Idolizing the Insane

I’ve always thought in due time a comic book immortalizing the works of a mass murderer/serial killer would be made. Apparently, someone already did.

I was surfing the net yesterday looking for Invader Zim pictures when I ran across this comic book: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. It was created by the Jhonen Vasquez, the same dude who created Invader Zim.

Johnny C., the main character, is an insane mass murderer who kills people and paints a section of a wall in his house with their blood to "keep the thing from behind the wall from getting out". The only "friends" he has are "Nailbunny" a pet rabbit he "fed once and then nailed to the wall", and two doughboys "Mr. Fuck" or "Mr. Eff" and "Psycho doughboy"; all of which are voices inside his head. And the only girl who came close to stirring his feelngs, he tried to kill.

Although he kills innocent people for as simple as not turning the smoothie machine on, or using a word he didn’t like, most of his victims are actually assholes. He has a wierd sense of right and wrong. At one time, after being resurrected from hell, he met a rapist who idolized him and killed in his name. He ended up killing him saying "Though this gets me no absolution, I would never do what you did to that girl!!"

Even if brutal in most scenes, most of his murders are actually funny and a little sad at the same time. He constantly tries to kills himself and the only time he actually succeeded (convinced by one of the voices in his head, Mr. Eff) Satan brought him back to life, minus most of his hair. There are also other characters that eventually had their own strips, like Squee, the bullied little boy who lives next door to NNy; and Happy Noodle Boy, the comics created by NNy making it a comic within a comic.

Johnny C.'s charm lies on the fact that he does only what most of us want to do, as gruesome, utterly morbid, and totally insane as it may be, and he gets away with it. He feels what most people feel and is not afraid to do something about it, although killing and torturing people may be a little over the top. Jhonen Vasquez describes NNy in "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut" as:

"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."

Ah, a comic book featuring a human with a real human mindset. A hero who murders annoying people and gets away with. If anyone here in the Phils have the comic book series, I’d like them please… leave a message.

*All images are copyrighted to Jhonen Vasquez