What Is Valiant Doing With Its (Probably) AI Generated Shorts Site?

It’s been a weird few years for Valiant — well, decade maybe — and it seems possible that things may be getting even weirder, thanks to an unearthed website that seems to be set up to sell AI generated versions of the Valiant characters, possibly in animation. Or maybe as vertical scroll comics? Or potentially jean shorts? Probably not the latter.

I’m going to set this up, hopefully, as simply as possible. About a week ago Valiant Entertainment began posting teasers on Instagram with characters including Bloodshot, X-O Manowar and more with the text, “We’ve been on watch. Some think they’re just stories. We know the truth. Follow the trail to see what’s coming. Register at the link in bio to track what’s next.”

That was followed by another post showing Ninjak, Shadowman, Punk Mambo, as well as Eternal Warrior and X-O Manowar, from the back, with the post text stating, “They’ve unleashed beyond the pages,” and the graphic adding “hint: it’s not a comic book.” Also, with no artist credited and a familiar, slick style, commenters began wondering whether this was all AI generated.

…So what is it, though, if not a comic book? Well, the link takes you to Valiant’s linktree, with a link there stating “Be first on Valiant Shorts.” That takes you to a website that teases the Valiant characters, the Shorts app, and offers up no real additional information. And if you try to make an inquiry on their form, it tells you to try again later without sending an email.

As of a day ago, you were able to access the app site itself, which used to offer up a lot more information, up until folks on the internet started passing it around and now it brings up a blank white page. That included the first “shows” from the Valiant Shorts app, with multiple episodes — though whether they’re animated episodes, or vertical scroll episodes in the Webtoon mode is TBA as you were unable to click past the main page. Those episodes cost “coins” on the app, also similar to Webtoon, though the relatively bare bones site (which is not accessible in that form anymore) seemed to tout that there would be ads, and no free episodes.

However, the site was clearly unfinished, including Lorem Ipsum text under a section about “Why Valiant?” and the company’s (incorrect) address at 123 Marvel Street in Los Angeles. So hey, maybe it’s all placeholder text? Maybe the whole thing is beautiful, non-AI art and they were just joking about this whole thing. Good joke! Got me!

Thankfully, AJ Ampadu, who is currently writing Valiant Beyond: Tales of the Shadowman, helped clarify this all a bit on Facebook in the Valiant Superfan Group… Or rather, clarify what this is not:

It’s AJ Ampadu, current writer of Tales of the Shadowman for Valiant/Alien Books.

Recently, an image was posted on the Valiant IG for an upcoming multimedia project. That image appears very likely to have been generated with AI. I just want to make a few things clear:

Alien Books handles the publication of Valiant comics, but nothing else.

The parent company that owns the Valiant characters retains the ability to use those characters in multimedia however they choose.

The other creatives and I at Alien have never used, and will never use, AI to create comics.

I personally have not been given any information about the project that was posted, but it has nothing to do with the comic books.

I know some people are disappointed, and understandably so. I’m not here to change anyone’s opinion on AI. I simply want to make sure the creative teams at Alien Books, who work very hard to create original, human-generated comic books, are not blamed for any decisions the parent company makes regarding the use of AI.

Ampadu also posted a video on BlueSky reiterating the same info.

…But this itself raises a host of questions, like if this is indeed AI generated versions of the Valiant characters and the comics writers and artists are not involved, what was the AI trained on? Who is training the AI? And how will it actually be executed on when the app goes live?

As is, despite attempting to reach out multiple ways, Valiant did not reply for comment on this piece as of publication time. We’ll have more on this as it develops.

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