A quirky book about a hobo king’s legacy. Yup.
Creative Staff:
Story: James Asmus & Fred Van Lente
Art: Kano
What They Say:
Confrontation! Devastation! Inebriation! (And the lost secret of the hobos too!) Oh dear God no, you’d better get out of the way…because here come the Delinquents!
Quantum and Woody are the world’s worst superhero team. Archer & Armstrong are a mismatched pair of conspiracy-busting adventurers. When a mysterious force collides these ill-suited and irresponsible “heroes” for a cross-country race through the darkest corners of American mythology, all hell is bound to break loose. Can two busted pairs become four of a kind in time to defeat the Hobo King, save the day, and make it back home in time for happy hour? Let’s hope so…’cause these guys make a really, really bad team. (And you don’t even want to know about the goat.)
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As I slowly get myself back into the Valiant universe after dabbling initially when the first trades came out, it’s been interesting since I’ve stuck mostly to the event books and not the ongoings that were too far in for my tastes. So when an early look at The Delinquents came in, it was a chance to spend a bit more time with Archer & Armstrong but also to get familiar with Quantum & Woody, two characters that I hadn’t read back in the day and have no real familiarity with. So something familiar and something new definitely works, especially when you’re basically making a buddy miniseries that’s set to run four issues and involves the main writing teams on the two regular books that are out there. Tie it all into the past and hobos and it has that kind of weird quirkiness that can really work.
And as a whole, I suspect it will work. The opening issue here is a different one to be sure as we get the two main stories that eventually blends into one. With Armstrong’s past, we get to see him back about a century prior or so when he was doing his wandering gig, leaving secret symbols for other wanderers to interpret about the safety – or lack of safety – of various places to crash while out with Rufus, the supposed king of the hobos. When Rufus takes a mortal wound, he has Armstrong take care of one of the prized items of all hobos, a worn map that really is shaped like an ass. It leads to some big treasure of some sort and he wants to entrust it to Armstrong. Which makes sense, because Armstrong does look out for other wanderers, but is also dangerous because Armstrong looks out for himself more than anything else. So it’s not a surprise that as the decades go on, the map travels through many hands and locales around the world before being cut in half and ending up in a collection.
That it ends up in the hands of Gerald Stano, the man behind the Mondostano behemoth of a business that, as we see early on, uses its ability to crush people and farms with ease to get what it wants. With Stano having come into possession of half the map, he knows what it represents and is intent on having the other half and the treasure itself. But he’s not young enough to go traipsing off to find it all, so he intends to hire Quantum and Woody to do it. They’ll hire out for most things, but even this has them feeling a little on the outside of being right since it involves some unsavory people and businesses. The writers aren’t looking to be subtle here in the slightest with what Mondosanto is all about and in a way that’s too much of an easy out because it’s so obvious and don’t without any finesse. But it puts things into motion and through it we get what is, for me, a decent introduction to the characters from the Quantum & Woody book. Neither man is totally keen on this job, but they do find that there is money to be made in it so they’re in it.
And similarly, we see Armstrong realizing that he has to do the right thing himself in the present as he learns what’s happened. And that means getting Archer to help him since the two pretty much stick together, mostly because Archer cleans up his messes. There’s a lot of dialogue in this book and it takes some time for things to get into a groove where it works, especially since the opening portion of all flashback that’s setting up for the events in the present. But once it starts moving and you see how the two pairings are getting into motion and how you know they’ll cross paths, it does work better and better. The downside is that while I liked the Armstrong stuff and the later material with Archer, I’m still not sure what to make of the other team. Part of it is because we’re thrown in with Stano so much and he’s playing a corporate jesus type with a lot of quirkiness to him that doesn’t always work well. And it’s parceled out in some busy pages with nine panel blocks to give it all space to get the dialogue in. It’s not busy for the sake of being busy, but it’s trying to do a lot here.
In Summary:
Buddy books can be a whole lot of fun and doing two sets of buddies here going on basically a Hobo Quest certainly presents something fun to work with. And there is a lot of fun to be had with the book, though you may see more of it in the second read as opposed to the first where you’re trying to piece it all together. The characters are handled decently here, though the Quantum and Woody guys haven’t won me over to trying out their book yet, and the concept is one that hits some good notes because of what it is. With a four issue run, it’s a minimal commitment that could have some amusing and comical twists and turns along it and they definitely make it worthwhile with solid art and a whole lot of dialogue so that you’re not rushing through in a couple of minutes. I’ve long been an Armstrong fan so just coming back for more of that is worth it, but there’s something potentially really fun in the mix here too.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Valiant Entertainment
Release Date: August 20th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
