My $.02: Book Review - Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut

As we discussed yesterday, I like to partake of the occasional comic book. Actually, that's not quite true. Similar to my television habits, I like to partake of comic collections, where an entire series or story arc is put together in book form, allowing the reader to enjoy it from beginning to end. Also, they're easier to take care of, and you don't need those geeky plastic sleeves - I'm far more interested in literary value than monetary.

Enter Johnny the Homicidal Maniac(JTHM) by Jhonen Vasquez. This is a seemingly simple piece of black comedy that follows a young goth kid around as he ponders existence, critiques society, senselessly tortures and murders hundreds of people, and terrorizes the neighbor kid (although I'm not entirely sure he means to). I tend to have a dark sense of humor, so naturally this seemed like something I would enjoy. Happily, I was right.

One of the strange things about these comic collections is that, at least in the ones produced by talented people, you get to see the artists grow. A prime example of this was The Sandman, where the earliest collections look and read like smart comic books. By the time the series ended, ten collections later, what I was reading struck me as important as any other literary work I had read in the past.

So it was with JTHM. The early comics, often consisting of only a page or two, are amusing, but they are also rough. There is little in the way of story arc or continuity (which is often played with intentionally, such as the pictures and text on Johnny's shirts which change from panel to panel), and the art, while edgy and interesting, is sparse and clean. As the series progresses, we meet more characters, most of whom are (or should be) inanimate objects in Johnny's house, and larger story lines begin to emerge. The art becomes more full as well, with the backgrounds filling with various bits of humor. It actually reminded me of the old Mad magazines, where each panel was good for two or three gags.

I should point out that the comics are occasionally broken up by other, somewhat unrelated comics. Some are mocking public service announcements, and those, while disturbing, are at least amusing. Unfortunately, there are also a fair number of Happy Noodle Boy comics. These revolve around a stick figure who yells nonsense at pedestrians until he is invariably shot and killed at the end. The reason these are featured so heavily is because they are supposedly the work of Johnny himself. Unfortunately, I could not glean any further connection to the storyline (with the exception of Johnny mentioning that "Noodle Boy" was a childhood taunt referring to how skinny he was), and frankly just became annoyed with these. Luckily, they become more sparse as the series continued.

Despite these side features, I really ended up enjoying this series, and hope to find more in the future. The intermittent social commentary, broken up by random acts of humor and violence, make for a far more interesting read than I was expecting. I'm not sure if it's something I'll read again, but for those that enjoy dark humor, it's definitely worth giving a chance.