Brand Echh: ARCHER & ARMSTRONG #0

Valiant’s next series was one of its more unique and distinctive. It was barely a super hero series at all, though its events took place in the same continuum as the other Valiant super hero titles. This was ARCHER & ARMSTRONG, and it debuted with a #0 issue for some reason. The story in this issue provides the origin of the partnership between the two titular leads and puts them into position to enter UNITY, the grand, sweeping crossover series that would run through all of the Valiant titles for the following two months, bringing all of the newly-introduced characters together. The series was the brainchild of popular creator Barry Windsor-Smith, who worked on much of the run. But this kickoff issue was plotted by Bob Layton and Jim Shooter and dialogued by Shooter, presumably in an effort to reconcile Smith’s offbeat concept with the tenets of the Valiant cosmology as had been previously worked out.

The best way to describe ARCHER & ARMSTRONG is that it’s an odd couple buddy comedy-adventure series. Its two principle characters are Obadiah Archer, a young man raised by a religious cult and who possesses uncanny martial skills, particularly with a crossbow; and Aram Anni-Padda, an immortal who has lived for thousands of years and who had devoted himself to pleasures of the flesh, drink and food and sex. The fun comes as these two disparate personalities come together and bounce off of one another while on a never-ending road trip into new adventures.

The real show here, of course, was Barry Windor-Smith, whose artwork and outlook permeates the characters and the project. While the artwork in this debut issue feels a little bit haphazard and rushed, and not entirely well-inked by Ralph Reese (Smith apparently went in at the last minute and re-inked portions of pages that he simply couldn’t live with) both narratively and visually, this was Smith’s concept all the way, and he’s the person that made this work. Smith wrote and drew issues #3-12 after serving as illustrator and uncredited co-plotter on #1-2 and this opening #0 issue. Thereafter, the strip was taken over by writer Mike Baron, who was a good fit in terms of being able to maintain its flavor. Artists Andrew Wenzel and Mike Vosburg kept it going up through its final original series issue, #26.

It has to be said: this series is weird, in particular this opening issue. We start out in Topeka, Kansas, honing in on young Obadiah Archer, who can sink a basketball at will. He’s the straightlaced son of two revivalist minsters, who it turns out are killing and mutilating children while also holding religious services where they take in charitable contributions from the faithful. But when Obie accidentally walks in on his parents mid-ritual, they decide it’s time to move on, and they leave him to die as they set their home ablaze. Obadiah promises God that he’ll punish his parents if the Lord allows him to live, and indeed, firefighters pull him out of the burning building before he can expire. Waking in a hospital, Obie runs away through a convenient window before his folks can finish him off, heading out homeless onto the streets.

Obie’s journeys carry him to Hong Kong, where he’s taken in by a monastery of monks. The monks hone his mind and body, and are incredulous about the degree of perfect control Obadiah evidences over his own physical form. He’s a perfect marksman, with a handheld crossbow becoming his weapon of choice. The monks try to teach Obie to put aside his anger, but he’s motivated by what he sees as a holy quest to fulfill the vow he made to God when his life was spared to bring down his parents. Eventually, he migrates back to Los Angeles in the service of this goal, and he runs into a beggar on the street. When Obie gives the man his last five dollars, the beggar wants to repay him by helping him out, and the two share their stories with one another.

The man introduces himself as Armstrong, and he tells wildly outrageous stories while he drinks about adventures spanning hundreds of years. Obie shares his own story, including the fact that his parents were arrested and incarcerated only months after he left the country–so his vow is no longer achievable. He wants to turn his skills towards battling injustice, but he doesn’t really know where to begin. The next day, Obadiah tries to find himself a job, but he’s thrown out of a bar in which he applies to be a bouncer, and he’s accosted by street toughs when he’s too good in a basketball bet. Eventually, though, he’s approached by Mahmud, who introduces himself as a friend of Obie’s temple master. He and his fellows in the Sect have been pursuing a great evil across the land for 250 years, and he wants to hire Archer to help finish off this demon. The demon in question, of course, turns out to be Armstrong.

Archer doesn’t quite understand what’s going on, but when Armstrong makes to bolt, he intercedes, and the two tussle for a few pages. Ultimately, though, Armstrong doesn’t take advantage of his great strength to pulverize Archer, and this gets the kid to listen to him for a few seconds. But in that time, Mahmud has been joined by a crew of Sect assassins with high-tech weapons and they move in to try to finish off Armstrong. Now siding with his burly friend, Archer prepares to enter the fray himself–and that’s where this first zero issue wraps up. The story doesn’t so much conclude as it stops, runs out of pages. The pacing on a number of these early Valiant books is really strange, but that’s one of the things that gave them their unique charm. If nothing else, it was often difficult to work out where the stories were going ahead of time, because they took such unlikely turns along the way. Anyway, this set the pair up for their inclusion in UNITY as well as foreshadowing the first appearance of Armstrong’s brother Gilead, who would be introduced shortly as the Eternal Warrior.