The Life and Death of Toyo Harada # 5 2019 Cover A by Jackson Butch Guice
Artists: Jackson Butch Guice (Penciller) , Jackson Butch Guice (Inker) , Joshua Dysart (Writer)
6 Comments - 1,025 Views - 1 Like
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DescriptionThe Life and Death of Toyo Harada # 5 Cover & Advertisement 2019Ink over pencil on comic art board Pencils & Inks: Jackson Butch Guice (Signed lower right) Writer: Joshua Dysart (Signed top right) The Life and Death of Toyo Harada is one of the first major “event” comics to be announced in the DMG era, after this summer’s Harbinger Wars 2, but the former won’t be a formal sequel to the latter. Indeed, both Simons and Dysart emphasize that Life and Death is intended to be accessible to folks who’ve never picked up a Valiant comic in their lives. “To the uninitiated reader, it’ll come off as sort of a maximalist epic, complete with global politics and huge doses of character-driven pulp sci-fi,” says Dysart. The story picks up after the events of the Dysart-penned Harbinger and Imperium series, both of which prominently featured Harada. He’s a near-immortal “psiot” — a human born with monumental abilities — who was once a secretive billionaire and philanthropist. He ran a program to find and train young psiots, but his undemocratic, megalomaniacal mind-set has led to repeated attacks against him from the heroes of the Valiant universe. In recent years, he went from being a behind-the-scenes kingmaker to a major global figure, attempting to correct economic injustice by empowering the developing world against the global superpowers. But don’t worry too much about all that. “You only need to know two things,” says Dysart. “One: There is a ring of alien technology that now orbits the earth in the Valiant Universe. These are the remnants of an invading alien fleet that was destroyed a few years ago in our continuity. And two: Toyo Harada’s defiance against the G8 economies has galvanized an approaching global war that is dividing the world, not by ideological or geographical lines, but along economic sustainability lines.” The subsequent narrative has been heavily influenced by Dysart’s travels in crisis zones around the world. “Since writing him, I’ve engaged more with the geopolitical landscape,” he says. “Spent more time in the Islamic world interviewing people and hearing their stories, places like Algeria and Pakistan. I saw the birth of the migrant crises while I was in northern Iraqi Kurdistan in 2014, and also watched a government in meltdown crisis in South Sudan as I traveled the length of it in 2016.” Though he’d been writing Harada since the early part of the decade, he says such journeys made him think about how the character needed to evolve: “His anger became more acute, his actions more desperate, his vision more utopist. He’s really turned into a kind of dark fantasy of mine.” That fantasy will be illustrated by a team of artists that fit into a recurring Valiant strategy: buy low, sell high. The small company has traditionally adopted a Moneyball-esque approach to its talent-hunting by seeking out creators who aren’t big names, but who it thinks hold raw talent. “CAFU’s wonderful,” says Simons. “Wonderful storyteller. Everything that hits the page is clean and crisp. He’s great at doing bombastic action as well.” Dysart is similarly praising of CAFU, but highlights the art of the flashbacks, as well. Those sequences begin with Harada’s psiot awakening in Japan in the midst of an atomic blast, and Dysart thinks they look gorgeous. “[CAFU]’s going to be sharing space with illustrative gods like Lewis LaRosa, Mico Suayan, and others, all of whom have made such deep impressionable work over the course of our ‘Psiot Cycle,’” he says. That’s all well and good, but the big question is: Will Harada actually die, as the title of the series implies? Neither Simons nor Dysart gets into details. (“Josh came up with a pretty crafty ending that will be fodder for stories for some time,” says Simons.) Either way, Dysart seems energized by the chance to take one last spin with his muse. “I give [Harada] my most radical politics. Then I take my absolute worst fears,” he says. “They are that democracy doesn’t actually work, and that there is no progress without violence. I’m not saying I believe in those things, I’m saying I fear those things are true. Then, I make him believe those things fully. Lastly, I move him to action in a way I could never do myself. I might believe in something, but I’ve never found an idea worth killing for. Harada doesn’t have that problem. He’s my bleakest angel, my own inner dictator. And when I’m writing him at his most honest, or maybe my most honest, I can’t really say he’s wrong.” Social/Sharing |
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Gal Schwartz
Member Since 2005
Posted on 9/7/2016
This is UNUSED ?!? It's outstanding !! What did they put instead, the Mona Lise ?
Michael Molinario
Member Since 2011
Posted on 9/7/2016
Gal Schwartz wrote:
This is UNUSED ?!? It's outstanding !! What did they put instead, the Mona Lise ?Still working on finding out. Could be comming up as a cover for the new Harbinger Renegades book or it was too close to some Game Of Thrones images so it got scraped.
Gal Schwartz
Member Since 2005
Posted on 9/7/2016
This is UNUSED ?!? It's outstanding !! What did they put instead, the Mona Lisa ?
David Holden
Member Since 2009
1 - Posted on 9/8/2016
You beat me to this. Great pick up whether they decide to use it or not. CONGRATS!!!
Anthony F 
Member Since 2004
1 - Posted on 6/22/2018
Great early pickup! Valiant has such an extensive inventory of wonderful art, such a striking image is a nice intro to Dysart’s next book.
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