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Nerding Day: Battle of the Year
Category: NERDING DAY
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Nerding Day: Kidz Water Hydrators 🌭
Children love comic books and also need water to live. Maybe that’s a controversial stance, but it’s one I’m willing to stand behind. Hi, I’m Robert Brockway and I’m here to talk to you about proper hydration and unleashed capitalism. It’s a ringing endorsement from me on both! Here’s my favorite comic book.
Kidz Water is exactly what it sounds like, water for kids. Now with extra fluoride! A bold twist in 1999, when the main market for bottled water was conspiracy-brained survivalists prepping bunkers for Y2K. It’s like booking flights to Orlando with the promise of extra colorful chem trails. Your demographic ain’t gonna love it.
But at first glance, the Kidz Water Hydrators comic book isn’t too crazy. Branded content and comic books go together like The Incredible Hulk and delicious Hostess Fruit Pies. Some maniac has already documented those extensively, it took most of his life and all of his sanity. I’m just saying that if this was an established practice – and Captain Citrus promises me it was – why then did Kidz Water Hydrators have to be launched under its own line: Marvel Custom Comics?
No other sponsored content title had to be distinguished from the Marvel brand, much less quarantined in its own publishing line. Marvel Custom Comics never published a single title before Kidz Water Hydrators, and never published one after. A whole separate imprint that existed just to clarify “this Kidz Water piece of shit does not represent us.” In an alternate timeline where Marvel never took that step, Kevin Feige is kicking off Phase Six of the Brandedverse by announcing Jojo Siwa as Crystal and Michael B Jordan as Tooth Decay.
“Haha,” you’re saying. “Classic Crystal burn from Brockway. I love this guy. He’s my best friend, I’m going to trust him with my house for the weekend.” Most of you are saying that, but I’m sure there are a few younger readers who don’t get our off the cuff Kidz Water Hydrators references. Let’s fix that.
MEET THE HYDRATORS!
Hydro! He can shoot water and is strong, like water is!
Crystal! She can turn invisible and has a crystal shield! She protects teeth! Any teeth!
Misty! She creates mist! Let’s check the next sentence for the rest of her powers! Thanks, Misty!
Ice! Ice!
Vapor! He can shoot water and is strong, like water is! Whoops that’s Hydro, thank god I caught that error in time, unlike Michael Stewart, the writer of Kidz Water Hydrators!
X-Stream! He can shoot various forms of water and is strong, like water is! Haha, you’re fired Michael Stewart!
Together they are the Hydrators, here to promote proper childhood hydration on their gleaming hovercycles, the sales of which could provide clean drinking water to all of Africa for the rest of time!
I have worked in branded content. It’s part of the only reason I’m so filled with crippling hate. I can tell you this: You do not put your A Team on Kidz Water Hydrators. Trust me, I’m a B Team Motherfucker. Yet those Hydrators bylines are not all struggling interns about to wash out of the comic industry. All of them are seasoned pros with big titles under their belts, and Al Milgrom was an actual editor at Marvel during this time. Not a well liked one, we can deduce from this job. But still, it’s wild how much money and effort was put into this. I’m only lying about one of those things.
Ha, “wash out.” I just got it. That’s why they pay me that B Team money.
The first issue – I’ll repeat that, the first issue – of Hydrators is about a villain named Chill who’s here to ruin a child’s snowboard race. In terms our younger reader can understand, in the ‘90s this was akin to inciting a violent political coup to overthrow a democratic election. It was a big deal, very frowned upon, but ultimately not punished.
I’m not going to sit here and spend my day spotting errors in the plot of Hydrators, because I have self respect but it is not unshakeable. I just want to point out that in the beginning, our heroes don’t know Chill’s sinister plan. They only know Nicole crashed one time in an active snowboard race, which made them bummed, so they gave her a flying hoverbike ride all the way back to the lead position. In terms our younger readers can understand, it’s like that election thing again.
That’s it. That’s all Crystal needs to hear. Nicole, a teenage snowboarder in the 1990s, is feeling a bit dizzy and flushed. To super-detective Crystal that’s evidence of a sinister plot, and not a Jetta full of half-crushed Sprite cans with little holes poked in them.
Ice, with his Bachelor’s degree in ice, knows that children’s water bottles do not naturally freeze in a perfect rectangle. Vapor, with his Associate’s degree in HVAC, knows the best solution is to fire scalding water at it. The kids replenish their bodies with warm water in heat compromised plastic. AHHH!
Real quick note: Can we find a way for the teens to drink water without saying the words “the kids replenish their bodies?” No? Kidz Water isn’t paying enough for a second pass? There’s barely enough money in the world to pay for this first pass? Human dignity does have a price, but you can’t buy it twice? That’s fair. B Team solidarity, Kidz Water Hydrators writer Micheal Stewart.
If we were accepting notes, I’d say it’s a little weird that the villain also loves water, but it worked for Hostess Fruit Pies and Nestle so let’s roll with it.
Hey, Michael Higgins, you’re the letterer of this issue. We need you to figure out a good sound effect for a snowboarder wiping out. It’s basically your one job.
You’re right, Michael Higgins: little rebellions keep the soul alive.
But look at that! Nicole is back in the race! With only substantial hoverbike assistance from a billion dollar superteam. We’d root against her for that back in the ‘90s. She was decades ahead of her time.
Chill isn’t out of the running yet, he’s come to this child’s snowboard competition armed with a high tech freeze-ray because he really, really wants that Personal Pan Pizza.
Whoops, you blinked and you missed it. The only thing X-Stream did in this, the team’s debut issue. He missed a flying dive tackle. Not a superpowered one at hyper speed. A normal dive tackle aimed at a teenage snowboarder off his board. At a kid wearing clunky snowboard boots in deep snow, who has just been knocked totally off guard by an invisible karate kick. I know I said I wasn’t here to poke holes in the plot of a sponsored content comic book for dehydrated children, but I also said I have self respect. We tell all sorts of lies to get through life. Right, Michael Higgins?
Holy shit, Ice. You should not be on this novelty corporate water team. You just flew in on an ice slide you made by flash freezing the ambient water in the air, then shaped a ski resort’s powder into a perfect loop to paralyze a snowboarding cheater. Even Chill could only freeze small blocks of water, and he needed a special gun to do it. This is a wild escalation, Ice. The person who did second most on your team high kicked a wrist.
Shit like this is why we needed Affirmative Action. Those are Iceman level powers. He’s an Omega threat now. Ice, you turned in a resume explaining how you’re the master of one of the fundamental elements of life and they put you on a team with the dipshit failcousin of every voting board member. That’s pure injustice. The only minority done dirtier in these pages is Misty (not pictured).
This is the whole comic so far, every page. Misty is not in it. The one panel where she helps a snowboarder stand up doesn’t count. She could’ve been replaced by a sturdy branch. Maybe “makes fog banks” isn’t exactly a universal screwdriver, but low visibility is famously the enemy of mountain sports. Ask Sonny Bono’s ghost, and while you’re at it, have him explain who he is to the younger readers. I don’t have a cynical analogy for that.
Wait, he’s like if Paul Walker was K-Fed.
Wait, that’s somehow even older.
Hold on, is that supposed to be a twist? That Chill brought a freeze ray AND a trick snowboard? And THE SNOWBOARD is why he was disqualified? Is this an Air Bud situation, there’s nothing in the rules about freeze-blasting teens and weaponizing dehydration?
Actually, let me check the handbook for the Mountain Creek Winter Fundays Downhill Play Race (Junior Division), yep it definitely says here you can’t be ferried down the mountain on the hovercycles of corporate shills. Actually, let me check the penal code of the United States of America, yep says here you can’t paralyze a teenager for cheating at snowboarding.
I can’t believe Chill brought the GDP of Indonesia in high tech weaponry and he’s not even going to get those two free passes to Snow Problem: Vernon, New Jersey’s hottest and only snowboard halfpipe for ages 18 and under. Those were the only stakes of this issue!
This is such a failure on every level that I can only assume it bankrupted the company. But there’s so little evidence Kidz Water even existed I can’t be sure of that. Hold on, there’s a website address here in the back. Let’s check Kidzwater.com on the Wayback Machine.
Huh, that was the same month the comics released. Even back in 1999, companies knew not to print their website address if they didn’t have a website. Let’s check back a year later.
Oh, man. Construction.jpg was the digital tombstone of the 1990s. So it never existed and skipped straight to limbo. Just an unbaptized baby of a business. RIP Kidz Water, the only unflavored fluoridated drinking water for children, aside from tap.
Special thanks to Mo for the Hot Hot Dog Tip!
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Brian Seiler, also known as Fluorider! He can shoot water and is strong, like water is!
Has this happened to you? You’re finally on a date with your crush and you realize way too late that the scent you’re using is Just. Not. Right. Maybe you thought expensive perfume would have impressed that special someone. Maybe you tried on pricey cologne to show them you’ve got class, buddy! But maybe the smell isn’t good enough or it’s too strong or – perhaps – it just doesn’t remind your beloved about the Super Mario Bros.
Good news: Your problems are over with Super Mario Scented Water. Is this a real, official product? I actually don’t know! A friend who works at a video game company and often visits other countries for work sent it to me with no context! That’s not a lie, by the way: My friend will just put things in a box, ship them to me, and I’ll have to work backwards to figure out what I’m looking at. It’s honestly the best. It’s like a prank and a present at the same time. The point being, whether it’s real or the most pointless knock-off ever, Super Mario Scented Water can give you a 1-Up on dating!
Now, to be clear – this is scented water, not perfume. This ain’t just for you and me grownups, it’s also for kids who want to smell good when they’re trying to impress someone at Nobu. Plus, the bottle says “no alcohol,” an ingredient that I’m guessing must be in perfumes and colognes. This is a relief for anyone considering drinking it because the bottle’s contents have the consistency of chunky milk. I honestly don’t remember if it looked like that or not when I received it because – guess what – I put it in a drawer and forgot about it for two years.
So, it’s kid friendly and alcohol free, just like my uncle before the accident. In addition to romance, it’s the perfect scent for first communions, bar mitzvahs, and graduations from elementary school. Be the coolest kid in your class by walking in with Super Mario Scented Water. And then drop to the floor crying when you accidentally have the nozzle backwards and spray it straight into your mouth. I’m not sure exactly what would happen if you did that because this article doesn’t pay enough for a hospital visit. Best case scenario it tastes awful. Worse case scenario, there’s an embarrassing newspaper article about how you died.
But enough of the hard sales pitch, what does it smell like? I’m so glad you asked. When you think about the Super Mario Bros., you probably imagine dashing over bricks to stomp on turtles. All of which have smells that one would want on their body. In fact, it’s hard to pick just one smell you can associate with the series. Fungus? Sure! Flaming castles? Yes! Road-crushed banana peel? One hundred percent! The aftermath of plumbing? Sign me up! Any of these could make a sexy date give you a sly smile and say, “Are you wearing Mario?”
They could’ve just gone with these obvious scents. But no. These are perfumers who cared enough to license or steal the Mario brand. You can’t sell Mario Bros.-themed scented water and make it smell like just one part of the game. You want it to smell like all parts of the game. And the only way to make it smell like all parts of the game is to, of course, make it smell like a living room carpet that was washed a month ago.
After spraying it on my wrist – and trying to take a photo that didn’t look insane – I tested the scent against others you might have in your home. What I found was a complex bouquet. It’s serving college dorm Febreze. It’s serving dad’s bathroom Glade PlugIn.
It’s serving Windex used to kill a roach because you don’t have a can of Raid. More than any other product on the market, Super Mario Scented Water romantically combines all of the familiar, lovely smells from under your sink. Just one sniff and you’ll be taken back to the good old days of having to scrub the kitchen before your judgemental grandma showed up.
So I return to the original question: Is this an official Super Mario Scented Water product? Honestly? Probably not? Almost definitely not? Based on both the smell and the feeling and the inability to find it anywhere else, no. Seriously. Usually you can find at least bootlegs. Somehow this doesn’t exist anywhere. I can’t find it on any site. Not eBay. No matter how many variations I searched.
Nor could I find it on Etsy as some sort of bespoke knock-off product.
No combination of words or phrases or trying to trick the algorithm gave me anything that looks like Super Mario Scented Water. I can’t even find a reference to the Super Mario Scented Water on a forum. True, I didn’t spend more than an hour looking – but also, if I did, I’d then be a person who spent more than an hour looking for Super Mario Scented Water.
That said, there are some things that do exist. Well, a lot of things exist. But in this specific instance, I found there is a recent Princess Peach Body Spray that was based on the Super Mario Bros. Movie. I think Lush had a few Super Mario options over the last year. This is not that.
I wanted to compare the two scents, but when I ordered “Princess Peach Body Spray,” the FBI showed up at my door and took all my hard drives. Hope they enjoy a lot of old King’s Quest games and some low-res rips of the pre-Special Edition Star Wars movies, cuz that’s what they’re gonna get! Sorry, cops!
I also found something that seems official called “Super Mario Water Teasers.”
I think this was one of those almost-fun games your grandparents would have that allowed you to push a soft button to make a little bit of water push microplastics around. Apparently it offers, quote, “HOURS OF CHALLENGING FUN”. It doesn’t say how many hours so I’m gonna guess, oh, two hundred. It’s basically the Elden Ring of soft water toys that leak after two days.
Unfortunately, when I ordered the “Super Mario Bros. Water Teasers,” the FBI once again showed up at my door. And they were like, “Buddy,” and I was like, “I know,” and they were like, “Hard drives,” and I was like, “Already in the evidence bags.”
But the fact of the matter is that – whether official or very, very, very, very, very likely not – Super Mario Scented Water does exist. For too long, perfumes and colognes and scented waters have had the stench of fruit and the fetor of wood. They’ve been disgusting and useless. Today you can change that. And since nobody but me and my friend seem to have ever even heard of this (knock-off) product, it feels good and proper to help them out with a few slogans.
So get your hands on Super Mario Scented Water today. If you can find it, which you almost certainly won’t! And happy sailing, you romantic dog: Have fun out there in the land of love, which as we all know is after the desert and ice levels.
Warning: Super Mario Scented Water does not wash off your wrist no matter how hard you try or what soap you use.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Vooster, who smells like Q*Bert. You know what we’re saying.
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Nerding Day: Marihuana
Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite doctor wizard, who’s also a smug 1960s swinging bachelor. That’s right, I could only be referring to Gold Key Comics’ Dr. Spektor. The superhero who is like Dr. Strange, except worse in every possible way, including his skills with women because this is the issue where Dr. Spektor gets his ass kicked by an owl and then gets dumped.
Unlike Doctor Strange, Dr. Spektor is not a real doctor. He’s more like one of those chiropractors that sell male enhancement supplements. Honestly, that would be more impressive. I don’t think Dr. Spektor even has a real job. His full name might be Dorian Reynoldo Spektor, and he’s doing some creative abbreviating. And you should know Dr. Spektor is also fully human– he has no real superpowers other than a pretty good memory and a large library of occult books. He’s a man who has read too much, and his job seems to be Scooby Dooing around the country with his girlfriend to point at supernatural creatures and go, “Yup, that’s a ghost. I’ve got a whole book about them, and that is what they look like.”
Our story today, “NIGHT OF THE OWL!” opens with Dr. Spektor and his girlfriend, Lakota Rainflower, a Sioux woman, riding in the car together. And because this comic was published in 1976, he refers to her as Pocahontas and asks her why she seems sad. To which she responds, “You mean you don’t know?” This conversation is a relationship 911 on multiple levels, but Dr. Spektor remains unbothered.
He’s instantly like, “Thank God, something more important popped up. I almost had to listen to my girlfriend’s feelings instead of hunt ghosts. Can you even imagine?” The thing Dr. Spektor and Lakota have stumbled upon is Dr. Spektor’s cousin Anne being menaced by an oddly sexual bird man with thick thighs. I’m proud to announce this owl has awakened absolutely nothing in me. However, I do have the urge to crush some Duolingo today for some reason.
The fact that this buff owl keeps mentioning how pretty Ann is will be important later. It turns out Cousin Anne has a lot going on. Her dad was recently obliterated in a house explosion after becoming inspired by Dr. Spektor to dabble in the occult. You might even say this whole thing is all Dr. Spektor’s fault. Luckily, it’s also a convenient way to escape an awkward conversation with his girlfriend.
Dr. Spektor knows exactly how to deal with a problem caused by the sinister book known as the “Demonomicon.” He’ll have to fight it using his own copy of the very same book, the “Demonomicon”. Did he get it in a two for one deal at Occult Party City and gift one to his favorite cousin in lieu of a sympathy card after his wife died? Who’s to say? It’s important to remember that no one can prove anything.
I feel like Dr. Spektor didn’t need his copy of the “Demonomicon”; he just wanted to make sure everyone understood that his cousin didn’t own a book he didn’t have. His whole thing is books. It’s all he’s got. Using the “Demonomicon”, we learn the buff owl is not a Harlem Globetrotter in disguise. It’s a demon named Andras, who, much like a regular bird, thrives on chaos. As Dr. Spector quietly reads in his private library, Andras goes around literally ripping planes out of the sky and prying railroad tracks out of the ground for fun.
Back in his library, Dr. Spektor sips some tea, avoids his girlfriend, and decides they need to have a seance to contact his dumbass ghost cousin and ask how they can get rid of Andras, even though it seems like Dr. Spektor has access to all of the same information as his cousin. Dr. Spektor is suddenly like, “fuck it, this, the book is really long and I think a seance would be cooler,” which is true. But it turns out they can’t contact Dr. Burton’s cousin since the medium thinks the guy is still alive. Convenient excuse, medium!
Now, I bet this whole time you’ve been wondering if there’s an owl man running around, are people going to blame retired superhero who is not technically Batman, The Owl, for all of Andras’s destruction? You’re absolutely right, my friend. The Owl has sought out Dr. Spektor to file a copyright complaint on the Owl Demon.
You have to wonder if this whole story was a way to remind Dr. Spektor readers that The Owl exists because there really isn’t any reason for him to show up other than an owl demon giving the man-shaped owl community a bad name. He serves no real purpose in the plot, but we obviously have to include him in the demon owl story, right? After all, we all remember his classic catchphrase, “BY THE WAY, IN CASE YOU DON’T RECOGNIZE THIS OUTFIT I’M WEARING, MOST PEOPLE KNOW ME BY THE NAME OF… … THE OWL!“
The cops show up to arrest the owl (not The Owl) for tearing airplanes out of the sky with his bare hands and he scampers off into the night. Dr. Spektor tries to convince the police that the bird they’re looking for is actually a demon but no one buys it and Dr. Spektor is very clearly used to that, so he just kinda dips. On their way back from the failed seance, Andras attacks and kidnaps Anne. Dr. Spektor’s plan to shriek, “ROLL UP THE WINDOWS, QUICK!!” does not work.
Dr. Spektor’s next idea is to “try to stop Andras somehow,” but it fails, because Andras is a supernatural demon and he is an ordinary man named Doctor. In fact, it’s such a useless gesture Lakota is genuinely offended he didn’t ask her to help. I mean, why not die respecting her?
Lakota could probably have taken that owl. If she pictured Dr. Spektor’s face on him and let out some of her frustration about dating a man whose job is solving the occult problems he caused, Andras would be dead as hell. Instead, we learn Andras has some kind of hypnotic powers that make Lakota and Dr. Spektor unable to fight him. Who knows why he bothered. Maybe it’s hard to get liquid nerd out of demon feathers?
Andras also uses his bird hypnosis on Anne to prevent her from running away. He flies her into a tree and says, “You live here now, Anne! I know it’s not the condo with a fenced-in yard you were hoping for, but it’s home, Anne! Don’t fall out of our home, or you’ll die. Sorry, about the mind powers. I promise it’s mostly a safety thing, not a sex thing. Okay bye, I have to go destroy. Ha! Heee! Haa-Haaahh!” I don’t know why I’m paraphrasing when I can show you the full riveting speech:
This is a great villain monologue. Andras’s motives are so clear. He wants to cause chaos and hang out with Anne. The fan fiction for these two writes itself. Sadly, Lakota is not as jazzed about Anne finding eternal love with Andras as I am. In fact, she’s pretty pissed at Dr. Spektor and has the wild idea that all of this is a little bit his fault somehow?
He could have taken this woman to TGI Fridays in the first panel of this comic and they would still be together. To make matters worse, The Owl returns, and Lakota does not like his vibe because she wonders if “a sane man would risk his life taking the law into his own hands.” Hey, “Doctor,” are you hearing this? You, the man who fights ghosts– who is currently looking to fist fight a hypnotic superbird of Satan with no plan? Dr. Spektor should really see the writing on the wall here, but he’s too busy hanging out with his cool new friend in the owl costume. He misses every single sign she gives him, and she is not subtle:
And that’s a wrap on Lakota. He will never see her again, but he’s too distracted to realize that. His cousin’s spectral form shows up to tell him which tree Anne is in, so he’s got to go rescue her. The Owl tags along, and they have an epic showdown with two regular owls, which the comic book tries to convince us is the pinnacle of danger. These hollow-boned creatures are predators, but their primary prey is mice. Almost any adult man should be able to fight an owl. If a combined weight of eight pounds of grouchy bird is a threat, these two superheroes are doomed.
But it’s actually worse than two men going into a ring with a couple owls and walking out defeated because the owls aren’t real. They’re an illusion created by Andras with his hypnotism skills. Learning this is how Andras’s hypnotism skills work makes me wonder what Anne thinks she’s been doing this whole time she’s been stuck in a tree with him. Did she think he was Taye Diggs? Haha, I hope not because the big twist of the comic is that this whole time, the owl demon was, in fact, her father. That’s why he was so obsessed with Anne, because, as Dr. Spektor so eloquently puts it, he still wanted to “possess” his daughter. Anne is like a cool lava lamp, or a tennis racket that he left behind when he went full owl.
I did not get the vibe of fatherly affection coming off that bird demon. He was trying to get his cloaca wet. I know that he was possessed by a demon, but this is still so messed up, and no one acknowledges it. There’s no awkwardness. They banish the demon and Anne drives off into the sunset with Bird Daddy.
Dr. Spektor returns home to finally learn how hard he has been dumped. She hit him with the “please don’t try to find me” in her goodbye letter. That’s the ultimate dump. Not only are they broken up, she doesn’t want him to know her address. That’s how sick of ghosts this woman is. “SILENT FUCKING RAGE,” he thinks to himself.
At least she had the decency to leave behind a framed photograph and a tomahawk for him to remember her by. He should have seen this one coming. He asked her to help save his cousin from bird marriage to her Dad, and she literally said, “I have a bad headache!” That last panel is a man truly defeated both romantically and physically by an owl. Dr. Spektor may have sent him back to hell, but Andras won this issue.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Lucas Keen, but in case you don’t recognize his crushed velvet jumpsuit, most people know him by the name of THE PURPLE HONEYCREEPER.
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Nerding Day: The (Devil’s) Workshop 🌭
Blue Comet Press was an independent comic book publisher founded, staffed, and terrorized by Craig Stormon. Craig has a tough vibe to pin down, he’s kind of like a child granted a Zoltar wish to be big, and then sent six hundred years into the future to fight in a time war he had no chance of understanding. Now he’s back, and he has PTSD from robot attacks that haven’t happened yet. He is a madman standing at the edge of infinity, and instead of therapy he slowly burned down a comic book imprint over the course of a decade. He started BCP in 1986 and ran it until the mid ‘90s, and he never published a title that went beyond three issues. Craig Stormon himself was BCP’s most prolific and most canceled creator, and he was in charge of cancellations. They say if you hate yourself you’re probably not alone, but only Craig Stormon has a choir of alternate universe Stormons heckling his every move.
The (Devil’s) Workshop was one of many Blue Comet Press titles that didn’t make it past the first issue. That makes it lucky – some titles didn’t make it beyond issue zero. He canceled them before they started, because his child-brain has been tragically shattered and spread across the chronoverse. The (Devil’s) Workshop was Stormon’s response to the ‘90s edgy comics craze which, like all of human existence, Craig Stormon both despised and desperately wanted to be a part of, but couldn’t figure out how.
You might remember the main character, Windraven, from Blue Comet’s flagship title, L.I.F.E. Brigade – a team of bewildered superheroes fighting every comic book plot at once. Windraven was the Indian psychic magician who got her powers twice, once from the fact that all Indians are magic, and twice from a living comet who’d never met her and didn’t realize it was granting her the exact same set of powers again. Her primary personality trait was bikini, and she lost half of it for The (Devil’s) Workshop. Windraven is an embodiment of the saddest thing that can happen in comic books: When a nerd falls in love with a sexy lady he made up. She shows up in multiple titles, surviving several cancellations. She’s the one thing Craig Stormon can’t let go of – well, her and the pinless handgrenade he carries everywhere for arguments.
Like all Blue Comet Press titles, The (Devil’s) Workshop opens with a completely insane frothing manifesto from the editor, Craig Stormon, ranting against the very artists he’s working with in this issue, often including himself.
Craig Stormon writes like the moment after a child falls into an ape enclosure. Just pure shrieking chaos. Every Stormon editorial feels like a man in a dynamite vest is screaming over your shoulder while using you as a human shield against a wary SWAT team. The opening sentences of this comic book blame you, the reader, for assuming Craig Stormon was selling out to the edgy comics craze. He invented the concept of bad girls in 1991, maybe 1992, you idiot! They didn’t exist before that! Also the penciler for this issue was a son of a bitch whose ghost almost certainly haunts the trunk of Craig Stormon’s 1981 Buick Electra. It’s a good thing we’re not even naming that son of a bitch or this would be libel.
Craig Stormon’s mortal enemy this week is a cowardly penciller named Dick Bonk. There’s no way that man exists outside of Craig’s own quivering brain. This is definitely a Split situation. When co-writer Paul Birch walked into the office one day to find the walls smeared in shit and Craig Stormon introducing himself as Dick Bonk Pencilman, he knew better than to question it. That’s how you get a Stormon Bite, and those always get infected.
It gets overshadowed by the mad fury reserved for his own pencilsona, but Craig also throws digs at the painter of this issue’s cover, promising that all future issues will be MUCH better than this shitty one. That’s the kind of burn that doesn’t fully land until Craig Stormon cancels the whole title, ensuring there will be no future issues.
Hold on, Craig Stormon is not done clawing at the walls and cursing at the unrelenting sun.
Craig knows what you’re worried about: You think he’s too afraid to say “FUCK.” Well, you little dick bonk, he’s not! He’ll say it, plus any other word. Butt! That’s just an example. BUTT AGAIN.
I’m not sure what he means by listing other books he’s worked on before they got “too scared of competition.” Wait, I am sure: He got fired for hunting the other artists like Lance Henriksen in Hard Target.
The (Devil’s) Workshop is a comic book for ADULTS… who are also children brain-zapped into huge bodies and doing their best in a society full of loud noises. It’s about hardcore stuff like sex, drugs, and satan worship! It’s all so pure and naive. By sex Craig means looking at a butt, by drugs he means the stuff he learned about in elementary school puppet shows, and by satan worship he means the stuff he learned about in home school after he attacked the puppets.
Let’s meet our first character, a drug addict, handled with all the skill and sensitivity of a man who shoots nutria for sport.
Finally, Craig Stormon has found his voice, and its a hollow-eyed Maine fisherman’s suicide note. Hey Craig, real quick, why are all the dogs slaughtered at sunrise? Does that happen every sunrise, is it one of those brutal English aristocrat things, like fox-hunting or Royal Knockout? Since you felt the need to specify, I have to ask: Craig Stormon, do you think dogs howl in salute to you? Is that why you always howl back, you slavering fucking madman?
We’re looking for a live child in an apehouse if we’re looking for empathy and understanding in a Craig Stormon title. Maybe he does better with the female characters-
Most of the women in Craig’s comics are horny extroverts who get what they deserve. But that’s only to show us how the special one, Windraven, isn’t like the other girls. She’s not overtly sexual. She doesn’t want to be the center of attention. Yes, she has her whole butt out the first time we meet her, yes it’s in the same panel where she explains she’s not making an exhibition of herself, but contradiction and exposed asses are how you create deep characters.
Now that we’ve established our primary themes – junkies, dog slaughter, Indian butt – it’s time to break the whole comic for a three page flashback to the events of L.I.F.E. Brigade, which are not relevant to this story and will not come up again.
Here’s the only important new development in those pages:
In a two panel yadda, all of Craig Stormon’s “sexy women” get chrono-blasted across time, just like his own fragile child brain. This accomplishes three things: It lets him set the story in a more relatable modern-day world, it gets rid of all the gross unsexy men, and more butt.
What a butt! Like all the best butts, it’s two water balloons hanging from a back. Like only the greatest butts, it looks like Gleep and Glorp doing the Bump. Like only the most sensual of ladybutts, it’s a top down view of two pachycephalosaurs fighting.
This being the mid-90s, Craig has to strike a delicate balance. Every edgy female character has to be super horny for sex, but she also has to attack any man trying to have it with her.
The physical storytelling here is so bad I’m not sure what’s happening. I guess Shandazar magnetized that man’s cock so his best friend’s wedding ring was inexorably drawn to it? Otherwise I have no idea why that man took a plasma blast to the junk and his buddy started juggling his balls while quipping “what a quaint old British custom.” It might be a Monty Python reference. Wait, this is the art’s fault – that means this is Dick Bonk’s doing. The son of a bitch! Dick Bonk slipped a dick bonk in here!
So far we are missing the trademark Craig Stormon dyslexia blitz, but don’t worry- it’s coming.
He crowded that last word bubble so hard it overran its borders, only to spell the word he screwed it all up for wrong. He spelled “damn” with a B, then basically called his main characters a couple of cubts.
It’s worth pointing out Craig’s one attempt at a running joke – he named this team of all sexy lady warriors the Iron Cupcakes, then decided they hated it. That’s actually pretty funny until you realize it’s a tragic metaphor for Craig Stormon’s entire comic book career.
There are two plotlines running parallel in The (Devil’s) Workshop. One is this: sexy ‘90s women with prehensile butts lusting for and then attacking dong, and the other is a junkie for satan learning the cons of buying smack from the devil.
Yes, the drug dealers here are literal zombies and demons, obviously led by-
A woman’s crotch.
This is our main villain, and if I told you anything about her before posting the proof, you’d never know if I was joking. For example, if I said she deals drugs brought up from hell to save enough money to post the devil’s bail and her name is some fedora-tipping shit like M’Lady Doom, you would laugh, but part of you would secretly think Craig Stormon could actually write that.
Sometimes a pearl-clutching Satanic Panic scare goes so hard it comes back around to awesome again. M’Lady Doom rules. She’s just, she’s the baddest.
It turns out Murphy, the junkie every dog salutes as they die, has been skimming the devil’s hell heroin. M’Lady is a ride or die gal for Satan, so it’s good that Murphy is incredibly ready to die. He was practically bursting with mortality.
M’Lady injects him with battery acid and he curses her, vows zombie revenge, demands euthanasia, and then untucks his shirt to fire his guts at her like a lizard – all within the span of three panels. There’s no way her entourage was prepared for this dude speedrunning death like that. If they didn’t inject him with battery acid he would’ve died two seconds later spitting vile curses at a nearby rusty nail. He was a shaken-up bottle of Diet Flesh Coke just waiting for his Acid Mentos.
Meanwhile, across town at the sexy ‘90s butt rave for chaste women, Windraven’s barely named friend made the mistake of going out for a cigarette. Because Craig Stormon’s brain is a whirlwind of howling ghosts he can never escape, this means she deserves to get kidnapped by a satanic cyborg drug dealer.
There’s a lot to deal with here: The reiteration of “damb,” which means that wasn’t a typo earlier – Craig Stormon really thinks that’s how you spell it. Do you think he pronounces the B? There’s the slutty cutouts on her already short skirt that make it look like she has a spare butt. The fact that she reacts to killer cyborgs like Helen Keller walking into a sprinkler. But I like the little details: Hell’s Robocop is so bad he bought a Bic with a little skeleton on it. I think I had a hackeysack with that exact logo on it, and ironically enough I traded it for cigarettes.
Whoever this lady is, she’s so irrelevant that her friends, the main characters, never actually realize she’s been abducted. Even after her kidnappers nearly run them over. Man, I’m starting to get Stormon’s enmity. Penciller and Enemy of the People Dick Bonk’s only reference for “big tittied woman diving” is a vampire lunge-
He really bonked this dick up.
Finally we see the titular workshop (devil’s). It’s the vicious dungeon where the blood of 13 innocent victims must be spilled to free Saragar!
From jail! Hell jail! The demon judge set Saragar’s blood bail at 13 victims! And he’s almost free. He’s so close! Saragar is trying to spend the last of his commissary fund on erasers and tic tacs, because he’ll be damned if the hell prison is keeping a penny of his baby momma’s paycheck!
The barely named friend is sacrificed nude and upside down, forced to stare up the very cooch of her captor as she dies. In fact, she’s beheaded at that exact moment – so the last sight her brain imprints as she spins up eternity is a pap smear of the devil’s girlfriend.
Across town, her best friends sleep as all women do – full makeup, same bed, tits out – totally unaware of the satanic drug orgy being held in honor of her death. The devil’s cyborg uses her skull for a gag to a non-existent camera while a caped man spit takes through a handjob. Everyone’s college roommate, a guy named something like AJ, gets head from one of the devil’s concubines, just happy to be gettin’ some.
Fucking AJ, man. He’s not even a satanist. He’s a registered pastafarian, he has the bumper sticker and everything. You could call him out on his hypocrisy but you know he’d just say “head’s head, man!” and spill bong water on the carpet while going for a high five.
And that’s it, somehow that’s everything that happens in this comic. It’s way too much and not nearly enough. A woman gets beheaded by a Chick tract while her friends sass up a ‘90s rave, and every single one of them shows their whole ass, especially Craig Stormon.
I’m pretty sure Craig even writes the ads in the back, because if not, he has found his people:
RAW Comics is so anti-establishment they’ll shun Valiant, which I think was an MLM knife scam that got out of hand and accidentally turned into a comic book press. RAW’s tagline is “COMICS THAT BITE BACK!” which sounds edgy until you think about it, and then it just implies they’re so stupid they eat comic books.
And then there’s this full page splash for GEOFFREY’S COMICS, where Craig Stormon drew a custom character named Captain Greed shaking and then punching the head off a child for shopping at a rival comic book store.
So are we rooting FOR Captain Greed here, Craig? It’s good and right that he’s rocketing the faces off children for capitalism? Oh hey everybody it’s Bone Daddy, the contextless janitor hermit! Tell your local comic book clerk Bone Daddy sent you, and get a free kidnapping! It’s how you tell a total stranger “I have no family to care if I’m found in a bathtub full of ice later.”
There’s no way Geoffrey Comic knew what he was getting into when he took out this ad space. Craig Stormon promised him something tasteful and then sent him this page covered in barbecue sauce and ants. I don’t know if Geoffrey complained, but we’ll find out in the next unhinged editorial starring Craig Stormon’s brain mites.
Craig’s final note is one of baseless optimism undulled by ten straight years of self-inflicted failures and invented enemies. It’s a teaser page for issue 2 of The (Devil’s) Workshop.
“12 women, no blood, no heads. Who’s 13th? The future at stake,” Craig Stormon writes.
“That’s great!” His neurologist says, “we’re getting some fine motor coordination back. The words will start making sense eventually when we teach your speech center to reconnect with your hands. Trust the process, you were lucky to survive that tractor accident.”
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, the original Bone Daddy, now a proud Bone Granddaddy to two little Bone Daddies and one Bone Mommy.