Fred Van Lente on the Eternal Warrior’s Return

At Baltimore Comic-Con two the weekend before last, Valiant Entertainment announced that the classic Valiant character The Eternal Warrior–known to fans of Fred Van Lente’s wonderful new series Archer & Armstrong as Gilead, the brother of Aram, also called Armstrong–would return in an upcoming issue of Archer & Armstrong.He’s not just showing up, either–he’s showing up wanting to kill his brother.”Armstrong and Gilad just do not see eye-to-eye. They’re brothers, but their similarities end at genetics,” Van Lente told USA Today about Archer & Armstrong#5.”Gilad sees [immortality] as a duty to fight for right, Armstrong sees it as an opportunity to drink as much booze and spend as much time with as many beautiful ladies as he can — so this issue is mostly fists, minimal hugs. We’ll see if they can work things out before the four-issue arc ends.”And that’s where the fun starts for Van Lente, who gets to write the kind of defective family dynamic he’s known for making work so well during his run with Greg Pak on The Incredible Hercules.Van Lente spoke to ComicBook.com about bringing The Eternal Warrior into the 21st Century.Valiant seems to be pretty invested in creating a universe fairly quietly, aren’t they? Rolling out Zephyr and Ninjak as supporting characters in other books spreads the fans a lot less thin than giving everybody their own title…