Friday Comics: S.C.U.D.

One of the greatest gifts my friend Gary ever gave me was telling me to read his copies of Scud: The Disposable Assassin by Rob Schrab. It is about the day-to-day trials of a robot assassin who discovered that he will self-destruct upon the termination of his target; so he has to keep the target incapacitated and on life support which takes capital. Our friend Scud then becomes a freelance assassin. He also has significant girl-trouble. Scud is drawn in black and white, and is chock-o-block full of wonderful lines like "I'm Jesus Christ with a laser gun and you're all going to Hell!"

Scud became my litmus test for determining how interested someone was in comics and whether or not I could consider their opinions. The test works like this: Have you read Scud? If yes, did you like it? If yes = I will be cautiously optimistic about your views on other comics. If you say "OHMYGODSCUDWASSOAWESOMEICAN'TBELIEVEYOU'VEREADSCUD!" then you may subscribe to my newsletter. If you say no, you are dead to me. If you just haven't read it, then you have been wasting too much time not reading it and you must read it right away.

Reading Scud has become even easier. Not only did Mr. Schrab wrap up the maddening 10 year cliffhanger from issue #20 with four new issues last year- there is also a great collection of all the issues in Scud: The Whole Shebang which is a steal at it's low low price of $29.99. Plus, if you get your little butts down to Challengers, you can buy it at 25% off until February 14th.