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.