Recommendation: Scud - The Disposable Assassin

[The criteria: (1) Self-contained stories; no background knowledge required. (2) Widely available. (3) Fairly inexpensive; no price gouging. And of course (4), highest quality.]

In 1994, riding the end of the collector's bubble, a black and white, independent comic became all the rage. It had four spin-offs (two minis, two ongoing) and two video games. In 1998, issue #20 had the protagonist swear that he was going to assassinate the Earth... but it wasn't until ten years later that issues #21-24 came out finally finishing this oft-overlooked fan favorite.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin was created by Rob Schrab (pronounced "Shrob" but not followed by "Bo Bob") and Dan Harmon, but the bulk of the credit goes to Schrab. Like many of us, Schrab gave birth to this creation through a mixture of depression and cheesy old movies (in this case, westerns and exploitation films), but unlike most of us, Schrab and Harmon come from the Dead Alewives, a comedy troupe out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since creating Scud, they have gone into film and television writing Monster House for Columbia Pictures and currently working on The Sarah Silverman Show for Comedy Central. They also did an unsuccessful pilot for a show satirizing '80s superpowered action shows (a la The Incredible Hulk and Knight Rider) called Heat Vision & Jack starring Jack Black with the voice of Owen Wilson as his talking motorcycle. It was produced by Ben Stiller after he became a success, but before the other two did.

Getting back to the comic, the plot is fairly simple, as dramatized by this image (right). Basically, the story is set in what I would call a pop-culture mish-mash alternate reality. Like a cartoon reality such as Doug, Rocko's Modern Life, or even Duck Tales, it resembles our world, but does not conform to it. For example, when you have a problem with someone, you can always spend a few Franks at a local vending machine and get a robot assassin. Just so there are no loose ends (and so the company can make a greater profit), the assassin will self-destruct upon termination of its target.

This story is about one Scud, who upon seeing the warning sign on his back, decided he didn't want to self-destruct and so shot the arms and legs off of his target and put it on life support. Then he had to become a freelance assassin to pay the bills. Along the way, Scud encounters Jeff, the mother of the Apocalypse; Ben Franklin, self-proclaimed master of sex and voodoo; La Cosa Nostroid, the android mafia; Drywall, a blue... uh, interdimensional... storage... thing; Sussudio, the beautiful master thief with a robot fetish; and many more bizarre creatures.

Scud is one of those things, like web comics (or variety show podcasts), that you can see quickly evolve from its crude and rough beginnings as both the artist learns his craft and the art finds a unique form all its own. Despite all of the witty rejoinders and casual brutality of the series, there is obviously a lot of love here. The comic was originally created to impress a girl that Schrab was interested in (hence the name "Heartbreaker"), but ended up impressing Schrab himself. The long break between the twentieth and twenty-first issues was actually, in part, due to another romantic relationship falling apart and the anger and cynicism associated with that breakup. Naturally, you don't need to know all this to enjoy the comic, but it feels like a very personal work, and when you learn the history behind it, it just makes sense. It isn't just a story, but an exercise in free expression forming in the ether of one man's own demented psyche.

Just the sort of thing I love.

Until recently, if you wanted to read Scud, you would either need to illegally download it, order it from the website, or painstakingly track them down in comic stores, but with the final four issues completed, Scud has been collected in one edition titled Scud: The Whole Shebang boldly including a beginning, middle, AND end at no extra cost! Cover price is $29.99 (S19.59 from Overstock, $19.79 from Amazon) for 786 pages or 3.5 pounds of zany goodness. I don't own it yet, but I expect to resolve this problem as soon as possible.

Further web links-
Rob Schrab's Official Webpage
The Official Scud Webpage (last updated in 2003)
Schrab's Scud related video clips

Recommendation: Bone

Well, it finally happened. I decided that as long as I am talking so much about comics, I might as well put together a few recommendations. But I didn't want this to be a completely masturbatory process for me, so I came up with a few ground rules to make these recommendations a bit more palatable.

1. All recommendations will be self-contained stories. They may be part of a series or they may have sequels, but you won't feel like you are getting an incomplete story when you read it. If they are superhero stories, I will assume the reader has a passing knowledge of comic books gained from television and movies. I will recommend nothing that requires background knowledge.

2. They must be readily accessible. I will not recommend anything that is out of print or is only available in single-issues. I will assume my readers find being in a comic store as uncomfortable as being in a twelve-year-old boy's treehouse. (Furthermore, I will assume my readers find being in a twelve-year-old boy's treehouse uncomfortable.)

3. They must be relatively inexpensive. Of course, prices wildly vary for comics and cost/benefit analysis should also take into account page count amongst many other factors, but I will not be recommending any comic that I believe is unreasonably expensive for the casual comic reader. This includes oversized hardcover editions marketed to hardcore collectors and other forms of price gouging.

That said, let's begin with my first recommendation: Jeff Smith's Bone. This is a young adult comic in the fantasy genre starring several oddly cartoon-ish protagonists collectively known as the Bones from Boneville. Leading the group is the humble Fone Bone accompanied by his cousins, the greedy Phoncible P. "Phoney" Bone, and the goofy, cigar-chomping Smiley Bone. After Phoney's failed campaign for mayor led to the group being run out of town, they wander into a mysterious valley full of strange humans where they are pursued by evil rat creatures and locusts. They take refuge with a kindly, young woman and her tough-as-nails "Gran'ma Ben." They soon find themselves drawn into a mythological adventure to stop the Lord of the Locusts to wake the world dragon Mim and thus end the world... but not before Phoney tries to rig the great cow race to cheat the local villagers.

Bone has won an unpresidented 10 Eisner Awards and 11 Harvey Awards, the industry's two most highly regarded accolades. In their list of Top Ten Graphic Novels of All Time, Time Magazine called it "as sweeping as the Lord of the Rings cycle, but much funnier." I agree whole-heartedly. Like any great fantasy novel, reading Bone is an experience that makes you feel like you were there, and Smith's characters are so rich and dynamic that, by the end, they feel more like friends.

This comic is available in two main formats. For $39.95 ($25.62 from Overstock, $26.37 from Amazon), you can buy Bone: The One Volume edition. This collects all 1300 pages of the series in its entirety in the original black and white. I own this volume and it is one of my favorites. However, for $9.99, you can get the colorized volumes released by Scholastic Press. They look beautiful, but with 9 volumes, that comes out to a total of $90. Until they have the colorized version in a single volume, I think I'll stick with black and white.

Further web links:
Boneville - The Official Bone website
Bone games from Scholastic