There’s a new Archer & Armstrong series…does anyone care?

[Dallow Spicer1]

New series coming out by writer and artist I’ve never heard of. Weird Bernard Chang cover (didn’t he used to be good??) with Armstrong coloured in this oddly dark shade??

Here’s the blurb…

Written by STEVE FOXE
Art by MARCIO FIORITO
Colors by ALEX GUIMARÃES
Letters by HASSAN OTSMANE-ELHAOU
On Sale May 4, 2022
The triumphant return of Valiant's best friends! When the hard-drinking immortal Armstrong seemingly loses his ability to heal, the young and optimistic Archer refuses to let his best buddy go gentle into that good night. But when you live for millennia, you rack up plenty of enemies who'll be thrilled to find out you're no longer indestructible... Archer & Armstrong's globetrotting quest for (more) immortality begins here!

[nycjadie]

I haven’t love A&A since 2013. Still, I’ll give it a go.

[aj583]

Yes, I care…it’s Archer & Armstrong. Crossing my fingers!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[GammaJosh]

I'm in, but I agree that cover looks weird.

[sonicdan]

I'll be checking it out.

[SwiftMann]

I mean... I'll buy it and read it. That creative team seems really questionable though. Even moreso than the nobodies on that EW Kickstarter mess.

[grendeljd]

I’m interested and will definitely give this a chance - although it always makes me groan when the high concept of a “fresh take” on an established series involves taking away a key piece of the high concept and acting like that’s going to be something clever.

Kind of like the Matt Kindt take on XO - “Hey, let’s take away the XO suit for the majority of this run - isn’t that *clever*?!”

[Chiclo]

Kind of like the Matt Kindt take on XO - “Hey, let’s take away the XO suit for the majority of this run - isn’t that *clever*?!”

It is called deconstruction.

[Dallow Spicer1]

Kind of like the Matt Kindt take on XO - “Hey, let’s take away the XO suit for the majority of this run - isn’t that *clever*?!”

It is called deconstruction.

It’s all the rage with hipster types

[sonicdan]

Kind of like the Matt Kindt take on XO - “Hey, let’s take away the XO suit for the majority of this run - isn’t that *clever*?!”

It is called deconstruction.

It’s all the rage with hipster types

Alan Moore and Frank Miller did it best in the 80s but no one ever accused them of being hipsters.

[Chiclo]

Kind of like the Matt Kindt take on XO - “Hey, let’s take away the XO suit for the majority of this run - isn’t that *clever*?!”

It is called deconstruction.

It’s all the rage with hipster types

Alan Moore and Frank Miller did it best in the 80s but no one ever accused them of being hipsters.

I dunno. Frank Miller’s got that hat.

[nycjadie]

Lol!

[markie7235]

A&A is ok, good for a laugh, but I feel like they are better supporting characters than major players in VEI.

The last series that I was actually excited about was Eternity. The Incursion books held my interest and were good. And I do enjoy all the Doctor Mirage series so far. The new Shadowman I'm surprisingly enjoying, and despite poor writing, the Psi-Lord books actually introduced some new possibilities and potential for Valiant, so curious where it goes from there....If they can drop the slap stick humor.

I really wish they would come out with the next story/series around Divinity. I mean Eternity came out when? Like 2017 or 2018? He was their new hotness, and all the Divinity books and Eternity were solid, and then nothing....4 years with no Divinity appearances....And we know David Camp/Cartographer is now being held in the Unknown, where he implies he "wants to be" in the prior X-O series (was it 2019?), but nothing since. The characters introduced with Eternity and the Unknown have so much potential and it's sad to see them abandoned so quickly.

While DMG is not the Valiant most of us wanted, I would say I don't find many of the books that have come out as "horrible". What they lack though is quantity....Not talking copies of each book, but just series coming out at once. It's like they have 2-3 books a month over the last couple years. There's so many stories that could be told and at the current production rate and release schedule, they won't happen for like 10 years...if Valiant makes it that long. Just not sure how you can be profitable as a company with how few books they are releasing regularly.

[Ryan]

I think Archer and Armstrong is a great concept that never really reaches it's potential. It's the ultimate character contrast, like Laurel and Hardy as an action-adventure. The hundreds of lifetimes world weariness of Armstrong contrasted against the effervescent naivete of Archer. It worked when BWS did it because you could feel that they both might be aspects of his personality. But his run ends before it ever really gets rolling, and it felt like the main part of their adventure was still to come. It seems hard for other writers to balance all the elements of humor and adventure just right to get that really satisfying read, but I think the potential is there for a great long form comic series. It also seems tailor-made for a type of movie that Hollywood loves, teaming up a young and an aging action star (e.g. Uncharted, Indy 4, etc.).

Deconstruction has been the go-to for pretentious comic writers for decades now. It's not clever anymore, it's just lazy. When Alan Moore and Frank Miller did it they were inverting the tropes that had been established for 40+ years of superhero stories, so it seemed novel and innovative at the time. A and A has only had 60 odd issues over 3 decades, and never seemed all that popular, does anyone really care if it's tropes get subverted? It's in need of reconstruction, not deconstruction. Same goes for all the Valiant characters, but that doesn't seem to be what modern comics are interested in doing.

[Shadowman99]

Sounds fine to me.

Was just thinking the other day that nobody seems to give a damn about A&A any more. Considering the other 'pillar' titles (Bloodshot, XO, Shadowman, Harbinger, Ninjak, Rai imo) and the number of series they've all had to date, A&A has definitely got the short end of the stick. Kinda feel like nobody knows what to do with them, but I guess this new creative team came up with something editorial were happy to run, so fingers crossed.