The Scumbag vol. 1: Cocainefinger

Rick Remender’s creator-owned output has been something of a mixed bag with me.  “Deadly Class” has been pretty great, and that’s the exception.  The first volume of “Low” was so depressing that I didn’t read another.  I did make it to the end of “Black Science,” even though it gave me some good reasons to stop along the way.  Meanwhile, “Seven to Eternity” is looking to wrap up its run with my sympathies for its characters out of whack as its main villain is more interesting than its protagonist.  “Death or Glory” managed to pack some utterly astounding action sequences into a story that preached the gospel of living off the grid in a very sanctimonious way.  Then there’s “Tokyo Ghost” which was hamstrung by its predictability, both in terms of storytelling and morality.  It’s that series which “The Scumbag” has the most in common with.  This title is both predictable and moral, to its ultimate detriment.

The “moral” bit is kind of surprising because “The Scumbag” was pitched as being about what would happen if the worst human in the world became its answer to James Bond AND Nick Fury.  Said person is Ernie Ray Clementine, a burned-out, drug-addicted hedonist who hails from a time when rock and rolling all night and partying every day was the answer to all life’s problems.  In today’s world, that just means he’s hated by everyone from the bartender at his favorite bar, the local prostitutes, and his favorite drug dealer Spanish Larry.  Larry, in fact, has had enough of this guy that (after Ernie has swiped a Salvation Army donation box to pay for his drugs) he’s decided to sell him some cocaine cut with rat poison to get rid of this guy.

That turns out to be a mistake as Ernie’s incompetence with freebasing leads to the death of Father Time, the world’s greatest secret agent.  It also leads to our protagonist getting the special serum that made the agent so great, and now he finds himself working for Central Authority.  They would have you believe that they’re the “G.I. Joe” to Scorpionus’ “Cobra” and now they’re forced to negotiate with Ernie and his self-interest if they want to have a chance of stopping their nemesis.  While Central Authority may seem to have their work cut out for them, it’s even worse than it seems.  That’s because if they can only get Ernie to work for them through bribery, who’s to say that Scorpionus can’t do the same.

I say the two organizations in this series are most like “G.I. Joe” and “Cobra,” but you could easily replace those with “progressives” and “conservatives” and not lose a beat.  One is actively trying to return the world to an idealized version of itself that never actually existed and only benefited one class and race of people.  The other is trying to bring equality and justice for all while being extremely judgmental and sanctimonious about it.  Remender doesn’t camouflage his political leanings here and I find them to be tolerable since I mostly agree with what he’s saying here.  That he’s also trying to jazz things up with the trappings of an over-the-top “Bond” movie also help here as well.

Of course, if you don’t agree with the writer’s leanings, then you’re going to find the political commentary here utterly risible.  Even I’ll admit that while I agree with Remender’s perspective, he doesn’t find a new or interesting way of portraying the conflict between progressives and conservatives in the context of this comic.  It’s all a lot of shouting from characters on both sides, with accompanying gunfire and/or martial arts, as they yell out their talking points and nothing gets accomplished in the end.  I find this kind of thing to be exhausting and depressing to witness in real life and all the genre trappings the writer throws into the story here can’t change that.

This isn’t the most disappointing part of the volume, however.  No, that honor goes to “The Scumbag” himself, Ernie.  The pitch for this series was that the fate of the world was going to rest in the hands of the worst person on it.  Ernie is a lot of things here, most of them bad, but far from being the worst person on it.  I mean, Remender could’ve given us a child-eating serial killer as the protagonist for this series, but I imagine that it would’ve been a much harder job to make that kind of person into a sympathetic protagonist.

Which looks to be Remender’s ultimate goal with Ernie.  Though we see him betray the trust that Central Authority placed in him, freebase on a public sidewalk while suffering from explosive diarrhea, and display enough willful ignorance and self-interest to dwarf a political convention, he ultimately winds up doing the right thing at the end of the day.  This so-called “worst person in the world” is revealed to ultimately care about those around him, which certainly flies in the face of all the anti-authority nonsense he spouts throughout this first volume.  

What I’m getting at here is that Ernie’s brand of awfulness ultimately feels safe and predictable as it’s shown off here.  It doesn’t matter how many drugs he takes, or how many sexist remarks he makes towards the women working with him, it’s clear that his moral compass will ultimately point the right way at the end of the day.  The problem is that this isn’t what “The Scumbag” was advertised as being about before its launch.  I’ve read plenty of stories about bad guys who were secretly good and came to embrace that aspect of themselves.  This series looks to be just one more in that long line, and I didn’t come here to read about that.  Or, at least, I didn’t come here to read about one that didn’t feel so familiar.

It’s worth noting that “The Scumbag” was originally going to be a collaboration between Remender and artist Lewis Larosa.  Except that partnership fell apart after the first issue and now the series will have a different artist for each subsequent issue.  This is actually something of a good thing because it means that this first volume is also graced with the work of Andrew Robinson, Eric Powell, Roland Boschi, and “Deadly Class” artist Wes Craig.  All of them follow in the style that Larosa established in the first issue, so it’s a good thing that the artist did an excellent job of selling the action-packed depravity the series has on offer.  It would’ve been great to see what he did with the rest of the volume, but everyone else does a pretty good job of picking up the slack.

This is good because at this point, “The Scumbag” is a series where the art is a cut above its writing.  We were promised a drug-fueled romp through the most ridiculous parts of the “Bond” franchise and wound up with a story that feels constrained by its adherence to a generic sense of morality.  It’s not helped by the fact that Remender is also using the series to play out the familiar conservative vs. progressive battle that’s consuming our culture right now by simply rehashing the expected talking points.  All of this is enough to make me want to give up on this series with this first volume.  Except I just can’t tell if “The Scumbag” is going to continue to further its protagonist’s (boring) story of redemption, or have him embrace his inner awfulness and drag both sides down with him.  One of these options is far more interesting than the other and I’d like to know which one I’m getting before I decide to follow this series any further.