Valiant Announces X-O Manowar's Armor Hunters Follow-Up Dead Hand

Valiant Entertainment has just announced "Dead Hand," described as "a devastating cosmic showdown" beginning this March in X-O Manowar #34 from writer Robert Venditti and artist Diego Bernard.

You can see the first, exclusive interview with Venditti about the project here, complete with some variant covers and concept art you can't get anywhere else.

Earlier this year, X-O Manowar and Unity wrenched the world back from the chaos wrought by the invasion of the alien Armor Hunters, but in 2015, the fate of all life – human and alien alike – will be thrown into dire peril as the ultimate fail-safe of an extinct alien race has finally counted down to zero…and the robot army called Dead Hand has been activated.

The civilization that built them has fallen...and, now, to combat the doomsday threat that destroyed their world, Dead Hand will complete the mission that their creators could not. Soulless and brutal, this billion-strong legion is the phantom army of a dead world and it will cleanse the universe by any means necessary. But what unthinkable menace were they created to destroy? And will Dead Hand's slow march across the galaxy spell death for countless worlds?

"Dead Hand is going to take the mythology surrounding the X-O Manowar armor, and the entire Valiant Universe, in a direction not seen before," said writer Robert Venditti. "As formidable as the adversaries in the series have been to date, none of them measure up to this single-minded, doomsday threat. X-O Manowar has made a habit of taking what readers expect and turning it on its head. We've challenged ourselves to do that again."

"Last summer, X-O Manowar went up against the Armor Hunters for a full-metal throwdown between Earth and alien life. Well, we won the battle, but that doesn't mean we've won the war," said Valiant Editor-in-Chief Warren Simons. "Somewhere out there, something colder, grimmer, and more calculating is about to come online. And it won't concede that war, even in death. An extinct world has saved a nasty treat for the Valiant U – something insanely effective that could only exist in the wake of their failure – a dead hand. Venditti's cooked up a good one, folks."

Featuring specially manufactured overlay wrap covers by Lewis Larosa on each issue, alongside wraparound alternate covers by rising star Jorge Molina, the four-part Dead Hand action epic launches in X-O Manowar #34.

You can check out the solicitation text below.

X-O MANOWAR #34 (NEW ARC! "DEAD HAND" – PART 1)

Written by ROBERT VENDITTI
Art by DIEGO BERNARD
Cover A (Overlay Wrap) by LEWIS LAROSA
Cover B (Wraparound) by JORGE MOLINA
Variant Cover by DAS PASTORAS
Dead Hand Design Variant by JORGE MOLINA
Artist Variant by BUTCH GUICE
$3.99 | 32 pgs. | T+ | On sale MARCH 4 (FOC – 2/9/15)