Author: Robert Brockway

In L.I.F.E. Brigade, Issue 1, we met a cast of fascinating characters four times and then watched them hide in caves twice. Writer, maniac, artist, editor, maniac, publisher and maniac Craig Stormon started the indie comic company Blue Comet Press and was the sole driving force behind most of its comics. Being in total control of all of them didn’t stop him from canceling all of them. Most after the first installment, some before it! Several Craig Stormon titles debuted at #0 and were canceled before their first issue. But L.I.F.E. Brigade was Blue Comet’s premier series, meaning it didn’t get canceled… it got canceled twice. Twice the cancellations of every other Craig Stormon title!

It just wouldn’t be a Stormon production without an unhinged editorial section. In the first issue he reviewed a cool party, guilt tripped a fellow artist, and bragged about getting shitcanned. I’m cutting twenty other crazy things for the sake of brevity, a sin Craig Stormon would physically attack me for. In this editorial he’ll talk up his revolutionary art, invent the dumbest word you’ve ever heard, apologize for his terrible art, introduce a hot new artist, get carried away on a lie escalator, and then start a war with Marvel using prosecutable libel.

We’re on page nothing! This is the inside cover, where there would usually be an in-your-face ad for RoboTrucks: The Lost Forever, a Taiwanese shovelware game that’s just a reskinned Puzzle Bobble. But Blue Comet comics have no ads! It’s a moral stance, like 1900HOTDOG, and not because we’re both too fucking crazy for RFPs.

Don’t worry if you forgot the rich story of the first L.I.F.E. Brigade. If there’s one thing Craig Stormon’s great at, it’s recapping what just happened even if that means recapping it while it’s happening. Like the caverns? Remember the caverns? You’ll remember the caverns.

*Remember the caverns!

I’m glad we reminded people about the caves twice in the first panel. There’s no need to rehash why the entire planet is reverse evolving into obliteration, because it’s not anymore. I don’t mean that problem has been fixed, I mean Craig forgot the plot between issues and now the Earth was ravaged by nuclear war.

Think of this as freestyle comic booking, Craig Stormon remembers the important things: The characters. In the first issue we learned that Ray Gun Kid is furious and quick to laser, but we never saw it.

Maybe you were expecting some violent showdown with an alien army, but that’s not the reality of laser ownership: 70% of ray gun fatalities happen in the home, and are telepathic space robots.

You’ve all innately absorbed storytelling rules, like that every scene serves a purpose. Is this setting up a later plot point involving Ray Gun Kid and a tragically ray gunned kid? What was Oracle doing in that cave? He changed the subject awfully fast, didn’t he? Maybe we’re supposed to be suspicious of Oracle now. This isn’t nothing, it can’t be.

You know how they say you should never jump in the water to save a drowning person, because they’ll blindly claw at you until you both drown? That’s what’s happening to your brain right now. The story is drowning and everything you know is saying you have to save it with meaning, but it will only kill you if you try. None of this is ever mentioned again, and the scene ends with radioactive mutants.

I mean the next panel is screaming radioactive mutants.

There, your brain was trying to predict that. That’s what would have happened if you jumped in the story pool to save Craig Stormon.

I maintain that Craig’s drawings are so terrible they loop back around to actual art. Or at least they can fake it. Flash back to college, that showing you went to because you were trying to nail one of the artists. Mentally hang this panel in the gallery – you’d spout some bullshit about subverting 1950s American iconography to impress them, right? Make the right sexy Lichtenstein pun and it would work, too.

Craig discovered a new tool this issue: Editorial notes. Like all new things he discovers, these will be used as confidently as they are incorrectly.

You have to be careful with Blue Comet comics. You can’t just laugh at something and move on. Sure, you caught the first three hilarious things about these panels:

-Craig felt the need to explain radioactive mutants twice like it’s a highbrow concept that might fly over our heads. In his wood-paneled study and smoking jacket, sipping a brandy, tamping his pipe like “the cannibals, you see, are from the radiation.”

-The phrase “turned to cannibalism with blood-lust, and total insanity!” like the mutants made a careful choice to embrace insane cannibal blood-lust as one might turn to Christ.

-He cuts in with an editorial note to make sure that when he said “death on their minds,” you didn’t forget the last sentence when he told you they were insane blood-lusting cannibals.

You caught all of those, you chuckled sensibly, you moved on to read this paragraph. The obvious escaped you. Craig Stormon is the editor leaving that note, and he’s also the writer. An editorial note is there to clarify something the writer may not have made clear, but without altering their words. They were Craig’s words in the first place! If it occurred to him as an editor that “they have death on their minds” might be confusing phrasing, he as the writer could have just fixed it.

The rambling, the repetition, the typos, the editorial notes to himself – I have this figured out. Craig Stormon doesn’t know about drafts. He legitimately never heard of the concept of a draft and is totally unaware of revision. He believes that once you art, it’s done, and all you can do is watch helplessly as the world tears it apart. That’s the only reason he’d swap plotlines between issues and keep canceling his own comics. He’s frustrated that his art isn’t turning out right, but thinks he’s powerless to do anything about it.

You and Craig might be panicking right now, wondering how our heroes are going to get out of this mess he wrote them into-

They probably don’t appreciate being called “normal people” and “ordinary folks” so hard by a visiting space troupe of psychic exploding lunatics. I come from a small central Oregon cattle town, and then I spent 20 years in Portland with satan-worshipping strippers and amateur cyborgs. If I went back home and started calling everybody “ordinary” you can bet I’d wake up inside a cow. That’s what we did to city slickers in my town, we put them inside cows. Don’t mock our ordinary ways.

You probably get it. These people are normies. Not Chads or Stacys, just Michaels and Rebeccas. The 49%. Cable watchers, landline owners, the turkey sandwich of humanity. Craig worries you don’t get it. They’re real simple folk. These are blue collar irradiated cannibal destroyers. What’s the best way to show that?

It’s so hard to explain all the ways this panel is funny. It’s not just the juxtaposition of a mundane brand on the tailgate of a mutant slaying battlewagon. I mean, it is that. But it’s so much more! You have to know all about Craig’s misfiring brain and his childlike understanding of the world. How he must define normalcy, having only guessed at normalcy’s shape by observing its gravity fluctuations from his mental observatory six billion miles away.

Anyway, let’s meet those normies. Those post apocalyptic accountants. Just shades of living beige, these simple honest hillfolk-

This huge-jawed hunk in a spandex bodysuit and AR goggles with his carefully vague “pal” – an enormous Indian who dresses like a bondage cowboy and calls himself Two-Ton – blasts through a cannibal horde with an armored F-1050 before introducing himself as the Zone Ranger, and Craig Stormon’s best descriptor for him is “normal, ordinary folk.” At the risk of sounding like an oblivious mother welcoming her daughter’s roommate for the 19th consecutive Christmas, I think something else is going on here.

These honest churchgoing workaday Joes take L.I.F.E. Brigade back to their post-apocalyptic party compound, surely smelling of silicone and 100% of the world’s cocaine, where every member of this super tough space mercenary team has a total mental breakdown.

Hold on, this is supposed to be hundreds of years from now – in the first issue we saw Rochel Windraven with her tribe of techno-shamans all practicing psychic meditation. You’re telling me it’s so far in the future Indians have evolved ESP and the American government still keeps them on reservations?

That… oh, that one actually tracks. Sorry.

Let’s get the base tour from The Zone Ranger, who’s wearing 1/3rd of a shirt and not the 1/3rd you’d expect.

He gives a tour like a 5 year old showing off a tree house. Look how many movies we have, and if we clean up we can watch any one we want as long as it’s over before 9 o’clock. Let’s check out the rec room and the fort Two-Ton set up in the closet – it’s got string lights! – before our heroes are shown to their bedrooms. Thrilling! Action!

Whoa, hold on. Is Captain Long John Lazer, notorious outer space mouthfreak, really about to get it on with Windy Blaze? Look at those names! Think of the potential for sexy puns!

“Is that John as long as I heard?”

“My favorite’s the Chinook, but I love all hot breezes.”

“Is that permanent smile from disfiguring space herpes, or are you just happy to see me?”

Haha he slammed the door straight in her face.

It’s a hallmark of any Craig Stormon title that our heroes almost consider fucking and then completely don’t, because you write what you know. Why bring up the sexual tension at all if you’re just going to dunk it in the garbage to write a daydream about military skeletons?

This isn’t super relevant. I only included it to establish that Long John Lazer cries through the maskhole, he’s saying his own sound effects in the dialogue bubbles, and I just like the shocked skeleton.

Long John Lazer flashes back to how things got so bad, which should be easy because the first issue told us everything we need to know: Reverse evolution ray. People are becoming triceratopses because of an anti-evolution laser and the very specific ways the American education system failed Craig Stormon.

Here’s what that looks like…

I wasn’t joking, Craig Stormon forgot the entire premise of this comic book in Issue 2. It’s no longer about rad dinosaurs who used to be porn stars (there had to be a few!), now it’s just general societal collapse and nuclear fallout. But nevermind that, there are seven hundred more interesting things we need to talk about in this panel.

Why are the several real brands displayed so prominently? No way Blue Comet showed a racist duck drawing to an ad executive and locked down that Coke placement. This is legally prosecutable. There’s not even an ironic commentary here, all we establish is that Radioactive Robert Smith loves his Porsche battlewagon. Look at Cool Disney Funkmaster. What the fuck is Hipster Lurch doing in those overall pockets? There’s something beautiful about the naive earnestness of FOOD LINE, but no, forget all of that. Throw it in the fire. We have to talk about whatever this fucking thing is:

Is that supposed to be a child? Take in the context: the food lines, the gaunt mother holding him, it’s supposed to be a starving kid, right? Not a Billy Zane homunculus? It’s a bald, hydrocephalic, simultaneously buff and malnourished mini-freak with a huge hog busting out of his polka dot panties – that’s what Craig Stormon thinks children are. It’s a god damn shame that he died before we could do a documentary on his broken brain. He should have a syndrome named after him. I mean, I assume he’s dead, because this world was not built to care for such special maniacs.

You won’t believe this, but we’re already going to beat that panel in the next panel.

Society has descended into apocalyptic chaos and it looks exactly like Double Dragon fan drawings in a 1989 Nintendo Power. Just two radical gym rats fucking up a starvation line, milliseconds away from an argument about collateral dick damage. FOOD TODAY. The sign says. That’s what a stroke victim writes while trying to repair the neural pathways responsible for understanding breakfast. No equivocations this time: This is art.

Let’s check back in on Captain Long John Lazer. When we last left him he was tired from touring hallways and he did not want to fuck. Now he’s-

He’s doing it again. He’s still there. Captain Long John Lazer has entered the Blue Balls Bermuda Triangle, and he’ll never leave. Why is everyone so horny and nobody knows how to fuck? It’s like Craig Stormon is locked into geosynchronous orbit with sex. He’s always stuck right there, never farther away but never any closer. In any other story, those two panels are the surest setup for an action hero bang session. There’s a third panel where she starts to drop the nightie, hard cut out to saxophones and stock footage of the beach.

“OK, guess we will not fuck I really wanted to do that goodbye again for the second time again!” Windy Blaze goes home alone to workout them huge gorilla arms with a prominently branded dildo, while both Long John Lazer and Craig Stormon share the bad ending in this episode of Boner Twilight Zone.

I’m not sure what happens in the finale. But I think maybe the bad guys have captured some civilians and they’re going to kill them?

Craig’s done everything he set out to do: introduced his characters more times than a heartbroken son at a dementia ward, hid them in caves, had them tour an apartment complex, bought delicious Coca-Cola Food., they did not fuck, they never fucked, and they beat the alien reverse-evolution plot by forgetting about it. It’s time to confront the evil Vandanese emperor, who I guess is the bad guy.

Haha, you thought the setup was for some kind of feminist quip, a Return of the King “I don’t need no man, girls get it done” moment, but no: Windraven doesn’t have a clever retort, what she does have is an Indian mindblast that turns alien brains into tapioca.

How did she pull off this perfect strategy – which was showing up, having nothing to say, and psychic blasting an alien politician into gelatin? She, like everyone on the reservation, has a crystal ball full of ancestors! No time to delve into that because there’s something ungodly going on with her breasts. I don’t know if Craig was trying to draw a tight shirt or what, but it looks like eggs undergoing mitosis.

It looks like Batman’s pantyhose don’t fit right. If you squint real hard her tits look like a caricature of a pleasant librarian. Maybe I just figured out why none of Craig Stormon’s characters fuck. Anyway THE END.

Ahh, but the aliens ALSO have wizards who can see the future! None of this had ever been mentioned before, and it probably wouldn’t have come up again if there had been a third issue, which there wasn’t, because Craig Stormon canceled his own comic after two completely insane issues that were mostly about caves and celibacy.

But wait! There’s more! L.I.F.E. Brigade 2 ends with a bonus mini-issue teasing a new title by a different artist. This is Roller Coasters, a rollerskating superhero team whose powers, premise, and plot are never explained in all 12 pages of preview, which is mostly about how badly a roller-contortionist’s ripped amazon girlfriend wants to get on top of him but doesn’t know what the next step is. Then the very last page abruptly jams every ounce of story in at once like it’s Sunday night homework.

If you’re wondering why the art changed but the story is still manic gibberish about mostly but not quite ever fucking, it’s because Craig Stormon insisted on writing it “for consistency.” That’s perhaps the craziest move of all, that he took over writing the guest artist’s comic because he was worried fans would notice inconsistencies in storytelling. An entire planet full of forgotten dino-people shrug in impotent fury, and then blink out of existence.

So this horny bench queen and her rollerskate club stumble on her boyfriend strapped into a cosmic man milking machine (the way she responds says this is not the first time), they completely buy his hasty cover story about a voyeuristic alien who wants to recruit every hot teen that wanders into his space dairy, and their response, every one of them, is “fuck yeah, me too!”

It’s perfect. I’d buy every issue if it existed.

No title at Blue Comet made it very long. Craig Stormon got frustrated and bored after a few issues when he couldn’t figure out how to put the little people in his head outside of his basement apartment and inside of each other. But surely if L.I.F.E. Brigade, the premier title, only made it two issues, then Craig must’ve realized there was nothing to these extremely killable roller-virgins. This was their preview issue and he struggled through nothing for 11 pages only to slap a slashfic story prompt on the end. I’ll strap myself into the man-milker and flip the switch to GLORP if it got even a single issue-

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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Alpha Scientist Javo, who has overloaded every intergalactic man-milker he’s been strapped into.

L.I.F.E. Brigade was a 1986 comic book series by artist and writer Craig Stormon, and the flagship title of indie publisher Blue Comet Press. It was about a group of space mercenaries who gained mysterious superpowers and returned to Earth only to find it destroyed, so they waged war against the aliens who forced the entire planet into reverse evolution. You might recognize that as three too many premises, which is usually a sign you need a good editor. Unfortunately Craig Stormon was also the owner and editor of Blue Comet Press. Oh, and L.I.F.E. Brigade stands for Last Individuals Fighting Evil (on Earth) Brigade.

Another pair of eyes might have come in handy on that one, Craig.

Despite owning every step of the process, writer and artist Craig Stormon’s L.I.F.E. Brigade would be canceled after just two issues by editor and owner, Craig Stormon. Following an impassioned plea by superfan Craig Stormon, Blue Comet Press brought creator Craig Stormon’s L.I.F.E. Brigade back for a reboot. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to win over the publisher, Craig Stormon, who canceled the revamped series after a single issue.

I worry you hear all that and think, “he started a vanity press then quit after he found out it was hard – I’ve had friends who were ‘writing a novel,’ I know how this goes.” No, Blue Comet Press published several titles, many of which ran longer than L.I.F.E. Brigade. It had other artists, writers, employees! I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess none of them were paid on time. Let’s recap: L.I.F.E. Brigade was launched as the premier title of a new indie press where the creator had complete control over the company, and it was still shitcanned twice in the span of three issues.

That’s because Craig Stormon never met an idea that didn’t need six more ideas, a tangent, a manifesto, and an apology. He was a prolific builder of worlds both stupid and insane.

Let’s start with the first issue of L.I.F.E. Brigade’s letters section.

There shouldn’t be a letters section in the first issue.

There were no letters to answer yet, and the whole thing only spanned half of the inside front and rear covers, yet Craig still managed to go off topic every single paragraph. He used this small space to solicit fan art, try to hire the fan artists who did not and never would exist, tried to bribe them into existing, named and shamed a fellow comic artist who didn’t deliver on promised work, told a story about how he did such a bad job one time his employer didn’t use any of the art despite paying him for it, plugged his sign company, yelled at nobody for saying he had it too easy, laid out four different business plans and asked for fan input on them, bragged about his art style despite showing us his art style on the next page, humbly praised his own work ethic, thanked his family, his publisher (Craig Stormon), and the non-existent fans of this again first issue, talked about a cool party he went to one time, reviewed a bar band, explained the comic you were currently reading, plugged some other artists, defined what it means to be a professional (do what Craig Stormon says), ran through his resume again, and took about six “anyways” to reroute himself onto the topic at hand, which was Craig Stormon.

We are on page zero. We haven’t started yet. We’re on the inside cover, and already this is a one-sided conversation with a bus maniac. If you’ve ever been cornered by an oversharing public transportation lunatic and pulled the stop cord early, opting to walk four miles through a bad neighborhood rather than hear another word about 5G, this isn’t the comic for you. If you looked that bus maniac straight in the eye and said “I’m having trouble visualizing this, could you draw me some pictures?” I have such good news for you.

The art sucks so hard that it rules, actually. It’s not just bad, it’s bad in an iconic and interesting way. Perspective, proportion, coherency, troubling Native American space women and their prominent nipples – these are all things Craig Stormon thinks can get fucked. Especially that last one. Windraven had nipples built into her space suit so aliens could tell when she’s interested, and her secret? She’s always interested.

I love it. I’d genuinely hang this on my wall and get a little uncomfortable every time I had to explain it.

L.I.F.E. Brigade is paced exactly like a trapped subway conversation: As soon as you catch the beat of the madness and start to dance to it, Craig blows up the whole disco and walks away whistling. Here, meet the Ray Gun Kid – he shoots like he gets mad: Fast, and for no apparent reason.

Sure, of course, short-tempered ray gun scientist. Let’s hear more about that-

No, it’s time to jump to Captain Long John Lazer – which is exactly what I’d name the well-hung captain in a porno parody of L.I.F.E. Brigade – thinking about how young and fine this dude is, even though only 1/3rd of his face is visible.

We were already heading down a wild road with an insane gunfighting lab tech, then we jumped the guardrail and went offroading with Captain Long John Lazer, casual fan of space mouths. You’ll never get your feet from one panel to the next. It’s like how Kubrick designed the set of The Shining so the audience couldn’t grasp the geometry of the hotel, only here every door opens onto a bear blowjob.

I kind of get it with Ray Gun Kid though. Early in the comic he stumbles across a robot and sprints in with the exact enthusiasm of a 10 year old finding a weird moth.

It’s absolutely adorable. Laser pistol wielding super scientist, quick to anger but full of child-like earnestness? That’s the main character in a Kindle Unlimited romance with seven thousand four star reviews. I don’t know that my first thought after meeting him is “I wonder where he got that mouth? Humm?” But I get the appeal.

My favorite thing about Craig Stormon, aside from that he’ll cancel himself twice if he doesn’t deliver to the exacting standards of Craig Stormon, is his pacing. He illustrates every single awkward silence, even if it kills the momentum of a radical robot discovery.

It gives L.I.F.E. Brigade the vibe of new roommates taking a roadtrip together too soon in the friendship. Nobody is fully comfortable now that they don’t have a space to retreat to, and Brenda forgot to pack a bra.

It turns out the robot is actually a mechanical body separated from a brain that needs all the same medications as Craig Stormon. The Atomic Oracle uses every part of the speech bubble to introduce itself, explain that it’s invincible, that its brain is detachable, that it invented itself four different ways, and that sometimes it worries about itself. You can actually see Ray Gun Kid contemplating the stop cord here, even if it means walking home through the warehouse district at night.

Now that we’ve introduced our characters, it’s time to introduce our characters again! First up, the Ray Gun Kid. He’s… a ray-gun kid! You remember that, you met him twice already!

Furious, fair-mouthed laser boy! One time somebody said he missed and he cried! He cried! Until they took it back!

Here’s Blue Comet, or Tim Buck, no preference, but maybe Tim Buck, probably just Tim Buck, sorry!

Tim Buck is the only human shooting star with social anxiety, and I love him for that.

Windraven is a double psychic Native American, which according to 1980s comic book stereotypes means she’s triple psychic and can maybe turn into a bear if she gets mad.

And as for Captain Long John Lazer, he was just born a freak. You and Ray Gun Kid already knew that, but a different kind of freak!

Nice. Say what you will about Craig Stormon, but he knows how to introduce a ragtag crew of space mercenaries for the second time. One panel, in and out, just like Captain Long John Lazer and the mouths of his crew. No filler in this-

Oh, okay. So he was born with a laser beam eye. That’s almost an origin story. It’s the same cheat code Stan Lee used when he ran out of synonyms for radiation and invented the X-Men. Got it, time to move on-

Okay, we really get it. It’s because of the laser, not herpes, and if Tim “Blue Comet No Sorry That’s Dumb Just Tim Buck” Buck says otherwise, it’s because he’s jealous of all the attention the new guy is getting. Long John Lazer must be captain because he owns the ship. His team is an awkward meteor, a triple psychic, and a tech genius gunfighting mouthboy, while he can… shoot a laser out of a face that’s allergic to lasers.

Oh shit, I’m leaving out The Atomic Oracle. Oracle has his own mission and concerns, and he needs the help of L.I.F.E. Brigade to-

Craig took a whole panel to draw Oracle totally dumbstruck that the group of superpowered mercenaries who just rescued him now want to hire him to rescue them. It’s like an episode of The A-Team if Hannibal, Face, BA, and Murdock rescued a plucky young woman whose family business was being destroyed by a corrupt mine-owner, then handed her a gun and told her she’s the only one who can clear their names.

That one no-dialogue panel implies about thirty seconds of offended silence, but after Oracle recovers he agrees to join the team. He’s not yet complete, so the Brigade sets out to help him find his core. If you start to feel bad for Tim “I Said Blue Comet As A Joke” Buck, just know that he does it to himself.

Now that Oracle is whole again, the team takes care of those space pirates who tried to bury him as treasure – I never told you about that, don’t ask, it doesn’t matter, they’re going to explode.

You know Tim “Just Tim, Can We Stop Talking About The Blue Comet Thing?” Buck hated himself for this. He got carried away being part of a fun group activity for the first time and made himself the center of attention, now he’s got a new shame to revisit instead of sleeping.

I didn’t cut any meaningful action, there’s no big fight with the space pirates. The first issue of L.I.F.E. Brigade spends twenty pages reintroducing each character and their favorite mouths, the whole crew hides in a cave for a while, then suddenly they remember there’s a conflict outside and explode it.

Finally we can return to Earth, which you’ll remember, but not understand, is being reverse-evolved by aliens!

Hahaha shut the fuck up, Tim. This is why everybody RSVP’d ‘YES!’ to your party but the servers at Outback Steakhouse sang you “Happy Birthday” alone again. Tim “I Actually Never Even Said Blue Comet” Buck sees his mother has backwards evolved into a pterodactyl and thinks it’s an excuse to talk about the liberal agenda.

There’s something I assume is a spaceship dogfight, but remember Craig Stormon’s brain has five different inner monologues and they all hate each other.

Sweet nesting sound effects inside of nested bubbles. Good job, Artist Craigs #1 through 4. Bad job, Craig Wrangler #5.

Hold on, we forgot to introduce our characters for the third time.

Then it’s, holy shit, it’s time to hide in a cave again?

All we’ve done is say hello and wait in a cave, multiple times! Craig Stormon’s whole life is caves and greetings, they’re the only experiences he has to share! This is a story by a little boy who’s only ever called for help from a sewer. But wait, there’s more! There’s a mini bonus-story at the end about a problematic duck I won’t post here because it’s racist in a way I don’t have words for!

But wait! There’s even more! There are many pages of pin-up art I won’t post here because it’s starting to feel like booing at the Special Olympics!

Find out what’s going to happen next time in L.I.F.E. Brigade Issue #2! Will our heroes continue hiding in a cave? Yes! Will they briefly consider fucking and then never mention it again? Yes! What about the awkward silences? Yes! Or will this be the end, will the entire comic be abruptly canceled?

Yes, you knew that part! It’s the Craig Stormon Rule of Threes: anything worth saying is worth saying three more times. But will L.I.F.E. Brigade get canceled next issue?!

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This article is thanks to a hot Hot Dog Tip from Mo, who basically works here.