Word: schrab
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Dates: during 1997-1997
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...connection of "Scud" to popular culture, and to genre film culture in particular, is one Schrab plays up heavily. He suggests that "Scud" readers imagine that they're watching a movie, complete with music appropriate to each page or each scene. Each issue lists on the inside cover a "suggested soundtrack," drawn from rock, alternative music and film soundtracks. Schrab even provides suggested "voice talent," so you know just what those voices in your head ought to sound like (Scud is supposed to be voiced by John Malkovich...
...Schrab is a highly gifted visual artist, and his fluid, hyper-kinetic black-and-white illustrations give the comic a definitely "cartoony" feel which contrasts quite effectively with the startling violence which periodically erupts in it. Ben Edlund's popular humor comic "The Tick" is a visible influence in the early adventures of Scud (for example, in the characters like the nefarious "Voodoo Ben" Franklin, a villain suspiciously resembling a founding father who animates his zombie armies using his electrified kite...
...progresses; in fact, the "Scud" universe is now large enough to have generated two spin-offs. Almost as violent and twice as profane as "Scud" is "La Cosa Nostroid." Illustrated by one Edvis (whose goofy, facile style is as reminiscent of Phil Foglio as it is of Schrab), the book somehow manages to make immature, violent, half-cyborg mafiosi extraordinarily lovable. And Scud's silent sidekick Drywall--a little creature whose zippered skin leads into a infinitely large inner warehouse where he can store anything he needs--has for some reason become extremely popular among the readers of "Scud...
...idiosyncratic method of drawing together the disparate threads of popular culture. There's a prevailing opinion that genius consists less in originality than in the ability to bring together what's already in the air, giving it a new life of its own. According to that point of view, Schrab must be doing something brilliant...
Because when it's taken on its own terms, of course, Schrab's ridiculous fusion of machismo, humor and popular culture works. And it certainly does generate a lot of attitude. Scud himself realizes this in one of his profounder moments. Meditating that he's one robot protagonist who's never wanted to be a human being, he comes to the conclusion that he should enjoy being what he is. Summing up the central aesthetic of the comic, Scud proclaims, "It's cool to be a robot...