Archer & Armstrong #5 Review: Best. Date. Ever.

Archer & Armstrong #5 finally gives fans Archer’s first date with Faith, and it’s everything we wanted.

A&A: The Adventures Of Archer & Armstrong #5
Written by Rafer Roberts
Art by Mike Norton
Published by Valiant Entertainment

Archer & Armstrong #5 doesn’t go on sale until July 20, so watch out for spoilers below!

Back in Fred Van Lente’s third arc on Archer & Armstrong, time traveling immortal Ivar accidentally told uptight good guy Archer that the love of his life was going to be named Faith. Readers of Harbinger swooned – Faith is the plus-sized sci-fi enthusiast whose love of life gave a vibrant heart to an otherwise grim team of Renegades and whose respectful representation of body diversity launched one of the best-reviewed limited series in Valiant’s history. That miniseries picked up the thread, with Faith and Archer developing an adorable long-distance romance after meeting at a wedding. She’d recommend the best sci-fi movies Archer’s conservative foster parents had outlawed, and he joined up to help her fight aliens in the final issue. This issue has promised to deliver the couple’s first dinner-and-a-movie date, and it may be the best either character has ever been.

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While Armstrong skips town to hunt down the wife he forgot he had a few thousand years ago, Archer screws up his courage and hops a plane to LA to take Faith out to dinner and a screening of The Princess Bride. It’s not the smoothest first date – there’s a group of bad guys in shark costumes trying to take Archer down – but most of the book is about two people falling in love.

This is a more mature take on the characters than we’ve had with Rafer Roberts’s run so far. The first arc was such a jarring shift in tone, from the consistently witty satire of Fred Van Lente to a series of cheap, unfunny bro jokes about booze and vomit. Clayton Henry’s classic, expressive, clean style gave way to a jumbled mess, with normally wonderful artist David Lafuente losing a lot of the command of storytelling he’d shown before in favor of wacky, painful cartooning that not even Chris Bachalo could have made palatable. Swapping Mike Norton in seems to have forced a maturity onto the book, and this allows Roberts to shine. It also helps that drunken lug Armstrong is out of town for the majority of the issue, curtailing the previous attempts to make puke into a punchline.

Instead, readers are given a beautiful, relatable story we’ve been waiting for. Rafer Roberts’s humor keeps the small talk between the characters engaging, and there are dozens of cameo characters in the background of Faith and Archer’s dinner and movie theater scenes. In between Faith’s giddy responses to Archer’s life (“Have you time travelled? Was it more like Doctor Who or Lost?”) are moments of charm and romance that wrecked me (“I like how you smile when you talk about things you love.”) and summoned the best memories of that rush of falling in love with someone who lets you be yourself. If you can read the scene where Faith and Archer share their first kiss while Faith narrates with lines from The Princess Bride without crying, you’re a tougher reader than I am. The low-brow frat humor of the previous arc made me worry about some fat-shaming when putting super-trim Archer with a bigger woman, but it’s obvious that Roberts loves what she looks like and is as charmed by her vivacious pop knowledge as Archer is. I love that Valiant Entertainment doesn’t always have to name it when they bring diversity in, and I love more that they are so committed to publishing comics that represent a wider range of reader.

This book will give you courage. Ask that person to go out with you. Be yourself and find the right fit. It’s okay to be scared – Archer fights gods with a crossbow, and he’s sweating while texting this woman. Someone out there will love you for being geeky. Someone out there will love your body. Will love your background. Will love your goofy best friend. Someone out there isn’t expecting you to change, or only loving you despite what you think are flaws. I promise you, you deserve love. So go act like it. And read this issue as many times as it takes to show you that.

The Bottom Line: When Roberts gets to write a comic for an audience that isn’t reading issues between keg stands and rounds of Quarters, he’s able to give one of the most joyful romances this publisher has ever printed. Valiant’s best single issue of 2016 so far.

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