Creative Staff:
Story: Rafer Roberts
Art: David Lafuente
Ink: Ryan Winn
Colors: Brian Reber
Letters: Dave Lanphear or A Larger World Studios (both are listed, only in different places, so I’m unsure as to who should get credit)
What They Say:
GET SMASHED…OR BE SMASHED! Valiant’s (somewhat) dynamic duo are going “IN THE BAG” for AN ALL-NEW ONGOING SERIES from rising star Rafer Roberts and comic book superstar David Lafuente!
Meet Armstrong: Since the ancient city of Ur, this immortal adventurer has spent the last 7,000 years drinking and carousing his way through history alongside some of the greatest merrymakers the world has ever known.
Meet Archer: A sheltered teenage martial arts master and expert marksman that was raised for a single purpose – to kill the devil incarnate. Little did he know that this undying evil was actually Armstrong (he’s actually a pretty good guy…once you get to know him) and, since hitting the road together, the two have become great friends and even better partners.
Now: Archer is about to set off on his most dangerous mission yet – a quest into the mystic reaches of Armstrong’s bottomless satchel to liberate his friend and comrade from the clutches of the mad god Bacchus! (Okay, so, Armstrong went into the satchel himself to get a bottle of whiskey that he kinda misplaced and got stuck. It’s like the Amazon warehouse of arcane treasures in there…and he doesn’t exactly have a maid service.)
Imprisoned in Armstrong’s satchel for centuries, Bacchus now commands a legion of monsters, goblins and golems bent on escaping back into the world of man and enacting revenge on their captor… Can Archer single-handedly combat the godly embodiment of intoxication himself – and rescue his best buddy – without becoming lost amongst Armstrong’s endless repository of bizarre artifacts and historical oddities in the process?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After a rather long hiatus, Archer & Armstrong is back, and it’s just as fun, as goofy, and as refreshing as always.
For those of you coming to this title for the first time, the titular duo is one of Valiant’s most beloved franchises. Archer is a teenage martial artist and marksman raised by foster parents to kill the immortal Aram Anna-Padda—who now goes by the name Armstrong. Instead of the blood-soaked immortal monster he expected to find, Archer discovers a fat, hard-drinking, hard-living man who’s actually a pretty good guy underneath his vices. The two team-up and go on strange and exciting adventures.
Those adventures continue today in this new series, and as usual, Armstrong proves to be the source of their problems. In addition to being immortal, Armstrong possesses what basically amounts to a bag of holding. His satchel can contain anything, and he uses it to house his booze, his porcelain doll collection, and various mystical artifacts too dangerous to leave to the hands of mere mortals. It’s one of the most powerful objects in the world, and Armstrong dove right into it, leaving a note for Archer saying that he’d be back in a sec.
He doesn’t, and Archer decides to go after his often infuriating friend. Before he goes, he enlists the help of Mary-Maria, his foster sister and friend who also happens to be the leader of a sect of warrior nuns called the Sisters of Perpetual Darkness. Archer instructs her to watch the satchel and come rescue him if he’s not back by dawn. Having lived a sheltered life, and being basically good-hearted, Archer believes Mary-Maria when she says that she will do as he asks. To her credit, she does wait a few hours before running off with the bag.
Archer doesn’t know this, of course. He climbs down a rope into the bag and encounters a surprisingly organized world. The first area is a gargantuan library staffed by green, squat goblins, and after chasing one down, he discovers Armstrong’s location. Not surprisingly, it’s the liquor storeroom.
As one might expect, Armstrong’s satchel contains a great deal of useless junk as well as items he forgot he stored there, including the Roman God of wine and revelry, Bacchus. When Bacchus learns that Armstrong is actually inside the bag, he organizes an army of trash golems to capture him so he can torture the immortal. Archer and Armstrong fight valiantly, but eventually the golems overwhelm them with sheer numbers.
Everything I love about Archer & Armstrong is here in this kickoff issue. The story is fun and goofy while containing a strong emotional core. The characters are well-developed and play off each other beautifully, and there’s plenty of action and humor to go around. Just like the previous series, it’s a big mix of far-out ideas anchored by three-dimensional characters.
While the basics of the series remain the same, the art goes in a different direction. Clayton Henry drew the previous Archer & Armstrong series and his style was more realistic and grounded—almost the obverse of the decidedly ungrounded and unrealistic stories. David Lafuente’s art, on the other hand, leans more towards the cartoon-y, using clean, simple lines and exaggerated bodies and facial expressions to better get across the action or emotion of the scene. It’s interesting to me that both styles fit the comic. Lafluente’s facial expressions in particular sell the emotion of a scene, and his action scenes are fluid and exciting. He also draws a mean library. Seriously, if I could, I would live there, goblins or no.
In Summary:
I loved Fred Van Lente and Clayton Henry’s 2012 revival of Archer & Armstrong, so I was excited and a little trepidatious when I saw that the series would be relaunched under a new creative team. I should have had more faith, because Rafer Roberts and the rest of this creative team have given us a bang-up first issue that feels both like a new chapter and like classic Archer & Armstrong (if something that was around in 2012 can be called “classic”). If you’re a fan and are on the fence, give it a try. I think you’ll have a great time. Dr. Josh gives this an….
Grade: A
Age Rating: T+
Released By: Valiant Comics
Release Date: March 16th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99