The final book of the Summer of Valiant relaunch is here! Does it hold up to the quality from the other three? I say hell yes!

Archer Armstrong #1, David Aja Cover

The story starts off interestingly enough, with all life on Earth being wiped out. From there we get an overly religious theme park, mixed martial arts, the nudist cowboy, a crazy bar fight in which Armstrong defeats a guy by throwing up on him, and the One Percent planning to blow up Greece.

This is definitely the craziest of the relaunch so far, and it may be my favorite. It feels so different from the others, which is great because Valiant isn’t trying to make all of their books feel the same. This was much lighter in tone, and Fred Van Lente did a great job making the world feel over-the-top while keeping the characters compelling and believable. It’s interesting that this world feels like a parody of ours, what with the founding fathers being part of a sect and the One Percent being a secret evil organization, yet it’s part of a larger universe, meaning that X-O, Peter Stanchek, and Bloodshot all live in this parody world too.

I also think that Clayton Henry may be my favorite artist at Valiant right now. He’s very clean and expressive, and he can draw the hell out of a fight scene. He’s also got an amazing sense of anatomy, which I don’t really tend to notice, but for some reason it stands out here. It just seems like the guy really knows what he’s doing.

This was a great first issue, one that really stands out from the rest of the darker books Valiant is putting out. That’s not to say the others feel the same, I’m really enjoying all of them, but I think this might be my favorite first issue out of the four.