Though Happy is at times predictably irreverent as one might expect an imaginary horse to be - spouting fluff a la Roger Rabbit - at other times he uses words like "screw" and "ass," where I thought it might be stronger if Happy were separate, mind as well as body, from Sax's world.
I only regretted that Morrison puts a foul mouth on Happy (mild, as compared to the other characters). When, on the first page, Robertson draws a man vomiting in an alley while at the same time a dog pees on the man, the reader gets a sense what they're in for, especially set against two rival hitmen discussing, also Tarantino-like, which part of the male or female anatomy their rival Sax best epitomizes. The creators, appropriately, ratchet the filth of the book to absurdity, all the better to make Happy's presence equally absurd. The story's real attraction, again, comes from the juxtaposition of an extremely graphic crime story with a flying blue cartoon character Robertson is an inspired art choice, blending pages reminiscent of his work on The Boys with animated ridiculousness. Smoothie (all of this purposefully like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film) when Happy helps him escape in exchange for helping Happy rescue the kidnapped Haley. Blue because of a botched hit job and seconds away from torture at the hands of Mr. Happy! teams former police-detective-turned-hitman Nick Sax with Happy, the equine imaginary friend of a girl named Haley, who only Nick can see. Happy!'s arc is fairly predictable in the way of the other Christmas tales it honors and lampoons, but the enjoyment comes in watching how Morrison dizzily mashes up crime drama and Christmas story cliches into a story demented and warm at the same time. The broad strokes of Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson's four-issue miniseries Happy!, newly collected - a Christmas story in which a hitman reluctantly teams with a cartoon blue horse to save a kidnapped girl - tells the reader most of what they can expect from the book.
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