VALIANT COMICS: X-O MANOWAR

By the end of 1992, X-O Manowar had published 11 issues. The Unity crossover was presented in issues 7 and 8. Shooter wrote issues 1 through 3 and issue 5.

The story follows Aric Dacia, a 5th century Visigoth who was enslaved by the extraterrestrial Spider Aliens. He spent the next fifteen hundred years aboard a Spider Alien spaceship. Due to time-dilation effect of near-light-speed travel, he only aged a couple years. Aric eventually escaped, stealing the Spider Aliens' 'X-O, Manowar Class' body armour in the process.

The armour, the then supreme variant of the alien's exo-armour research, was able to apart itself to its wearer, making a pyshic or telepathic link thereby enabling it to react at extreme speed to any threat to the wearer. It later became clear that the "manufacture" process for the armour, which appeared not only self-repairing but also capable of spontaneous 'budding' to generate a new version of itself, involved the absorption of a sentient intelligence which became the armour's own sentience.

At first, Aric struggled to adjust to the late-20th-century Earth. He encountered a number of Valiant Universe heroes, befriending some and alienating others. Through a twist of fate, he wound up gaining control of Orb Industries, a dummy corporation founded by Spider Aliens. [source]