Matt Kindt's time writing X-O Manowar comes to a close with the art team he started it out with. How do they send Aric of Dacia off?
In this issue, a chapter comes to an end.
Written by Matt Kindt
Illustrated by Tomas Giorello and Isaac Goodhart
Colored by Diego Rodriguez and Andrew Dalhouse
Lettered by Dave Sharpe
With the plot wrapped up in issue #25, “X-O Manowar” #26 concludes Matt Kindts time writing the book with a poignant epilogue, mostly with the artists that started out with him, Tomas Giorello and Diego Rodriguez. This issues epilogue qualities come through in Aric of Dacia’s introspective monologue as he takes stock of his experiences. Aric’s monologue ties together the various episodes in this issue as it becomes something of a Earth wide road trip. The content of this monologue reads like a love letter to his ever present life partner, Shanhara, the sentient bio-armor that has been with him all these years. As a love letter it is the emotional culmination of everything Matt Kindt and his various artistic collaborators have built towards in this run on “X-O Manowar.”
Structurally this issue isn’t to far off from another issue of Valiant Entertainment written by Matt Kindt, “Divinity” #0. In both cases our leads take stock of where they’ve been while facing the inevitable adventure. Kindt sent Adam Abrams on a long walk in “Divinity,” this time he follows Aric on just another day of work as the protector of Earth. As something of a road trip, it allows Kindt to write a series of 3-5 page adventures for Aric to go on and give Giorello and Rodriguez many different types of scenarios to draw.
As Aric blasts off from crisis to crisis connected by that running monologue, it lets the lead character and creative team take stock of where they’ve been and how they have grown. This is a run that was all about exploring the multifaceted identity of Aric of Dacia. A majority of the collections from this run mark Aric as a class, from soldier to emperor, barbarian, to agent of GATE, and eventually a hero. These classes are the prism with witch Kindt has tracked the characters growth and stumbles. Aric is still growing, of the adventures in this issue the single best page is a simple one of Aric trying to fly to Thailand, or Thai-Land as he puts it, on his own without Shanhara’s guidance. The sincere effort by Kindt and the art teams to treat Aric of Dacia as a complex human being is why this run has packed with more emotional nuance and growth in 26 issues compared to Robert Venditti’s 50 issues.
Kindt’s mechanism for showing this growth was a novel twist on the sidekick role. He gave the armor, Shanhara, a voice and with it someone Aric could always talk to. Their relationship isn’t the uneven power dynamic that defines the mentor-sidekick relationship, theirs is a true partnership. If anything Aric recognizes his own frailty in comparison to Shanhara. This dynamic is waiting for a reading with similar implications to the polygamous triad from Venom – and that was before Schon had a suit of her own born from Shanhara. By giving Shanhara a voice, Kindt gave “X-O” the first constant companion since the original Valiant to explore him with.
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