It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for another new edition of Kickin’ It Old School, our weekly column in which we look to the past and review books from the original Valiant universe! This week, I’ll be discussing Harbinger #0.
Harbinger #0
Published in June 1992
Written by David Lapham
Penciled by David Lapham
Inked by Kathryn Bolinger
Colored by Jorge Gonzalez
Synopsis
This takes place before Harbinger #1. Pete writes to the Harbinger Foundation for help because he’s discovering that he has unusual powers. Meanwhile, he begins to abuse his powers to get what he wants in his personal life. He manipulates his mom’s mind to get her off his back. He manipulates Kris’ mind to make her go out with him. Once he is contacted by the Harbinger Foundation, he gains comfort with his powers and becomes more comfortable abusing them. As he realizes this, he begins to doubt the Harbinger Foundation and fesses up to Kris, who kicks him out. He heads to his best friend Joe’s house and discovers him dead. He goes back to the Harbinger Foundation, but Harada realizes Peter’s suspicion is too great and, deeming him to great of a threat, plans to have him killed.
Pete calls Kris and convinces her to come get him. As Rachel enters Pete’s room to shoot him in the back of the head, Kris is being stopped by Eel and Weasel. When Rachel pulls the trigger, Pete’s subconscious protects him, causing a huge explosion that kills Rachel and 31 others. Pete then finds Kris, incapacitates Eel and Weasel, and escape with Kris.
Review
This issue added great perspective to the story and more depth to Pete and Kris’ characters. Without seeing their early struggles, the characters didn’t have much depth in the first handful off issues oh Harbinger. Some of the interactions seemed to come out of nowhere, too, like when Kris threatened to kill Pete in his sleep if she thought he was messing with her mind. This also gives us better perspective of the possible extents of Pete’s powers. He has hardly tapped into his potential in issues 1-6 when you see what his subconscious did to protect him from being killed. And, although it’s nothing new to us at this point, we once again see how vicious and cold blooded Harada can be.
Originally from ValiantCentral.com
It’s interesting to see that Josh Dysart was actually following the original fairly closely. I had always assumed that most of vol. 1, especially the implied date rape, was totally his invention
The same is actually true of X-O. Read the original #0 and tell me it doesn’t look VERY familiar…supplement Spider Aliens with Vine of course
Pingback: Kickin' It Old School: Harbinger #7 - All-Comic.com