X-O Manowar is one of those cult books that has floated around the periphery for years but never quite managed to crack the big time, that is until now. Launched back in the early 90s this tale of Alric the Visigoth and his intergalactic space armour was created by Marvel legend Jim Shooter, Bob Layton and Jon Hartz and featured early work from the like Joe Quesada (on X-O #0). An instant cult favourite it would spawn crossovers with the fledgling Image universe and even fellow metal helmet wearer, Marvel‘s Iron Man, thanks to an appearance in a video game as a result of Valiant’s sale to Acclaim Entertainment. Despite fervent fan support it was very much a product of it’s time and so faded into the mists along with a raft of other 90s superheros, that is until 2012 when X-O, along with the entire cast of other Valiant classics, such as Archer & Armstrong and Bloodshot, were resurrected under the new Valiant Entertainment banner with a new rebooted origin. Under the guidance of Robert Venditti (creator of The Surrogates for Top Shelf) and artist Cary Nord, the world of Alric the Visigoth has been recreated and revitalised for a new 21st century audience and with it they have created one of the best pure superhero books on the newsstand.Plucked from his 5th century war-mongering against the Romans, Alric is taken captive by a mysterious race of aliens known as the Vine. Forcing Alric and his fellow Visigoths into a life of brutal slavery, the humans eventually revolt and in the ensuing melee Alric finds himself bonded with the mythical X-O Manowar armour, a Vine super weapon with religious implications for the highly spiritual Vine culture. It’s like King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone, but with more laser guns. The slave revolt spills out on to earth, who the Vine are seeking to conquer, and Alric soons realises he is no longer in his present day, out in ours thanks to a time delay caused by the ships faster than lightspped travel. He also discovers that the Vine have been interbreeding with humans for generations to create an elite hybrid sub-class known as plantings who the Vine are using to take over the earth. In order to combat his intergalactic captors, Alric/X-O teams up with one of these plating, Alexander Dorian, in an attempt to bring the Vine down from within as well as forging an alliance with government assassin for hire Ninjak.

This first 8 issue run of X-O Manowar, is about as good as modern superhero comic writing gets with smart dialogue, engaging characters and epic cover-to-cover action that literally spans time AND space!  Although the prospect of a medieval man in cosmic armour may sound hokey, the smart writing of Venditti prevents it from ever becoming cliche and while the ‘Conneticut Yankee‘ approach is well utilised in comics and sci-fi, in this instance it gives the story a personal resonance as alric tries to deal with his isolation and loss of family rather than being played simply for laughs at his expense. That is when he isn’t knocking secen bells out of the Vine of course!

With an epic scale that literally crosses time and space this new incarnation is reminiscent of more 21st century books like The Authority or Ultimates than the 90s superhero antics of before and so has a grown up intelligent edge to the whole story. By mixing the present day, with space based sci-fi and gritty blood and guts battle scenes from Roman times, the book is incredibly rich and artist Cary Nord manages to handle these greatly varying scenarios with supreme skill, mixing stunning space-scapes with sweeping vistas of battle scenes with a brilliantly deft touch.

By making the X-O armour a holy relic, Venditti also gives the books a more socio-political edge as the Vine struggle to reconcile the use of this significant holy weapon against them. As well as making the book more than a simple ‘punch-fest’ it also  helps make the Vine into an almost sympathetic foe as they become much more than just cliched faceless monsters and gives the conflict between them and X-O much more depth and room for development.

After a strong 8 issue introductory storyline, X-O is set to step up another level with their latest epic crossover, Planet Death, which sees the previously defeated Vine bring in the big guns in their attempt to finally conquer earth and defeat Alric and the Manowar armour with Alric looking to defeat the Vine on home territory just as father defeated the Roman’s on theirs. With regular artist Cary Nord returning after a 2 issue break, this has the potential to be one of the most dynamic story-lines of the year, so be sure to get in on the action now and don’t miss out.

X-O Manowar is available via ComiXology for £1.99 for issue 1 or £2.49 for issues 2-9. Each issue include exclusive bonus content such as original artwork for digital editions. Issue #9 and #10 are part of the ‘Prelude to Planet Death‘ storyline and so are a great place to start, but it all gets going properly in issue #11.