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Feb 26, 2017

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 732: L.I.F.E. Brigade #1, 1986

http://www.comics.org/issue/661439/

This was a weird one. The cover had me thinking I was reading someone's comic from grade 4. Seriously, look at the face on that front character. But as I made my way through it, I began to think that the art is actually much more inspired by the underground comix of the 60s and 70s. There's something strangely subversive about it, which, sadly, the story doesn't quite pick up on.

This is the tale of a small group of adventurers, all outcasts, searching the cosmos for a new home for an increasingly needy humankind. But the interesting part is that by the end of the comic they've decided to return to Earth, only to find it devastated by a robotic alien race. So it seems that, rather than the sort of tired "Let's find a new place to live" storyline, we're getting the slightly more interesting "Holy shit what happened to our planet while we were away" storyline. The series lasts 3 issues, so we may never know what exactly happened to the Earth, but, if nothing else, the story is illustrated in really weird, and kind of wonderful, way.

What strikes me is that that cover is not at all indicative of the richness of the interior art, so I wonder if it's a style of art that doesn't suit the colouring on the cover. Had that been a B&W cover, it might have conveyed a much more mature aesthetic than it does. Perhaps there are artistic styles in comics that just don't suit colouration.

Onward!

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