlfriend.
Joe does his best to make Pete see how he's changed for the worse since he started hanging around the foundation. When Harada sees Pete's loyalty falter, he has Joe killed. Instead of ending them, Pete's doubts they only increase and Harada decides it's better to kill Pete than to let someone with that much power live to become an enemy. All alone, Pete reaches out to Kris, who promises to try to help despite the way Pete abused her. Pete survives Harada's assassination attempt and he and Kris hit the road pursued by Harada's agents. Together, they recruit three other harbingers to their cause: Zeppelin, a somewhat chubby comics and sci-fi fan who can fly and would prefer her friends call her Zephyr; Flamingo, a hot-to-trot Southern belle who generates intense heat and flames; and illiterate auto mechanic John Torkelson, whose goes by Torque. The physical and psychological pain Pete's powers cause his victims quickly earns him the nickname Sting.
While the premise is simple, Shooter and Lapham give it surprising depth. As a legitimate businessman, Harada is a believable and admirable foe who uses methods acceptable to society to further his goals. The Harbinger Foundation pays thousands of workers good salaries and treats them fairly, earning Harada their loyalty. Many of the harbingers who turn to Harada are helped by the foundation and find in it great opportunities for education and work as one of Harada's Eggbreakers, so named because you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. It is legitimate to argue that Harada deserves his personal and financial power for his contributions to society and all the people he has helped. As in the real world, Harada never would have achieved such success without being shrewd and knowing how to manipulate situations and people to his advantage— qualities that help him justify the transgressions he must commit to ensure the outcome he wants.
But to Pete, the ends don't justify the means. Harada has no right to persecute Pete and try to kill him. He has no right to threaten those who fail to swear loyalty to him or who choose to oppose him either directly or indirectly. To Pete, while Harada has used his powers to help others, Harada helps himself first and foremost at great expense to others. Like another superhero named Peter, Sting believes great power involves great responsibility.
But while Pete and his friends believe they are in the right in opposing Harada, they face plenty of obstacles that force them to examine and in many cases alter their values— and not always in ways they're proud of. While Harada operates from a position of wealth and legitimacy, Pete's harbingers have to struggle just to survive. They have little choice but to use their powers to steal food or shelter, to commit sometimes extreme violence as self-defense, and they have to deal with each other and their own conflicting emotions.
The most common problem they have to face is stealing. None of them is rich and they can't work jobs without making themselves vulnerable to detection by Harada. So they have no choice but to force their way into a hospital to get treatment for the wounded Kris or steal a car from the parking lot to escape. (In one of the nicer bits of dialogue, Zeppelin suggests they take a junker, to which Torque replies, "No. Somebody needs that car. Take a rich pig's wheels.") When they confront Harada at the end of the second issue at the foundation's New York headquarters, they steal a large amount of money from Harada's safe and guiltlessly spend it on cars, plane tickets and a vacation to New Orleans. Their use of the money may seem unwise, but it is convincing for people their age.
While dealing with Harada is hard, dealing with each other is far from easy for these hot-blooded teens. The significant role sex plays in this book is evident from the start, when Pete and Kris share a hotel room within the first few pages of the first issue. When Faith joins them, Kris's first reaction is to be defensive about the sleeping arrangements. And everything heats up when they meet Flamingo, who introduces herself to Kris and Faith by burning her clothes off and talking suggestively to Pete. But while Kris says she loves Pete, she also can't help competing with Flamingo for Torque's attention. Torque brushes aside the obvious Flamingo to pursue the tougher catch in Kris. While Flamingo and Torque are referred to as an item, they don't seem to be interested in much more about each other than sex. Kris, who often acts as Pete's and the team's moral compass, finds the reality of maintaining high moral standards hard where Torque is concerned and she has an affair with him that results in pregnancy. (The identity of their child in the Unity crossover was one of the great early twists of Valiant continuity ... but that's another story.)
While Kris and Pete are highly motivated to fight Harada, Faith and Flamingo are more normal, having fled convincingly dull and unsatisfying home lives to fight a cause they knew nothing about before meeting Pete. Faith was a spoiled and shy "geek" who feared her schoolmates conspired to make fun of and embarrass her for her interest in comics and science fiction. She enjoys the adventure and friendship of being in the group and is the most easy going of them all. To her, it's better to have friends and live with some dangerous than to play it safe and be unhappy.
Flamingo played the bad girl all her life to win some attention from parents too involved with fundamentalist Christianity to spend much time with her. She became the town slut, always being used and abused by her supposed boyfriends and often beaten up by those boys' girlfriends. That all changes as she is shocked to find her teammates asking her to break a tie and decide what the team should do next. She's even more surprised when they abide by her decision. This leads her to stand up to a harbinger named Ax in a fight with Valiant's spider aliens by burning him in a very tender spot. From that point on, she is more vocal and takes a more active role in the group. Her development of self-respect is hardly the most inventive plot twist of the series, but it is well done nonetheless.
But despite the abuses heaped on the others, Torque's tragedy is the greatest of all. Raised illiterate in rural Georgia by the owner of an auto shop and gas station, he was physically and mentally abused as a child and had few, if any, friends. To protect himself, he acts like the tough guy who's only after chicks and booze. It's Kris who draws him out as she teaches him to read and returns his attraction. We slowly begin to see him relax and let himself have fun, even throwing items for Zeppelin to "fetch" and going to the zoo.
While Torque is the team member most experienced with violence, the others take to it with surprising ease. There are several battle scenes that take a realistic approach to violence that is harsher and more thrilling than the fantasy violence seen in most comic books. Issue four's Christmas Eve battle, in which Ax recruits belligerent harbingers to get revenge on Torque, is a great action sequence. They chase Torque through cold, rural streets as one harbinger sticks psychic spikes through his body. They torture him for hours before Sting and the others show up. The battle ends when Pete overpowers the harbingers by frying their brains with his painful brand of telepathy while Kris takes a rock to the head of Ax's pit bull and then knees the dog's owner hard in the groin. The team laughs its injuries off in a single panel finale reminiscent of a sitcom tag scene.
But the team's next battle exacted a much higher price than they ever wanted to pay. When the Eggbreaker Puff loses control of his power to disintegrate anything he touches and destroys a Dallas office tower, Harada goes in to help him and is detected by Pete. Harada tries to help Puff, whose girlfriend Thumper is greatly concerned for him. The harbingers' steady progress as they fight their way toward Harada forces him to choose between helping the dangerous Puff and his own personal safety. He orders Puff terminated as Pete and crew enter. Solar, who's also after Harada, shows up as Harada escapes. Pete relays information from Solar's mind to Puff's that allow the youth to regain his control. Puff is grateful but Solar is outraged that Pete entered his mind so easily. Solar gets Pete and his crew out of there and scolds them before leaving. But Pete smells blood and believes this is the best time to strike at Harada. They are ambushed as soon as they return to Harada's complex, and Harada orders Pete shot in the head at the first opportunity. Puff and Thumper decide they can't allow Pete to be killed after the way he helped them and they knock out Harada. Free of Harada's telepathic attack, the harbingers escape with their temporary allies.
But Harada taps into Puff's and Thumper's minds to find out where Pete and his friends are, dispatching more Eggbreakers to stop them. A battle erupts on the road and the Eggbreaker Rock lures Torque into the woods and stabs him. The harbingers win the fight, but realize too late the ambulance that takes away the barely breathing Torque is manned by another Eggbreaker, who gives Torque a lethal injection. Pete enters his friend's mind in time for Torque to say a simple good-bye ... and then he's gone.
The team's struggle with the death of their friend and the cost of their campaign against the Harbinger Foundation completes the story arc. Most of them are numb, unable to truly comprehend that their friend is dead. Pete knows he can never wash Torque's blood from his hands and is ashamed at his rashness in pursuing his crusade. Flamingo surprises herself by finding comfort in the Bible that kept her from her parents. And Kris, who is now showing signs of morning sickness, feels the loss the most, throwing a tantrum and demanding they give Torque a decent burial. Again, they resort to questionable behavior to ensure their friend is laid to rest properly. They steal his body and Pete forces a funeral home owner to arrange services in the middle of the night, no questions asked. In a long, realistic scene, they sit by themselves in the funeral home crying as they listen to the service and pay the price of their crusade and mourn their dead friend. Feeling much sadder and wiser, they use the last of the money they stole from Harada to buy the one thing they know Torque would want them to have: a classic Mustang convertible.
Looking back on these books, it's amazing how well they hold up. The emotion that fuels this arc and climaxes in the tragic and sad death of Torque is still compelling, the modern material well supported by Shooter's flair for Silver Age-style craftsmanship. These stories are densely plotted and move along quickly, with almost no time spent on extraneous mood or unessential plot elements. Lapham and Shooter tell their complex story with a graceful simplicity in page layout, panel composition and scripting— and it works.
It's ironic Shooter would write so well about a conflict between a group of kids and a big company at a time when he was fighting his partners for control of Valiant— a fight he soon lost. Having been both executive and creator, Shooter obviously identifies with both Sting's and Harada's points of view and perhaps was using Harbinger to explore his own feelings about corporate life and its effect on people's morality and creativity.
For a time, Harbinger was the hottest book in the industry in one of the hottest markets for comic books. It was disappointing to watch both Harbinger and Valiant decline so far, so quickly after Shooter and Lapham left. Today, you'd be lucky to find copies of the Harbinger trade paperback in the bargain bins, while Valiant itself is practically gone. Lapham has moved on to his self-published (and excellent) Stray Bullets series and Jim Shooter is now nowhere to be found in comics after two subsequent publishing ventures failed. I still miss this series and its unique flavor from time to time, and wonder what would have happened if Shooter and Lapham had been able to take it to some kind of conclusion. But it's probably better unfinished, as an unsatisfactory ending would only have tarnished the promise shown by this star that shone briefly but brightly in comic-book history.