Word: scud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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While biological and chemical arms can potentially wreak havoc on civilian populations, they're considered inefficient, especially when delivered by Saddam Hussein's favorite transport, the Scud. "The Scud is an inaccurate weapon and the wind has to be just right," says Thompson. Still, Israel is taking notice. Statements by the chief U.N. weapons inspector that Iraq has enough biological or chemical arms to "blow away Tel Aviv" has elicited Pentagon-like tough talk from Israeli officials. "Surely Iraq must know that it will not pay to attack Israel," government spokesman David Bar-Ilan told Reuters. Israelis are being told...
...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...
...comic moves away from those influences as it 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...
With a spin-off series, a video game and now a movie looming in the future, "Scud" is obviously one of the success stories of the competitive world of independent comics. And, unusually, it's succeeded not through literary depth or through the invention of strange new worlds, but through sheer attitude and its own 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...
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...