Scud: The Complete Shebang

Rob Schrab’s Scud the Disposable Assassin came out in 1993.  It was a scatter-shot series about a world where murder is casual and easy ”“ you just go to a vending machine, enter a few coins and voila, your own personalized assassination robot, who will not only complete the job but also, based on the contempt-level you program into it, will insult the victim before termination. The story is about one such robot, which discovers that it (he?) will self-terminate after completing the assignment ”“ hence the term ”˜disposable assassin’ ”“ it chooses to keep its victim incapacitated but alive, and then proceeds to become a freelance assassin. The series ran 24 issues until 1998, and then Schrab went into TV and animation work full-time, leaving the conclusion of this maniacal series in limbo.

Ten years later, Scud is back in print as a collected edition, and Image Comics deserves accolades not only for collecting this memorable run, but also for getting the creator to complete his work after 10 years. Throughout the comic, Schrab’s animation instincts kick into high gear, and the result is a lunatic romp of an adventure, one which makes you burst into laughter at nearly every page-turn. The note-perfect pace of the story, the overall sketchy look of the characters, the hyper-kinetic action sequences ”“ all of this together makes for a package that throws pretentiousness to the winds; it is an over-the-top action-adventure that parodies itself and the rest of the genre, and then you realize, somewhere in the middle of the book, how much you begin to care for the lead character.

There is a level of irony at work here ”“ consider that at the time of Scud’s release, it was overshadowed by the soulless Image offerings of that time ( I am looking at you, W.I.L.Dcats and Youngblood), and yet fifteen years later, it is this black-and-white series that has proved to be the more lasting work. Rock on, Rob.