The Adventures of Archer and Armstrong #4 Review *SPOILERS*

The Adventures of Archer and Armstrong #4
Written by: Rafer Roberts
Art by: David Lafuente
Price: $3.99
Publisher: Valiant Comics


This book was a little tougher for me to review. Archer and Armstrong along with Quantum and Woody are among my all time favorite characters in all of comics. So I decided to try and put my love for the past books aside and start fresh.

The previous issue left off with Armstrong rummaging around his magical bottomless bag looking for and old and very valuable liquor. This allowed one very strange creature called Bacchus to run amok. The duo get trapped in the bag, and needed rescuing by Mary-Maria Archer's adopted sister.

We start off with something Armstrong does best, DRINK! This guy could have a drinking contest with Marvel's Hercules and Iron Man and put them to shame. After learning that his buddy Frank died, Armstrong musters up the courage to call Frank's wife to ask if he can meet up with her to pay his respects. After she agrees he gets the shakes and needs another drink before looking for his magic bag.

Then all of a sudden Armstrong is taken out by a freakin' dumpster of all things. It makes him all loopy and he thinks Archer is Frank's spirit. Archer has Mary-Maria go ahead to help the innocent bystanders while he tries to get Armstrong up so he can help fight Bacchus.

They are all attacking Bacchus but it's not really affecting him because he is now a giant and has an army of "Bros, bachelorettes, and drunks in santa suits". To make matters worse for the duo, but more interesting for us readers, the giant Bacchus is pouring booze all over the place for his goons to down so they can, "Get naked and riot". They do as he commands and start worshiping him and by doing so give him even more power.

Armstrong comes up with a plan and needs Archer and Mary-Maria to defeat the followers of Bacchus to take away some of his power while he comes up with a plan to sober him up. We get a good fight scene complete with descriptions of the fight, My favorite one is a kick to the nuts. I can't recall if a kick to the nuts has ever had a close up with a description before this book, but it fits the tone of this book perfectly. It made me thing of something that Woody and Goat would do for sure.

That giant bastard Bacchus literally plops down on a liquor store and gets trashed even more on the entire store inventory after Mary-Maria slices his ankle...

...And Armstrong heads on over to Star-Butts cafe to get enough coffee to sober up Bacchus. Archer decides to lunge at Bacchus and gets in a big hit right in the guts.

This results in a pukefest that puts Stand By Me and The Sandlot to shame. Armstrong pulls up reminiscent of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin with his beer truck coming after Vince. He gets the hose from the coffee tanker truck lodged into one of Bacchus' mouths and fill him up with the whole truck load. This makes him hyper, but he was shrinking down to his normal size. I know this is a spoiler filled review, but I don't want to explain how this one ends. I think it would be better for you to see it yourself as you read the issue. I'll skip ahead to Armstrong  meeting up with Frank's wife and him apologizing to her for the way he acted in the past. She forgives him of course and mentions to Armstrong that she hopes he doesn't ruin him since he can be a bad influence. Armstrong gives Frank's wife the rare bottle of liquor that we learn is worth at least ten thousand dollars. That's a lot of doll hairs.

The tagline for the next issue is, "The search for Armstrong's wife begins". Now I now that will be crazy since only a crazy woman would have married an immortal drunk who gets into the wackiest situations in all of the Valiant Universe.

For those who are familiar with these characters, this book will not seem too cookie and you will love it from the start. For those unfamiliar with them, I can see you either really loving it or hating it completely. As far as the art goes, it fit the characters and story line really well. The panel layouts gave it a really good pace and the colors were great. The first two pages looked a bit rough, but it did not take away from the overall tone. The writing was really good, but not as good as the Valiant relaunch issues or even the Delinquents book that had Archer and Armstrong with Quantum and Woody (Please bring that book back Valiant!!!)

Putting my personal feelings for these characters aside and grading this as a new reader or someone vaguely familiar with them, I would have to give this issue a 6/10 on the beard scale.

Until next time, DatBeardedBastard is out...