VALIANT BEYOND: X-O MANOWAR #3 – New Comic Review

Valiant Beyond: X-O Manowar #3, by Valiant Comics & Alien Books on 11/26/25, is a pressure cooker of speeches, panic, and looming slaughter, with Aric trying to turn one disastrous rescue into a full‑scale stand against the Earthborn.

Credits:

• Writer: Steve Orlando
• Artist: Guillermo Fajardo
• Colorist: Lautaro Ftuli, Ludwig Olimba
• Letterer: Camila Jorge
• Cover Artist: Nathan Birr (cover A)
• Publisher: Alien Books, Valiant Comics
• Release Date: November 26, 2025
• Comic Rating: Teen
• Cover Price: $4.99
• Page Count: Teen
• Format: 22

Covers:

Analysis of VALIANT BEYOND: X-O MANOWAR #3:

First Impressions:

The opening at the Red Steppe throws you into a war briefing where Typhon talks about Aric like a glitch in his cruelty program, and it sets a tense, ugly mood in seconds. The pivot to the Dive’s town‑hall argument feels messy and human, with the punks split between fear, pride, and raw frustration about the fallout from Aric’s choices. The gut reaction is simple: this is a world held together with tape and temper, and the comic wastes no time showing how fast both can snap.

Recap:

In Valiant Beyond: X-O Manowar #3, Aric of Dacia was trapped and brutalized in Typhon’s lethal playground known as “The Scar,” where outcasts and debtors were forced to fight engineered beasts and each other to earn a twisted form of status or die trying. He endured a gauntlet of muck, monsters, and indoctrinated punks in AFB arenas, barely hanging on to his honor while forming uneasy alliances with Demolition and the morally tangled Aztlan. Sacrifice rituals, “Earthborn” elites, and “newborn” hopefuls blurred into a chaotic system of cruelty that powered both machines and hierarchy, with Typhon running the whole thing as sadistic ringmaster. By the end, Aric survived the carnage and resisted Typhon’s expectations, but he remained a battered piece on a board he did not control, his larger mission still locked behind confusion and violence.

Plot Analysis:

The issue opens on the Red Steppe, where Typhon inspects a set of rejects he calls “newborn” and dismisses them as failures who could not make it as Earthborn, ordering them left to the centisnakes while he declares war in response to Aric’s defiance. This scene frames Aric as a problem that should have been eliminated, and Typhon treats Aric’s survival as an insult that demands a large‑scale retaliation. Back at the Dive, Demolition addresses the gathered punks and admits that bringing Aric in has brought dangerous attention to them, prompting a heated debate over whether the group should have helped Aric at all. Cram, Aztlan, and others argue about responsibility and risk, with one faction angry that Aric “pissed on the Earthborn’s doorstep” and another pointing out that he saved the Nose’s family when he could have ignored their plight.​

As tempers flare, Aztlan nearly starts a fight before Demolition reins everyone in and insists that the Dive decides by discussion, not inquisition. Aric is blamed for provoking Typhon’s demo boys, but Demolition reminds them that he was asked to represent the punks, and that their current danger is the result of choices made together. When Aztlan challenges Aric’s judgment and courage, Aric responds with a firm warning about starting fights you cannot survive, then finally explains his origin to the group. He recounts being taken from an ancient battlefield by the Farriers, fighting as a slave gladiator in space, and seizing the X‑O armor from an undefeated champion whose own helm betrayed him, revealing that he is over two thousand years old and has spent those centuries at war.​

Aric contrasts the Dive’s constant scraping for survival with his own drive to remove the “executioner’s blade” hanging over them by destroying the Earthborn, framing the Earthborn as a pestilence whose defeat would be an act of honor and freedom. He lays out a simple offer: fight with him to live, and the punks accept, swayed by the promise of removing the threat instead of waiting to be crushed. Hours later, Demolition and Aric prepare for the Earthborn’s approach on a steep climb toward the Dive, with Aric planning a high‑ground defense and assigning roles, including Careless Whisper’s explosive support. In a quieter moment, Aric talks to Demolition about his distant “queen,” the armor’s keeper, while Demolition reveals he was raised by artificial intelligence and only met real humans in his twenties, admitting he can “break any technology” but struggles with people, which Aric reframes as leadership potential.​

The calm shatters when the Nose, a doctor and pillar of the Dive, wakes up in pain, murmuring about his family and his will as Demolition rushes to help him reach them. Before they can move far, arrows from the incoming Earthborn strike from a distance, and Aric counters the long‑range attack with his armor while confirming that the Earthborn are riding in full force and will arrive within minutes. Aric orders Demolition to take the Nose and defend the punks while he alone confronts the Earthborn, arguing that Demolition has a living family to protect, whereas Aric’s died lifetimes ago. The Nose collapses at home among María and their children, naming Niko as his inheritor, and his death triggers a supernatural “inheritance” where Afana, Vass, and even the Nose himself appear through Niko, with an unseen presence promising to help Demolition evacuate the punks before “Earth’s worst” arrive.​

Away from the Dive, Typhon’s forces climb toward the settlement, trading crude jokes about the climb and taunting the defenders while Typhon boasts that he is bringing an unmatched horror. Aric opens fire from above, but Typhon mocks him and unleashes a psychic or fear‑based assault that leaves Aric frozen inside his armor, unable to move. Typhon lectures Aric about fear, describing it as a thief that invades the mind and locks the body, claiming he never hit Aric with the full force of his power before and that the armor has become nothing more than a fancy casket. As Aric strains and begs his armor to move, he calls out for his queen and wonders how she could abandon him after so many wars, while the narration declares “X‑O Manowar shackles within,” ending the issue with Aric paralyzed in terror as Typhon closes in.

Story

The pacing bounces between brisk and bogged, with strong momentum in the war council and last‑stand setup but a sagging middle where Aric’s origin recap eats a big chunk of page space that veterans of the character already know. Dialogue swings from sharp, character‑specific insults to wordy speeches that try a bit too hard to sell themes about honor and fear, especially during Typhon’s closing monologue. Structurally, the issue tracks a clear spine from Typhon’s declaration of war, to the Dive’s internal conflict, to the doomed stand on the mountain, but it also piles on exposition and supernatural inheritance lore just as the clock is supposed to be ticking down, which dulls the tension instead of sharpening it.

Art

The art excels when showing crowds and chaos, with the Dive’s assembly, the Earthborn’s climb, and Aric’s armored standoff all staged in panels that read cleanly even when bodies and debris fill the page. Guillermo Fajardo’s compositions lean on strong diagonals and vertical climbs, which visually sell the idea of everyone scrambling uphill while danger rains down, and the action beats are easy to follow even when the script leans into abstract fear attacks. Lautaro Ftuli’s colors push a harsh, warm palette for the Red Steppe and the Dive, then deepen into darker tones as the Earthborn close in, giving the whole issue a baked, exhausted mood that fits a world cooked by violence and bad choices.

Characters

Aric’s motivation is straightforward and readable: he wants to turn survival into victory by taking the fight to the Earthborn, anchored by his long history of war and his obsession with honor. That said, his “fight with me if you want to live” turn from reluctant guest to general feels abrupt, and the script leans on a familiar X‑O origin speech instead of digging into how this specific world has changed him, which keeps him a bit distant. Demolition, the Nose, and even Aztlan show more grounded stakes, torn between community safety, personal loyalty, and simmering anger, and their arguments over responsibility make them more relatable than the armor‑god in the room. Typhon remains a theatrical sadist, and while his fear power gets clearer, his deeper motives stay thin, which keeps him effective as a blunt threat but shallow as a character.

Originality & Concept Execution

The mash‑up of wasteland punks, cosmic gladiator backstory, AI‑raised rebel, and a cult of fear‑wielding Earthborn gives the book a distinct flavor, even if many ingredients are familiar on their own. Conceptually, the issue wants to show Aric as a legendary warrior forced to adapt to a broken frontier society while a fear‑drunk tyrant weaponizes psychology against his armor, and that premise lands most clearly in the final duel where Typhon turns X‑O into a prison. Execution wobbles, though, when the script pauses the incoming siege to drop legacy inheritance lore and extended origin beats, which blurs the promised focus on a tight, brutal stand between punks and Earthborn into something looser and less disciplined.

Positives

The standout value here is the visual storytelling of a community bracing for a hit it probably cannot survive, with layouts and color choices that make the Dive feel like a real, fragile place worth fighting for. The Earthborn’s climb sequence, the layered crowd scenes, and the closing pages of Aric locked in psychic terror all use clear panel flow to track action and emotion, which gives readers something solid to hold onto even when the script gets chatty. On the writing side, the bitter arguments in the Dive and Demolition’s confession about his AI‑shaped past add texture that grounds the big cosmic armor mythology, giving the issue a few sharp character hooks instead of pure spectacle.

Negatives

The biggest drag on your time is the script’s habit of talking over its own tension, especially when Aric’s familiar origin monologue and Typhon’s extended fear lecture muscle in during what should be lean, high‑stakes pages. The sudden inheritance sequence around Niko and the ghostly family adds lore without clear immediate payoff, right when the story needs to stay glued to the siege and Aric’s impossible stand, which can make the middle third feel like a detour instead of escalation. Readers looking for a tight, tactical war issue may feel shortchanged by the amount of explanation and speechifying crammed into the countdown, and the villain still reads more like a loud concept delivery system than a fully realized person.

Art Samples:

The Scorecard

Writing Quality (Clarity & Pacing): [2/4]
Art Quality (Execution & Synergy): [4/4]
Value (Originality & Entertainment): [1/2]

Final Thoughts:

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VALIANT BEYOND: X-O MANOWAR #3 delivers a visually strong, thematically clear chapter where Aric steps up as the only wall between a desperate community and a swaggering nightmare, but the script keeps stopping to explain itself when it should be tightening the noose. If your pull list has room for a beautifully drawn, slightly over‑written wasteland war story that leans hard on fear as a weapon and honor as a curse, this issue earns a slot, but anyone craving lean plotting and a fully fleshed‑out villain might want to sample it before committing to the whole arc.

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