David Lafuente

If you carry around a bag in your day-to-day life --- or heck, even a wallet --- then you already know how cluttered those things can get. You just dump things in there, and when it's time to clear it all out, you wind up buried under a torrent of movie tickets, dead pens and receipts. If, however, your bag was a magically expansive satchel that you'd been carrying around for about five thousand years, you'd probably have a whole lot more to deal with. For Archer & Armstrong, that is definitely the case --- and instead of half-punched loyalty cards for the local coffee shop, they're dealing with garbage monsters, giant robots, and fish men as they're dropped into the depths of Armstrong's bottomless bag. It's all happening in Rafer Roberts and David Lafuente's A&A #2, and you can read a preview below!

Just earlier today, we speculated that we’d be seeing more announcements of exclusive contracts beyond those coming from DC Comics, and it seems that is the case, as Valiant Entertainment has announced a whopping fifteen exclusive deals in one fell swoop ahead of this weekend’s Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo.

Archer and Armstrong are back! Valiant's buddy caper comic, starring a sheltered young warrior and an uncouth ancient warrior, got its start back in the 90s, and was revived in 2012 by Fred Van Lente, Clayton Henry, and Pere Perez in a series that ran for 25 issues. This new title, A&A: The Adventures of Archer and Armstrong by Rafer Roberts and David LaFuente, picks up where that one left off. However, while the last Archer & Armstrong was a globe-hopping, and eventually dimension-hopping adventure story, the story kicking off in A&A #1 finds the duo traveling within, rather than without. Specifically, the heroes are journeying into the bottomless depths of Armstrong's magical bag, which houses an entire world of goblins, monsters, and at least one very angry god.

One of comics' best buddy action-comedies returns in March with The Adventures of Archer and Armstrong #1, written by Plastic Farm's Rafer Roberts with art by former Ultimate Spider-Man penciller David Lafuente. The first storyline, "In the Bag," features Archer (a very nice young man who was raised in a religious theme park and trained to be an assassin) searching for his best friend Armstrong (fun-loving immortal vagrant and occasional hero) inside the latter's magic bag, which opens into a kind of mystical warehouse/library which apparently holds, among other surprises, the god Bacchus.

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.

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