With the “Summer of Valiant” drawing to a close in August with the first issue of the relaunched Archer & Armstrong, Fred Van Lente is facing a challenge that’s unique even among the Valiant writers and artists who have been tasked with resurrecting some beloved properties from years ago.In his case, the writer of Archer & Armstrong is not only reviving a beloved property, but trying to reinvent the wheel on the most critically-acclaimed and fondly-remembered of the original Valiant crop of titles. With artist Clayton Henry at his side, he’ll navigate politics, religion and superheroics, all while being compared to Barry Windsor-Smith.Van Lente joined ComicBook.com to talk about the series, the 99% and courage in comics.It’s interesting—while Archer and Armstrong was never the sales sensation of some of the other Valiant books in the ’90s, it also never really degraded in quality at all and is one of the most-loved new comic series of the last 30 years. Is it weird taking over a book like that, where a lot of fans are saying, “I hope he doesn’t f— this up” as much as they’re excited to see it?I don’t know it’s weird so much as a challenge I relish. Really, it’s no different than taking over Spider-Man or any other franchise property. You want to retain what made people love it in the first place but also update it and to a certain extent bring in new readers and broaden the fanbase. Warren and Clayton and I have spent a lot of time concentrating all those things and I’m pretty thrilled with what we’ve come up with.Armstrong is still a hedonistic immortal, Archer still a repressed martial arts master; together they still travel the globe getting into strange and stranger adventures while being pursued by the sinister Sect, a sort of United Nations of all the world’s secret societies. We’ve tried to focus the “high concept” to focus on the idea of the duo being conspiracy busters — so expect the Freemasons, the Vatican, Nazis and aliens to feature prominently — and added and tweaked a few more elements I’m loathe to give away here, but there’s plenty long-timers will enjoy recognizing, but not to the point where newcomers will feel alienated.
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