The Delinquents by James Asmus

The Delinquents Reviews

• 
  Anne

  Goofy plot, terrible puns, and far too much dialogue for something that boils down to the antidote for laughter.
  An issue or 2 in, I recognized the story as something I'd DNF'd before but I figured I might as well be done with it or I'd probably grab it again on accident.
  shudder
  
  
  
  Archer & Armstrong team up with Quantum and Woody to go on an incredibly tedious Hobo Adventure.
  Armstrong (who is immortal, btw) was handed the keys to the Hobo kingdom many years prior, in the form of a map made of tattooed butt skin.
  Quantum and Woody are hired by an Organic Guru, whose corporation made a small army of thugs who are part cow and part plant, to find the Hobo Treasure.
  Hijinks ensue.
  
  
  
  Oh god. This was a complete slog. I just want to forget this cornball comic and move on with my day.
  Save yourself and skip this.
• 
  Chad

  Quantum and Woody are not nearly as funny as the author thinks they are. Unfortunately Archer and Armstrong come across as secondary characters.
• 
  Rod Brown

  One of those books that desperately wants to be a madcap laugh riot, but is instead a painful and most tedious slogathon to read. It's a team-up between two of Valiant's buddy books -- Archer & Armstrong and Quantum & Woody -- wherein all the bros hunt for the treasure of the hoboes, which as the old folk song tells us is at the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They must crisscross America, usually by rail, looking for the hobo signs that will point the way, all the while fighting and bickering betwixt and between themselves.
  
  I got it for free as a Bonus Borrow on Hoopla and even then it was still overpriced because they did not include the emotional cost of actually having to read it.
  
  Look, it's bad. Just know that it's bad. Very bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. BaaAAAaaaddddddddDD.
• 
  Sam Quixote

  The country music hit from the 1920s, Big Rock Candy Mountain, is made real in The Delinquents as Valiant’s wackiest duos Archer & Armstrong and Quantum & Woody team-up for an adventure to find the Hobo King’s treasure!
  
  Fred Van Lente’s Archer & Armstrong and James Asmus’ Quantum & Woody are both great titles, arguably the two best Valiant have right now, so putting two great tastes together should make them taste even better – right? Mmm… no, unfortunately.
  
  The two teams ridin’ the rails just isn’t that funny a setup as Van Lente/Asmus thought. The whole joke is that these “superheroes” are getting drunk, sleeping rough and getting stinkier – that’s pretty much it. The joke wears thin quick over the four issues and what was something of a cute story becomes quite dreary by the end.
  
  I suppose there are a couple of fun moments in the book. Woody taking Archer under his wing and introducing him to alcohol was alright, and I really liked the way they went about the big final battle in the last issue.
  
  The writers wryly acknowledge the cliché of the superhero medium where many pages are spent with everyone bashing one another until the heroes win, so rather than portray that tedium again, they have a double-page spread of the setting and actual cut-out figures of the characters with cut-out sound effects so the reader can use their imagination to construct their own battle – brilliant! Van Lente/Asmus have a story to tell and an elongated fight scene won’t add anything to that!
  
  If the whole book had had that subversive and inspired approach, I’d have liked it a lot more. But it’s mostly the characters being predictably silly in an obvious way to little effect – they’re not funny and it’s not a great story to watch them bumble about. “We’re delinquents, look how crazy we are, woooah!” pretty much sums up the “comedy”. Even as a fan of these titles I found The Delinquents a chore to get through.
• 
  Wing Kee

  Much like Deadpool this book is not as funny as it thinks it is.
  
  World: The art is alright, it’s a bit above Valiant standards and the characters do emote well and the sense of action and framing is solid but it’s not super great, just aight. The world building here is alright with some interesting premises which are intended to joke, it starts of funny but really devolves to the same stuff again and again fast. The two world of Archer and Armstrong and Quantum and Woody.
  
  Story: The story starts of kinda interesting with the Hobo King and with the two duos coming together and then it becomes endless try so hard jokes that don’t lands and when it does it’s potty humor, it’s lowest denominator stuff and the dialog is super painful. I don’t really want to talk about this book, it’s bad, it’s pointless, it’s not funny, it’s pretty terrible. It’s janky, it’s poorly written, it makes no sense, the sense of humor is off. It’s not a good book.
  
  Characters: The duo coming together you would imagine there being some great banter but when you have stunted dialog and no quiet moments to let them just vibe off each other you have a very missed opportunity. Nothing big happens here they are just transported from their respected series here.
  
  A poorly executed and unfunny story. that is pretty pointless and I’ve already forgotten it.
  
  Onward to the next book!
  
• 
  Robert

  Monsanto = Bad, Hobos = Good?
  
  Or something like that.
  
  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I skimmed the last issue and a half.
• 
  Chris Lemmerman

  "Gretchen, stop trying to make Quantum & Woody happen. Quantum & Woody will never happen."
  
  I...don't get it. Archer & Armstrong, Quantum & Woody, the Goat, a hobo-infested race across America. Recipe for brilliance, surely. And yet this is kind of just...flat. There are moments of greatness, mostly from Kano's super-detailed art which is jam packed with background jokes (usually involving the Goat who is drawn fantastically here), and yet the story just doesn't really do anything.
  
  The interplay between Archer & Woody is probably the best, since they're so massively different, but since Archer has had to deal with Armstrong for so long, surely Woody's brand of drunken debauchery shouldn't be quite as shocking as he finds it. Meanwhile Quantum and Armstrong are kind of just reserved for punchlines.
  
  I laughed out loud a few times, but far less than I expected with this group of characters. The board game at the back of the volume got almost as many laughs as the four issue mini-series did, which is probably indicative of something.
  
  Extra points for the art though, because Kano is just so fricking fantastic.
• 
  Des Fox

  Kano's art is impeccable. It always is, but I was particularly impressed by his work on The Delinquents. His panel-work is always impressive, and he really makes this book a joy to read. Kano's panel work helps to fit the surprisingly dense narrative into these four issues, penned by James Asmus, and co-plotted by Fred Van Lente. The Delinquents is fun, even if it never hits the same highs as A&A and Quantum and Woody have independently. The plot is a hobo-rich American mythology, that manages to suit both teams of superheros. There are a lot of gags and some clever writing that make up for the relatively docile plot, culminating in an admirable crossover, with some fantastic visuals.
• 
  Judah Radd

  “Mister E. Meat”
  
  That pretty much sums up this silly screwball comedy in a nutshell.
  
  With isn’t to say I didn’t like it. I did. But, it’s goofy as hell.
  
  The story was weird. Quantum, Woody, Archer and Armstrong link up for the first time to find Hobo treasure, all while battling the evil forces of some pastiche of Monsanto. It was about what you’d expect... but stranger.
  
  The art wasn’t my main jam... but it was well paired with this script, brought to us courtesy of Asmus and Van Lente. Cartoony title should have cartoony art. I definitely chuckled a few times. Ya know what? Fuck it. Pick it up. Life’s too serious. Kick back and enjoy something fun.
• 
  Shannon Appelcline

  The Delinquents. This is much more a Archer & Armstrong story than a Quantum & Woody story, as it has the weird capitalists and the shallow storytelling that are much more common to the former comic. It takes a while to get used to having Quantum & Woody caught up in that. But once it comes together, and especially once the four characters all meet up (and finish with their stupid obligatory fight), this story really shines. So, the back-half of this is a truly enjoyable team-up that I would love to see long-term (and the front-half is OK) [3+/5].
• 
  Javier Muñoz

  aquí tenemos a las dos parejas más delirantes del universo Valiant: quantum y woody, dos hermanos superhéroes de alquiler que corren aventuras junto a una cabra preñada (que además es su padre) que lanza lasers por los ojos y archer & armstrong, una pareja formada por un chico criado y entrenado desde pequeño en una secta creacionista sin apenas contacto con el mundo real y armstrong, un inmortal alcohólico y amante de la juerga.
  
  Estos personajes deberán unirse para encontrar el tesoro del rey de los sin techo, cuyo mapa está dibujado en unos calzoncillos usados, en una carrera contra una megacorporación agrícola malvada... una mera excusa para unir en un crossover las dos colecciones más alocadas de la editorial.
  
  Aventurilla intrascendente y chorresca, dibujo correcto y apropiado para la obra. a mi me ha resultado divertida sin más, incluye en las últimas páginas un juego de mesa recortable.
• 
  Brian Poole

  
  The Delinquents, pairing two of Valiant’s successful franchises, is a rare miss for the reborn publisher.
  
  The concept of The Delinquents is the union of the conspiracy-busting Archer & Armstrong with “World’s Worst Heroes” Quantum and Woody for a madcap, comedic adventure. The basic plot has promise: an evil corporation taps rental heroes Quantum and Woody to track down the treasure of the Hobo King. The boys have half a map, which, for no good reason, was tattooed onto a hobo’s ass (since removed from the dead hobo, apparently). Armstrong holds the other half. Having once been entrusted to protect it, Armstrong lost half of the maps years earlier. Alerted by a conscientious hobo, Archer & Armstrong take to the rails to help safeguard the Hobo King’s treasure. The two duos meet, have a misunderstood fight, then team up. Hilarity should ensue, as they flee the minions of the evil corporation and eventually find their way to the Hobo version of Shangri-La.
  
  Except not exactly. As written by Quantum and Woody scribe James Asmus (from a concept co-plotted by Archer & Armstrong writer Fred Van Lente), The Delinquents falls prey to lazy storytelling that squanders its plot’s promise. The story is weighed down by bodily fluid gags, sex puns, drunken shenanigans, obvious visual puns and Woody’s non-stop barrage of single entendres. The jokes trample one another for attention, giving none any room to land and breathe. As he did too often in Quantum and Woody, Asmus goes after corporate, political and cultural targets that are low-hanging fruit and fails to do anything interesting or amusing with them.
  
  Unlike Van Lente, who spiced his outlandish Archer & Armstrong plots with creative ideas, stinging insights and just the right amount of inappropriate humor, Asmus deluges The Delinquents in laziness and obviousness. The quest for the Hobo King’s treasure, using Hobo Code symbols, was a great idea. But The Delinquents seems to lose interest in that concept fairly quickly. The journey should be the meat of a quest story, but Asmus short-circuits that in favor of puerile displays and an overly long climax that kills off any momentum that remained. The script almost drowns in obvious, lazy choices (mocking various food and philosophical movements that are blindingly easy targets; calling a major food conglomerate “Mondostano”). What isn’t abandoned to laziness is almost choked with crudeness (the “ass map;” Woody’s non-stop foolishness).
  
  The redeeming moments tend to involve Archer & Armstrong. That duo’s bond continues to demonstrate depth and complexity, even in less than ideal circumstances. Their offbeat brand of humor occasionally pokes through the miasma of sex and piss jokes to suggest what The Delinquents could have been with Van Lente at the helm. At its worst, the series suggests that Quantum and Woody are a less interesting (and not entirely necessary) copy of Archer & Armstrong.
  
  On the art side, Kano deploys a scratchy, cartoonish style that works at times. But many pages are panel-choked and too busy. Some sequences boast unnecessarily complicated layouts that make following the action difficult. To some extent, that’s the sign of an artist basically submitting to the plot as broken down and not pushing back to assert his own identity. For as expressive an artist as Kano usually is, The Delinquents isn’t a great showcase for his skills. He does some nice character work, but the demands of an overstuffed script never give him a chance to cut loose, which is a wasted opportunity.
  
  A reader leaves
  The Delinquents hopeful for a better Archer & Armstrong showcase in the near future. And not especially eager to see where Quantum and Woody go next.
  
  A version of this review originally appeared on
  www.thunderalleybcp.com
• 
  Peter Derk

  Good laughs, good fun. The best part is probably the Big Fight, which instead of being illustrated, is a two-page spread with cut-out-able characters, and readers are encouraged to basically play out the fight however the hell they want, because we all know the good guys win and who cares?
  
  I like that stuff. In a way, you feel just a little ripped off, but I think that the fun of it outruns the ripped off feeling, and I suppose it's better to admit that the ultimate battle doesn't mean much and going with that as opposed to cramming in a few more punches.
  
  And strange as it is, I felt like Quantum and Woody, white and black superhero brothers who are traveling with their father, who is inhabiting the body of a pregnant goat, far outpaces the weirdness of Archer and Armstrong, a man who left a weird cult and an immortal hobo. I think the sum of all that weirdness is less that the total of its parts, which is a bit of a shame.
• 
  Alex Sarll

  Pleasingly atypical superhero crossover centred on "a continent-spanning ass map leading to the lost treasure of the hobos". The villains are a murderous conglomerate whose genetically-modified farm-stuffs are also their greatest weapon; they're called Mondostano, a name which is definitely not intended to recall any real biotech firms, apocalyptically evil or otherwise. The credits scene has one of the best montages I've seen comics accomplish, and there's an especially innovative approach to pacing the obligatory climactic fight; the closest equivalent I can recall was in Tommy Udo's Vatican Bloodbath, not exactly an acknowledged classic.
  Also, one of the leads is a superpowered transgender goat with a Speak & Spell.
• 
  David Finger

  I was really surprised at how unfunny this story was considering Salon proclaimed it as “one of the year’s funniest comics.” It wasn’t, but it tried way to hard to be hilarious...which in turn just made it terrible. It was like being stuck in a car with a guy telling a collection of the world’s worse dad jokes. The concept was solid as was the art. And maybe if they dumped the humor and tried to tell the story as a slightly more serious story with humorous elements it might have worked (although that is doubtful considering how stupid the premise was. A secret hobo map written on a butt cheek that led to a secret Rock Candy Mountain full of riches, and the evil Monsanto like corporation that was trying to get their hands on it). But every panel was a bad pun and a bad joke that distracted from the story. Maybe I’m being unduly harsh though because the four “Delinquents” were interesting characters with a lot of potential, which only made the failed execution of this graphic novel all the more pronounced.
• 
  John

  For some reason I wasn't crazy about either of Valiant's Archer and Armstrong or Quantum and Woody reboots, but this team-up really clicked with me. The humor ranged from juvenile to not quite juvenile, the plot, while silly (butt-skin maps, really?) was fun, and I enjoyed the hobo-lore stuff. The art was great, with a light breezy style that reminded me a bit of comic strips from about 50 years ago. Lots of fun.
• 
  Ritinha

  Além da
  Bluff House e
  das trombas de elefante a invocarem a arma no coldre do Steranko, há toda uma paródia zurzidora de uma certa multinacional chamada Mondostano, o que adensa os meus afectos pela Valiant.
  Do lado menos bom: há pontos com demasiado texto afectados a um humor menos conseguidos.
• 
  Sha

  1. That was so good.
  
  2. I was grinning the entire time.
  
  3. I agree with Woody. Archer. Is. Adorable.
  
  4. I really appreciate the fact that the writers were all hey we know this is where a multi page fight sequence happens but we are gonna ask you to use your imagination to imagine it and if it's not good enough you can't sue us. Bless.
  
  5. More story, less fight scenes. I'm looking at YOU Gilad.
  
• 
  Capital Fetter

  Very enjoyable romp featuring Valiant's two buddy teams.
  
  James Asmus (and Fred Van Lente) manage to successfully combine the Indiana Jones / conspiracy feel of A&A with the offbeat, gonzo humour of Q&W.It would have been easy to send the needle too far to one extreme or the other, that the story manages to balance both unite well.
  
  This volume is featured in the second deluxe edition and it must be said that there are many funny featurettes in that volume.
• 
  Gary Lee

  A&A vol 6 made it sound like this one would pick up from there and actually lead to something. Instead, this reads like a Q&W adventure, with A&A tacked on to get more readers. The Q&W style of humor does nothing for me, so this was a chore to get through. Especially since there seem to be no consequences afterwards.
• 
  Gim Yong

  Not as inventive and funny as it had set out to be. While A&A and Quantum & Woody were refreshing in their own titles, the Delinquents did not offer anything extraordinary that would make this team-up particularly stand out. A tad disappointing, but overall still a decent read.
• 
  Art

  I was hoping for more. I have a great time with a lot of the Archer and Armstrong stories, but this one just didn't do it for me. I think that it might have something to do with my never warming up to Quantum and Woody.
• 
  J.

  I'm a big fan of both Q&W and A&A, so this team-up is aimed right at me. It's big, goofy, ridiculous, self-aware, and hilarious. The art looks good throughout, particularly the interesting layouts.
• 
  Tomas

  I like Quantum and Woody but I was not impressed with Archer and Armstrong that much. It is hard to write funny books because everybody has a different sense of humor. So not for everybody
• 
  Marco Antonio di Forelli

  Cruce entre Quantum & Woody y Archer & Armstrong. Entretenida si te gusta alguna de las dos series, pero poco más. Su mayor utilidad es dar a conocer a unos a los fanáticos de los otros.
• 
  Ashkin Ayub

  🤦🤦🤦
  
  এর চেয়ে ভাল প্লট আমার ছোট ভাই লিখতে পারবে, এইটা বলে বছরের সেরা কমিক্স sighs
• 
  Steven W

  Painfully silly but it had its moments...
• 
  Ferenc

  3/5 - Graphic Novels
  3/5 - Humor
  2/5 - Characters
  3/5 - Story
  
  2.75/5 - Rating