The Delinquents

Comic Info

The Delinquents #1 Variant

Reprints The Delinquents #1-4 (August 2014-November 2014).  Armstrong isn’t the most responsible person.  When he was travelling the rails, he was given a map to the hobo treasure scrawled on the skin of a butt…which he promptly lost half of to a hungry dog.  Now, an elite food manufacturer named Gerald Stano has found the other half of the map and hired Quantum and Woody to locate the hobo treasure.  When the two of the world’s worst super hero teams find themselves on the same quest a team-up seems inevitable…unless they go out drinking instead.

Written by James Asmus with help from Fred Van Lente, The Delinquents is a crossover between the Quantum and Woody and Archer and Armstrong comics.  With illustrations by Kano, the four issue limited series has been collected and released in a trade paperback.

I love Archer and Armstrong…Quantum and Woody less so.  With the two teams meeting, I saw it as a good comic meeting an average one.  I had hoped it was going to be more Archer and Armstrong than Quantum and Woody, but the tone of the comic was balanced enough that I couldn’t enjoy it as an Archer and Armstrong comic nor dislike it as a Quantum and Woody comic.  With the in-between nature of the comic, I found myself a little unmoved by the story.

The Delinquents #4 Variant

Hobo-code for some reason has recently become a big thing.  A storyline in Hawkeye also revolved around hobo-code and here, the characters are also travelling by hobo-code.  I’ve never been a train person or had any desire to live a life on the rails so hobo stories never had much appeal to me.  The adventure here lies heavily on the travel adventure, but it isn’t rooted in the reality that I would have liked.  I like travel adventures where they go to locations like Rushmore, Route 66, etc. and uncover adventure.  Here, the travel seems incidental to the jokes and laughs.

I don’t get many jokes and laughs on the Quantum and Woody part of the story (which is part of the reason I’ve never really been into their comic).  I don’t find their comic very smart and while an actual team-up between the two teams would have been interesting (who hangs out with whom), the team-up doesn’t happen fast enough and then it still feels like a lot of Archer and Armstrong hanging out with Quantum and Woody instead of a true blending.  When the character do switch and Quantum works with Armstrong and Woody works with Archer, the comic works, but there isn’t enough of it (plus Mr. E. Meat, Storm, and Stano are pretty lame).

The Delinquents was an obvious comic.  With two similar team books in a small company’s market, you had to have the characters meet.  The book just needed more of the team-up and interaction.  I was glad that it was a limited series instead of disrupting the flow of Archer and Armstrong, but I do think The Delinquents could have been better (but I do give the art a thumbs up).