X-O Manowar was about Aric, a Visigoth from 2000 years ago who had been kidnapped by spider aliens & kept in stasis for most of that time, until he managed to find & become linked to the aliens' X-O Manowar armor & fought them.
Retribution Part 1: Into The Fire X-O Manowar #1 Reprinted in X-O Manowar: Retribution
Okayyyyyyy... do the writers (Jim Shooter & Steve Englehart) assume that all Visigoths from 2000 years ago were brain-damaged morons or just Aric?
Maybe if they had read some 2000 year-old books they might have realized while there are some ideas & concepts they might not get that doesn't mean they were idiots. Very annoying to have this guy as the narrator.
What does Aric mean when he refers to ten suns? He says it has been ten suns since he's loved a woman, so context would seem to indicate 10 years, but wouldn't "sun" be a more natural way to refer to a day?
Ken comes off a little stereotypically gay in his first appearance, even Aric realizes that Ken is a man who loves men (he doesn't understand them, but they make good wizards.)
Starting with issue 2, Ken gets written like everyone else, dropping the more blatant characterization elements. Makes me wonder if Ken was supposed to die originally (instead of just lose an arm) or if someone pointed out how potentially offensive it could be to write Ken like that all the time & decided to tone it down.
X-O Manowar Class of '93 X-O Manowar: Retribution
NANJAO. Aric's gay sidekick is named Ken Clarkson.
Hmmm... bit of a knock at Clark Kent, do you suppose?
The Mapgiver (the unseen person who gave Aric a map to where the X-O Manowar suit was in the ship) is shown & he looks like Elvis.
Ugh! Was there ever a time when the joke about Elvis having been kidnapped by aliens was fresh?
The big nit, of course, is that Elvis didn't disappear like Amelia Earhart, THEY FOUND A BODY, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!! He's dead, dead, dead! Drive a stake through this overused gag & kill it as dead as the real Elvis somebody!
Solar, Man Of The Atom was a human being converted to an energy being with godlike power.
On The Darkside Solar, Man Of The Atom #17
Solar meets a surviving group of spider aliens on a base on the moon, they want the seed (the X-O Man Of War armor) which they can convert to a spaceship and return home. Solar thinks that if he lets them have it he can follow them to their homeworld and wipe them out.
1. Solar is a pretty powerful dude, so why can't he offer to use his power to get them home? (Sure they call him the Destroyer, but they are being pretty open with him here telling him what they need.)
2. The X-O Man Of War armor can generate power strong enough to affect Solar which would seem to be the worst thing Solar could want the spider aliens to get their hands on and yet, for some unknown reason he tries to get the armor for them.
The Second Life Of Doctor Mirage is about Hwen Mirage and his wife Carmen and how they make their marriage work after he becomes a ghost and the various supernatural menaces they face.
Darque Passage Part 1 The Second Life Of Doctor Mirage #1
Page 10, Panel 6. Previously Welt's corpse was yellowish-green with brown hair, but here he's completely bluish-white.
Dr. & Mrs. Mirage are basically ghost hunters, they were attacked by reanimated corpses activated by the necromancer Master Darque, and when they visit his house, they meet his sister Sandria, who is drawn floating in the air, as they catch a flight to Tibet they lament not have any proof of paranormal activity.
Huh?
NNAN. Dr. Mirage's "costume" is the ski suit he was wearing when he died.
Good thing it didn't have any corporate logos on it. ;-)
Rai And The Future Force was set in the 41st century of the Valiant Universe and featured the then current Rai (second guy to hold the title in the overall series) and he led other 41st century heroes (Magnus, X-O Commando, Spylocke, the Eternal Warrior, the 41st century Geomancer, etc.) in the war against the Malev which had invaded Earth.
General thoughts.
Not sure if I would call it a nit, but reading the issues in one sitting tended to have a bit of a Mood Whiplash between issues, almost as if Ostrander couldn't remember how he had ended the last issue before writing the next one, like one issue would end with him trusting the mysterious Spylocke, then the next issue would start with him still having doubts about the guy. NNAN, but things like that implied something had happened between issues that we the reader were unaware of.
Also because there were so many characters people tended to get short shrift on personality development. Whenever there was a risk of somebody growing as a person the story would shift to someone else.
The Rai was also supposed to be a leader who could unite people, but his speeches usually tended toward common sense statements like "We shouldn't fight each other while we have a common enemy." and generally lacked the force of personality and majesty that someone like this should be written with. The artist, who was otherwise fine, also didn't use any of the art tricks that other artists might use to help make the character seem more leaderlike and compelling.
The Battle For South Am -- Chapter 3 Targets Rai And The Future Force #16
Page 16, Panel 2. The caption identifies the place as "Palo Alto" when last issue the place was named "San Alto"
Blood Oath Rai And The Future Force #20
Man, the jump from last issue to this issue was really jarring. Admittedly it was also when Tony Bedard took over from John Ostrander, but just jumping ahead 8 months and ignoring a lot of what probably happened in those months... yeesh.
Of course, Bedard also tossed a number of characters he didn't want to deal with under a bus as well.
I also wonder if the secret that Bedard revealed about Spylocke here was what Ostrander had planned as well as it seems to be a pretty big deal here while in the previous issues that I have there's almost no trace that this could have been intended as the secret (there is one or two things that could fit the reveal, but they're very minor).