Flashback Friday: 30 Years of Archer & Armstrong
Jul 08, 2022
by Amanda Sheriff
Valiant’s unlikely best buddies are celebrating their 30th anniversary in comics. Archer, the skilled fighter, and Armstrong, the immortal partier, were created by Jim Shooter, Bob Layton, and Barry Windsor-Smith and introduced in Archer & Armstrong #0 (July 1992).
Armstrong was born Aram Anni-Padda thousands of years ago to a warrior named Vandal and a mother who died giving birth to him. When a tribe attacked their village Aram, his brother Gilad (the future Eternal Warrior), and Vandal fled their home.
Aram and Gilad soon learned that they were immortal and possessed superior physical abilities. They joined a new tribe and fought the Mesopotamians, then Aram decided that being a warrior wasn’t the life he wanted. Instead, he turned to a life of pleasure, drinking, and adventure, renaming himself Armstrong.
Obadiah Archer was raised by a minister and his wife, but learned that they were kidnapping and assaulting children. They tried to kill him by lighting their house on fire and he vowed to God that if he survived, he’d bring his parents to justice. After he was rescued, Archer traveled to a Buddhist monastery in Ladakh to learn how to fight. He showed a natural ability to learn martial arts and talent with a bow and arrow, then returned to the US to find that his parents had been arrested for their crimes.
Now living aimlessly, he met Armstrong who regaled him with stories about being an immortal adventurer. Archer then met Mahmud and the Sect, a group that has been hunting an enemy they call “He Who Is Not To Be Named” for over 2,500 years. Archer joined the group on their quest, but learned that their target is Armstrong, they are actually an evil group, and they have members all over world.
Archer & Armstrong were captured by the Sect and briefly imprisoned. After they broke free, the duo traveled around Europe, taking on the Sect and other dangerous enemies.
This article originally appeared in Gemstone Publishing’s e-newsletter Scoop.
Meet Armstrong: Since the ancient city of Ur, this immortal adventurer has spent the last 7,000 years drinking and carousing his way through history alongside some of the greatest merrymakers the world has ever known.
Meet Archer: A sheltered teenage martial arts master and expert marksman that was raised for a single purpose - to kill the devil incarnate. Little did he know that this undying evil was actually Armstrong (he's actually a pretty good guy...once you get to know him) and, since hitting the road together, the two have become great friends and even better partners.
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!
Collecting A&A: The Adventures of Archer & Armstrong #1-12, IMMORTAL BROTHERS: TALE OF THE GREEN KNIGHT #1, and ARMSTRONG AND THE VAULT OF SPIRITS #1, along with more than 20 pages of rarely seen art and extras!
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!
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?
Collecting A&A: THE ADVENTURES OF ARCHER & ARMSTRONG #1-4.
After years of meditation and training, 18-year-old Obadiah Archer has been dispatched to New York City to carry out the sacred mission of his family's sect - locate and kill the fun-loving, hard-drinking immortal known as Armstrong! But as this naive teenage assassin stalks his prey, he'll soon find that both hunter and hunted are just pawns in a centuriesold conspiracy that stretches from the catacombs beneath Wall Street to the heights of the Himalayas. And Archer & Armstrong will have to work together if the future is to stand any chance of surviving the past's greatest threat!
From the New York Times best-selling creative team of writer Fred Van Lente (IVAR, TIMEWALKER) and Clayton Henry (HARBINGER WARS), this volume collects Archer & Armstrong #1-4!
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Amanda Sheriff is Gemstone Publishing’s Associate Editor, serving as the writer/editor of the e-newsletter, Scoop. She is the author of The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Movie Posters, The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Concert Posters, and The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Horror, and co-author of The Overstreet Price Guide to Star Wars Collectibles and The Overstreet Price Guide to Batman.
