Most of the Defiant line ended up in my local store's 10 for a buck box so I checked it out. A lot of the books had promise, but I also felt they had off-putting elements that were going to turn away large audiences.

The art was often not that good on many of the books and the coloring made it look muddy.

The "heroes" often took that moral complexity thing from Valiant to the next level. War Dancer's goal, for example, was to destroy the world. Dogs of War had an Archer and Armstrong buddy setup, but troubled and unlikeable characters. I get that they were trying to make more complex and adult superheroes but this was right at the time when the hot books were swinging away from that with Image's childlike plot lines.

Prudence and Caution captured the Archer and Armstrong thing better but only lasted two issues. The Good Guys, with heroes created by fans, was too gimmicky. I only read a Preview issue of Charlemagne, which I thought was a unique concept but had ugly art. I liked Dark Dominion pretty well, thought that had an interesting concept with the idea of facing fear. Warriors of Plasm was ruined by gimmicks. I didn't get the 0 issue from Previews and I definitely wasn't putting it together from a card set.

More of a personal nitpick, but the whole Plasm thing, with the biological planet and the "gore for the org" is a bit of a disgusting thing for the lynchpin of the line. It looked just like snot. The cover of Plasm 0 looks like a guy playing in snot.

I dug Shooter's next effort, Broadway comics, a lot more. That had some great books like Knights of Broadway, shame it didn't last.