Rai Zero

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Rai #0

1 Overview
2 Story
3 Innovation
4 External links

[edit] Overview

Rai Zero (#0) was an influential comic published by Valiant Comics in November of 1992.

The book set the basic outline for the history of the Valiant universe from 1992 until well into the 41st century.

The book quickly became a much sought after issue, staying on Wizard (magazine)'s Top 10 hot list for months.

[edit] Story

"The Blood of Heroes" story was written by Valiant's top talent: Jim Shooter, David Lapham and Bob Layton. Marketing director Jon Hartz also contributed to the story's overall plot.

Shooter and Layton, in particular, were the architects of the entire Valiant Universe.

"The Blood of Heroes" laid bare the fates of many of Valiant's most popular characters; including Shadowman, X-O Manowar and Obadiah Archer of Archer & Armstrong.

It also included several first appearances of popular Valiant characters that would be featured in their own monthly comics; like Bloodshot and the new Rai.

[edit] Innovation

Rai #0 is the perfect example of the originality of VALIANT Comics. This is a book that introduced what was to become a major character in the VALIANT Universe, Bloodshot, and showed readers how, where, why and by whom he would be killed some 30 years later. The introduction of a major character is in the same book as the depiction of his future death. Rai #0 also showed readers the deaths of a number of other important characters (X-O Manowar, Harada and Archer) as well as introducing a few new ones (Bloodshot, the last Rai and the H.A.R.D. Corps).

Does it seem like VALIANT was giving away all the best parts of their upcoming stories? Absolutely not. In fact, Rai #0 involved the reader in the progression of the VALIANT Universe by offering snippets of future events that could be interpreted in a number of ways. The events would happen in future issues but maybe not for the reasons we assumed they did while reading the one or two panels that showed them. Think of the old adage, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Okay, so Bloodshot dies, but what happened to the Blood of Heroes that gave him his powers? And even though we see Ax defeating Bloodshot in one panel and the Geomancer finding him dead in the next, there is a substantial space of time that was skipped in-between. We never actually see Ax kill Bloodshot. Did someone else turn up in that time and kill him? Did Bloodshot commit suicide? The plethora of possibilities served only to further the anticipation of the event and send readers into wild discussions whenever newly released stories provided clues.