A teacher and superheroine body swap fantasy, all in one!

---

TSF Showcase 2024-44
Lady Valiant by Tom Roberts, Xamrock, and Team Lady Valiant

Well, this one was a long-time coming. Lady Valiant is a superhero body swap comic that began publication in 2017 and has steadily grown into something far, far larger. A 600+ page main comic, 500+ page supplemental side comic, and dozens of side stories and spin-offs that run the gamut. It is something I have been aware of since 2018 and, like many big, grand, ongoing TSF works that creators make into their livelihoods, I have been checking in on it every few years. 

Now, there is a LOT to cover when tackling Lady Valiant. Between the dozens of side stories and the fact that the series is ongoing, I would be here all day if I tried talking about everything. So, instead, I am only going to cover the first 585 pages of the main comics. This covers the first two major story arcs and gives a nice place to cap things off.

Also, thanks to Rain for recommending I tackle this work. I’m not sure how sustainable this segment will be come 2025, but you want me to do a future TSF Showcase on something, let me know in the little box down below.

---

Part 1: Every Teenage Boy’s Fantasy

Set in a world of superheroes and supervillains, Lady Valiant follows Tom Simpson. A regular-old teenager with a fixation on superhero statistics, particularly those of his city’s resident protector, Lady Valiant. A super strong and flight-based super who just so happens to be the secret identity of Tom’s high school teacher, Angela Lane. One day after school, he gets close to her super tussle, hoping to get some good pictures and ‘data’. But a routine run-in with a C-class jobber becomes serious as Lady Valiant’s main antagonist, Outlet. A Doctor Octopus like super-genius with metal manipulation powers and a terminal disease of some manner. 

In a move that is almost certainly inspired by Dan Slott’s Dying Wish Spider-Man storyline— where Doctor Octopus stole Peter Parker’s body— Outlet plans on stealing Lady Valiant’s body to extend his own life. …And things do not go according to plan. The swap spider doodads fail to snatch Angela’s body, the fallout of the battle sees Tom get severely injured, and the spiders, somehow, end up swapping Angela’s and Tom instead. 

Waking up the following day, Tom is a bit slow on the uptake, but gradually works through the details. That he is in the body of his teacher, that she is Lady Valiant, and that he is in full control of her bombshell 10/10 body. Except before he can go investigate things in more detail, the call of action pulls him away, and he ventures off to test his stuff by fighting a jobber supervillain… and taking him out in one punch. Enthralled by how much power he has, Tom decides to head off to get some better stats at the local quarry.

While Tom is getting to grips with his new body, Outlet recovers from the walloping he received yesterday and goes to execute his plan. But not by targeting Angela Lane’s body. Instead, he targets her mother, the original Lady Valiant, Herald Lane. A blonde woman who is supposedly 76-years-old, yet looks like she could be Angela’s sister. She still has the same powers, but her retirement has made her rusty, allowing Outlet to successfully sick his spiders and snag her skin for himself. Going so far as to even suit her body up with his mechanical accouterments.

This all happens across the first 38 page issue of the series, and as a start, it is rather strong. Things move at a brisk pace, it establishes the two central possessions, highlights the gulf of experience between the protagonist and antagonist, and finds enough time for some good action. It also isn’t in short supply in terms of cheesecake, and for those who are hungry for more, the comic does boast a supplemental extension with My New Body. 

A ‘spin-off’ that shows both Tom and Outlet as they break in their new bodies. For Tom, it is a necessity where he gets lost in the thrill of his new body while taking his first shower. While Outlet views this as a means of exerting his power onto this body, tearing off his clothes as he mercilessly fucks himself, loving every damn minute of it. While both ultimately are masturbation sequences, the deliberate coloring, alternating perspective, and contrast between the two does ultimately add to these characters and delivers on the otherwise suggestive content.

Jumping back a bit, you might have noticed that I called these possessions, rather than body swaps, and that is largely for pedantic reasons. While both of these are technically body swaps, a body swap that follows only one character, while the other is comatose or incapacitated, is functionally identical to a possession. It is a trend that I have seen in many body swap stories over the years, and I understand why. A lot of people invested in TSF like seeing hot girls act like dudes but do not like seeing schlubby dudes act like girls. There is nothing wrong with that preference, though I do wish that more ‘swap’ enthusiasts acknowledged how any body swap story is actually two or more stories. Sure, that might not be as interesting, but I just think it’s very telling how both the FTM characters get comatose right from the get-go. 

Though that’s not to say there are no male characters, as the next stretch of story sees Tom meet up with his buddy John, who is effectively the perverted and kinda dumb friend character. Tom tells John the truth, pulls out the old ‘I know where you hide your porn’ line to prove his identity, and proceeds to… act like a teenage guy in an adult woman’s body. Dressing scantily, eating oodles of phallic meat, talking about how much he masturbated, and playing video games together. Good humanizing stuff that establishes Tom as just some kid… before they get a call from Tom’s mom, informing him of what happened to Angela in his body. 

Rushing to the hospital, Tom sees his mother heartbroken over these events and Angela wrapped in bandages all over her. While the visual language here is a bit… muted, this sight stirs something within Tom and steels his resolve. His reckless behavior has brought an untold amount of grief to his mother and left his teacher, a hero in more ways than one, in a coma. He needs to take this situation seriously, handle the responsibilities he has been given, and act like an adult. A call to action that he hypes up… before deciding nah.

Tom mulls over Angela’s bills for a while, goes to school dressed up like a tart, buys an entertainment set-up that does not match the more standard depictions seen in the rest of the comic. (Great continuity!) Records some stats with John at the training grounds at the local quarry. And whoop some robbers like they’re nothing. It all makes him out to be a very reckless protagonist. Someone who is eking out the most of this temporary experience, indulging in his fantasies or power and sexual allure, and spending money like he never could before. Which would be fine… except for how Tom’s resolve was just established in the hospital scene. 

After this, there is a brief reminder that Outlet is still in Herald’s body and working on a new exoskeleton suit to complement his new form. This includes a new outfit that, much like the first one he sports after landing this body, never shows up again. …And another brief scene where various crooks on prison island are talking about how Lady Valiant has been more aggressive as of late, and they need to hit harder to get back at her. This is meant to be foreshadowing for the next section… but the characters seen here are different people than the goons who show up later on. I don’t mean to pry too much on these things, as I completely understand how they happen. When releasing a webcomic page by page, it is very easy to lose track of small bits of continuity, but I would at least expect the right two characters to be used in scenes with only two characters.

Jumping back to Tom, he receives a suspicious ‘hair appointment’ request on his phone, but in actuality it is a cover-up for him to meet up with Whisper. A Nick Fury pastiche who works for SHIELD pastiche, SWAP, short for Special Weapons Access and Procedures. Contrary to their name, they do not specialize in body swaps— they just encounter them a lot— and are aware of the fact Tom and Angela swapped. They lack the technology to return them to normal, or the others affected by the stray swap spiders, but they are keeping an eye on Tom. 

Now, does this serve as the thing to strengthen his resolve? Nah. He’s stylin on not-Rhino and not-fem-Doc-Ock on the next page. And two pages later, he is meeting with the principal. Not for dressing like a tart though, for the slipping quality of his lesson plans and tutoring John too much. In light of this, Tom gets in his car, remarking “damnit, being an adult is hard.” When… the story really has not shown off the struggles of being an adult. Being told to spend less time with John means little when he can, and does, still go over to visit Tom at Angela’s house. And… actually, I think this is a good time to pause things and break, as there are a few things that have been building up across the first 100 pages.

---

Part 2: Wash Away The Details and A New Coat of Glossy Paint

When I sat down to read Lady Valiant, I started with some old files I gathered years ago, rather than reading directly from its very slow website. While doing so, I noticed a few oddities in the font choices, spacing issues and some jammed text boxes. I thought that this looked a bit tacky and checked if there were updated versions on the official website… and there were. But these versions also omitted certain details. 

Namely, instead of Angela being an algebra teacher at Coolidge Community College, she is a teacher of an unspecified subject who works at an unspecified high school, located in this unspecified California/Florida coded city. …Actually, in reviewing the pages for screengrabs, I noticed that Tom does refer to “start[ing] with math” on page 97. But I think that is just a clumsy rewrite of ‘get deep into variables.’ Because the line makes no sense in a high school setting. You don’t call math class math, you call it algebra, geometry, etc.

Now, I have no problem with doing rewrites and modifying small details of a story— I did that with my first few novels a while back, and it made them objectively better. However, the nature of some of these rewrites highlights a problem with the storytelling that becomes more apparent as the story goes on. Angela’s job as a teacher is barely touched upon in the story itself, and whenever it does show up, it is always masked with deliberate vagaries. As someone who has covered a lot of school-based TSF works, this is particularly confusing to me, as it is more or less ignoring a core pillar of a student/teacher body swap story. Being a teacher. Learning the material ahead of time, learning how to effectively teach it, and presenting as a teacher before a class of students.

I would not say this is a necessary part of the narrative, but if you are not going to delve into this detail, then why even bother with the school setting? Especially when the school setting introduces so many problems with a superhero story like this and a long-term body swap story. Being a high school teacher is one of the most scheduled, regimented, and time-intensive jobs there is. You need to be at a place as ass-early-o’clock, deal with rowdy kids from ages 13 to 20, and while kids these days might have lots of homework, teachers have way more. Grading papers, modifying lesson plans, needing to give lectures and answer the same questions all day long. Between all of that, who has the time to cook, clean, relax, and save the world from destruction?

Now, if Angela was a college professor, that would dramatically change things. Depending on one’s agreement with the university, teaching could be a part-time job where one works as little as 15 hours a week. Though, that is highly dependent on the subject. Still not as flexible as a reporter job, the ideal superhero job, but that’s another topic altogether. 

By choosing this approach, the story inadvertently raises a lot of questions about when events are taking place, whether this teaching job is endangering humanity, and how Tom as Angela is managing his schedule. Admittedly, these are all minor quibbles, but it begs the question why Roberts went with this approach. …Actually, I think I know why. Because hot high school teachers are a common trope in fiction, common experience among teenage boys, and high school settings, for as trite as they may be, reflect a near-universal experience. 

Edit 12/29/2024: Nevermind, I’m wrong! According to Tom Roberts, this change was made due to restrictions with what works can be published on the TSF comics site, TGComics. They did not want high school protagonists, so Tom was aged up to a college student.

However, there is another tangent I have in me before moving on. If you go to the Lady Valiant website as of when this showcase was first published, you will see that the first 100 pages of the comic are only in black and white. However, in July 2024, the Lady Valiant Team went to the trouble of remastering these pages, fully coloring and shading them and fixing nits and bits along the way. So, why are these pages not available on the website? Well, they are, but you need to join their Patreon to access them. You don’t need to pay them, you just need to join and follow them. 

There’s no banner or anything telling people to do this on the site itself— the banners are years out of date actually— and there was only one update on their blog/patreon informing people of this. This was a dumb decision. They should have just updated the website to feature the new colored pages, as they obviously want people to see them over the black and white originals.

As for the coloring itself… it has problems. The most obvious one is an attempt at creating more dynamic or natural lighting. The tops of hundreds of panels are slathered with this bright filter that is meant to represent the sun or a bright light source, and it is both senseless and tacky. It washes out the colors beneath this filter, and often doesn’t make sense. While the second-most obvious one is Angela’s hair.

Referring to the body, Angela’s hair was originally portrayed as black with the series cover, but as coloring was introduced, it became black with some purple highlighting to make it stand out more. The highlighting gradually grew following the original wave of coloring, slowly transitioning to it just being purple on page 209 with one of the series’ many artistic shifts. With the remaster of the first 100 pages, the art team could not decide what to do with the hair color. Sometimes it is the bright purple is settled into, which I think looks best. Other times, it is black with purple accents. That would be one thing, when they make the hair black, the colorists colored away certain details in the original line art. Which… is not something a colorist should ever do. 

When the colorists do add detail, it generally looks quite good, a more complete image than the original. It accentuates certain visual motifs, makes characters easier to distinguish, and overall improves the visual language of the work. But there simply was not enough quality control, and certain choices made… are bad. 

Such as the way nipples are over-emphasized in the colored version in a way that just looks lecherous and unrealistic. With the worst examples being pages 66 and 97, where the nipples are poking out from Angela’s shirt so much you can see a square foot of boob. It looks like one of those AI generated pin-ups where the AI doesn’t understand what clothes are and how they work and the prompter doesn’t care. 

Oh, and I cannot forget how the colorist made the aforementioned Nick Fury pastiche, Whisper, Black during the first 100 pages. When, throughout the rest of the series, he is White. I have zero clue how nobody in the production process noticed that, and part of me thinks this must be some sort of in-joke. Nick Fury was ‘race swapped’ after the success of Ultimate and MCU Nick Fury after all. And by race swap, I mean replaced by his Black son.

…Actually, one more thing before I get back to the main comic. While webcomics are typically not published in any sort of package, they are often divided and denoted in terms of storylines. This has been a standard since time immemorial— or at least Bob and George— which makes the lack of chapters in Lady Valiant very strange. Storylines help the reader better divide when things happen in a comic, makes it easier to refer to specific sections, and… generally leads to better writing. Because you need to partition ideas into buckets.

---

Part 3: Can I Really Be the Hero?

Resuming at page 100, Outlet has somehow called forth two goons (or thugs if you prefer) to do some dirty work of some manner. Except… who are these people? Well, one of them is actually someone seen briefly in the prologue, a strong bloke named Goliath. But the blonde man is never given a name, seen before this stretch of four pages, or after it. Clearly, he had to be here for a reason, but I guess he got cut somehow? And why does Outlet need them to begin with? He is lying low, nobody is going after him, and is clearly whipping up some plan of some sort. Is this just to remind the audience that he is still around and still a technomancer by putting some C-lister in an exosuit? …Yeah, pretty much.

Things then cut away to show Tom visiting Angela in his body and seeing his mother again, clearly distraught over this whole situation… but in a way that only crops up when in the hospital. I can tell what Roberts is trying to do here, show Tom as a character of two minds, feeling both bad for the situation and wanting to enjoy this thrilling experience while he can. Yet, that is not what is being presented on the pages, and definitely does not mesh with how selfishly Tom behaved in the prior chapters. 

After this visit, Tom has a run-in with Goliath, now decked out in perky pink power armor. Up until this point, Tom has not had to fend off against anything more than minor threats and has not had to learn how to really use his powers, and this fight serves as a wake-up call to him. He makes some strides, but gets smacked around more than a bit, and is eventually saved by Turbulence in a bit of cross promotion for her comic, also produced by Team Lady Valiant. (Which I might cover if people want to see it.) She’s an experienced veteran who trounces this third-rate villain with second-rate tech before having a chat with Tom, already knowing about his situation.

This leads into a humanizing little scene where the two eat burgers while sitting on a billboard, Turbulence telling Tom how superhuman bodies need two things. To eat an excessive amount of food to meet their required caloric intake and to tend to their super sexual urges. Which I view as a cheeky way to justify so many in-universe porn comics, side stories, and references to masturbation. It’s simply a funny conversation to throw in after a major fight scene, while also openly putting Tom in the role of the rookie, showing reverence and hesitation around Turbulence while she is casual yet regimented.

It also leads Tom to realize that he sucks at being a hero and, following a conversation with John, hitting up Turbulence to do some training at the old quarry. …For two pages before things shift back over to an update with Outlet. After settling into Herald’s body for a few weeks, he finally ventures out into the public, donning her old superheroine outfit and heading to the Sky-Fort. Basically a giant Helicarrier but without the turbines. He moseys through security, acting casually before accessing a computer… and getting stopped by an associate of Herald’s. 

I have to say that I just love the simplicity of how this guy verifies whether Outlet is who he appears to be. He posits two usual responses, gets non-answers, then feeds Outlet a fake nickname. It’s such a simple yet effective way to weed out body snatchers that creators could and should steal it. Or use it to make sure their friends haven’t been body snatched! …Course, if they haven’t, then you seem like a weirdo. But that’s pretty appropriate. After all, if you’re reading this, you’re into TSF and body swapping, ya weirdo!

With Outlet discovered as a faker, he proceeds to retaliate by showing off his newfound powers. I’m not entirely sure how, but he managed to transfer his metal manipulation ability to Herald’s body and takes the tech in the Sky-Fort to form a metal suit that tears away his existing costume. As with everything else, it is pretty lewd, but it is a good ‘corrupted heroine’ design, with jagged sinister patterns and one side exposed, because evil in female bodies generates heat. At least in superhero comics. (People probably aren’t getting these decade-old AT4W references, but that’s okay.)

Predictably, Outlet manages to overpower the heroes in the Sky-Fort, having not really gained much beyond vague ‘information’ and making himself known to the enemy. A bit boneheaded, but that’s villains for you.

Shifting back to Tom, he is now leading a field trip at the local museum, which I guess implies that Angela is a history teacher, or maybe English because… wait, no. American Literature and Composition and US History was a hybrid class only used by my school district. In this more public setting, Tom is remarkably more professional in how he conducts himself, dressing conservatively, trying to be attentive, and pushing away his pervy co-worker. It shows Tom easing into the life he has assumed, taking things seriously after the wake-up call with Goliath. A sense of responsibility that carries over when some schmuck knocks over a vase and summons a Roman centurion named Tiberius.

John and Tom work together so Tom can make a clean get-away, ducking into a janitor’s closet for a classic changing sequence, showing off his recent findings of the Lady Valiant uniform. Rather than just be durable spandex, it is actually a shifting organism, capable of assuming multiple designs, self-repair, and, as seen here, can double as underwear. …Or rather, a band of cloth that I think is stored around Tom’s waist, implying that he was going commando. …Huh. 

Tom then returns to the museum as Lady Valiant and tries to talk down Tiberius, once again showing his attempts at growth… before making the mistake of touching a Tiberius’s hand. Romans hate that! They fight, Tom shows off his new trick of shooting his costume forward to grab Tiberus’s sword a la Spider-Man’s webbing. But before the battle can conclude, Tiberius finds the relic he was looking for and teleports away back to a metaphysical realm beyond Earth. The realm of the Goddess Minerva!

What, you thought that this superhero universe wasn’t going to ape from Roman mythology? Get real! Mythology is a free idea bucket and everybody kinda knows how the Greek/Roman gods work, so every two-bit and 128-bit writer worth their salt tackles it eventually. Even me! Barely!

Later that night, Tom finds himself transported to Minerva’s domain, where she explains that Angela is one of Minerva’s champions, a vassal for her divine powers who was tasked to defend this world. While she is not happy about Tom being in Angela’s body, she also cannot return him to his own body, so she decides to make the best of this situation. To have Tom train and gain the resolve necessary to be the hero he appears to be. Before he can prove himself, his armor will be locked away. This should lead into some sort of more serious training arc… but that doesn’t happen.

Tom literally only does two heroic feats after this encounter. Jumping ahead a bit, he beats a tentacle pervert while at the beach and rescues people after a road collapses, if only because it delayed his commute. Real hero energy there.

Before getting into that though, the story also takes the opportunity to introduce a new semi-major character in the story, Doctor Elizabeth Cummings. A mousy researcher who touches Tiberius’s sword after the battle… and gains She-Hulk powers. She becomes tall, buff, tan, and blonde, with a body carrying a good amount of God energy. She is plenty pleased by this transformation, wants to stay this way, and even decides to venture off into her own attempt at heroing by going after some robbers… equipped with a minigun. 

Elizabeth, having never had a gun pointed at her before, chickens out during the encounter, leading Minerva to possess her form and show her how a real hero does it. It’s a novel insertion of a brief FTF possession and presents this powerful goddess as a pervert who thinks nothing of going on a joyride with a potential champion’s body. I’d say something about characterization, but she’s a Roman god. This isn’t even in the top thirty most wild things they got up to.

This presumed rape serves as a twisted deterrence for Elizabeth and after spending a week(?) in that form, she finds herself returned to normal, thinking that the power was only temporary. But after trying to return her new clothes, she winds up encountering the second electricity themed jobber in their series and returns to her buff form. Minerva guides her, telling her that unless she pushes through her timid nature and fights the good fight, her powers and body will be stripped from her yet again. It is a form of tough love, but it works, giving Elizabeth the pressure needed to grit her teeth and bear the pain as she breaks several bones in her opponent’s body. Thus establishing a secondary character with her own little sub-arc, enough to get the job done, but nothing too remarkable.

---

Part 4: The Women of Lady Valiant

Before going back to Tom’s side of the story, I want to take another moment to talk about something that… bugs me about this series. Namely how it depicts its female-bodied (hereafter abbreviated to female) characters and how they are used in the story. The vast majority of female characters in Lady Valiant are tall, busty, have an hourglass figure, and match Eurocentric supermodel body standards to a tee. 

The reasons for this are simple. This physique is often seen as a default for certain artists who specialize in drawing hot babes. It is the default female build in superhero comics and a lot of legacy nerd media. This is a Patreon-backed production and many top donors are men of specific tastes who want to see their narrow preferences reflected in this work. And this is generally seen as a safe, familiar, marketable image.

I don’t care that this is the design for Angela’s body, but it is always glaring to me when this is the default next to the physical variety of the male characters. Tom and John are short little man-nuggets, halfway to goblin town. Some men are so throbbing with muscle they have shoulders six heads wide, a physique only a freak could love. While others have more reasonable proportions, spread across both heroes and civilians. It makes the female hero designs look… boring by comparison, as I can tell the artists are capable of drawing female characters with more varied body types. I’ve seen Xamrock’s DeviantArt!

Instead, the only major character with a different physique up to this point is Elizabeth’s hero form. (Yes, her mousy original form also gets a busty hourglass figure after her first appearance.) However, the art team fluctuates the proportions of Elizabeth’s buff form… and a lot of characters in general. Even Angela’s body does not have the most definite proportions, drifting about over time.

This lack of variety in female forms is also notable considering how much of this story centers around female-bodied characters, as characters tend to blend into each other. I don’t want to say they look like modified versions of each other, largely only differentiated by their hair or tan… but they do. I get that this series is primarily targeting a male demographic, but at least throw in some variety! Thicc girls, beefy girls, girls with dick-destroying thighs, superheroines with lethal hips and asses that men would pay to get smacked by.

This could at least be avoided if there were more male-bodied characters, but the series is generally reluctant to repeat them beyond talking roles. For about 300 pages, from page 188 to 495, the only major male-bodied characters are John, a (generally) comic relief character, and Whisper, who is pretty much a corporate admin who mostly does exposition.

---

Part 5: Dawn of Operation Oppais, Dood!

Currently, I am at page 204 in the series, but the next 130 or so pages pretty much fly by, as not a lot is actually accomplished. Tom visits the secret underground facility to get a new uniform and meets with a blue-haired fashionista who suits him up with what will become the Lady Valiant uniform for the rest of the comic. 

This is followed by a filler chapter where Tom goes to the beach for the day and gets jumped by a… a hentai supervillain. Specifically, a fat ugly bastard in a giant squid robot that covers Tom with sticky blank ooze and grabs him with tentacles. It is a fine enough chapter, showing Tom being more comfortable with his powers and thinking more intuitively, but this whole thing was obviously just included for some TNA. 

Things cut away to show Outlet back in his lab, currently trying to eke out every bit of Herald’s knowledge as she stews in his unconscious body. This takes the form of a virtual reality battle between the two, Herald in her vintage costume and Outlet in his metal getup. 

It’s not particularly plot relevant, but it does a good job of showing how domineering and brutal Outlet truly is. Toying with her, threatening her family, all while using his digital reality to incapacitate her despite her best efforts. Then, after leaving her fuming with rage, he decides to take a more direct approach and contact ‘Angela’ to go out to lunch. An offer that Tom cannot refuse. …I mean, he should refuse it, but Whisper never warned Tom that Outlet is in Herald’s body, even though he is absolutely someone who needs to know. Like, top five people.

Questionable logic aside, I have to say that I really like this scene. It is of two people trying to pretend to be someone else, not fully knowing how to act like them or how they act around each other. Tom is dressed in an overly formal manner, Outlet is too casual, they are out in public, being seen by others, and trying to eat steaks (or burgers?) in an appropriately ladylike manner. Outlet thinks that ‘Angela’ is merely being guarded and not revealing any unnecessary detail as a rule. Tom thinks that he is about to get caught any minute now. It’s a great dynamic, only undercut by how this tension gets interrupted with Elizabeth’s side plot. 

This is followed by a few more scenes meant to show Tom’s shifting relationship with his current life. Celebrating a job well done by playing a fighting game, dressing more professionally at school, and going out on a date with the aforementioned blue-haired girl. These are meant to show Tom settling more into his new life and body, trying to achieve a balance between responsibility and indulgences, though it does not really feel like that in execution.

When smoothed over and crumpled together, this gives the impression of character growth, but when looking at the fine details, it all feels like these decisions or scenes were determined on a whim. They don’t feel like the result of a planned and defined progression. They feel like a bunch of stuff that happens one beat after the other.

On that note, remember how Tom has his suit taken away until he can prove himself? Well, the story is finally going back to that plot beat. While going to work one day, there is a traffic accident and, with the roads backed up, Tom sports his Lady Valiant costume and rescues people trapped in their cars. A simple heroic response that shows Tom realizes that heroism is about more than stopping crime… I guess. Which is enough for Minerva to arrive in his home and give back the Lavy Valiant costume. Really, it is not deserved, and is just a hasty way to solve this conflict before the arc ends.

Right after this, on page 341 (I told you not a lot happened), Angela finally wakes up in Tom’s body, six months after falling into a coma. This… was surprising. At this point, it had been years since Tom’s body was seen in the comic, and I’d imagine that most readers had forgotten about this stray factor. But now there is finally an FTM character and this can become a true body swap story. …Right?

Angela tries to keep her true identity secret, but she openly hates this, being in a weak body, a body that just feels wrong, and a body with all the lethargy that comes after a six month snooze. But rather than showing this unfortunate reality… Minerva shows up, makes Angela a champion, and gives her the ability to transform back into a woman.

Now… I have a lot of thoughts on this. On one hand, I am partial to stories about a male-bodied protagonist gaining access to a magical female alter-ego and powers they can only access in this new form. Just look at any TSF magical girl series I covered (Kämpfer, Oto x Maho, Mahou Shounen Majorian). However, that is not quite what we have here. Instead, this is an adult woman who is turned into a teenage boy… that has the power to become a superpowered teenage girl. 

That is… a strange idea. Remove any one element, and it works. But together, it both is and is not a TSF scenario, and I’m just not sure how to feel about it. Sure, there could be drama if Angela has to present as male Tom for extended periods. Except this is not her story, and the intended audience isn’t really interested in a story about an adult woman living as a teen boy. So the writer chooses not to show those parts in any level of detail.

Also, I feel the need to comment on the design of fem-Tom here, later known as Teen Valiant. It is easily the most distinct female body design in the series, being shorter and less busty than any of the heroes and featuring a cute bushy, curly hairdo. They definitely look younger and less… refined than the older counterparts. Which is appropriate.

However, the comic also regularly presents this form in a way that can be seen as exploitative. This character’s body is only 18, so things like an ass shot, nipples poking out from a thin top, or the super outfit exposing half of each boob, are glaring. Sure, this character is physically legal, but it often feels like the artist is appealing to the sort of people who seek out erotic materials of legal adults who look like minors.

Oh, and a minor note going back to the coloring, this redesigned version of Tom does not need glasses anymore and has brown hair instead of black. This is a fair enough change, as it makes them look more distinct, but… why didn’t the first 100 remastered pages adopt this change? Sure, it would be more work, but if you are going to remaster something, do it right! I say that enough when talking about games, and the sentiment applies doubly so for a far simple medium!

Anyway, John shows up again to give Angela a recap of what’s happened and help her train her new body. She finds it remarkably weaker than her old one, but about on par with what she could manage as a teenager. Then, once she deals with Tom’s family, she ventures off to the stage of the final chapter of the first story arc. An unnamed tropical island full of relics of an ancient precursor race called… the Ancients.

Everybody is here on this island. Tom flies there and meets up with the head researcher, Angela’s father, who I don’t think has a stated first name, so I’ll just call Dr. Lane. Elizabeth Cumings is brought in as a specialist to examine things. And Outlet manages to pry enough information from Herald’s brain to eke out the location, hoping to find Dr. Lane and snag an all-powerful relic to enhance his powers.

The execution is a bit hectic, jumping back and forth between different perspectives and throwing around a lot of reveals and encounters. Some of which are just glossed over. Such as Angela having her own revealing costume with no explanation of where she got it. Tom just presumes who Angela is despite her body being radically different from Tom’s. And we learn that Angela has two fathers, bearing both Dr. Lane’s DNA and precursor DNA… but neither Tom nor I understand the significance of this revelation.

This all culminates in a big bombastic battle in a makeshift museum, and an effective one. With Tom, Angela, and Elizabeth all putting up a good fight against Outlet. However, he is a seasoned supervillain up against, effectively, three rookies, and is able to find what he was seemingly looking for. The Helm of Minerva. An artifact that grants Outlet a cataclysmic level of power and knowledge, and the only thing that can stop him is a remnant of a sacred tree. Particularly a spoon that Dr. Lane dismissed as a regular old spoon and whittled it down so he had something to stir his chili. …I get that this is a gag, but what?

Point is, this spoon is a deus ex machina (that had 50 pages of build up) and allows Tom to warp reality once and only once. So he uses it to undo the body swap between Outlet and Herald, achieving something that most magic and science cannot. 

As a conclusion, it feels a bit cheap in that Tom just wishes things back to normal, rather than needing to use his own cunning or determination to win, though it also makes sense. This is the first big conflict in the series against a mastermind who has basically everything going for him. There is just enough build up to this moment for the conclusion to feel satisfying, and is ultimately more of a way to de-power Outlet. For he still has his original body, his technology, and most importantly a clone of Herald’s body. A clone that lacks the divine blessing of Minerva, and with it her powers. …As later revealed on page 509, the only appearance of Outlet in the next arc. The God War Arc!

---

Part 6: Battle of Gods

Rather than dish out the trickle of information, I’ll just state the plot outright for this arc, as it is far more straightforward. After Outlet took the Helm of Minerva, he inadvertently severed the realm of the Roman Gods and our reality. Allowing them to invade the world by claiming human bodies to serve as their mortal conduits. The ones who pierced this veil include Hercules, Bacchus, Venus, Jupiter/Jove, Veritas, Proserpina, Cybele, Juno, Vulcan, and Ceres. They were originally banished from the mortal realm per an agreement between Minerva and Mars following an ancient war that split a continent millennia ago. The longer these Gods remain on this Earth, the closer Mars gets to achieving his freedom, allowing him to rampage across the Earth yet again.

It is a good and functional structure, offering many opportunities for battles and gives the creator to set the stage for reimagined deities in minor villain roles. And that is, in part, what this arc of the comic delivers. It also pairs things off into more episodic or issue length storylines that feature far more evident planning. So, clearly, lessons have been learned from the prior arc.

The arc proper sees Hercules inhabit the body of a gym rat named Miss Henderson (the series is bad at establishing character names), where he goes on a rampage, breaking things with his big club. With the help of SWAP, the three Minerva’s champions are able to incapacitate him, but realize they are going to need to accumulate more power if they want to take on real Gods. Thus leading into a highly appreciated training section between Tom and Angela. 

With the aid of Turbulence, they hash out their frustrations with each other. Angela is pissed that some teenage kid is in her body and she is unable to lead the life she built for herself. While Tom is pissed that he cannot get to see his family or friends, that he needs to live as a woman, and deal with all these adult responsibilities. The execution leans a bit too much on Tom’s misfortunes rather than Angela’s, but it does address some lingering animosity between the two, presenting them as allies in battle and daily life. …While also boosting their power levels for the upcoming wave of battles. 

The next stretch of the story sees them battle against the conduit of Bacchus, the God of wine, who is in the body of Miss Baliste, a rich heiress. He is staging a massive party where he gets everybody all drunk and happy, because that is his vibe, but after a single swing with Tom’s suit tassels, he gets knocked out. Needless to say, he was a very necessary inclusion. Afterwards, the folks at SWAP eventually figure out how to spot the remaining Roman Gods and their next target is the conduit of Jupiter, or Jove as he prefers.

He is in the body of a female Black medical doctor and has been working with her to help her patients, making him an ally rather than a threat. Which is a bit odd, as Jove has a long history of being petty and irresponsible, but I guess he knows better than to mess around with Mars. He also has the power to remove uncooperative Gods from their conduits and does so to both Henderson and Baliste, who inexplicably retain their powers and are made into minor characters. They are both one-dimensional characters who only exist to bolster up the ranks of the heroes and have such similar designs they almost look like palette swaps. 

With all this established, the story then pivots slightly in its direction by… seeing characters dispatch four gods in a single page. Veritas, Proserpina, Juno, and Cybele, who were brought up multiple times, are each dispatched by a lone hero— including a gold and white hero wielding a hammer who never shows up again. Needless to say, this is simply an abrupt way to shorten this storyline by restricting the cast of characters… while also immediately expanding it. 

The creators opt to make the big bad of the remainder of this story Venus, who steals John’s body and turns his body into the tallest and bustiest of them all. Because that is what this series does with male characters, and John needed some role in the plot. However, Venus also has two Gods working for her, Vulcan and Ceres. With Vulcan being a big strong man with a hammer— pretty on brand— and Ceres being a male ninja, despite being a Goddess of agriculture.

But before getting into that, you remember how I said Elizabeth’s proportions were inconsistent? Well, she is actually given a redesign nearly 300 pages after her debut, when Minerva gives her a slimmer, more ‘condensed’ form. …Before being also given a set of golden armor a scant 23 pages later… and the new title of Centurion 14 pages later. Yeah, they screwed up with this execution. She should not have been given ‘condensed muscles,’ as it was a defining visual characteristic, and if she was going to get a power boost, it should have been all at once. 

Anyway, Venus insists that there is no possible way for Mars to possibly escape from Tartarus and refuses to return to her domain. She wants to be free, to be loved, and has already created a faceless army of simps who do her every bidding. Simps whose… lifeforce she siphons away in order to amass enough power to seal Jove into a coin. Thus leaving the heroes without a supporting god on their side, and presenting their opponent as someone of immense power. Power that is only broadened as she goes on TV and makes her presence known to all. An event that, somehow, leads Washington to order SWAP to leave Venus alone. Maybe the Secretary of Defense cannot bear to remove the world of those honkers…

With the heroes in a bind, things jump ahead to two weeks later. Venus has made herself known to the world and been transformed into a cultural icon overnight due to her divine powers to turn men into her slaves. However, this leaves both Vulcan and Ceres restless. Vulcan feels neglected, Ceres wants to restore the world to its pre-polluted state, and rather than keep her allies close, Venus… lets them do as they please.

This leaves the heroes to divide and conquer while Venus uses this opportunity to let John out to play with his transformed body for one hour. If only to justify the creation of an 8 page side comic, where John cosplays and masturbates. It’s predictable and unremarkable. 

As for the other heroes, Centurion and Turbulence team up to take on Ceres as she lays siege to… Cleveland? That’s not even close to the most polluted city in America! The battle is structurally a pretty straightforward plant tentacles versus flying superheroine affairs, which ends with a character taking Ceres into the stratosphere until she passes out. …Or maybe dies? But the oddest thing about this encounter is easily how Ceres transformers her form into that of a scantily clad woman during the battle to increase her power. Which just raises the question of why they didn’t, one, make her body female in the first place and two, keep with the ninja motif? Because people love sultry ninja girls!

Meanwhile, Vulcan is out at a fancy bar in the unnamed main city. Rather than fight him directly, Tom and Angela go to converse with the drunkard. …Or more specifically Tom does, since Angela is too young to drink. Tom and Vulcan chug margaritas together as Vulcan pours his heart out, saying he thinks Venus hates him, while Tom says that he could have any other Goddess in the pantheon. That’s not great advice, considering how their family tree is, but Vulcan is drunk enough to think it’s a good call, so he promptly leaves his host’s body. It’s more played for yucks than anything, heightened by Tom’s light fumbling and goofy expressions during the encounter. However, this segment highlights a core weakness with The God War Arc.

There is very little time afforded to Tom or Angela’s life outside of their heroics. There are no school scenes, no scenes of Tom screwing around with his new body beyond this date, and no scenes of Angela dealing with her new family. I mentioned before how the story fails to address how characters can be away from school for such long stretches, and this arc does not really acknowledge this conflict. Sure, this God business is important, but at this point, this is just another superheroes saving the world story. 

Anyway, Tom and Angela are then informed that they are out of time and, even if it means going against Washington’s orders, they need to attack Venus. Tom, Angela, Elizabeth, Henderson, Baliste, and Turbulence all rush in during her latest concert, because I guess she’s a musician now. They spread out to destroy the venue equipment to stop Venus from amassing more power, but before the battle can really start, Satan Mars arrives! And he’s damn near invincible! He effortlessly takes out Angela, Elizabeth, Henderson, and Baliste, forces Minerva to exit her realm to enter the battlefield, and after Tom gives Venus a stern lecture, she joins in to help fight.

With four against one, they are able to hold back Mars, yet defeating him is still too much. The only option they have is to shove him back through the portal he came through, all fighting as once as they move forward, shifting the earth itself. Venus and Minerva both forgive each other and, with a heroic sacrifice, they both get shoved into Tartarus with Mars, their fates unknown.

Even with Minerva gone though, her blessings still remain and while I would assume this would send John to Tartarus as well and kick off arc 3— Lady Valiant Goes to Hell— that’s not the case. Instead, Mars only grabbed Venus’s spirit, not her physical form, when dragging her to hell, leaving John still on Earth… albeit in his transformed body. And, much like with Tom’s body swap, this is an irreversible transformation!

Following this, there are a few pages to wrap up the storyline. Tom returns to his teaching job. Whisper gets ousted from SWAP in favor of a character from Turbulence. Angela gets sacked with summer school before she can’t graduate— because of the coma, not missing classes to fight Gods. While John is now Tom’s new irresponsible NEET roommate! And together, the two are going on a European vacation. Which means Angela needs to defend the city in their absence… while dealing with her teenage boy/girl hormones.

As an arc, it’s a functional and effective superhero battle story. The fight scenes are good, there’s some creativity on display with how characters fight, and the artwork remains high quality. However, in pursuing this, it loses sight of what I find to be its far greater appeals. It stops being a story about a teenage boy trying to be an adult woman and a superhero on top of it. The dual life elements of the story fade away. And after a two-page scene where Tom and Angela go over lesson plans, their development is put on hold. By focusing on so many characters with the roman Pantheon, the story feels more jumbled and there is less reason to care about the new characters. Particularly the nothing offered by Henderson and Baliste and the ‘monster of the week’ roles filled by Ceres and Vulcan.

There was definitely more planning present here, but I am not quite sure what the vision was. This is a roughly 180 page story arc, told over the span of over 2 years, and it feels like very little was accomplished. I mean, besides busty women battling each other and getting into occasional humorous and lewd hi-jinks. But is that really the best vision for a superheroine body swap story? I don’t think so.

---

Part 7: Stripping Down Lady Valiant

Having gone through the entire series in robust detail… I think Lady Valiant has some great ideas, but a foggy vision. There are flickers where I truly believe Roberts understands what the allures are of a story like this. Seeing someone balance indulgences and responsibilities as he is forced to grow up in a high tension environment. It has the ability to balance the burdens of adulthood through the eyes of a teenager, the lewd funsies that come from being in the body of a sexy lady, and the dramatic battles of any decent superhero comic.

While it is easy to highlight how these ideas clash in a summary, and point out how the goop holding them together is absent, this is a good combination. Tom develops a strong enough sense of responsibility and retains enough childishness to make him an endearing protagonist. When he and Angela are interacting together, they have a good rapport. Angela is clearly not thrilled about this situation, but she knows better than to lash out at Tom. And while I know Tom fucks his borrowed body like a firetruck on the reg, he is routinely trying his best.

The evolving and shifting art style of the comic is a point of criticism due to how inconsistent it can be. However, the series manages to maintain a good level of generous cheesecake, engaging action, and enough cartoonish deformation to enhance the humor and maintain a lighthearted tone.

I think the series has all the elements needed to be genuinely great… but between the underbaked ideas, questionable executions, and a general lack of focus, I don’t think it hits the mark. I definitely admire the ambition and drive of the creative team, keeping this story going for seven years at this point, throwing around so many new concepts and characters. And while I am not covering it as part of this showcase, I think arc 3 is off to a strong start. But taking this all in… I think it is just alright. Both as a story and… as a TSF story. 

As I said, there are quite a few scenes during the first arc that work really well and convey the burdens and allure of being in another body. There is a clear desire to do something with this, but it often feels like this desire is only pursued depending on the author’s momentary fascination and desire to put men in the bodies of tall, busty women. It does not misuse the genre or anything, it just lacks a certain exploratory desire that I like to see from TSF works. 

---

…And with that, after 9,300 words, I think that covers it.

I know I said that I was going to tackle bigger works for the rest of the year, but all these super heroics reminded me of something lite that I have wanted to cover for a while. An iconic oldie from the 1990s… that you’re probably more familiar with through its 2000s remake.

Edit 12/29/24: It turns out that I made a mistake when researching this work and accidentally attributed the original writer. I thought that Tom Roberts and DocVS were the same person, but that was not the case. DocVS is not involved in the main Lady Valiant comic.