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‘Happy! #1:’ Advance Comic Book Review

 

Happy 1Nick Sax is a great detective turned hitman.  If popular crime fiction is any way to judge, that must happen to most detectives eventually.  Despite its name, Happy! is very much the opposite: a bleak, brutal, cynical tale of mobsters and mayhem, and for all that the setup is formulaic and it doesn’t thrive.  I think maybe because the script is written from the “criminals curse every other word they say for no particular reason” school of dialogue.

But, this is a book written by Grant Morrison, and so obviously this isn’t just a gritty crime yarn.  After a hit gets a bit complicated, Nick starts seeing a blue cartoon pegasus/unicorn who claims to be an “imaginary friend” (though not Nick’s).  This is Happy the Horse, who really pops off the page.  I think his absolute strangeness works really well with the gritty, muted color palette of everything else in the book.  Happy’s one of those cartoonish characters who seems destined to just say all kinds of lines that shouldn’t come out of an adorable caricature’s mouth; I like to imagine this idea came from late nights watching YouTube videos where someone dubbed over My Little Pony with audio from Pulp Fiction.  (To absolutely nobody’s surprise, these exist.)

As much as the crime story didn’t give me anything to care about, I really want to know what’s up with Happy, what he is, why he’s here, and what kind of task he has for Nick.  Unfortunately, the setup of the mob plot takes most of this issue.

Clearly, this mini intends to go somewhere besides just a hail of bullets at the climax, but I’m just not sure where yet.  Is this a crime story with a cartoon horse, or a cartoon horse story with some crime?  Whatever the case, I’m guessing it’ll be pretty twisted.

 

 

 

Brandon Perdue, Fanbase Press Contributor

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Favorite Comic: Top Ten by Alan Moore and Gene Ha Favorite Tabletop RPG: Fireborn Favorite Spacegoing Vessel: Constitution-class Refit

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