Gilad Anni-Padda – the Eternal Warrior – has walked the Valiant Universe for over ten millennia. He has seen triumph, tragedy, humanity at its absolute best and at its most horrid. Now, with Valiant’s “Book of Death” event halfway to completion, we had a chat with writer Robert Venditti about the second half of the book and what is to come later this year for the Eternal Warrior in his brand new ongoing comic, “The Wrath of the Eternal Warrior.”
We’re now—as of just a couple weeks ago—halfway through “Book of Death”, with the second issue revealing Master Darque as the big bad of the series. What was it like, bringing him back to the forefront after a hiatus?
Robert Venditti: Master Darque is one of the really iconic, great villain characters from the original Valiant Universe, so it was a character I was really looking forward to having a chance to write, but when you’re working on a book like “X-O Manowar” or “Armor Hunters,” you don’t want to shoehorn him in just because he’s a good character. It was more a matter of waiting until there was the right story, the right opportunity to bring him in, and this seemed like a good one for many reasons—not the least of which is the situation and the conflict set up in the Book of Death, where you have the mystical power of the Geomancers and we’re learning just how enormously powerful they are. This just seems like a sphere of magic that Master Darque would definitely want to get access to if he could.
“Book of Death” has a different structure than a regular event comic. What was the collaboration like in creating what is, essentially, the many, many, many years to come for the Valiant Universe, with these little ten page excerpts from these from the titular book?
RV: Each issue of the storyline has an eight-page excerpt taken directly from the Book of the Geomancers—a book of prophecies from the future that details the end of the Valiant Universe and its various characters. That’s the sort-of “book of death” in the title, if you will. From the beginning, it seems like it would be an interesting storytelling exercise—an interesting framing device—to have these excerpts and these moments. It’s also something that harkens back to Rai #0 from the original Valiant continuity. That’s probably one of the most famous and popular issues that Valiant ever made, where it detailed all these things about the future, so we were tapping into that sort of idea as well. As far as coordination, we spent a lot of time in the writers room—all of the writers, together, talking about it, particularly the first eight-page sequence in issue one. There are a lot of things in there that I know from having been in the writers room—things that show up in various comics and various Valiant titles over the year—and, in some cases, in the more distant future on the publishing schedule. A lot of the stuff in there was specifically placed because I know what’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of coordinating that with the other writers, making sure I was getting details the way I wanted them to be, and also not stepping on anybody’s toes—and making sure that everyone knew what I was putting in there and that I wasn’t revealing anything they didn’t want revealed.
Gilad’s been one more of the prominent characters in the Valiant relaunch, an we’ve seen him in many different books. He’s been written by different writers like Matt Kindt, Fred Van Lente, Greg Pak — my question is: as we venture into “Wrath of the Eternal Warrior,” who is the Eternal Warrior to you?
RV: He’s one of my favorite characters in the Valiant Universe. Back when Valiant was first asking me to pitch on various characters, they sent me sort of a series bible on their A-list heroes, and the two that were most interesting to me were X-O Manowar and Eternal Warrior. Obviously, I went with X-O Manowar for my pitch, but Eternal Warrior is someone I’ve always wanted to get back to, so it’s great to be able to have this opportunity—not only for Book of Death, but also with the Wrath of the Eternal Warrior series as well. To me, he’s someone who’s unique in terms of the Valiant pantheon, unique in his perspective on things. You have a character like X-O Manowar, who originated in the 5th century and now finds himself in the modern day — he missed all of that time in between. Gilad is somebody who has lived every day of the last 5,000-plus years, so he has a very long-term view of the Valiant Universe, and the role of the Geomancers, and the rising and falling of civilizations, and all of these things that every other character in the Valiant Universe that has a normal lifespan just can’t relate to. I think that’s really at the heart of the conflict that drives “Book of Death” — Gilad is looking at events and seeing them from his long-term perspective, and the rest of the Valiant Universe is looking at it from a much shorter-term perspective, and it’s putting them at odds, even though they all are sort of justified in their own way.
Continued belowOne of the things that I think is really interesting about Gilad that I want to bring to the “Wrath of the Eternal Warrior” series is the idea that, for him to do what he does — you know, to keep fighting, to keep picking himself up over the thousands of years, and defending Earth and defending all of us — he really has to be an incredible optimist, which I think is a really interesting way to look at him. There’s so much pessimism in the world today and I think the gut reaction would be if you have somebody who’s an immortal character, they would just be so down about how bad things are. But Gilad is somebody who was there five thousand years ago—he knows how improved the world is from the days where there was no running water, no medicine to speak of, and all sorts of different things. He believes there’s still a lot of work left to be done, but in order for him to want to fight for us and lay himself down as much as he does, he would have to believe that we are good and we’re worth fighting for, and I think it’s that optimism driving him that makes him a really fascinating character to write.
I know that we still have two issues of “Book of Death” left, but what I would ask is — as spoiler-free as we can try to keep it — can we paint a picture of where Gilad is going in the “Wrath of the Eternal Warrior” #1?
RV: I can’t really get into too much there without giving away some of the events that are going to happen in “Book of Death #4”, but I will say that what Gilad is going to be facing are conflicts and adversaries that we’ve never seen him face before, that we’ve never seen anyone in the Valiant Universe face before. As far as looking at Gilad as an immortal character—which is certainly nothing new in the pantheon of mythologies and fictions—these are conflicts that I don’t know that immortal characters have faced before either, so it’s really going to be something different—hopefully unexpected—and it’s going to put on display a lot of his character traits: the optimism, the choice to fight, and so on.
Apart from the physical challenges and the confrontations he’s been through throughout thousands and thousands of years [has] known so many people throughout his entire life. The most recent relationship he has come to have is with the little Geomancer from the future, Tama. How will their relationship continue to evolve?
RV: Tama will continue to be a key piece of the Valiant Universe as a Geomancer, and certainly that will be an important part to Gilad as well because part of his role is to be the sworn protector to the line of Geomancers throughout history. But I think for a character like Gilad, who’s immortal, there’s so much opportunity to really see different eras of not just Valiant history but human history as well, and we’re definitely going to be tapping into that. I mean, right from the very beginning of issue one, we’re going to see those sorts of things and, a lot like I did with “X-O Manowar” — where, if you were reading the first issue at the time, you might not realize that there were fifteen, twenty plotlines that were being introduced in those first twenty-four pages — and I think “Wrath of the Eternal Warrior” is very much the same way. There are so many plotlines we’re introducing in this first issue, some of them are going to be readily apparent in the first arc and some of them are going to continue to play out way deep into the series, We’ll be tapping into a lot of the stuff that you’re alluding to.
You are collaborating with Raúl Allén, who has signed an exclusive with Valiant this year for this series. The art style is very different from what we’ve seen throughout a lot of the Valiant Universe with artists like Doug Braithwaite and Clayton Henry and so forth. What I would ask is, considering the premise, how has the collaborating and designing of what we will see in the “Wrath of the Eternal Warrior” been?
Continued belowRV: All the Valiant artists that I’ve been able to work with have great, unique qualities that they bring to the table, and Raul is certainly no exception. We’re really just getting started in the series, but seeing what he’s able to conceive in terms of page layouts, character designs, story beats, compositions—the way he approaches each page, I struggle to even try to describe it, because I don’t have an in-depth background in terms of art. I didn’t start reading comics until my late twenties, but to me, it seems he approaches each page as a separate art piece that also works as part of a larger, 22-page whole. It’s really a fascinating process, and it’s so unexpected when the pages come in. That’s what makes it fun because obviously I’m plotting issues and I’m putting in details and dialogue and introducing characters and things like that, but the way he’s able to reveal them and convey story and convey emotion—he does it in ways that I’ve never seen before, not just in terms of who I’ve worked with, but also in terms of comics I’ve read. He’s really an enormous talent. He’s super great to work with. I’m asking him to do a ton of designs, just in the first issue alone, and everything he’s doing is phenomenal. I really can’t wait for people to see the extraordinary talent that he is.
We’ve got two major milestones coming up for X-O, the first one is the coming—the “Book of Death” one-shot, “The Fall of X-O Manowar”. And then, not too far ahead, the 50th issue. Anything you would like to tell our readers— a little hint?
RV: “The Fall of X-O Manowar” issue — as with all the tie-in issues — it’s meant to be an additional excerpt from the Book of the Geomancers, and it’s an end for X-O Manowar. I think it’s very fitting for who he is as a character, and there’s also a bit of a legacy involved there that I’m looking forward to people seeing. As far as “X-O Manowar” #50, as we’re building up toward that and starting with issue #39 in the “Exodus” arc and moving into the two arcs beyond that, we’re going to see how the entire architecture of the series—you know, all fifty issues leading up to that, plus the #0 issue and some additional tie-in issues, as well—they’re all working together in ways that people hopefully haven’t expected. I think they’ll be surprised and really pleased to see how every individual story arc — no matter how separate they may have seemed from each other at the time — is really part of a single large machine with all the gears turning together. I’m pretty excited about it.
“Book of Death #3” will be in stores and digitally September 23rd. Look out for “Wrath of the Eternal Warrior #1” on November 18th.