Archer and Armstrong

Ever since they were relaunched by Valiant Entertainment, Archer and Armstrong and Quantum and Woody have been two of my favorite books on the market, and it's no stretch to say that it's because they take a very similar approach to a classic superhero trope. They're both the stories of mismatched pairs, buddy comedies that throw in strange conspiracies, bizarre mysteries and wanton destruction into a blender and end up with a smoothie made of highly enjoyable comics. So naturally, it was only a matter of time before they joined forces to form a mismatched pair of mismatched pairs, which is exactly what happens in this week's first issue of The Delinquents. And as you might expect, it gets pretty weird. Like, "mysterious treasure map made from the skin of a hobo's ass" weird.

Following the successful launch of a Valiant Comics roleplaying game on DriveThruRPG.com, the publisher announced this week that it will partner with the RPG site's sister site, DriveThruComics.com, to offer its entire comics library -- the old and the new -- DRM-free, as PDFs. New comics will be available day-and-date. Not only that, but for the next 30 days, Valiant will offer eight of its number-one issues for free through the DriveThruComics website; Archer and Armstrong, Unity, Bloodshot, Eternal Warrior, Harbinger, Quantum and Woody, Shadowman and X-O Manowar.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

This week, Fred Van Lente and Steve Kurth launch America's daring, highly trained special missions force into a whole new set of adventures in the pages of G.I. Joe #1. This time, though, the team is operating in the public eye, complete with a new embedded journalist codenamed Hashtag, facing off against a version of Cobra that promises to be both cartoonishly evil and horrifyingly sinister... Re

This week on War Rocket Ajax, one of our favorite writers joins us when Fred Van Lente drops in to chat about Archer & Armstrong. He tells us all about what it's like to write a story with more political content than he's been able to do from other major publishers, and how A&A is the perfect comic for fans of Assassin's Creed -- and you can listen to the whole show right here at ComicsAl

This week has seen the relaunch of the Valiant universe with the release of the first issue of X-O Manowar by writer Robert Venditti (The Surrogates) and artist Cary Nord (Conan the Barbarian). Coming in the months ahead are new incarnations of other Valiant properties Bloodshot, Harbinger and Archer & Armstrong from a roster of talent that includes writers Fred Van Lente, Joshua Dysart, Duan