Happy #2

Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Darick Robertson

I still have a hard time believing that this is a Grant Morrison comic.  It feels and reads like it was written by Garth Ennis more than anyone else, although this issue borrows from Who is Jake Ellis? as well.

Basically, Nick Sax is an ex-cop who now works as an assassin.  He's had a heart attack, and is being held in a mafia hospital by people who believe he has the password to an off-shore bank account.  Nick's only friend at this moment is Happy, a small blue winged horse, who only he can see.  Happy is the imaginary friend of a young girl who has been kidnapped by a pervert in a Santa suit.

Happy has to keep Nick alive in order to get him to go rescue Hailey, but Nick is pretty sure the horse is just a hallucination.  This leads to him sitting down at a high-stakes poker game, so that Happy can help him out.

This is a fun read, with the right amount of rough-hewn weirdness and viciousness (hence the reason why I keep ascribing it to Ennis, and not Morrison).  There doesn't appear to be any sort of meta-textual stuff going on here; perhaps Morrison just felt like cutting loose.

Darick Robertson is always great, so the book looks very good.