- Share this article on Facebook
- Share this article on Twitter
- Share this article on Flipboard
- Share this article on Email
- Show additional share options
- Share this article on Linkedin
- Share this article on Pinit
- Share this article on Reddit
- Share this article on Tumblr
- Share this article on Whatsapp
- Share this article on Print
- Share this article on Comment
One of the biggest — and most welcome — surprises from this year’s New York Comic-Con is the announcement from Valiant Entertainment that Christopher Priest and Mark Bright are returning to their creation Quantum and Woody for a brand-new miniseries launching next year. Or, as Priest puts it, “For whatever insane reason, they kind of resurrected two old guys who had kind of moved on to other things outside comics.”
Currently titled Q2: The Return of Quantum and Woody, the new five-issue series will be set in the continuity established by Priest and Bright in the series published by Acclaim in the 1990s, taking place roughly 20 years after the original series ended.
“Mark and I went around a little bit until it clicked,” Priest explains to THR. “We thought, why don’t we just move this 20 years into the future — 20 years from whenever ‘now’ happens to be, so that way it’s disassociated from the current Valiant continuity, but there’s also a break from the original Acclaim continuity. Although these are the original Acclaim characters, this isn’t just the next issue of Quantum and Woody. There’s been a significant break from what happened before.”
STORY: Valiant Releases ‘Fully-Animated’ Cover for ‘Unity’ #1 (Exclusive Video)
Q2 sees Woody discover that there’s a new Quantum and Woody fighting crime, and his attempts to find out who they are lead to — as fans of the original series might expect — problems for Eric Henderson, the original Quantum. “It’s always good to go back and draw something you’ve worked on before again,” Bright says of the new series. “It’s a chance to see if your kid has grown up and is covered in tats and piercings, or if he’s a U.S. senator.”
One character who won’t make much of an appearance in the new series is Vincent Van Goat, Woody’s fan-favorite pet. In fact, Priest explains, he wasn’t even meant to make that many appearances in the earlier series.
“In the Acclaim run, the goat was one element of one story — Woody put a cape on a goat just to irritate Quantum,” he says. “We went on to plot the next two or three issues, and Mark was drawing the second or third issue after, and I got a call from the editor saying, ‘Where’s the goat?’ I was like, what goat? I had no idea; it was never our intention to make the goat an ongoing character. He got his own action figure, he got his own fan mail. I was like, this is ridiculous. The goat appears in one panel in the new series, but otherwise, no goat.”
STORY: Thirteen is a Lucky Number for Valiant’s ‘Shadowman’
In addition to Quantum and Woody, the two have worked together on Green Lantern, Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine and Power Man and Iron Fist and worked separately on such series as Black Panther, Iron Man and Batman.
Both creators are keeping mum about whether or not Q2 marks a temporary return to the characters — and comics as a whole — or not. “The story is left deliberately open-ended in terms of what the characters could do,” Priest responds. “We’re introducing some new characters into the Valiant Universe. And those characters may find new life in other directions as well. What we don’t do is, we don’t close doors, because that’s just stupid.”
Q2 will be released in 2014.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day