Occupy Comics: Archer & Armstrong #1 Review
Archer & Armstrong #1 is a book you’ll probably like if you spent a lot of time camping out during the Occupy protests, or if you’re an active commenter on Pharyngula, because it tells a story that reinforces everything you already “know”: Evangelical Creationist Christians are obese, easily duped tools of the wealthy who are actively conspiring to become even wealthier, even if it means destroying everything and everyone to do it.
It’s gonna be likable to that particular demographic the same way that hardcore American conservatives like Atlas Shrugged – it tells you what you want to hear… but like those Ayn Rand books, just because it gives you a warm, affirming fuzzy feeling about your personal life choices doesn’t mean it’s a good fucking story.
I’ve been sitting here alternating between staring at this empty page and flipping back through the book, trying to figure out how to summarize the story, and I’m finding it really difficult, which is not a good sign. What we’ve got here is some kind of device that blew up Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago, that the Freemasons and the wealthy and villainous One Percent (and that’s not any kind of political judgment on my part; writer Fred Van Lente actually calls them that, which is a pretty decent indicator that this story is about as subtle as a prison rape) are trying to get their hands on so they can stabilize the Euro by blowing up Greece. So The One Percent (ugh) have their pet Evangelical Reverend and his Congressperson wife send their son Archer, who was trained to be a martial arts master in their Creation Museum / Amusement Park home, to distract Armstrong, an immortal Mesopotamian working as a bouncer in a New York City bar, from interfering with their master plan. And hilarity ensues, provided that by “hilarity” you mean “bafflement.”
Look, I’ve read this comic about six times now, and frankly, there are huge parts of this story that just don’t make any fucking sense at all. Let’s start with the One Percent’s master plan to build this exotic device to destroy Greece. Supposedly the One Percent has their hooks into the United States Government (at least they own a member of Congress), and if that’s the case: why go on a quest to build some exotic, weird-assed device to take out Greece when you have access to nuclear weapons right fucking now? And why send Archer, Jesus’s Favorite Aryan Ninja, to subdue Armstrong when it’s clearly pretty common knowledge that he can be taken down with knockout gas? And would any self-respecting right-winger train their child in a variety of Eastern martial arts when the local Wal-Mart has AR-15s for sale? And even assuming that the One-Percent conspired to get Archer sent out just so they could get their hands on his piece of the Giant Glowstick of Doom, why allow him to be trained as a killing machine in the first place? Wouldn’t it be easier to tell them that their master plan requires the breeding of fat, sedentary young boys?
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