Valiant Comics had some of the most powerful and unique characters in comics for several years. Valiant began publishing books in 1989 when former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter left Marvel and started to create new characters. The company was sold in 1994 to Acclaim Entertainment, and then, when that company went bankrupt in 2004, it changed hands again. DMG Entertainment ended up buying it in 2018, and in 2023, the news broke that Alien Books had licensed the Valiant characters to carry on their stories. Finally, in 2025, Alien Books teamed up with IDW Publishing, and Valiant Comics titles roared back to life.
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This is great news because it means that some of the popular characters, like Bloodshot, and some of the more powerful, like Divinity, have a chance to find new fans again.
7) Ninjak
Ninjak might not be as powerful as those characters ranked above him, but it says a lot to see him ranked at all because he is a man with zero powers, yet he still ranks alongside gods in Valiant Comics. He debuted in civilian form as Colin King in Bloodshot #6 (1993), with his costumed debut in Bloodshot #7 (1993) by Mark Moretti and Joe Quesada. His first solo comic book series, Ninjak #1, launched in November 1993 and was the highest-selling comic in the United States that month, regardless of company.
Ninjak has no superhuman powers at all, but he makes the list thanks to his martial arts mastery, MI-6 espionage training, high-tech weaponry (including his ultra-high-frequency katana), and tactical genius. He showed his power levels in the Divinity storyline (2015), when the god-tier Abram Adams made the whole Unity team experience subjective lifetimes in seconds. Ninjak was the only one able to partially resist by using a mental discipline technique for controlling his own perception of reality. He also fights the Eternal Warrior, an immortal soldier with thousands of years of experience, and never backs down.
6) Shadowman
Shadowman first appeared in X-O Manowar #4 before his solo debut in Shadowman #1 (1992), created by Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart, and David Lapham. His solo comic ran for 80 issues and was one of Valiant Comics’ most successful original titles. He is Jack Boniface, a New Orleans jazz musician bonded with the Shadow Loa, a voodoo spirit passed down his bloodline that activates his supernatural abilities. His primary antagonist is the necromancer Master Darque, who seeks to merge the living world (Liveside) with the realm of the dead (Deadside).
Shadowman’s powers include paranormal strength, night vision, regenerative healing, shadow manipulation (binding enemies in shadow chains, creating weapons from darkness), and umbraportation, which is teleportation through any area of darkness. He can freely enter and exit the Deadside and animate dead entities to fight alongside him, and in the 2012 Valiant relaunch, Jack ascended the Deadside hierarchy and gained authority over the dead itself.
5) Bloodshot
Bloodshot is the most famous Valiant Comics character thanks to the 2020 Vin Diesel movie that was adapted from the comic book. Bloodshot first appeared in three panels on the last page of Eternal Warrior #4 (1992), with his first full appearance in Rai #0 (1992). Kevin VanHook, Don Perlin, and Bob Layton created the character. His powers come from experimental nanites injected into his bloodstream by the government contractor Project Rising Spirit.
His powers include superhuman strength and endurance, near-unlimited regeneration (by consuming organic matter), shapeshifting, and technopathy that lets him interface with computers and weapons systems. He was also a blank slate, as the government gave him false memories before every mission, and no persona stuck. Bloodshot U.S.A. showed his immense power when the U.S. government weaponized Bloodshot as a delivery vector, spreading his nanites across New York City and turning ordinary civilians into Bloodshot-like super-soldiers that he then had to fight and contain.
4) Livewire
Livewire debuted in Harbinger #15 (1993) by Bob Layton and Joe St. Pierre. Livewire is Amanda McKee, a psiot teletechnopath who can interface with and control any machine, computer system, or network through willpower alone. Discovered by Toyo Harada, she became his most trusted aide within the Harbinger Foundation before defecting. Her powers were greater than just electronics control, as she can also control magnetic fields, letting her interact with non-electronic metal.
In her single most impressive feat in the comics, she stripped the X-O Manowar armor, the most powerful weapon in the known Valiant universe, directly off Aric of Dacia, wore it herself, used it to subdue his entire Visigoth army, and personally defused an incoming nuclear strike. In Livewire‘s 2018 reboot, she shut down the entire U.S. power grid to protect psiots from government persecution. This act killed people dependent on hospital machinery and fractured the Valiant hero community, one of the most consequential morally gray acts by any Valiant hero.
3) X-O Manowar
X-O Manowar first appeared in X-O Manowar #1 (1992), co-created by Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart, Bob Layton, and Barry Windsor-Smith. He is Aric of Dacia, a 5th-century Visigoth warrior abducted by the alien Vine. After he steals their most sacred weapon, the living armor Shanhara, he returns to Earth 1,600 years after he left. The Shanhara armor is sentient. It was once a young girl whose father bonded her to the suit to save her life. She became permanently one with the armor and remains its soul and AI, choosing which hosts she will accept and which she will reject.
At peak output, the X-O armor withstood an attack described in the comics as capable of erasing a planet like Earth from existence. It also broke a containment field specifically engineered by the advanced Vine civilization to restrain it. X-O Manowar outranks Livewire because while she can wield the armor temporarily, Aric has fully bonded with Shanhara and can access its maximum potential, including a power threshold she never safely reached.
2) Toyo Harada
Toyo Harada made his major appearance in Harbinger #1 (1992) by Jim Shooter and
David Lapham. His full origin was told in Harbinger #0 (1993). As a child, Toyo Harada witnessed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima firsthand, which unlocked his Omega-level psionic abilities. His telepathy lets him read, control, and manipulate the thoughts of any sentient being, broadcast his consciousness across the entire planet, and cross language barriers by speaking directly mind-to-mind.
Toyo’s telekinesis is near-limitless. He can levitate giant objects, generate destructive psychokinetic blasts, create force fields, fly at supersonic speeds, and crush armored vehicles into compact balls of scrap with a thought. He secretly influenced the Cuban Missile Crisis, the end of Apartheid, the events of Tiananmen Square, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. He has been quietly engineering history for decades, showing his true power. He is also immune to reality warping, even from god-level characters.
1) Divinity
Divinity debuted in Divinity #1 (2015) by Matt Kindt and Trevor Hairsine. Abram Adams is a Russian cosmonaut who volunteered for a decades-long solo deep-space mission. He returned to Earth, landing in the Australian outback, as something the Valiant Universe had never encountered. He was a being of effectively unlimited power. His abilities include manipulation of space, time, matter, and subjective perception. He turned a scorched desert into a lush oasis, granted wishes to those near him, and made the entire Unity team experience complete subjective lifetimes in seconds while time barely moved.
When X-O Manowar, Livewire, Eternal Warrior, and Ninjak were sent to capture or terminate him, he defeated all of them simultaneously and without much effort. Ninjak was the only one able to partially resist. The ironic part is that Divinity is a god-level character with no desire to be a villain. He is kind, generous, and genuinely confused by human fear of him. No other character on this list has defeated the rest of the list combined, and his power ceiling remains untested.
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