'X-O Manowar' targets alien nation in 'Planet Death'

Brian Truitt, USA TODAY | USATODAY

Aric of Dacia is returning to visit the alien race that captured and enslaved him. Suffice it to say, he is not pleased.

The four-part "Planet Death" story line kicks off In Valiant Comics' X-O Manowar No. 11, out March 20, and features Aric waging war on the Vine as well as the return of the artist Cary Nord, who launched the series last year with writer Robert Venditti.

Before that, though, a two-issue prelude drawn by Trevor Hairsline began in X-O Manowar issue 9 last month that finds the Vine sending X-O Commandos after Aric to get their armor back, putting him in a bad-enough mood to set a course for the alien homeworld of Loam on a mission of old-school Visigoth vengeance. (issue 10 is out Feb. 20.)

The "Planet Death" arc "will be the culmination of at least a dozen plots and subplots. There are huge moments coming. Our goal is to tell an action story on a grand scale, but give it a heart," Venditti says.

"All the big reveals are things we've been working toward since Day 1, but the road we've traveled developed much more organically. We always knew what the destination was, just not how we were going to get there."

X-O Manowar was the first Valiant comic to relaunch last year, and reintroduced comic fans to Aric. A Visigoth warrior plucked from the fifth century battlefields during wartime against Romans, he embarks on a new adventure when he's nabbed by the Vine and escapes with their X-O Manowar armor and ends up on modern-day Earth.

Aric's return trip to Loam — willingly this time — is a homage of sorts to his forefathers' sacking of Rome.

"One of the great tragedies of Aric's character is he grew up under the heel of the Roman Empire, and he never got to see the Visigoths have their day," Venditti explains. "While his uncle Alaric was sacking Rome on Earth, Aric was a prisoner of the Vine in space. His experience with the Vine has led him to equate them to the Romans, though, and now they've become the focus of his anger. That doesn't bode well for them."

The writer teases that X-O fans will meet "a ton" of new faces during "Planet Death" — "more than I could count, actually" — and that the story arc leads into the next, which will end up someplace even bigger.

"There are huge changes ahead for the entire Valiant Universe," he says, "and X-O Manowar will be a key part of it."