Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

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Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
The front cover of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac #5 shows Tess and Krik at the mercy of the wall monster in Johnny's house.
Publication information
Publisher	Slave Labour Graphics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Limited series
Genre	Humor/comedy
Publication date	August 1995 - January 1997
Number of issues	#1–7
Main character(s)	Johnny C., Squee
Creative team
Creator(s)	Jhonen Vasquez
Editor(s)	Jennifer de Guzman

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (abbreviated JtHM) is the first comic book by Jhonen Vasquez. A black comedy and comedy horror, the series tells the story of a fictional serial killer named Johnny C. as he explores the psychological and possibly supernatural forces which compel him to commit a string of murders. In the 1990s, Johnny began as a comic strip, then ran under alternative comics publisher Slave Labour Graphics as a limited series of seven issues, later collected in the trade paperback Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut. The series produced two spin-offs titled Squee! and I Feel Sick.

Contents 1 Creation 2 Director's Cut 3 Spin-offs 4 Style 5 Main characters 5.1 Johnny "Nny" C. 5.2 Todd "Squee" Casil 5.3 Devi D. 6 Setting 7 Synopsis 7.1 Issue 1 7.2 Issue 2 7.3 Issue 3 7.4 Issue 4 7.5 Issue 5 7.6 Issue 6 7.7 Issue 7 8 Filler strips 8.1 Happy Noodle Boy 8.2 Public Service Announcement 8.3 Anne Gwish 8.4 Wobbly-Headed Bob 8.5 Meanwhile... 8.6 True Tales of Human Drama 9 Reception 10 Merchandise 11 External links 12 References

[edit] Creation

Jhonen Vasquez started drawing in kindergarten.^[1] Later, he attended Mount Pleasant High School, where, taking part in a contest to design a new look for his school's mascot, the Cardinal, Vasquez submitted an entry that the judges rejected.^[2] On the back of a preliminary drawing for the contest, he drew his first sketch of the character he would later name Johnny C.^[2] Vasquez's high school's student newspaper published a number of comic strips titled Johnny the Little Homicidal Maniac.^[2] Vasquez says the character originated as a personal avatar who could carry out his own revenge fantasies.^[3] Rob Schrab makes the same observation.^[4] However, Vasquez has always distanced himself from the character, saying that Johnny should not be mistaken for an author surrogate.^[5][3] Vasquez also created Happy Noodle Boy while attending Mount Pleasant as a way to stop his girlfriend from asking him to draw comics for her.^[6]

In the early 1990s, Carpe Noctem, a magazine about the goth subculture, published several one-page strips featuring Johnny, now called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.^[2][7] Though he never planned to create comic books,^[8][1] Vasquez submitted samples of his artwork to alternative comics publisher Slave Labor Graphics.^[2][5] Between August 1995 and January 1997, the publisher released a series of seven full-length issues based on the character.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]} Vasquez describes the production process for Johnny as a "mess" and a "spew".^[3] As Vasquez worked on the comic, he prepared less and less, foregoing outlines and sketches and writing dialogue as he inked.^[3][2] Vasquez wishes that he had taken more time to plan the series, and feels that the quality of the dialogue suffered from his haphazard approach.^[3]

A photograph of one of Vasquez's friends, Leah England, serves as the middle of a portrait collection on the cover of the second issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.^[10][16] England also gave Vasquez the inspiration for a filler strip about a child who was dangerously afraid of losing sight of his mother, as well as the "Meanwhile..." strip in the second issue.^[10][16] The two were discussing an event that had happened to a cheerleader, and thinking up the worst excuse possible.^[6]

Jhonen based Psychodoughboy and Mr Eff off of two real Styrofoam Pillsbury Doughboy display figures that he found and painted.^[6] He created Nailbunny as he was drawing the first page the character appears on.^[6] Vasquez's style was influenced by Walt Disney, Tim Burton and Edward Gorey.^[6] Vasquez modelled for himself while drawing the characters.^[6]

Vasquez intended a tapeworm named Scolex to be one of Johnny's voices, but the character never made it into the finished series.^[17] Vasquez now uses Chancre Scolex as a pen name for Everything Can Be Beaten and his LiveJournal.^[18][19][20]

Like many alternative comics, and other Slave labour Graphics titles, Johnny is creator-owned. By September 1996, Vasquez announced in his introduction to the sixth issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac that he had reached sufficient success in his artistic career to be able to quit his day-job and devote himself full-time to his art.^[14]

As his comics moved from dedicated comic book shops into shopping malls, Vasquez bemoaned the attendant change in his audience.^[3] Vasquez went on to create a children's television series called Invader Zim, and became uncomfortable with younger fans of Zim reading Johnny, because of the violence depicted.^[3]

[edit] Director's Cut

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut, a trade paperback released by Slave Labour Graphics in July 1997, collected the series.^[21] Slave Labour also released a hardcover version of the collection. Rob Schrab provides a foreword.^[4] The trade paperback includes a "Gallery of Ancient Horrors" that features a few strips previously published in the Mount Pleasant High School newspaper and Carpe Noctem, as well as some strips previously unpublished, all with commentary by Vasquez.^[2] The paperback also introduces some new supplementary materials such as sketches, an issue-by-issue synopsis, character profiles, and a fictional interview with Vasquez, but leaves out many of the filler strips from the original series.^[21]

The cover of the trade paperback features the logo "Z?", meaning "question sleep". "Z?" appears frequently throughout Vasquez's work and Question Sleep is the name of his official website.^[22] "Z?" is a reference to insomnia, a condition from which several of his characters suffer.^{[21][23][24][25]}

[edit] Spin-offs

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac spawned two spin-offs: a four-issue series titled Squee!,^[23] and; a double-shot titled I Feel Sick.^[24][25] The trade paperback release of Squee!, titled Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors, includes the filler strips left out of Director's Cut.^[23] Johnny makes cameo appearances at the end of Squee! and in the second issue of I Feel Sick.^[23][25]

[edit] Style

The comic is high-contrast black and white with stylized and geometric cartoon characters. Graphical perspective is often very loose. The panel borders are jagged, and certain strips have messages hidden in the complex designs of the borders. Many of the characters are thin nearly to the point of being stick figures. Several of the characters, including Johnny, wear T-shirts with expressive messages that change from panel to panel. Vasquez often breaks the fourth wall with side comments to talk about the book, its audience, or himself. The speech balloons change with the moods of the characters. For example, Johnny's word balloons grow thorns when he becomes angry.^[21]

[edit] Main characters

[edit] Johnny "Nny" C.

The series focuses on Johnny C., a deranged killer who elaborately slaughters anyone who irritates him, then drains their blood to paint over a wall in his house to prevent a monster from escaping.^[21] Vasquez explains Johnny's lack of romance and sexuality as a manifestation of the character's cowardice.^[3]

[edit] Todd "Squee" Casil

Todd Casil, better known as Squee after the noise he makes when frightened, is a young boy who lives next door to Johnny.^[21] Squee has his own series called Squee!^[23]

[edit] Devi D.

Devi D. is a young bookstore cashier and aspiring artist who dates Johnny until he tries to kill her and she escapes by fighting for her life.^[10] She makes her first appearance in a "Meanwhile..." filler strip.^[10] Devi is the protagonist of I Feel Sick.^[24][25]

[edit] Setting

The series is set in the mid-1990s in an unspecified city. 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.^[21]

Johnny lives in a decrepit, single-story house with the street address 777.^[9] The house has an extensive labyrinth of tunnels underneath.^[12] Johnny uses the subterranean rooms as dungeons and torture chambers,^[21] as well as a storage place for corpses,^[15] though he also burries the remains of his victims.^[11] The tunnels also provide him with a network to various locations, such as his neighbor Squee's residence.^[15] Johnny perceives the layout of the house as constantly changing, though he does not state if this shifting is the result of the supernatural forces at work within the house or his own psychosis.^[26] Johnny states that he found the house and moved in some time ago.^[21] He also constructed an unidentified flying object landing pad on the roof.^[11]

A later part of the story takes place in the afterlife.^[14] After accidentally shooting himself,^[12] Johnny journeys first to Heaven and then to Hell, and both turn out to have more in common with Earth than he expected.^[14]

[edit] Synopsis

The story is told in vignettes that reflect Johnny's disjointed mental state.^[16] Vasquez leaves unexplained which events in the story are objective and which are subjective, and provides no back-story about Johnny's origins.^[16]

[edit] Issue 1

The series begins when Squee wakes in the middle of the night to find Johnny in the bathroom of his family's new house. After a confrontation with Squee's teddy bear, Shmee, Johnny leaves. Later, a survey-taker tries to collect Johnny's opinion on a recent rash of murders around the city. When the man asks about a possible case of vampirism, Johnny explains that he has to keep a wall in his house wet with the blood of his victims or else a monster imprisoned there will break free, then stabs the surveyor to death with a pencil. Johnny goes on a rampage with a spork in a "Taco Hell" restaurant, then watches news coverage of the slaughter on TV. Johnny debates Psychodoughboy and Nail Bunny on whether or not he should commit suicide, but the group gets distracted by a commercial for diarrhea medicine.^[9]

[edit] Issue 2

Johnny captures a man named Edgar Vargas, who he recognizes as an innocent and apologizes to for needing his blood. Vargas explains that, because of his faith, he is not afraid of death, and Johnny kills him, but lacks his usual sense of satisfaction. Johnny captures a beautiful woman and tells her that he will spare her because he is better than her, but then kills her with a scythe anyway when he realizes that they are both just as ugly on the inside. Johnny goes on a date with Devi, a cashier at a local bookstore, then tries to stab her, but she fights for her life and escapes. Johnny makes a late-night run to a "24/7" convenience store for a "cherry Brain Freezy", but shoots the clerk who tells him the machine has been shut off for the night.^[10]

[edit] Issue 3

Johnny takes a leisurely walk while listening to "Ode to Joy" on his portable CD player until a man outside of Cafe le Prick insults him. Johnny then kills everyone in the cafe, including the man from the "Meanwhile..." strip that introduced Devi. A man tries to molest Squee after the boy becomes separated from his neglectful mother in the mall, but Johnny intervenes and kills the pedophile. Johnny tortures a drunken bully named Krik with an electric drill. Johnny abducts a goth couple, Dillon and Tess, after Dillon ruins a screening of Kafka for him. Johnny realizes that he cannot die or be brought to justice for his murders, and that the doughboys are no longer under his control. Johnny force-feeds a victim to test the freshness of the contents of his fridge, then releases the bewildered man.^[11]

[edit] Issue 4

Johnny and Nailbunny journey through the bowels of Johnny's house and discuss the nature of Johnny's psychosis. Later, Johnny and Tess have a conversation in the dungeon as Johnny prepares to torture Dillon with electricity. Johnny kills a cockroach named Mr Samsa after Gregor Samsa, the main character of Franz Kafka's short story, The Metamorphosis. Devi has been in seclusion since Johnny's attempt on her life. Her friend Tonja (later renamed Tenna) convinces Devi to call Johnny, but the call triggers an automated gun that shoots Johnny in the face.^[12]

[edit] Issue 5

Krik manages to free Tess before a monster breaks free from the wall and kills Dillon. Krik tells Tess how he ended up in Johnny's clutches. The monster runs amok in a room full of restrained victims. Tess and Krik run into the doughboys. Mr Eff is angry about Johnny's accidental shooting while Psychodoughboy is overjoyed. The monster catches up and consumes the doughboys as Tess and Krik flee upstairs to find Johnny clinging to life. Krik stomps Johnny's skull until the wall monster breaks through the floor. Krik run for the front door, but, as he crosses the threshold, one of the monster's tentacles cuts him in half, and he falls with the monster screaming into oblivion. Tess looks into the void and fades from existence. All that is left of the world is Johnny's corpse floating through space on a section of floorboards.^[13]

[edit] Issue 6

When Johnny's soul arrives in Heaven, he meets St Peter and God. A woman named Damned Elise gives Johnny a tour of heaven. Johnny starts a massive psychic battle when he discovers that the souls in Heaven have mental powers which can explode peoples' heads. In Hell, Johnny meets Señor Diablo, who reveals that Johnny is a "flusher" or "waste lock", a creature chosen to concentrate the spiritual byproducts generated by humans into a specific object or point in space, in this case the wall in Johnny's house. As Johnny died, the wall unleashed the built-up negative energy, in the process destroying the universe, which was then restored. Johnny then finds out that Hell's torments are entirely self-inflicted. Johnny is resurrected and finds himself in his house, but with all of his voices gone, replaced by a talking "Bub's Burger boy" named Reverend Meat.^[16] Johnny is left unsure if he really died or if he experienced some kind of dream or hallucination. Later, Johnny stands in line at a 24/7 to buy a "Frooty Pop" when a robber bursts in and shoots the clerk.^[14]

[edit] Issue 7

Johnny resolves to become emotionless like an insect. A copycat killer named Jimmy pays Johnny a visit and confesses to several murders, including one mentioned earlier to Johnny by both a surveyor and Tess, which enrages Johnny so much that he eviscerates Jimmy with hooks and crushes his face with a sledgehammer. Afterwards, Johnny tries to phone Devi with a prerecorded message, but she delivers a diatribe against him. Johnny then argues with Reverend Meat, who urges him to give in to his emotions, though the disembodied voice of Nailbunny tells Johnny to resist. Johnny kills a homeless man by shooting an arrow into his back with a "kick me" sign attached. Johnny visits Squee and tells the boy that he will soon leave for a vacation, then smashes the back of Squee's father's head with a toy robot. Johnny sits on a cliff overlooking the city and writes in his "die-ary".^[15]

[edit] Filler strips

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac features several filler strips, which, for the most part, have nothing to do with the main storyline. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut collects "Happy Noodle Boy", "Public Service Announcement", and "Anne Gwish" while Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors includes "Wobbly-Headed Bob", "Meanwhile...", and "True Tales of Human Drama".^[21][23]

[edit] Happy Noodle Boy

There is also a comic within a comic in the form of "Happy Noodle Boy", written and drawn by Johnny himself.^[21]

[edit] Public Service Announcement

In a few issues, there are "Public Service Announcement" strips that parody television public service announcements on topics such as teen pregnancy and substance abuse.^[21]

[edit] Anne Gwish

Anne Gwish is a young 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. The strips featuring her are largely a satire on the goth subculture.^[21]

[edit] Wobbly-Headed Bob

Wobbly-Headed Bob lives in a separate fictional universe from the main storyline, one inhabited by funny animals who, with the exception of Bob, live in a state of innocence and bliss. In contrast, Bob is a megalomaniac who believes himself to be the most intelligent person in the world, and the only one who understands the true nature of reality, which he sees in entirely pessimistic terms. His extreme negativity leaves him isolated and depressed. He overwhelms anyone he meets with his despair and often causes them to either commit suicide or flee from him in horror.^[23]

[edit] Meanwhile...

In one "Meanwhile..." strip, a group of piñatas come to life to exact revenge on a girl whose birthday party claimed one of their own. In another, two ancient gods of war possess a pair of grade school crossing guards to reenact an epic battle. In yet another, a naive goth teenager, a character who also appears in I Feel Sick, dreams of becoming a sexy vampire like those found in The Vampire Chronicles, but transforms instead into a vampire more like Count Orlok. In one of the more infamous "Meanwhile..." strips, a nervous man on a date with Devi D. tries to conceal his explosive diarrhea. In an act of self-insertion, Jhonen Vasquez himself appears in other "Meanwhile..." strips.^[23]

[edit] True Tales of Human Drama

The strips titled "True Tales of Human Drama" tell stories about things such as a baby exploding, a plane crashing into a bus full of girl scouts, and a man blowing something out of his nose so horrible that a priest commands him to jump off a building.^[23]

[edit] Reception

Vasquez sees alternative comics critics as ignoring his work because of its wider audience.^[3]

On 5 April 2008, Wizard placed the third issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac at number 151 in their rundown of the 200 greatest comics since the magazine started in July 1991.^[27]

• McMullen Jr., E.C.. "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: The Director's Cut review". FeoAmante's Horror Thriller. http://www.feoamante.com/Comics/Reviews/JKL/JTHM.html. Retrieved on 2009-07-04. 
• Marc (2006). "Review:Johnny the Homicidal Maniac". Unattended Baggage. http://unattendedbaggage.blogspot.com/2006/07/review-johnny-homicidal-maniac.html. Retrieved on 2009-07-04. 
• Rothschild, D. Aviva (2000). "The Comics Get Serious--Review of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac". Rational Magic. http://www.rationalmagic.com/Comics/JTHM.html. Retrieved on 2009-07-04. 
• McCracken, Kenn. "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: The Director's Cut: Review". Revolution Science Fiction. http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=821. Retrieved on 2009-07-04. 

[edit] Merchandise

Over the years, Slave Labour Graphics has sold Johnny the Homicidal Maniac merchandise such as clothing, posters, and toys.^[28] Slave Labour released a Spooky squeeze toy, first shown in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac #4,^[12] as part of its promotion for I Feel Sick.^[28] Several years ago, a mug based on the design of the wall monster with the Question Sleep logo was under development.^[20]

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

• Jhonen Vasquez's official website
• Jhonen's Twitter page
• Johnny's Twitter page
• Official website of Slave Labour Graphics, publisher of JTHM
• McKeon, Matthew. "Jhonen Vasquez...Shredding the Medium". Haven House Publications, Ltd. http://thepayne.net/~jhills/interview.html. 
• [1]

[edit] References

v • d • e Jhonen Vasquez Limited series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (7 books, 1995-1997) • Squee! (4 books, 1997-1998) One-shots I Feel Sick (2 books, 1999-2000) • Fillerbunny (3 books, 2000-2005) • The Bad Art Collection (1996) • Everything Can Be Beaten (2002 with Crab Scrambly) • Jellyfist (2007 with Jennifer Goldberg) TV filmography Invader Zim (27 episode series, 2001-2002) • "Shut Me Up" (music video, airdate unknown) Characters List of characters in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac • Johnny C. • Squee • Wobbly-Headed Bob • List of Invader Zim characters Other Slave Labor Graphics • If (Mindless Self Indulgence album)