Creative Team:
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Clayton Henry
What They Say:
It’s history in the breaking! After years of meditation and training, 18-year-old Obadiah Archer has been dispatched to New York City to carry out the sacred mission of his family’s sect – locate and kill the fun-loving, hard-drinking immortal known as Armstrong! But as this naive teenage assassin stalks his prey, he’ll soon find that both hunter and hunted are just pawns in a centuries-old conspiracy that stretches from the catacombs beneath Wall Street to the heights of the Himalayas. And Archer & Armstrong will have to work together if the future is to stand any chance of surviving the past’s greatest threat! From the New York Times best-selling creative team of writer Fred Van Lente (Marvel Zombies) and Clayton Henry (Incredible Herc), this volume collects Archer & Armstrong #1-4!
The Review:
Having liked a lot of the original Valiant books back in the 90’s, the one that I had a special affection for was Archer & Armstrong due to its kind of quirky nature. It reminded me of some of the syndicated shows on at the time like Xena and Hercules where it had a serious story overall but it was told with a sense of fun and adventure. And in this first volume of the rebooted series written by Fred Van Lente with artwork by Clayton Henry and Matt Milla, they’ve definitely captured that feel. While it’s a bit awkward just because of how much it wants to set up at times, there’s a good sense of fun about it and just plain silliness because of Armstrong’s personality, which plays well against the more straight laced Archer. The book is one that also rather handily deals with the problems of belief, reality and faith when it has to work with someone who has lived for so long and seen so much.
The foundation for the book is short but explored more over the first issues here as we see some ten thousand years prior where the brothers Armstrong and Ivar are in disagreement about what should be done after the loss of their younger and nobler brother, Gilad. While Armstrong doesn’t want things to go too far, Ivar is intent on going big by using the tools available to him in the mysterious item known as the Boon. But Ivar’s work goes unexpectedly and it causes a large scale of destruction across the world, resulting in a cataclysm that Armstrong has dealt with for millennia since by hiding the six parts of the Boon in very unusual places so that nobody could go after their wish again in the same way. Because of his lifespan, Armstrong has lived a happy go lucky kind of life, seen so many people he was close to die, and also saw that the world is pretty much the same no matter the era. He’s also spent more than enough of it neck deep in wine, women and song, giving him a kind of oafish feeling in the present day.
While he would be content to just live his life out as he does, there are always those that want what he’s hidden. The main thrust of this is an organization known only as the Sect, which uses many different sub-organizations to accomplish its goals, though most aren’t aware of it. The series introduces us to a creationist style theme park and school where a small but select group of teenagers have been training by faithful parents to be the instruments of the Sect to kill Armstrong and gain what they need. Their most noted student is the natural born son of the parents, Archer, who has an amazing ability to mimic physical skills that he sees and uses them instantly for himself. But he’s also a creature of pure faith, believing everything that his parents told him about the world, which he hasn’t seen for himself
His being sent into the world has him finding Armstrong surprisingly easily, but it just gets things rolling in a good way as the two are at odds at first, but then find themselves on the same side when Archer discovers the truth about Armstrong being a pretty good guy and that his parents have absolutely no love or use for him if he fails in his mission. And finding out that their place was just one place that the Sect secretly controlled only made it worse for him, causing him to go all out in wanting to kill Sect members but being held back due to the way they have control over his siblings within the compound. But that takes a bit of a backseat as the reveals hit about how the Sect has garnered five of the six pieces needed for the Boon and it turns into a race to get the next one. With Archer not wanting this group to get such power after seeing what they did to him and his, it doesn’t take much for a pretty good working relationship to be established with Armstrong.
What has to happen to make the book work is that you need to characters that aren’t the same but work well together, and Van Lente has done that with these too. Armstrong’s almost happy go lucky ways are pretty fun to watch since he gets easily distracted at times, but also because he has such a rich history to himself that comes up at times. His extended time knowing Michelangelo leads to some hilarious commentary about the things he did to tweak the church at a time when he had faith but despised the system itself. There’s a lot that comes up in this regard that are almost throwaway lines but feel like they merit an Armstrong & Michelangelo book as wel to show their adventures together. Armstrong really is the heart of the book because of his personality and seeing him getting sucked in to help the guy who came to kill him was just the icing on the cake.
Archer is a little harder to get into because he’s been so brainwashed for so long into what he’s been taught, but when the reality of the world starts to hit, he makes adjustments along the way in order to achieve his goals. He does see the bigger picture, which helps, and the way he develops an affinity for Armstrong as the two work together in some dangerous situations, and as Armstrong places a good deal of truth in him, the pair definitely have a lot of really amusing scenes together. It may change on a dime a little too quick in some ways as he went from wanting to kill him to wanting to work with him to deal with a larger problem, but when you factor in what he was confronted with when it came to his parents and his beliefs in the world, he had to latch onto something.
In Summary:
Archer & Armstrong definitely caught my interest from the get go, but it does have an awkward bit of progress along the way before it really settles into things, only to go a bit curvy in the final chapter here with the awkward One Percenter cult that the Sect is using. When the focus is kept on the main pair, such as dealing with Archer’s struggles with the world and conflict of beliefs, and that of Armstrong’s nature of having to get involved even if he doesn’t want to because of a truly world weary attitude, it’s firing on all cylinders. There’s a lot to like with the work as a whole and it definitely left me wanting to see more of where this pair will go. While it doesn’t knock it out of the park for me, it has a very solid foundation that can be built upon and I can’t help but to feel that it can only go up from here when it comes to the stories themselves and expanding the characters relationships.
Grade: B
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