You know, it can’t be said often enough: despite the fact that these days DC’s fantasy characters from the late 70s and early 80s generally sell worse than Firestorm on its worst day, they’re all still pretty neat characters.
Valda was the main supporting character-slash-love interest in Arak, Son Of Thunder, which itself was a pretty decent fantasy comic (kind of like Conan, but with a Native American hero and a vaguely real-world setting). She was the daughter of Bradamante, the legendary lady knight of Charlemagne’s court, and herself a knight like her mother was. Also, she teamed up with Arak to fight demons and ogres and evil knights and so forth.
All of this is perfectly decent fantasy fare, but what elevates Valda for me is this: look at what she’s wearing! No chain mail bikini for Valda – no, she’s going to wear a full chain shirt, thank you very much! High heels? Those are for courtesans: Valda wears practical boots. And pants! (Okay, tight leather pants, but at least she’s got pants on.) For a female character in any genre fiction this is pretty damned impressive – for a female character in a sword-and-sorcery fantasy epic it is practically unheard of. Such practicality is quite awesome, and yet she remains terribly fetching, I must say.
Recently, Valda seems to have been transported to the future for some reason – she’s shown up a couple of times in various Shadowpact stories, but never in any great detail or with an explanation for why someone who was born in the 7th century is, you know, still around and all. But let us not overlook the fact that this means she can teach certain female characters about the virtue of practical clothing.
TANGENTIALLY RELATED FUN FACT: Arak, Son of Thunder is the ancestor of Flying Fox, whose magic cloak was a legacy left behind by Arak. Nifty.
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Man, she looks great.
I have to agree. I’m amazed by how awesome that picture of her is.
Not mentioned is her constant name-dropping; that girl is always talking about “my dad, you know, CHARLEMAGNE? Maybe you’ve heard of him?” Cute haircut, but man, what a pill!
Huh….She’s like Shining Knight, only a girl (carefully ignoring the fact that the current Shining Knight is also a girl) and cute. I like Shining Knight. Too bad neither character gets their own book. She needs something to differentiate herself a little more from Shining Knight. There are a few more differences, but there could be more distinguishing differences.
She was trained by a ghost she summoned herself.
That’s already awesome. And then she put on armor.
Huzzah, pants!
I bet her practical clothing was responsible for, like, 30-40% of her rating.
When I saw the name I expected her to be some sort of steam punk robot. So I was actually marginally disapointed. But hey! Practical clothing!
You know I would buy a Vigilantee/Shining Knight team up book if it had the dynamic from JLU and a seventh century robot chick in it.
She’s even got short hair!
I always love seeing heroines in practical wear – no high heels, no miniskirts, not wearing what looks like a swimsuit or fetishgear, with hair that isn’t incredibly long and unbound… (Seriously. Even if it’s not-quite-shoulderlength, you can’t so much as ride in a window-down car with unbound hair and expect it to not blind you and get tangled) I mean, I think I’m used to all that by now, but I still love seeing practical wear.
She’s very adorable, although I wouldn’t tell her that while she’s swinging that sword around.
She looks perky and gorgeous and has a knife in her boot. All of this is awesome. So is her hair.
Huh….She’s like Shining Knight, only a girl (carefully ignoring the fact that the current Shining Knight is also a girl) and cute. I like Shining Knight. Too bad neither character gets their own book. She needs something to differentiate herself a little more from Shining Knight. There are a few more differences, but there could be more distinguishing differences.
The current Shining Knight is all emo; Valda here is clearly anything but with that bright smile. They’d make a great team-up.
I can already see the slash fiction.
Yeah, but the issue where Arak came home and found her in the icebox was such a downer.
Pshaw. May I point you to exhibit A: “mistress of the knightly arts,” exhibit B “Occupation: Knight,” and exhibit C: honking big-ass zweihander? Anyone comes at Valda with a fridge they’d better have an extended warranty.
Extended warranty? See, because she’d break it, and normally the extended warranty is for suckers, so…
They look like tights to me, not leather pants.
Someone’ll probably forget to draw them and she’ll bhe wearing a chainmail minidress.
After seeing those terrible images of Rose McGowan all Sin City’d for Red Sonja I couldn’t agree more.
It’s a great drawing overall, really. Ernie Colon instantly conveys personality, charm, and fighting spirit (and as mentioned, avoids many of the sexist tropes of fantasy heroines, which is always a major plus.) I’d read a comic about her.
Firestorm on its worst day being somewhere late in the John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake run, I think. You know, where he stopped transmuting things, got a worse costume and starting hanging out with African gods. I believe it was collected in the trade paperback entitled Somebody Cancel Me Already.
I only ever read a few issues of Arak, but I loved it.
And that art rocks.
I’d pretty much forgotten about Valda, but her style may very well have informed some of my own characters.
Yay Valda!
[...] Opal is like an evil version of Valda. (Who not coincidentally was also drawn by Ernie Colon. Man, Ernie Colon was so great.) Sometimes [...]