Kickin’ It Old School: Unity #0

Welcome to 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! Since I’ve finally made it to the Unity crossover in my reading, for the next few weeks, I’ll be doing a daily review of each of the 18 chapters of the event. Let’s kick things off with Unity #0.

Unity #0

Published in August 1992
Written by Jim Shooter
Penciled by Barry Windsor-Smith
Inked by Bob Layton
Colored by Janet Jackson with Maurice Fontenot and Jorge Gonzalez
Lettered by Jade
Edited by Jim Shooter

Synopsis:

We finally see what effect the event that created Solar had on Doctor Pierce. As Solar and Geoff investigate the occurrence at Pierce’s house, the whispers of the Earth tell Geoff the truth of what happened. After the Pierce that we have become familiar with kills her abusive husband, her other self that went through the black hole with Solar shows up and kills her, then takes her son to an alternate place in the time stream. Between Geoff’s ability to communicate with the world and Solar’s ability to jump into the time stream, they discover where Erica Pierce is hiding.

Upon discovering what Erica has built, Solar gives Geoff his hand so that he can jump between the time stream and Earth so he can get reinforcements. Geoff discovers that, with Solar’s hand, he can jump from place to place with only a thought. He retrieves Aric and the Renegades before Gilad calls him back. After Gilad arrives, he isn’t pleased with the group he has to fight with, so he retrieves his brother Aram and his new friend Archer. Upon returning to Solar, they discover that he has gained them some more allies. Magnus, Rai, and a future Gilad await them, and the showdown with Erica Pierce is about to begin!

Review:

I’ve been SOOOO excited to get to Unity! Every time people talk about VH1 Valiant, it’s “pre-Unity” this and “post-Unity” that. Now I’m finally beginning the most defining event of the original Valiant Universe! I have not been disappointed. First of all, the list of creators on this issue is amazing. Every name listed represents the most substantial creators involved in Valiant. The art is great. The style is slightly different than what we’ve seen so far, which helps to mesh the characters from all of the different books.
And who’s the big bad villain that the whole Valiant Universe has to team up against? Erica Pierce. One of the most pitiful characters from Solar. She has an abusive husband. She’s dealt with having a being of pure energy grow inside of her. But it’s not easy to empathize with her because she’s just such an unpleasant person. However, just as Phil went through the black hole and became Sol, Erica went through and became a much more evil version of herself. The original Erica never had the backbone to use her powers and thus suppressed them. The evil Erica has no problem using them to a great extent.

And, on top of how great this issue was, it was FREE! What a way to introduce the whole Valiant line to the fans! This issue had to be reserved at your comic shop, which means that people had to be pushing their comic shop to order Valiant. Especially following the scarcity of some of the first issues, the excitement over this must have been huge! I wish I could’ve been a fan back then. If anybody was a fan and recalls what it was like as Unity launched, please hit me up on Twitter @whospaul and let me know what it was like!

Originally from ValiantCentral.com