When Valiant relaunched a few years back, Archer & Armstrong was the breakout hit of the line. The blend of intense action, quirky comedy and over-the-top villains like the One Percent, and a cult that literally worshiped the concept of nothing, made it one of the most memorable comics of the past few years, and made Fred Van Lente and Clayton Henry a pretty hard act to follow.

But as Valiant announced today at New York Comic Con, there's a team that's up to the task. Next March, the series will relaunch as A&A, with the new team of writer Rafer Roberts and artist David Lafuente, with a variant cover by Kano.

 

A&A #1 cover by Lafuente
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According to Valiant's press release, A&A will be an "assault on the Valiant Universe" that finds the 7,000 year-old immortal pleasure-seeker and his naive but lethal homeschooled pal literally journeying to the bottom of a bag to find an ancient bottle of booze.

 

Now: Archer is about to set off on his most dangerous mission yet – a quest into the mystic reaches of Armstrong's bottomless satchel to liberate his friend and comrade from the clutches of the mad god Bacchus! (Okay, so, Armstrong went into the satchel himself to get a bottle of whiskey that he kinda misplaced and got stuck. It's like the Amazon warehouse of arcane treasures in there…and he doesn't exactly have a maid service.)

Imprisoned in Armstrong's satchel for centuries, Bacchus now commands a legion of monsters, goblins and golems bent on escaping back into the world of man and enacting revenge on their captor… Can Archer single-handedly combat the godly embodiment of intoxication himself – and rescue his best buddy – without becoming lost amongst Armstrong's endless repository of bizarre artifacts and historical oddities in the process?

 

Roberts is a relative newcomer to mainstream superhero comics, but odds are pretty good that you've seen his work as the artist of the genuinely hilarious "Thanos and Darkseid: Carpool Buddies of Doom" comic strips:

 

Thanos and Darkseid: Carpool Buddies Of Doom
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So it's pretty clear that he's got the kind of comedic timing and sense of humor that's really made Archer & Armstrong work in the past.

As for Lafuente, you're probably most familiar with him from Ultimate Spider-Man, but with this announcement, he's become the latest creator to sign exclusively with Valiant. Here's a look at his pages from the upcoming title:

 

A&A #1 pencils by David Lafuente
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A&A #1 pencils by David Lafuente
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A&A #1 pencils by David Lafuente
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A&A #1 pencils by David Lafuente
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A&A #1 debuts in March 2016.

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