Happy!

There are some who think that making a comic book as a movie pitch is an inherently bad thing.  After all, the idea is to get the idea out there in some form, attract the attention of Hollywood, and ride the ensuing wave of box-office success and merchandising to a pot filled with cash at the end of the rainbow.  This is opposed to creating a quality work and then having Hollywood come knocking and enjoy success on your own terms.  Take a look at the respective career trajectories of Robert Kirkman and Platinum Studios for objective proof as to which approach works better.  The reason I bring this up is because even though “Happy!” wasn’t probably designed as a movie pitch, it really struck me as something that could easily be adapted into a film (with Bruce Willis in the lead role).  Fortunately it does succeed on its own terms as a comic because Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson know what they’re doing here.  Mostly.

Nick Sax is an ex-cop turned mob hitman with a drug and alcohol habit and a case of eczema to emphasize his sorry lot in life.  After he suffers a heart attack on the job and winds up in a hospital filled with cops and mobsters who have lots of nasty plans for him, Nick gets a visitation.  A visitation from a tiny flying blue unicorn named Happy.  Nick thinks that he’s been doped up with the wrong kind of drugs at first, but when Happy refuses to go away and helps him escape, he starts having second thoughts.  Which is good because Happy is the imaginary friend of a girl who is going to meet a very unpleasant end if this ex-cop can’t get his act together in time for Christmas.

Morrison’s reputation for weirdness, and quality, is well-deserved and it’s on display again in the central premise of “Happy!.”  It’s not often that you see magical realism applied to what is effectively a gritty crime drama, but the outlandishness of putting a character that looks like it flew straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon works quite well in this context.  The book is filled with people getting shot in the face, having their bridgework knocked out, and getting stabbed in the head with a pen all while this cute little unicorn tries to convince Nick to do the right thing.  This is certainly the strangest “buddy cop” story I’ve read, and while Happy’s presence may come off as gimmicky it becomes clear by the end of the story that Morrison clearly put some thought into how this character is meant to tie into the story at large.

Of course, without Happy the story itself would be a pretty standard race-against-time with a slice of redemption at the end.  Morrison, though, is always good with the details and includes plenty little touches to make it stand out.  Take the oral sex scene with a man in an insect suit near the beginning, or the mob torturer with a new age slant and expensive bridgework, or even the Santa Claus child-porn-killing-webcam plot that’s at the heart of the story’s climax.  It’s things like these that stick in the mind and help counteract the fact that Nick is portrayed as a bit too unlikeable for his own good for the majority of the book.  There’s also the fact that Morrison’s dialogue feels a bit more exposition-heavy than usual as several of the characters, including Nick’s ex-partner, really feel the need to spell things out for the audience.  Then you’ve got the book’s climax which mostly works, but also feels a bit overstuffed and rushed with every last bit of plot coming to a head in those final pages.

It does give Robertson the opportunity to draw a whole host of imaginary friends, which winds up being one of the highlights in a book that is a welcome return to form for the artist.  While the man did incredible career-defining work on “Transmetropolitan,” he followed it up with some quality jobs with Garth Ennis and Greg Rucka at Marvel before joining Ennis on “The Boys.”  Unfortunately when Dynamite picked up the title, Robertson was still under an exclusive contract with DC and had to split his time between that title and those obligations.  That lead to a host of fill-in artists on “The Boys” while the man’s work took on a rushed appearance that did it no favors.  Though he had the time to make sure “Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker” looked as good as it deserved, “Happy!” really shows Robertson back at the top of his game.  Detailed cityscapes filled with characters that are normal, weird, and depraved are the order of the day and the man really sells everything in Morrison’s script.

Nothing more so than Happy himself.  Under Robertson’s pencil, the tiny unicorn is gleefully alive on the page and looks as out-of-place as he’s intended to be as well.  His body language is even different than the rest of the cast’s as his actions have a comic exaggeration to them that stretches against the boundaries of reality while everyone else looks like they’re confined to it.  It’s clear that Robertson had a lot of fun character on the page and I can’t imagine anyone else nailing the dichotomy Happy represents better than he does.

Would this make a good movie?  Certainly in the hands of someone like Spike Jonze who knows how to make surreal concepts work on the big screen.  Or maybe the Coen Brothers, if they decided they wanted to apply some self-parody to the hard-edged crime stories they bring us from time to time.  So long as Bruce Willis is the star.  I honestly can’t imagine anyone other than him bringing Nick’s brand of unpleasantness to life or being as bewildered and angry at the fact that his life has been invaded by a cartoon character.  “Happy!:  The Movie” may never happen, and all my speculation here could wind up being just that.  Fortunately for everyone else, it works well enough as a graphic novel to be worth reading on its own merits.