by Tiff Douglas
Fifteen is a very awkward age, it’s like you’re playing the demo version of your life on a crappy computer at someone else’s house, with everyone watching you and telling you you’re doing it wrong. You don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know who you are, all you know is that you don’t like it and you want to try something else. I don’t look back on my high school years with that much fondness or regret, I look back at it as being a bridge to where I wanted to go; one that took way too long to get over. I had a few friends that got me through, I discovered different types of music that inspired me, I didn’t really date anyone but there was one guy who really had my attention, he helped me figure it all out. His name was Johnny and he was a homicidal maniac.
Johnny The Homicidal Maniac is a charming comic book series that was introduced to me by a friend of mine who really liked to encourage the outrageous aspects of my personality. We were weird and we freaked people out or annoyed them on a regular basis. She told me that I should read it because it is hilarious and totally messed up. I have always been fascinated by horror movies and gore but felt uncomfortable when I took them too seriously. This gave me a chance to experience something more macabre but have a laugh, which did wonders for relieving my childhood nightmares. JTHM is a quirky seven part story based around Johnny, his creation Happy Noodle Boy, his extremely skittish and paranoid pre-pubescent neighbour Squee and various random victims and schizophrenia induced apparitions. Written and drawn by Jhonen Vasquez , it was first published in Carpe Noctem magazine in the early 90s and then published through Slave Labour Graphics in 1995.
Fifteen is a very awkward age, it’s like you’re playing the demo version of your life on a crappy computer at someone else’s house, with everyone watching you and telling you you’re doing it wrong. You don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know who you are, all you know is that you don’t like it and you want to try something else. I don’t look back on my high school years with that much fondness or regret, I look back at it as being a bridge to where I wanted to go; one that took way too long to get over. I had a few friends that got me through, I discovered different types of music that inspired me, I didn’t really date anyone but there was one guy who really had my attention, he helped me figure it all out. His name was Johnny and he was a homicidal maniac.
Johnny The Homicidal Maniac is a charming comic book series that was introduced to me by a friend of mine who really liked to encourage the outrageous aspects of my personality. We were weird and we freaked people out or annoyed them on a regular basis. She told me that I should read it because it is hilarious and totally messed up. I have always been fascinated by horror movies and gore but felt uncomfortable when I took them too seriously. This gave me a chance to experience something more macabre but have a laugh, which did wonders for relieving my childhood nightmares. JTHM is a quirky seven part story based around Johnny, his creation Happy Noodle Boy, his extremely skittish and paranoid pre-pubescent neighbour Squee and various random victims and schizophrenia induced apparitions. Written and drawn by Jhonen Vasquez , it was first published in Carpe Noctem magazine in the early 90s and then published through Slave Labour Graphics in 1995.
JTHM was the craziest thing I had experienced up to that point, it was violent and silly but at the same time insightful, poetic and sorrowful. Here was a story of a man, tormented by voices that tell him to kill random people in awfully inventive ways, to paint his wall with their blood, so that he can survive. Here is a man who reaches out to a young boy, recognising a kindred spirit in his terrified face and knows he could be different. I can only speak for how I read the story and what I got from it, it was a satire. Jhonen knew that the world was a joke, just as Johnny knew his world was a joke; so he invented Happy Noodle Boy.Happy Noodle Boy was originally invented by Jhonen in college, apparently, so that his girlfriend would stop bugging him about drawing her comics. Johnny drew this absolutely absurd comic to try to tell everyone that the world they live in is a maniacal farce.
I loved every minute of that comic, I laughed out loud when a yuppy accidentally shat his pants during a date, I giggled at the completely stupid ramblings of a stick figure and I shed a tear at all the times Johnny poured his heart out to a room full of his thoughts who wanted him dead. They were in different forms but they all had one purpose, to remind him who he was, to tell him to remain that way, to lie to him and tell him the only way to survive was to listen. I loved the darkness of it and I found that the same dark humour and poetic muse was inside me the whole time. I never wanted to kill anyone (just to be clear) but I knew how I wanted to express myself. Everyone hears voices, they may not be in your head, they may be real people living in your house, teaching you at school or even paying you to work. They are all telling you what you have to do even though you know it goes against who you know you are but you go along because it’s the only way you know how to survive. It taught me how to question sleep, those times when you let your guard down. It taught me how to laugh at all those terrifying things in life. It reminded me that I’m a goof and a freak and I’m okay with that.
I loved every minute of that comic, I laughed out loud when a yuppy accidentally shat his pants during a date, I giggled at the completely stupid ramblings of a stick figure and I shed a tear at all the times Johnny poured his heart out to a room full of his thoughts who wanted him dead. They were in different forms but they all had one purpose, to remind him who he was, to tell him to remain that way, to lie to him and tell him the only way to survive was to listen. I loved the darkness of it and I found that the same dark humour and poetic muse was inside me the whole time. I never wanted to kill anyone (just to be clear) but I knew how I wanted to express myself. Everyone hears voices, they may not be in your head, they may be real people living in your house, teaching you at school or even paying you to work. They are all telling you what you have to do even though you know it goes against who you know you are but you go along because it’s the only way you know how to survive. It taught me how to question sleep, those times when you let your guard down. It taught me how to laugh at all those terrifying things in life. It reminded me that I’m a goof and a freak and I’m okay with that.
JTHM is coloured only in black and white but the colour is in the detail. It’s not just for people who love the gothic way of life that get off on a little bit of darkness. It’s for people who want to laugh at the world and question why they care so much anyway. It’s one of the many things that helped me figure out who I wanted to be, not who I was becoming. That’s the power of comics they can influence you without you even noticing because with a novel you make the pictures, with a comic you make them live. I still actually have a JTHM T-shirt that I got when I was sixteen, it still fits me and I guess it always will.
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