Word: scud
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...things don't work out the way they're supposed to: When our Scud robot takes a break from the first issue's cinematically staged chase-and-shoot sequence to wash monster blood off his hands in the men's john...well, he happens to catch a glimpse in the mirror of his own back--complete with a label warning that he'll blow up the moment his assigned target is destroyed. Our Scud has an epiphany, realizes that he doesn't want to die and settles for merely damaging Jeff and stowing her safely in the emergency facilities...
...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...
...which the action of animated films is laid out, more than they do conventional comics. The story itself, along with its universe of pop-culture causality, features characters who are archetypes straight out of genre films: mobsters, samurai, sexy female assassins. And each "episode" of "Scud" is dedicated to a director in whose style the issue is cast: from Quentin Tarantino to Jim Henson to "the memory of Orson Welles...
...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...