Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
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- This page is about the comic book series. For its central character, see Johnny C.
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (sometimes abbreviated as JtHM) is a black-and-white comic book series written and drawn by Jhonen Vasquez. It began as a series of short strips in the goth magazine Carpe Noctem, and was later published in seven issues by Slave Labor Graphics between August 1995 and January 1997. The series later had two spin-offs: Squee! and I Feel Sick.
The comic is a black comedy laced with irony and social criticism. It is in part a satire of society’s fascination with violence. Enhancing these darker aspects are Vasquez's angular art style, accompanied by dark shading.
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[edit] Johnny C.
The series focuses on the 20-something year old anti-hero Johnny C, also known as "NNY" (pronounced 'knee'). He is a deranged serial killer, mass murderer, and spree killer who interacts with various other characters; generally by murdering them. He elaborately kills anyone who even slightly irritates him, then drains their blood and paints a certain wall in the bowels of his house with it ('to keep the Thing [from behind the wall] from getting out'). Johnny is willing to murder "innocent" people who, in his twisted mind, deserve their fate for some reason or another (many of those reasons are the reinforcement of stereotypes and enthrallment to the rampant consumerism of Vasquez's world). The number of Johnny’s victims is in the dozens, if not hundreds — or perhaps even thousands. Authorities are unable to capture Johnny and seem unaware of his existence, even though his crimes are often witnessed in public and reported by the few who manage to survive. Johnny himself speculates on this being the result of interference from outside forces. Johnny is somewhat of an insomniac, and would attempt to rid himself of all feeling. Note that Johnny C. expresses his emotions through his mass killings, but killing mostly is used in a comedic sense, as Johnny is not devoid of feeling or morals. In fact, during one conversation with a prisoner named Tess, she assumes he (Johnny) is the person behind a recent murder in which a girl was raped before she was killed. Johnny vehemently denies being involved ("I would never!"). Later, when Johnny meets the young man who actually did it (in an attempt to be more like Johnny, whom he idolizes), Johnny brutally murders him, saying "And though this gets me no absolution, I would never do what you did to that girl!"
What little is known about Johnny's past is summarized in the appendices of "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut.", in the words of Vasquez Himself:
Not much is known about Johnny's story. All we do know is that his parents were killed by an evil man, thus setting the course for NNy's life as a masked crime fighter. Or, perhaps not. At present, NNY is more his own enemy than any external mind could be, what with the decomposure of what may have been, at one time, a fine, intelligent mind. Johnny is, possibly, more hideously mentally malformed than the people he seems to think have ruined his world. He's not a loser, he's simply lost.
[edit] Secondary characters
[edit] Devi
Nicknamed "The Girl That Got Away," Devi was one of the few people who actually met NNY in person and lived to tell about it. She's also the only woman Johnny has ever truly felt any real feelings for. He met her in the bookstore she once worked in before she became a professional artist, and went on a date with her that ended in almost being able to kiss her, but instead he felt so happy that he wanted to 'immortalize the moment' and he tried to kill her. Instead, she beat him up and fled. Ever since, he has been occasionally trying to contact her to apologize and try and explain his odd reasons for trying to kill her, which she responds to by locking herself in her house and screaming at him over the phone.
[edit] Squee
A sad and lonely little boy, Todd Casil (or Squee, his nickname taken from the sound he makes when he is frightened) lives in the house next to Johnny's. About 7 or 8 years old, Squee is frightened by almost everything, and is terrified of his evidently disturbed neighbor. NNY takes a shine to Squee, seeing him as something of a little brother from the family he can't remember/never had. On several occasions NNY talks to Squee about his opinions on humanity and the various tribulations of life, usually ending in Squee being horrified by the 'examples' Johnny uses in order to get his point across, an example of which being Nny's interruption of a child molester's attempted abduction and molestation of Squee. Squee's father despises him and wishes that he was never born. Squee's mother is often so doped on various pills that she doesn't recognize Squee or is unaware of what is happening around her. Their detachment from their son also prevents them from noticing the numerous occasions in which Johnny breaks into the house. Squee's only true friend is a teddy bear named Shmee. Squee also got his own spinoff series, called Squee!
[edit] Nailbunny
Nailbunny once lived in a pet store, and was bought by Johnny. He was fed once, and then nailed to the wall for three years until his head was ripped off by Mr. Eff. Nailbunny tries to keep Johnny grounded and sane, talking him out of killing himself, and telling him that he can still get help. As the doughboys grow stronger, Johnny slowly loses sight of his only friend.
[edit] Mr. Fuck
Also known as Mr. Eff, he was once part of a display stand for pastries. He soon became a host to one of Johnny's internal voices (like Nailbunny and Psychodoughboy) that try to persuade him. As Nailbunny is the angel on Johnny's shoulder, the doughboys are a fractured version of the devil, representing the struggle between pessimistic nihilism (Mr. Eff) and complete, self-destructive despair (D-Boy). Mr. Eff represents the enjoyment of NNY's growing insanity, and wants Johnny to stay alive long enough so that he may be free from the "thing" behind the wall's grasp and live on his own.
[edit] Psycho DoughBoy
Sometimes called D-Boy, he and Mr. Eff hate each other, and both work for the "thing" behind the wall. He is older than Mr. Eff by a couple of years, and represents rabid despair and doom. Much stronger during NNY's depression, he wants Johnny to kill himself so he may be annihilated and reabsorbed into the thing behind the wall, as opposed to Mr. Fuck's desire to be an independent being.
[edit] Señor Diablo/Satan
Señor Diablo is the name given to the Devil in the JTHM comic. Señor Diablo represents Johnny's understanding of evil. This understanding includes lack of caring for other people and how they feel about life. In the JTHM hell Johnny sees a perfect example of a world of torture and pain which is a replication of the world that already exists, where the slightest upset to the inhabitants' routines makes them go mad.
[edit] Setting
The series is set in the mid-1990s in an unspecified city, possibly L.A. Decaying urban streets, shadowed back alleys and filthy convenience stores serve as the series’ backdrop. Crumbling and covered with litter and graffiti, everything is in a state of bleak decay, overlit by the neon signs of trashy consumer capitalism.
Johnny lives amid the urban sprawl in a decrepit, single-story house that has an extensive labyrinth of basements and tunnels. Johnny uses the subterranean rooms of the house as dungeons and torture chambers. The tunnels also provide him with a network to various locations, such as his neighbor’s residence. Johnny found the house and moved in some time before the beginning of the series, and uses it as a base of operations for his murderous rampages.
A later part of the story takes place in the afterlife. After accidentally shooting himself, Johnny journeys to Heaven and Hell, and both turn out to have more in common with the city than Johnny expected. In short, he is kicked out of both places and returns to life (minus most of his hair). Johnny wonders if he really died at all, or if he experienced some sort of dream or delusion. Johnny's wounds are miraculously healed and his neighbor Squee meets the same Satan Johnny did in JTHM's followup.
The series contains many strips that, for the most part, have nothing to do with the main storyline. Most of these strips are what Vasquez calls “meanwhiles,” the titles of which begin with "Meanwhile…" Some of the other strips follow a public service announcement motif, while others share the title "True Tales of Human Drama". There is also a comic-within-a-comic in the form of "Happy Noodle Boy.", written by NNY himself.
[edit] Anne Gwish
Anne Gwish is a goth woman that has her own strip in the later part of the series. Her name is a pun on the word "anguish." Her storyline is completely unrelated to Johnny’s, though she lives in the same fictional universe. In the back of the JTHM Director's Cut, (naming her AKA "bitch")it was revealed that Jhonen Vasquez liked the idea of Anne Gwish being the "most physically attractive" of his characters, as it "only frames more distinctly how HORRIBLE a person she is inside."
[edit] Happy Noodle Boy
Johnny is also the creator of a comic strip called Happy Noodle Boy.
Happy Noodle Boy is a stick figure appearing in a comic drawn by Johnny and read mainly by "the homeless insane". Every issue has (at least) one single-page insert of the Happy Noodle Boy comic itself, detailing the often completely nonsensical adventures (mostly cursing, screaming, and being shot, or in the instance of the first issue ranting while upside down while making hypocritical decisions for other people at a funeral). Happy Noodle Boy spends much of his time standing on a wooden box and yelling nonsense at hapless pedestrians, often provoking his own death, as it seems that every single cop in Happy Noodle Boy's world carries a loaded gun.[citation needed] He also seems to be very infamous in his area, as at several times, children have asked their parents to kill him.
At one point it is mentioned that, while all NNY can draw currently is Happy Noodle Boy, he used to be an artist of particular talent. Taken with Sickness from "I Feel Sick", a doll painting that is Devi's version of the doughboys, this makes it seem possible that one of the things the doughboy's exist on is stolen creative ideas or talent.
He appears in the backgrounds of many of the strips of the main storyline (the mall, the movie theatre, etc.), usually in crowd scenes, and pictures of him appear frequently in Squee's room. He also appeared in 'I Feel Sick' (comic series, JtHM spin off) issue 1 in a crowded dance floor.
It is believed that Happy Noodle Boy's name is a reference to Johnny's extraordinarily thin figure. In one particular comic, Johnny says that when he was young, other kids taunted him for this, calling him "Noodle Boy."
According to Jhonen Vasquez, he created Happy Noodle Boy while attending Mount Pleasant. According to Vasquez, "So many years ago, [my little romantical friend in high school] was the unwitting reason Happy Noodle Boy was created. [She] always asked me for comics. But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy".
4 strips of Happy Noodle Boy appear in Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book Of Unspeakable Horrors.
[edit] Public Service Announcement
In a few issues there is a "Public Service Announcement," often with exaggerated messages involving events such as a 15-year-old girl taking a bite out of her baby (a la A Modest Proposal) and a drug addict's horrendous puking which results in his right eyeball shooting out of his head (The moral at the end of this particular "Public Service Announcement" is "Kids, drugs won't help things. They'll only turn you into a hideous little freak troll-baby with exploding eyeballs.").
[edit] Cut from The Director's Cut
[edit] Wobbly-Headed Bob
Living in a different fictional universe and receiving his own one-page comic in each book of the series, Wobbly-Headed Bob is a depressed, conceited outcast with rodent-like features and a huge "freakishly overdeveloped" head. Bob believes himself to be the "ultimate being" as he is so smart, but is tortured by his own dark intelligence, and has an amazing knack for causing misery in everyone he meets; typically cutesy, happy, ignorant, carefree characters. By showing them the horrifying reality which he perceives to be their life, Bob makes them miserable, often causing them to commit suicide, which he barely seems to notice.
[edit] True Tales of Human Drama
Most often in these stories things happen that make little or no sense, such as a baby exploding or a man expelling something out of his nose so evil that a priest commands him to jump off a building.
[edit] Edited Lines
At least one line was edited for the Director's Cut - in Part 7, while NNY is arguing with Reverend MEAT, his line is changed from "Kill my stomach if I'm hungry!" to "Then I'll forget my stomach if I'm hungry!" However, the original print of the book edited out the text in that area entirely, leaving simply a chunk of white space in place of the dialogue. This has since been fixed, and the edited line appears in subsequent printings of the book.
[edit] List of strips by issue
- 1st issue
- "Traumatize Thy Neighbor"
- "A Survey in Hell"
- Untitled
- Johnny The Suicidal Maniac - "Another 2 a.m."
- 2nd issue
- "Goblins"
- "Things That Make Noise"
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Johnny The Suicidal Maniac - "2:15 a.m."
- 3rd issue
- Untitled
- "A Bad Person"
- Untitled
- "Johnny the You-Know-What"
- "Johnny the Suicidal Maniac"
- Untitled
- 4th issue
- "Descent"
- Untitled
- "A * Call"
- "A Call?"
- 5th issue
- "An Eventful Day"
- Untitled
- "Talking To Styrofoam"
- "Anne Gwish"
- "The Most Beloved Massive Headwound Recipient in Existence"
- 6th issue
- "This Is Heaven"
- Untitled
- Untitled
- "JTRM (The "R" is for Resurrected!!)"
- Untitled
- 7th issue
- "An Admirer of Sorts"
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Untitled
- "Good Luck, Squee!"
- Untitled
[edit] See also
- Jhonen Vasquez
- Characters of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
- Squee
- Fillerbunny
- I Feel Sick
- Johnny C
- Invader Zim
- Jellyfist
[edit] External links
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