Archer & Armstrong #9 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (story), Emanuela Lupacchino & Alvero Martinez (art), Guillermo Ortego (inks), David Baron (colors)

The Story: It’s safe to say if your pal’s trying to kill you, he’s not acting like himself.

The Review: My ongoing complaint with this series has always been that it tries too hard to toe the line between comedy and seriousness, without really committing to either.  Just look at this issue’s cover and you’ve got a good example of what’s flawed about the general tone and direction of this series: Gilad and Armstrong pincushioned full of arrows while Archer looks malevolently at them.  It’s a comical image, but not enough to make you laugh outright.

Within this issue, Van Lente’s humor diminishes to maybe half a handful of amusing remarks, the best of which is Kay bemoaning her sorry life while in Geomancer limbo: “I have a serious eating disorder!  My acid reflux is killing me!  I pop pills like a reverse Pez dispenser!  I can’t maintain a serious heterosexual relationship!”  And that’s pretty much it as far as comedy goes on this issue.  The rest actually gets devoted to the plot at hand.

Archer & Armstrong #8 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (story), Emanuela Lupacchino (art), Guillermo Ortego (inks), Matt Milla (colors)

The Story: Proving that a pointless existence does begin on the golf course.

The Review: I’ve frequently lamented that we need more humor-driven comics in the world.  While most titles manage to get in a couple jokes in every issue, writing a full-blown comedy requires a very different kind of craft and talent.  With a comedy, you naturally lose a lot of tension because so much of what happens can’t be taken seriously.  A writer then has to find a different way to give his story some weight so it doesn’t just float away on a sea of laughs.

Nick Spencer’s Jimmy Olsen is a great example.  The premise of Jimmy saving the world from destruction by alien-swingers by making Earth seem as dull as possible is clearly a joke in itself.  You haven’t the least expectation that the planet’s in any serious danger.  But you still have a lot of investment in the outcome because Spencer attaches a different importance to it: Jimmy’s pride and self-confidence, and whether or not he can win back Chloe Sullivan.  So yes, you get plenty of laughs, but you also still care about what’s going on.

Archer & Armstrong #7 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (story), Emanuela Lupacchino (art), Guillermo Ortego (inks), Matt Milla (colors)

The Story: In which it is proven that too much math can only lead to no good.

The Review: It’s funny.  You can go for years without seeing a movie about Abraham Lincoln, then all of a sudden, there’s two of them in the theaters one year.  True, one of them is a serious drama about the nature of principles and politics and the other involves slaying vampires and jumping off trains before they explode—but my point is sometimes, by chance, different writers will get the same ideas in their heads around the same time and go different ways with them.

I’m pretty sure the likelihood of someone reading both Dial H and Archer & Armstrong is even less than that of someone seeing Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, but if you do happen to read both, you have to notice their mutual fascination with the concept of “nothing as something.”  China Miéville basically spent his entire first arc exploring the different sides of “nothing,” but it’s Van Lente who manages to push out an accessible story out of it.

Archer & Armstrong #6 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (story), Emanuela Lupacchino (art), Guillermo Ortego (inks), Matt Milla (colors)

The Story: Stands to reason that the One Percent would turn out to be an evil cult.

The Review: If you read my review to Saga #9 (and if you haven’t, perhaps you should—it couldn’t hurt, and who knows, there might be a prize* in it for you!), then you’ll know that I think comedies generally have a more straightforward goal than dramas or even dramedies: make you laugh.  Even then, there are differences between smart comedies, silly comedies, and stupid comedies, and we as a society probably need to be more distinguishing among the three.

Smart comedies always have a point at the end of their humor, or at the very least make you stretch your intellectual muscles a little bit.  Silly comedies make you laugh by surprise, either with clever wordplay or well set-up slapstick.  Stupid comedies go for the lowest brow of amusement: cheap jokes, schadenfraude, vulgarity, anything that appeals to your rage or makes you squeamishly uncomfortable.  Archer & Armstrong is clearly not a stupid comedy, and although there’s some very silly stuff to it, I’d say it’s a pretty smart comedy.

Archer & Armstrong #5 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (story), Emanuela Lupacchino (art), Guillermo Ortego (inks), Matt Milla (colors)

The Story: It’s like Armstrong and Gilad are living the bridge to “A Change Is Gonna Come”.

The Review: Reading back what I wrote for last month’s issue of this series, I’m struck by how cross I sound.  Maybe the looming specter of finals sucked away some of my good humor that week, but I really gave #4 a hard time.  While I stand by my criticism of the title’s rushed pacing and thin development, perhaps I was a bit hasty myself in writing off the promise this title offers.  Despite my frustrations with it, I have to admit it still holds my interest.

What remains irritating about reading this series is the nagging feeling that I’m missing some crucial details about the A&A mythos, probably from the first couple issues I skipped over when I jumped onboard at #3.  It’s still a tad ridiculous that you’d miss out on that much substance by being slightly late to the game—and that the sizable recap page does nothing to reintroduce some of it to you—but at least this issue sort of brings you up to speed.

Archer & Armstrong #3 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (story), Clayton Henry & Pere Perez (art), Matt Milla (colors)

The Story: If you’ve seen a nun handle a ruler, you know the damage she can wreak with a sword.

The Review: As with many titles, what caught my eye on this one was Van Lente’s name, which I know best from all the work he did with Greg Pak on The Incredible Hercules and the not-very-incredible Herc.  What made the former series work was the buddy relationship between Hercules and Amadeus Cho.  They really had a unique chemistry among comic book partners in the differences of their natures, temperaments, appearances, ages, and backgrounds.

Though different in some of the details, Archer and Armstrong’s interactions clearly resemble the dynamic of Van Lente’s previous duo.  You have Armstrong, the big, brawny ancient whose primary interest is in satiating whatever physical impulse which strikes him that minute.  And you have Archer, the smaller, younger lad whose sober sense of duty and mission comes just a bit short of his companion’s recognition of fine wines.