FORGOTTEN COMIC BOOKS #3: SCARAB

It happened during the infancy of Vertigo. THE SANDMAN was far from over. Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon were wowing people on HELLBLAZER. ANIMAL MAN, DOOM PATROL, and SHADE, THE CHANGING MAN were still going. Joe R. Lansdale’s reimagining of JONAH HEX had just ended. PREACHER and TRANSMETROPOLITAN weren’t even twinkles in their creators’ eyes yet. Exciting things were happening in the world of comics.



And a little book, an 8-issue miniseries by the name of SCARAB, flew under everyone’s radar and was quickly forgotten. Not by me, though.


How to describe SCARAB? Imagine if John Constantine was a superhero, and that’s about as close as you can get. Scot Eaton’s mind-blowing artwork reminds one of the way things used to be during Delano’s run on HELLBLAZER, or Moore’s run on SWAMP THING. It really changes the way a reader reads a comic book.


The story? It comes from a little-known British writer, John Smith, who had only been known to Americans at the time from a fill-in story on HELLBLAZER. I wish he’d gotten a few more issues in on Vertigo’s flagship book, though, he was that good.


SCARAB concerns itself with Louis Sendak, an old man who used to be a Golden Age DC superhero (although he has no official DC history; this is his first appearance) called Scarab. He is the guardian of a doorway in his house that leads to the Labyrinth, a place where William S. Burroughs and Lewis Carroll would have been at home, brain-fucking each other for eternity. Decades ago, his wife Eleanor disappeared into the Labyrinth, and he’s been looking for her ever since. However, in his old age, he’s given up, and he no longer wears the mantle of the Scarab. All of this changes when the Sicari, a ghastly creature from a long line of assassin sorcerers, seeks to find his home in the Labyrinth, but first he must find it.


As a result of this struggle, Louis is brutally attacked by the Sicari, who then rushes into the Labyrinth. Louis drags his broken and bloody body to the Scarabaeus, the device that transforms him into the Scarab, and healed, he chases the Sicari down just in time to save Eleanor from dying at the assassin’s hands, but not in time to save her spirit.


Now, the old man stands vigil over the youthful body of his wife, who still breathes, but her spirit is lost in the Net, a world of orgasmic power that not even Timothy Leary on his biggest LSD binge could describe. I can’t pile enough accolades on Eaton’s artwork. He does things that the human mind wasn’t meant to envision.


The same holds true for Smith’s storytelling. When relating Eleanor’s power-surge through the Net, he hits the proper stream-of-consciousness beat. He does even better when describing Louis’s dilemma. What can he do to save his wife? What can he do to save himself?


With a little help from the Phantom Stranger, he figures out a way to transform his weak and elderly body into what it once was in his prime. He also becomes the Scarab more often, fighting villains that would have Batman shitting out his entire digestive system. I think even Superman would have a difficult time getting his mind around this stuff. Constantine could handle it. Swamp Thing, too. But none of the superheroes could.


Take, for example, the 2-issue arc, “Moveable Feasts.” In this little tale, all of the men in a little North Carolina town named Whitehaven get involved in a self-castration cult before drowning themselves in the ocean. The women are left behind, impregnated by nothing less than the great god Pan, even little old ladies who couldn’t conceive and little girls years before their first menstruation. The only man left behind, a guy who broke his leg and was therefore stuck in the hospital, is a raving drunk, angry that he missed his chance at honoring Pan by cutting off his dick and drowning himself. Oh, and after a vicious struggle, Pan raped him, too. Yes, he was impregnated, as well.


Or how about the garden in “Paradise Defiled?” People who have lost all hope on earth can sometimes wander into a torture garden, where a fallen angel sculpts their bodies into infernal works of art.


And should I even mention “The Scream over Hiroshima?” I will, if only to say that 50,000 people dying all at once in the blink of an eye will undoubtedly taint the spiritual world . . . .


Stuart Moore, the editor of this book, stated that SCARAB was an experiment of sorts. Vertigo is a horrific place to be . . . but it also falls under the DCU. Is it possible to have a superhero book in their Vertigo line?


This was his answer. John Smith’s deviant, insane ramblings combined with Scot Eaton’s rip-your-soul-out-an-inch-at-a-time artwork. They planned for eight issues, and if there was enough of an interest in Louis Sendak’s world, then there would have been more.


Sadly, while reader response was good, there simply weren’t enough readers. SCARAB disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. You won’t find a trade collection of this anywhere, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find the single issues.


It’s worth it, if you do. No comics experience should be without it. You’ll look at what comics are capable of with new eyes, I guarantee it. Besides, you want to know what happens when Louis finally finds Eleanor’s spirit. You want to see the joining that happens. You want to see how this mind-fuck of a book ends.


Don’t let SCARAB fall by the wayside.