Comics
Review: ‘Happy’ #3
Grant Morrison’s twisted seasonal pipe dream continues with the third issue of Happy, where he is once again joined by artist Darick Robertson as disgraced Detective Nick Sax teams up with a very small, very vocal flying blue horse. This installment fleshes out Sax’s backstory and gives us a glance into what happened to make him such a foul-mouth, chain smoking, miserable bastard.
WRITTEN BY: Grant Morrison
ART BY: Darick Robertson
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
Price: $2.99
RELEASE: December 19, 2012
The premise of “Happy” is so delightfully bizarre that the backstory we’re given to explain Nick’s doom and gloom attitude is disappointingly generic by comparison. Considering that the book’s titular character is either a drug and/or physical trauma induced hallucination, as Sax would like to believe, or a magical creature that only the surly contract killer can see, one would think that Morrison would pull out all the stops to make Nick’s story as wild as all that. He doesn’t and while what we’re given isn’t necessarily bad, it’s admittedly somewhat pedestrian in its ambitions.
A great deal of the book is spent on the battle of wills between Nick’s perpetual pessimism and Happy’s grating cheerfulness. Being the grizzled, cop-turned-killer that he is, Nick simply doesn’t have it in him to believe in the magic of tiny blue pegasi. Happy, on the oher hand, is unrelenting in his efforts to bring Nick around.
Happy’s young charge, Hailey, is still in grave danger and since Sax is the only adult who can see him, Nick really is his only hope. The argument stretches on a tad too long and Nick’s explosive Negative Nancy outbursts fall flat after a while. Since this is a mini-series and the clock is ticking on Nick’s disbelief, he inevitably comes around and the reveal as to why he can see Happy when others can’t is the most interesting moment in the book.
Darick Robertson’s art continues to be as dark and as grim as it needs to be and the grit is nicely offset by Happy’s vibrant blue coloring. The handful of scenes where we get to see the kiddie slaughtering Santa have their own sickly palette, supplied by colorist Tony Avina. Robertson’s penchant for lovingly drawn details and Avina’s expert coloring bring Morrison’s vision to life, even when the story itself becomes a little lackluster. The last few pages see our surly protagonist find his motivation and it’s likely that, now that the preliminaries are out of the way, the Dynamic Duo of Sax and Happy can finally get down to business.
3.5/5 Skulls
Reviewed by MelissaGrey
Comics
‘You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive’ – IDW Dark’s Next Horror Comic Will Make You Question Reality
Five friends. Four houses. One perfect life. Bloody Disgusting is excited to exclusively announce You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive, a brand new horror comic from IDW Dark.
From Eisner-Nominated writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and rising horror artist Heather Vaughan, You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is described as a “paranoia-laced, socially-conscious, horror mystery that will leave you questioning reality, and reveal that this crafted world is more of a nightmare than the idealistic dream they were expecting.”
Phoebe Joplin has never questioned the world her parents built: a secluded community where she and her friends were raised to be smarter, stronger, and better than anyone else. No distractions. No dangers. No secrets. Until the night of their graduation.
When one of them dies under impossible circumstances, Phee starts to pull at the edges of her perfect life—and what she finds is something far more terrifying than she ever imagined.
Because this place isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a cage. And no one who discovers the truth ever leaves it alive.
Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing (Batman – One Bad Day: Clayface, Star Trek: The Last Starship) co-write the upcoming IDW Dark horror comic, featuring art by Heather Vaughan.
Jackson Lanzing said in a statement to Bloody Disgusting, “You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is in many ways a spiritual successor to our last creator-owned horror, The Principles of Necromancy – a dive into the promise and consequence of playing god with the blood of innocents. But the Hivemind book this reminds me of most is Clayface: One Bad Day. This is a deeply human story with intensely raw emotions – five best friends and their five mysterious parents, tearing one another apart for the promise of some impossible glory that’s waiting just beyond their darkest actions. We’re thrilled to be bringing this story to life with our long-time partner in crime, editor Heather Antos, at IDW Dark – and we’re particularly excited to give our Clayface fans a new, brutal and emotional horror made just for them.”
Adds Collin Kelly, “We’re deconstructing a feeling that seems universal these days; our elders have a death grip on their power, without any intention of giving it up to the generations that come next. YNLTPA is about growing up with the limitless potential of the future… and realizing how much it’s a lie we’ve been fed to keep us under the yoke of the past. Bringing this brutal experience to life is our artist and co-creator, Heather Vaughan, who brings an incredible amount of humanity to our cast. But it’s in our youthful leads that Heather’s art really shines – you are going to fall in love with these young people, even as they go through the worst experience of their lives. What we’ve all crafted together is going to be tragic, painful, but above all else, sincere – with a future so uncertain, there’s only one thing we can trust: you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Some horror stories are about monsters in the dark. YNLTPA is about realizing the monsters raised you,” previews Senior Group Editor Heather Antos. “Working with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly on this series has been a dream in the darkest possible way. They’ve built a story that’s layered, brutal, and deeply emotional, and every issue gives artist Heather Vaughan opportunities to push the art into places that feel both haunting and deeply personal. Some horror comics will keep you up at night…this is one that will stick with you for years to come.”
The first issue of You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive goes on sale October 14, 2026! Make sure to pre-order at your local comic shop by September to guarantee a copy.
Exclusively check out the various covers for Issue #1 down below.
IDW Publishing’s horror imprint IDW DARK features comics like A Quiet Place: Storm Warning, Smile: For the Camera, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, The Twilight Zone, Event Horizon: Dark Descent & Event Horizon: Inferno, and more.
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