Review: Archer and Armstrong: Archer #0 By Fred Van Lente and Pere Perez

Reviews, Top Story

Archer and Armstrong: Archer #0

Written by: Fred Van Lente
Art by: Pere Perez
Colored by: David Baron
Lettered by: Tom B. Long

Published by: Valiant
Cover Price: $3.99

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!

Summary (contains spoilers): This issue starts with a young man codenamed Prodigal by Project Rising Spirit. They have been monitoring this young man carefully, and when they have decided that he is a viable psiot, they kidnap him telling his that his parents have been killed.

He is put under the care of Gamma in the Nursery, and they decide to use activation surgery on him, even though he is still very resistant to their attempts at brainwashing him.

He survives, and immediately starts showing not only incredible feats of acrobatic skill, but he is also able to mimic the psiot powers of other students in the Nursery. Project Rising Spirit realizes they have something extremely special on their hands here. Thelma Archer of the Dominion branch of the “Sect” decides that he is the one the Dominion have been looking for, and insists that Project Rising Spirit turns him over to her care. She renames him Obadiah Archer and intends to raise his as her own child. Prodigal’s memories are completely wiped out, and he believes he has always been with the Dominion and raised by the Archers.

Obadiah is given many forms of combat training which he adopts right away, and is given the quest of killing the “Godless one” (which is what led to the earlier issues of Archer and Armstrong with Obadiah trying to kill Armstrong). Obadiah’s real memories keep trying to resurface, so he suffers further brainwashing efforts throughout the issue. In the end, he ends up falling completely under their control after brutally attacking one of his “brothers” in the Dominion.

The issue ends with the reader realizing that everything they had seen was a briefing Project Rising Spirit was giving to the HARD Corps team and Bloodshot as they are being sent to take down Archer now.  I wonder if this means Archer will be finding out the truth in the next few issues…

Review: As I have said in many Valiant reviews, I have thought that new Valiant has done a great job of taking some of the best ideas and characters from the original Valiant universe and reshaping them into something new.

Archer and Armstrong is probably their biggest success there. The original Archer and Armstrong series was great in the beginning, but creative changes left the book floundering after the first ten or so issues. The new Archer and Armstrong seems to have a lot more depth and ideas at the core, which I think will give this run a lot more legs.

Archer in particular is a much different character, and this issue goes a long way to showing us why this version of Archer is such a departure. He is much darker, and his background is a lot more in-depth. I especially loved when we discovered that Archer is actually a psiot, perhaps one of the most powerful ones out there. It makes sense, but it wasn’t something I had considered all that much until this issue.  I am also curious how far his powers can go.  He seems like he would definitely give Toya Harada a challenge.

Fred Van Lente is the perfect writer for Archer and Armstrong and I hope he sticks around for a while. He has a great sense of humor, and at the same time, he has created a real deep world here. A lot of funny comics seem shallow at times, but Van Lente has build a real impressive structure here.   I love the Sect and how all the pieces tie together.  There is usually a lot of great satire there, and Sect Civil War might be my favorite Valiant story so far.  I am really looking forward to the Hard Corps crossover.

Another thing I have to give a lot of credit to Valiant is artistic consistency. Despite the fact that at least four different artists have done Archer and Armstrong, the art is always consistent and real good. Perez has done a few other issues of the series, and his work always stands out. Perez really got into some of the violence in this issue, especially when Archer tees off on one of the other Project Rising Spirit kids.

It was damn chilling, but one of the most memorable scenes in comics last week.

Valiant continues to put out meaningful stories, and the Zero issues that never feel like padding or money grabs. This was an excellent look into Archer’s past and provided some great surprises. And at the same time, it set up the Hard Corps crossover too. Valiant puts out a lot of great comics every month, but Archer and Armstrong is pretty much always at the top of the list for me. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Final Score: 9.0:  Loved this issue! A great look into the past of the Valiant universe and some hints on where things are going next.

Mike Maillaro is a lifelong Jersey Boy and geek. Mike has been a comic fan for about 30 years from when his mom used to buy him Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Adventures at our local newsstand. Thanks, Mom!! Mike's goal is to bring more positivity to the discussion of comics and pop culture.