I picked up "The Whole Shebang" collection of Scud the Disposable Assassin during my (thus far) only trip to Mike Sterling's comic shop during Alex and mine's road trip to Malibu back in 2019. Money well spent.
Scuds are "disposable assassins," mechanical killers you can buy from vending machines. A Scud is purchased to kill a monster (the monster in the image above, in fact) running amok within the Marvin's Manikans factory. Scud's well on his way to completing that mission when he catches a glimpse of the label on his back stating he'll self-destruct once his target is eliminated. Scud knows that he's too young, his life has just begun, so he only severs all the creature's limbs, then has it put on life support. Life support ain't cheap, so Scud's got to take jobs to keep "Jeff" alive and himself unexploded. And what's a killing robot to do but take jobs killing things? He just needs someone to give him a chance, give him a sign, he'll be there anytime.
There's a lot of violence, and Schrab ranges from pages with just a few large panels, to one page, late in the run, that has 34 panels, all of Scud fighting an army of disposable assassins like himself. Though Scud's guns never seem to run out of ammo, Schrab doesn't limit the fights to just shootouts. Scud's nimble and resilient, so he'll do a backflip into a kick, or tackle an enemy and pummel it while said enemy blasts a hole through Scud's torso, or use some handy furniture or excess weaponry to inflict carnage.
The jobs themselves vary. Sneaking into a max security prison to kill a snitch, killing Voo-Doo Ben (Ben Franklin as a necromancer), and wiping out a six-person organization running a small town in Kentucky. In Schrab and Harmon's typical bizarre fashion, the organization includes a man with a bulldog for a head (like, the entire dog), the Head of Jayne Mansfield in a hovering jar, and a giraffe with almost a little flying saucer for a head. That's its head in the upper right, as Jeff is able to add new parts as it goes along, allowing Schrab to change its appearance over the book, though it never stops looking freaky. Scud has to handle that job with a spare arm that belonged to a British werewolf. Retrieving his own arm requires breaching a space station where the werewolf is enacting a plan to reach the Moon and become something far greater than human. But Scud will come running, anywhere.
By that time, he's got enemies besides Jeff, including a girl that is soon on his mind, all the time, Sussudio. She definitely knows his name, and she wants him all the same. Enough to have Voo-Doo Ben (nobody stays dead in this book) make a doll that lets her control Scud. And considering she is, by her own admission, a pervert robophile, it would be fair to say she makes him nervous, she makes him scared. So at this point, things have officially gotten weird.
Scud's already met an odd little guy named Drywall, who speaks in vertical lines, and is a sentient storage system. Drywall's origin is alternately sad and terrifying, involving older and younger siblings, dead children, and Satan's big plan to collect all Earth's cool stuff backfiring on him.
Which is an odd element of the second half of the series, God and Satan get usurped. Satan, because he underestimated his creation, God I guess liked Earth too much to let it end, and his angels overthrew him in their impatience to get all Earth's cool stuff. Look, we really don't have that much cool stuff here any longer, but the Seraphim look like the aliens with big heads and big eyes, except they have wings on either side of their skulls. Maybe ingrown feathers are wrecking their perception.
There's also a crossover between issue 18 of Scud the Disposable Assassin and issue 6 of La Casa Nostroid, each issue focused on Tony Tastey's wedding from the viewpoints of their respective casts. It's meant to show how much Scud and Tony have changed since they last spoke (at least 12 issues ago). Scud could possibly be argued to have improved himself. He's traveled a lot, saved the world once, saved a couple of other worlds, found some friends - although he left Drywall and Oscar in the lurch - and he's gotten Sussudio to give him a chance, just give him a sign, he'll be there anytime (S-s-sussdio, whoa-oh.)
Meanwhile, Tony's become hot-tempered, selfish, cruel. He's marrying a woman whose lover, his friend, Tony killed for considering leaving the business. A woman who nearly died in that assassination, but Tony had her memories re-worked to love him instead. It's not even a matter of what others have done for him lately, it's what can they do for him right this second, and what he thinks they're trying to get out of him for nothing. Everyone is a commodity. As Scud remarks at the end of the issue, Tony's, 'on a speeding rocket to Planet Dickhead.'
The first 20 issues came out over roughly 4 years, but there's a 10-year gap between #20 and #21, which was a hell of a cliffhanger to live with for a decade. Scud, ready to die and willing to take the entire planet with him. Up to that point, Scud never entirely lost his glib manner. He'd ask Ben if he smelled something, then shoot Ben's nose off and add, 'and you never will.' Trash talk, tough talk, catchphrases, that whole bag. He occasionally reflected on how often people die around him, and how often it seems senseless, to the point he's actually surprised when he infiltrates NASA and the Ghost of Gus Grissom explains people here are dedicated to helping preserve life. Scud thought people were just always trying to kill each other. Soon he's back to calling a robot dog that follows Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics a 'bitch' for doing so.
After the gap, Scud's not cracking jokes. Drywall's changed - 10 years will do that - but all Scud's got are excuses and half-truths. Ben unleashes an army of Scuds, and Scud barely says anything, just psychotically determined to finish everything until he accepts there's really no hope. Because she's all he needs, all his life. It ends happier than that makes it sound, but I don't want to spoil everything.
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