Being powerful doesn’t equate to not having problems. In the Valiant universe it’s almost a requirement to be in the midst of a series of cataclysmic issues that must be overcome. Right now Gilad, the Eternal Warrior has to die to save the soul of his son, Ninjak has to have his future self save him in the present from a possible terminal disease he caught while on the Deadside, and then they’re the Renegades. They were a group of young people who attempted to make the world a place where you wouldn’t be hunted because you may have the potential to be a psiot. In order to tap into that potential, a painful procedure is warranted – one you may not survive. If you come out alive then you may have the potential to fly or have telekinetic ability. But more than likely you’d end up like a Juan Jose Ryp artistic rendering of a wannabe psiot.
And that’s a gruesome sight. Still, the team who called themselves the Renegades did what they believed would end the despotic actions of Toyo Harada and his Harbinger foundation. They were worse than wrong, and now the devil has shown up for his payment.
In issue one of ‘Harbinger Renegade’ time hasn’t stood still. After being exposed Harada is missing and the repercussions of exposing his criminal activities to the world has left a huge problem for the remaining Renegades to take care of. Faith, who has her own comic book series makes an appearance here to help a young man who is being hunted by a bunch of zealots and the government. She calls on a fellow team member for help and by doing this the reader is introduced to whoever remains of this group.
You have to feel sorry for the psiots who are still being sought after. As great a hero as Faith is, she can’t do the Superhero thing with only Ax (another Renegade). But her friends are broken. Emotionally they’re barely recovering from their last encounter with Harada. One is even off-planet. How can they repair what they’ve done if they can’t even stand to be in the same room with each other?
Writer Rafer Roberts has developed a narrative that consists of a number of destroyed and damaged people who are in the middle of a tornado of their own creation. Barely able to pick up the pieces of their broken lives, they have to come together. However, what happens when a group of unstable, self-destructive, bordering on narcissists try to save the world? Action and great drama. With a well-established group there’s no need to tell individual backstories.
Instead, Roberts places the reader into the lives of Faith, Torque, Peter, Ax and Kris and you can tell they have a lot of work to do on themselves. An emotional ride is in store as each character has to decide if they’re going to take up the hero mantle again. And unlike Faith, they have to figure out that they need to shift their idea of what being a hero means in order to survive in their own comic book.
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