If it wasn’t for the Marvel Cinematic Universe I would never have gotten into Valiant. It’s that simple.

Growing up I was never really into superhero comics, so it wasn’t until I saw The Avengers (was that really only 5 years ago?) and got bit hard by the MCU bug that I started to understand what I’d been missing out on for all these years. It had never really occurred to me before that the worlds of Marvel and DC were these sprawling, bizarre universes crammed full of riffs on every genre and archetype imaginable – gods and monsters, astronauts and aliens, spies, assassins, mad scientists… all rubbing shoulders in a world of endless calamity and triumph.

But then I tried actually reading some Marvel comics. Crikey. Don’t get me wrong, I loved a lot of it, but was baffled or bored by great chunks of it as well. All that baggage, all that history, that presumed knowledge, not to mention some pretty variable quality control over the years… It was overwhelming and frustrating.

Then along comes Valiant – specifically, rebooted Valiant circa 2012. Here we have a fresh, modern, post-MCU world of interconnected heroes, villains and assorted freaks, with only a few years of continuity to absorb. It was ambitious, but manageable. Plus, characters like X-O Manowar and Archer & Armstrong had an allure of weirdness to them that I found irresistible. I bought my first couple of TPBs a couple of years ago and I’ve never looked back.

So, with that backstory out of the way, you can probably guess my answer to the question posed in the title of this post. Given that the interconnectedness of Valiant was a key part of its core appeal to me, as is the case with the MCU, the thought of this world I’ve fallen in love with getting carved up and scattered over multiple film studios and franchises must surely be a worrying one, right?

Well… Maybe not.

Don’t get me wrong, if a press release came out tomorrow declaring an extended release schedule with Sony expanding well beyond Harbinger Wars to include the likes of X-O Manowar, Ninjak, Shadowman, Dr Mirage and so on, I would be delighted, and no doubt start feverishly hammering out a wall of text speculating on how this might all play out. But I’d also have my concerns, some of which I’ll outline below.

1. Is Sony up to the task?

Now, I don’t know how much of a working knowledge you have of Sony Picture’s reputation when it comes to handling blockbuster franchises, but here’s the tl;dr version: It’s not great.

Their bungling of the post-Raimi Spider-Man franchise lead to them hitting the reset button and handing over creative control to a rival studio, and looking beyond superheroes their franchises include the likes of Underworld, Resident Evil and Ghostbusters, all of which (for various reasons) aren’t examples that inspire much confidence in me. They’ve even reportedly been exploring the idea of selling off the entire studio. Do we as Valiant fans really want all our eggs in a basket that could get hurled out of the window at any moment?

2. Do Sony care enough to make it happen?

Whilst there’s been a trickle of information over the years following the initial announcement of the Valiant/Sony deal, there’s been very little in the way of actual progress. Directors have been signed on only to quietly drop out later, not a single casting has been confirmed and there’s a general sense that things are developing rather slowly.

Meanwhile, Sony have repeatedly made public announcements about developing a self-contained “Spider-Verse” with ambiguous ties to the MCU, with movies planned for Venom, Black Cat and Silver Sable and even (at one point) a solo Aunt May movie.

Sony seem determined to squeeze their Spider-Man rights for every last drop of content they can on the (I expect mistaken) assumption that any association with Spider-Man will be enough to sell tickets. Right now at least, the impression I get is that Sony are viewing Spider-Man spinoffs as their best shot at cashing in on the shared universe action, somewhat sidelineing the Valiant project in the process.

3. Are audiences ready for another shared universe?

Let’s take a break from kicking Sony for a moment and look at the bigger picture. Now, I do not subscribe to the theory of “superhero fatigue”. There is clearly a large, willing audience ready to show up to any superhero film worth the ticket price, as Wonder Woman has most recently demonstrated. However, with so many studios attempting to launch their own shared universes, I do think “crossover fatigue” could be a real problem.

There is something to be said for keeping stories self-contained. Does anyone really want to cough up for a cinema ticket to something that is, essentially episode 1 of a TV show? (I guess we’ll find that out when Inhumans hits cinemas in a few weeks). People will want some reassurance that they will get a single story with a satisfying beginning, middle and end rather than a bunch of empty set-up and the promise that it will definitely pay off, so long as they come back in a year or two, as evidenced by Universal’s misguided Mummy film that attempted to set up their new “Dark Universe” franchise.

4. How do you sell Valiant to a new audience?

Valiant is at an enormous disadvantage in terms of brand recognition. Sure, Iron Man was something of a D-lister back in 2008, but at least the average punter down your local comic shop would have heard of him and Marvel itself was already a long-established film brand by that point with hits from other studios like Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man to inspire confidence. But, like it or not, Harbinger and Bloodshot are well below Iron Man in terms of recognition. And when people do recognise the names they’re more likely to reference 90’s-era Valiant than the current incarnation. This makes it all the more important that the films are marketed first and foremost as entertaining self-contained stories rather than just parts of a greater whole.

5. How do you avoid homogenisation?

Distinctive tones in a shared world are easy to achieve in comic books. All it takes is a writer and artist with a unique vision and an editor who’s willing to let them pursue it. But films have a much bigger production team and, even when individual directors come and go from franchises, a lot of the behind the scenes staff might remain. This is why, unsurprisingly, one of the biggest criticisms leveled at at the MCU is that their films can feel a bit samey or formulaic. I think there’s some truth to that (and I’d argue the same also applies to the DCEU).

This means that the big challenge facing a connected Valiant Cinematic Universe is how to sell their films on the individual strengths of the stories and characters and avoid the sense that it’s just the same thing over and over.

By far the best example of tonally distinct superhero films is Fox’s long-running X-Men universe – a series in which X-Men: First Class, Logan and Deadpool can all co-exist. So what’s their secret? Total disregard for established continuity. Sure, a few actors stay the same from one film to the next, but anyone attempting to process every X-Men film since the first as part of some coherent, interconnected narrative is likely to give themselves a brain hemorrhage.

So, given all these concerns, would it really be so bad if Obadiah Archer never crosses paths with Toyo Harada? Can Aric of Dacia exist in a world without Bloodshot? Right now Valiant are actively developing scripts in house and recruiting directors to shop them around to studios as a package deal. Marvel did something similar in the 90s and 00s and in doing so gave us a number of films that helped to fuel the rise of the modern superhero film. By serving each character as best as possible rather than attempting to emulate the shared universe model, perhaps Valiant could help to establish an era of their own – the rise of the alternative superhero film.