Comics We're Thankful For:
Mike Isenberg is thankful for Scud: The Disposable Assassin

One day in late 1994, an adolescent Mike Isenberg walked out of his local comic shop with a black-and-white comic that would forever change his life.

The comic was Scud: The Disposable Assassin #4, published by Fireman Press.  It looked neat.  It was neat.  In the pages of that issue I would find a stylish robot fighting alongside cyborg mafiosos against zombie dinosaurs led by voo-doo lord Benjamin Franklin.  Needless to say, my 11-year-old mind was blown wide open.  I scrambled to find the issues I had missed, and made sure from that point on to grab every new issue that hit the shelves.

In the world of Scud: The Disposable Assassin, robotic assassins can be purchased from corner vending-machines as easily as soda or Doritos.  A Scud will pursue any target you assign him and then—as it states on the warning label affixed to his back—he will self-destruct once his target is eliminated.

The comic tells the story of one Scud (serial#: 1373), hired to kill a monster that’s been terrorizing a local mannequin factory.  During the fight, Scud happens to catch sight of his back in a mirror and reads the label that spells out his fate.  Not being too enthused with the idea of self-destruction, he refuses to kill his target; instead, he shoots off the monster’s limbs and brings it to the local hospital.  Medical bills aren’t cheap, however, so he starts taking freelance assassin jobs in order to pay for the creature’s life support.

Created by Rob Schrab, with occasional writing assistance from Mondy Carter  and Dan Harmon  (yes, the same Dan Harmon who went on to create “Community”), Scud is kinetic and exciting and stylish and imaginative and playful, all in a way that I hadn’t realized was even possible for a comic in 1994.  I immediately shared it with all of my friends, including a young Oliver Mertz; our bonding over Scud would become a decades-long shared appreciation of comics in general, eventually leading to our collaboration on an indie comic of our own.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful to Rob Schrab for opening my pre-teen eyes to the potential of the comics medium to surprise and excite, and to really express a creator’s imagination in a totally new way.  I’m thankful that it brought me and my eventual co-writer together.  And, most of all, I’m thankful that Schrab finally freakin’ finished it.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin #20 came out in early 1998 and ended on a serious bummer of a cliffhanger, with Scud agreeing to take on his final job: assassinate the world.  Issue #21 was supposedly right around the corner, but kept getting delayed as Schrab and Harmon were whisked off to Hollywood to work with Oliver Stone, trying to get a Scud film adaptation off the ground.  Months turned to years, Fireman Press closed their doors, and greatest comic of my adolescence seemed destined to fade into obscurity; out of print, forgotten, and unfinished.

Ten years later, working in a comic shop and thumbing through the new Previews catalog, I nearly faint when I see Image[6]  soliciting Scud #21.  In 2008, Schrab finally produced the last four issues of Scud, and then Image reprinted the entire series in Scud: The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang.

I recommend a lot of books here.  Usually a new one each week.  But if there’s one book in the entire comiXology catalog that I’m really thankful for, it’s this one.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Pick it up.

Comics We're Thankful For:
Jen Keith is thankful for Green Arrow: Quiver

My desk has a lot of Green Arrow swag on it; it’s no secret that he’s my favorite, and I owe that to a serendipitous discovery of Green Arrow: Quiver during college. It’s also no secret that it can be difficult to know where to start with superheroes. I offer up Quiver as someone who went blindly into a superhero book and came out a fan for life.

First off, you don’t have to know anything about Green Arrow to read this book. For Arrow fans, it’s a great place to start because it has many of your favorites. Arsenal, Black Canary, and the Flash make appearances as well as other members of the Green Arrow family like Connor Hawke, Oliver’s multi-ethnic son, and the first appearance of future Speedy Mia Dearden. With Justice Leaguers like Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, and even some Vertigo/supernatural characters, it’s an easy jumping off point.

As for the plot: Green Arrow is back from the dead (like many superheroes before him), only he’s not the same as when he left; this doesn’t stop him from hunting down the child-killer known as the Star City Slayer.

Quiver manages to show Oliver’s progression from ranting about “fat-cats” and “blue fascists” to the still hotheaded and liberal, though hopefully more responsible. old coot he grew to be all in one book. Kevin Smith does a fantastic job of summarizing the continuity and telling a compelling story while still fitting in humor and character development. Better yet, Smith and art team Phil Hester and Ande Parks stuck around for more.

Fighting with a bow and arrow seems outdated, but Oliver Queen is a character for today. When everyone is taking down the Lex Luthors and Jokers of the world, Oliver Queen fights for the little guy. He’s a moral compass for the Justice League, and about as non-powered human as you can get. His books have covered issues like homophobia and racism, political and corporate corruption, and even tackled HIV and drug addiction.

Quiver isn’t as groundbreaking as, say, The Longbow Hunters, which is entirely deserving of its own review. Nor is it the amazing 1970s road trip Green Lantern/Green Arrow team up. It is, however, near and dear to my heart as the book I am thankful of for broadening my comic horizons when I didn’t know my Wally Wests from my Kyle Rayners, and I’m glad to share the book that helped make me the comic fan I am today.

[Read Green Arrow: Quiver on comiXology]

Jen Keith is a Digital Editor at comiXology, comic artist, music addict, and is eagerly awaiting the day Ollie gets his Van Dyke back in the comics.

Comics We're Thankful For:
Harris Smith is thankful for Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth

It’s almost impossible not to recognize Jack Kirby’s contribution to comics, and to pop culture in general.  As co-creator of Captain America, the X-Men, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and numerous others, his vision has reverberated throughout the popular collective unconscious for decades.  What’s easy to overlook, however, is that while Kirby was adept not only at creating icons but also at tapping into the zeitgeist of the times in a way that resonated with readers, he was much more than a keen-eyed populist.  Jack Kirby was an artist with seemingly boundless imagination.  He was a risk-taker with a unique individual style.  While it’s always entertaining, much of Kirby’s work is also challenging and complex, rich with the obsessive detail of the true visionary, one who creates not just to appeal to a wide audience, but to fulfill something within themselves, to explore and express something fundamental to the core of their being.

This is nowhere more evident than in Kirby’s less popular work from the 1970s.  After his success with the aforementioned Marvel characters, he moved to DC in 1970 and created some of the most beautifully imaginative, boundary-pushing, medium-elevating work in the history of comics.  Witness Kamandi, a 1972 series initially conceived as a knock-off of Planet of the Apes, but which built a vast rich mythology around the last boy on earth’s journeys around a post-apocalyptic world where humans have been supplanted by various species of intelligent animals.

Far from a simple adventure story, Kamandi is loaded with intriguing ideas and striking creative flourishes.  Visually, it’s Kirby as his most brilliant.  Each panel is loaded with so much dynamism, they threaten to explode off the page.  The work seems to pulsate with vibrancy.  Kirby’s rubble-strewn landscapes of our fallen civilization are at once breathtaking and heartbreaking.  His signature double splash pages are incomparable, whether they depict the New York City skyline submerged in water or a colony of sentient apes maintaing a monstrous pastiche of techno-primitive machinery. 

Kamandi is the kind of narrative that passionate readers dream of, the kind of fictional universe that vibrates with such robust vitality that it takes on a life of its own.  Do yourself a favor this holiday season and take some time out of the hustle and bustle of last-minute shopping and family gatherings to let yourself be engulfed in the phantasmagorical wonderland Jack Kirby’s imagination.  You’ll be thankful you did.

[Read Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth on comiXology]

Harris Smith is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.

Comics we're Thankful for:
Madeleine Lloyd-Davies is thankful for Strangers In Paradise by terrymooreart

When I was 13, I had the incredible fortune to be invited to San Diego Comic Con with a close friend and her family. I was a comics newbie and indiscriminately bought anything that was recommended to me (including Chicken Soup for Satan, a way-too-scary horror comic that I bought because of the funny title).  By far the most important book I bought that weekend was the first volume of Strangers in Paradise.

This is the book that made me fall in love with comics all over again. When I was a kid, I would sit on the floor at CVS and read Archie comics (#TeamCherylBlossom). But I think people who grew up with friends and family who read and shared comic books can underestimate how hard it can be to get into them as a newcomer. I didn’t know where my local comic shop was. My attempts to play X-Men with boys on the playground were immediately shot down. And that was kind of…that, until SiP. As soon as I got home, I started trying to track down other graphic novels (I remember reading Castle Waiting, Alias, and slowly working my way over to collected editions of superhero novels like Astonishing X-Men).

But beyond pulling me into comics, SiP was really the first time I saw characters that I truly related to, in ANY medium. At age 13 I was coming to grips with the fact that I was chubby and bisexual (with a mullet, btw, #TeamMullet). At that time, I couldn’t have named a single chubby girl character OR bisexual character, let alone someone who was both (happily, I’ve since discovered plenty more great comics representation: try Love and Rockets: Locas or Wet Moon, for instance). To read a book with a woman who was chubby, who struggled with body image sometimes but was confident sometimes, who had people who thought she was beautiful AND people who made fun of her weight, whose sexual orientation was in flux—if you’ve grown up seeing a lot of people like you represented in media, you might not get how powerful that is. But I think a lot of people in this community are here for that very reason—something else that I am thankful for.

[Read Strangers In Paradise on comiXology]

Madeleine Lloyd-Davies is comiXology’s Production Director. She is very thankful to work in a company where she actually had to EMAIL TERRY MOORE!