Valiant: The Year of Heroes FCBD 2020 Special

Valiant Entertainment; Free (at participating retailers)

Under a photo cover featuring Vin Diesel from the Bloodshot film (if you haven’t seen it, we recommend it), Valiant offers two stories, each spotlighting one of their core characters.

First, writer Tim Seeley and artist Jason Masters kick off a new storyline with the usual action, intrigue, nanites, and explosions. Just four pages in, they give us a real twist, and we’re definitely intrigued enough to want to see where this goes in their regular Bloodshot title.

Up second is a longer tale of X-O Manowar from writer Joshua Dysart and artist Doug Braithwaite. This beautiful story, colored by Diego Rodriguez, harkens back to the excellent 50-issue run on X-O by writer Robert Venditti (and it’s even dedicated to him). Free Comic Book Day is supposed to be about introductions, and this one does a superb job setting up the mind of Aric, the man inside the armor, for new and established readers alike. Really well done.

– J.C. Vaughn