Picture Quiz: Harbinger

August 30th, 2007

Filed under: Comics

Could someone please explain to me what the big deal about Harbinger is? I picked up the first handful of issues cheaply — including the #0 issue — about a year ago and finally sat down to read them a few days ago. I’d always heard it was a good and groundbreaking series, but to say that I was underwhelmed would be putting it mildly. At best, it’s merely a mediocre comic, eminently forgettable. It’s not horrible, but that’s not really a good selling point (feel free to use that as a pull quote on the upcoming reissue though: Doctor and comic book blogger Scott says “It’s not horrible.”). The characters are almost entirely two-dimensional stereotypes and the plot is meandering and poorly explained. For example, by the third issue, they’re fighting aliens on the Moon. Let me repeat that: aliens on the Moon — it’s like a bad Silver Age comic. To me, that’s not the mark of an awe-inspiring and groundbreaking comic.

The way I figure, this Harbinger discrepancy can be explained in one of four ways:

  1. Harbinger is a great comic, and I am merely too unsophisticated to appreciate it. (Certainly possible; I do have low brow mainstream super-hero tastes).
  2. Harbinger is not a great comic, but it was better than most other comics from the ’90s, hence its reputation as a quality comic.
  3. People are looking back on the series with rose-colored glasses, but haven’t actually read it in years. When they actually sit down and reread the issues, they will realize it’s not nearly as good as they remember.
  4. People are confusing perceived monetary value with quality (this is certainly the impression you get reading the Wikipedia entry on Harbinger). The two are not interchangeable, especially in terms of ’90s comics.

Anyway, on to the picture quiz. Tell me what’s wrong with this scene from Harbinger #1:

scene from Harbinger

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19 Responses to “ Picture Quiz: Harbinger ”

  1. Allen Varney
    August 31st, 2007 at 1:01 am

    The six-sided die has 5 and 2 on adjacent faces, when on a real die they are on opposite faces.

  2. Jon Hendry
    August 31st, 2007 at 1:03 am

    For one thing, I’m pretty sure the 4-sided die isn’t numbered like that. Instead of 3 4’s on one face, there should be fours at the bottom edge of the three visible sides.

    Isn’t it Trekk_ie_? Or is -ie the outsider’s term, with -er the in-group term? (Kind of like SF vs. SciFi)

  3. lilacsigil
    August 31st, 2007 at 3:52 am

    Both the 6-sided and 4-sided dice are wrong – opposing faces of a 6-sided die always add up to 7 (hence 2 and 5 would be opposites), and a 4-sided die has three different numbers per side – the numbers lines up along the bottom edge of the die when it is thrown. And the Enterprise in the bottom right corner looks seriously wonky!

  4. Elayne Riggs
    August 31st, 2007 at 8:38 am

    What’s wrong is that there aren’t more characters in comics who look like Faith.

  5. Juho Salo
    August 31st, 2007 at 9:51 am

    She might not be a trekker, but her skirt sure has the insignia of Star Fleet.

  6. mike.
    August 31st, 2007 at 10:03 am

    What’s wrong is the automatic assumption that just because one is involved in ONE geeky activity, that one is also involved in ALL OTHER geeky activites. Just because one is a Trekkie (or -er) should not automatically entail that that person is also into D&D (or sits around in a starfleet insignia nightie, come to that).

  7. Jer
    August 31st, 2007 at 10:15 am

    Besides the dice problem that has already been pointed out (couldn’t the artist have spent 35 cents to get an actual 4-sided die for reference?), there’s also the fact that no geek would have a bedroom with that much empty space in it. I mean, there’s room for a display table for action figures going unused, for goodness sake! Why are you wasting space with a pink rug in the center of the floor when you could move your bed away from the wall and put in some more bookshelves?

    As far as your question goes, I think the correct response is probably “2″. IIRC, the big things going on in comics at the time involved Rob Liefeld’s X-Force, Spider-man in some kind of silver armor, and the guys from Image all spinning off their own company based around cool looking characters with little story attached to them. The Valiant stuff felt like someone was trying to do old-school superhero comics at a time when everyone else was trying to fit 26 pages of pinups into a book and call it a story.

  8. Bryan L
    August 31st, 2007 at 12:56 pm

    I vote for #3. A friend loaned me the series a few years back telling me I’d love it, and I couldn’t finish it. I don’t think he’d read it in a long time and simply remembered it as better than it actually was.

  9. Jonathan Hohensee
    August 31st, 2007 at 10:16 pm

    Has anyone had similar impressions with other Valient titles? Because I have a sneaking suspicion that Shadowman and Archer and Armstrong aren’t as good as I remember.

  10. Scott
    August 31st, 2007 at 11:42 pm
    Official Comment

    Excellent work.

    The dice were what I was looking at. As mentioned above, the four-sided and six-sided dice are set up wrong. As drawn, the d4 couldn’t be used at all. (I’m also now sure what the red die in front of the d4 is supposed to be.)

  11. Dan`
    September 1st, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    The enterprise is facing forward, away from the wall – while certainly something you could do, every fan knows the proper way to mount a model spaceship is sideways so you can get a good look at the entire thing.

  12. Michael Grabois
    September 2nd, 2007 at 4:37 am

    Looks like the red die in front of the fake d4 is supposed to be a d12, with a d20 in blue off to the right.

  13. David Oakes
    September 2nd, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    Just to be perfectly pedantic, the d4 is the picture is fully functional: Roll the die as normal; When it comes to a rest, get up and walk around the entire die; Whatever number you *don’t* see is on the bottom; This is the number you rolled.

    (Unless of course the squiggles on the right turn out to be 4’s as well. But then maybe it is a d2 in die drag…)

  14. Tracey Pass
    September 6th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    I agree with Elayne Riggs!!! Faith is ALL woman!! but I had noticed the problem with the dice and I’m LMAO @ Jer because my son is a self-confessed geek (he’s gorgeous!!!) and he has friends that have complete rooms full of scenarios of Warhammer figures. They get together and have simulated battles using dice and cards and the figures.

  15. Eric
    September 7th, 2007 at 1:37 am

    I only read the first arc or so of Harbinger collected in TPB, but it was a fun little comic. Not great, certainly, but a sort of modernized silver-age-like comic.

    After all, the aliens weren’t from the moon, they just had a base there. ;)

  16. Andy
    September 29th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    The Valiant titles were all connected. The spider alien moon base feels out of place if you read Harbinger as a stand alone title but it was important in the broader scope of the valiant universe. harbinger is good but valiant is great. i read harbinger before i read the rest of the early valiant books and had the same reaction but once i had read more valiant books i started to understand all the great things i wasnt noticing in harbinger the first time because i was too used to comics the marvel way. i suggest checking out the unity saga. thats a good stand alone story that really gives lets you see why people love valiant. and if you dont like it then you know for sure that valiant just isnt your thing.

  17. Anonymous
    December 28th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

    You guys forgot one thing: No girl could ever be that big a nerd. :P

  18. Metz77
    September 2nd, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Anonymous: You’ve never seen my best friend’s bedroom. You can’t see the walls for the Harry Potter memorabilia.

  19. Dissenter
    December 15th, 2011 at 1:22 am

    Forget the dice. What’s wrong with the picture is on the poster behind the females.

    A guy in a costume with a circle on his junk and his tiny sidekick.
    – The Colossal Circle Crotch and his trusty sidekick Runty the Reindeer -

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