The Scumbag, Volume 1: Snowblower Indemnity Review (Rick Remender, Lewis LaRosa)

Bargain basement SHIELD/HYDRA battle but SHIELD-lite got an advantage: magic injectable formula! Except the needle gets mixed up with a junkie’s who accidentally ends up injecting himself with it and gets superpowers! Now, Ernie Ray Clementine, a degenerate fuckup, has to use his newfound powers to save the world - but he just wants to get hiiiigh! Har-de-har-har! …

Rick Remender’s latest Image series The Scumbag is about as good as most of his other Image titles have been - which is to say it’s not very good! Still, the opening issue is funny with Ernie trying to shoot up in the middle of the street while diarrhea-ing and a pair of superhero/villain-types have a punch-up in the background. And I liked that every issue is drawn by a different artist, my favourites being Eric Powell and Wes Craig, though all the artists here - Lewis Larosa, Andrew Robinson and Roland Boschi - all draw great pages.

But the story quickly falls into a familiar pattern. The agent accompanying Ernie seemed like imitation Psylocke and Ernie himself is basically a druggier version of Deadpool, so it was like reading a crappier story from Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. Central Authority (SHIELD-lite) aren’t particularly interesting, nor are Scorpionus (HYDRA-lite), the latter of which was an assortment of right-wing caricatures.

The Formula Maxima doesn’t seem to do much besides give Ernie temporary x-ray powers (though we see more of a range towards the end, which is just a stereotypical power set), so it’s not like we get to see what a more R-rated Hancock would do, which feels like a wasted (hoho) opportunity.

And that goes for the most of the book which isn’t as transgressive or unpredictable as that opening issue promised to be. I thought Ernie would make some bonkers choices in situations where the “right” choice is so obvious, but he doesn’t and falls into that boringly safe anti-hero-but-not-really mould.

Decent opening issue and great art throughout aside, The Scumbag, Volume 1 isn’t nearly as outlandish or kerazy as it sells itself as. Rick Remender delivers an unremarkable and unimaginative Deadpool-ish team book that loses whatever steam it started with quickly before turning into a turgid mess of failed political satire, wafer-thin characters and dreary superhero action.