Manowar has just announce unexpected announcement…..

That’s the name of the latest comic event from publisher Valiant Entertainment, who’s teaming up with Alien Books to introduce and reintroduce fans to Valiant characters like Ninjak, Shadowman, and most importantly for our purposes, X-O Manowar.

That’s right – Aric, the hero from the Visigoth age, is back in a new one-shot at Valiant, for an adventure with a pretty huge twist. Shanhara, the alien armor that makes him a superhero, has abandoned him, leaving him to rely on his wits and history as a warrior. But stranded in what Valiant calls an “alien jungle,” will those skills be enough for him to survive?

The new X-O Manowar comic will be written by Valiant stalwart Fred van Lente, who says of this new adventure, “we wanted to create the perfect X-O story to serve both people who are new to Aric’s story and long-time Valiant fans. ”

Van Lente is joined by artist Jesus Barrios, and the one-shot will feature variant covers by Leo Lujan, Richard Ortiz, Guillermo Fajardo, Leo Lujan, and Richard Ortiz. Popverse is excited to reveal both the Fajardo and Lujan covers, respectively, which you can view on either side of this article.

What we don’t know yet is exactly how the X-O adventure will tie into the larger Resurgence event, in which the heroes of the Valiant U go toe-to-toe with a reality-warping mad scientist called Doctor Silk, although we did get a guarantee from Van Lente that, “the crossover is so vast that we really needed these special issues to show how the events affect our major players — and vice versa.”

He continues, “The villain of this X-O one-shot is new to Aric but not new to me — or the Valiant Universe, and opens a brand new chapter in that spacefaring side of our — oops, I’ll shut up now, I’ve already spoiled too much!”