Explaining Happy! (And Grant Morrison)

What is “Happy!”, well take the Jimmy Stewart classic Harvey, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, any Quentin Tarrantino movie and a heap of commentary on the state of Superhero comics, filter it though the views and philosophies of Grant Morrison and thats “Happy!”. 

So brief synopsis of the book and the Syfy (or in the UK Netflix) series. Happy! is the story of Nick Sax (whose name should really be spelt Sacks to keep with the Christmas theme of the story), a disgraced cop turned mercenary and high functioning alcoholic and drug addicts reconnecting with his estranged daughter (Hailey) by rescuing her from being molested by “Very Bad Santa” whose been hired to do such things by the mob as revenge for Sax killing an extra family member (he was hired to kill 3 and killed 4). The bonus one having made a deal with Mr Blue (the main gangster) to split the money they where hiding between them, but with him dead, Blue has no access to his ill-gotten gains. Sax’s only ally in rescuing his daughter from not so jolly Saint Nick is Happy a blue horse and Hailey’s imaginary friend. Happy is 1-2-3-4-5 grades higher than a hallucination but only Sax can see him, Happy is also in stark contrast to Sax. Happy is everything you’d expect a child’s imaginary friend to be, loving, caring and very excitable. Now as Happy was originally published as a 4 Issue mini-series by image comics for a full length TV series things had to be added, unlike many other adaptations Grant Morrison did write the pilot episode and the finale of Season 1 and only the opener to Season 2. Additions to the book include Sunny Shine a prima-donna children’s TV presenter who owes his success to aiding in organised crime and a pact with the “Wishees” (another addition from the book) parodies of the Teletubbies that are secretly Lovecraftian elder gods that feed off of misery.

Now nothing by Grant Morrison is just a story, Morrison writes about his own life in a distorted way. He uses a method that he calls a “Fiction suit” to incorporate himself into the story; in Animal Man he became the character the writer, in the Invisibles he was King Mob, in All Star Superman he was Lex Luthor, during his run of X-men he was Professor X and in Happy he is Sax. Other people also get fiction-suited into his stories, Mark Millar was Kid Omega in his run on X-men and Morrison’s father was Flex Mentallo (in his eponymous series) and Superman in All Star Superman. In Happy! very bad Santa is Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Very Bad Santa only exists to pervert and distort something innocent and harm children, much like how these two started the Dark age of comics which lead Superhero comics to become more dour and depressing and Hailey is the innocent children who won’t look up to Superman or the Flash because they read Watchmen or any piece of crap written by Frank Miller. Even though Miller and Moore have drastically different political views (Moore being an Anarchist and Miller being an Anti-Feminist and self proclaimed Fascist) they both created comics intended to be deconstructions of Superheroes but are really just Adolescent trash that think they’re deep. Now Sax is no saint and Morrison in his post-Marvel work is more reflective and realising that he is also guilty of this but Sax like Morrison changes his way in the story and does what he can to protect his daughter even if Sax had abandoned her before she was born. Mr Blue is of course the editorial staff of DC (in the series he’s played by an actor who looks a lot like Brian Azzarello a contemporary comic book writer who worships and tries to emulate both Moore and Miller whenever he can), and DC seem to have sold their core audience of wide-eyed innocent children who aspire to be Superheroes for Miller and Moore fanboys. DC’s practice can also be described as predatory, a very good example of this is Harley Quinn, Harley was an innocent character with the mind of a child and the victim of the Joker but now she’s a fetish, licking phallic objects like baseball bats and sleeping with all the male heroes when they guest star in her comic.

What about Happy the eponymous character, how does he fit into all this criticism of DC comics. Well he doesn’t, Grant Morrison has certain theories about how the universe works. Happy is 5 grades above a Hallucination because he’s from the Fifth Dimension. Now stay with me on this, humans are fourth dimensional beings, we can fully perceive four dimensions (height, width, breadth and time), Comic book characters are one dimension below us, which puts them at the mercy of Four Dimensional beings, writers and artists craft their whole world, we change how they act on a whim, this is how Batman can be both Adam West and the version from Dark Knight Returns. His whole personality is defined by his creative team, he can be an angry loner or be part of a team of super pals. Now beings from the Fifth Dimension can affect us, but we can’t perceive them just like how Spider-man has no idea that Stan Lee is making him fight Doctor Octopus again. When we come across beings from the fifth dimension we can only imagine what they are and handily the fifth Dimension is to us Imagination. With Imagination we can create new worlds but we can’t exist in them we’re stuck with the four we have, to master imagination is to become akin to godhood. Happy as an imaginary friend is created by Hailey through the Fifth Dimension (which is imagination) and has become a native to that world, and with this he is all powerful but due to him being made by a child has no grasp of his powers (these ideas where alluded to in the second season of the TV series) and while Happy is a benevolent Fifth Dimension inhabitant others like the Wishees are not so nice and only wish to mock and toy with lesser beings on our plane of existence.

And if you can wrap your head around all that well done you now understand most of Grant Morrison’s back catalogue.

Explaining the DC Multiverse

So what is a Multiverse, why does DC have one and why am I explaining it? Well let me explain the last part first and the spend the rest of the blog answering the other two. I find that Superhero comics have a lot of aspects to them that may not be easy for newcomers to grasp and I want to do my part to help people get and understand comics, especially as Superheroes are extremely popular but comic books are still seen as the scary artefacts that only a high priest (or complete weirdo) can comprehend and hoard. 

Multiverses are a hot topic in popular culture nowadays with Rick and Morty almost exclusively revolving around the concept, but where does it come from. Erwin Schrodinger came up with the theory and presented it to an audience in Dublin in 1952, but he called it “The many world theory”. This idea inspired many Sci-Fi writers to have different Parallel Universes that can interact with our own and is surprising well respected and looked into by actual scientists. I once saw Neil Degrasse Tyson in a Documentary claim that some Physicists think thats what Dark Matter (which makes up the majority of the universe) is actually the space other realities take up. Like all advanced physics it has yet to be completely proven, but this has never stopped writers from using it, most versions of a Multiverse work on the idea of infinite universes with infinite possibilities (this is the model that Rick and Morty and Marvel Comics use) DC has a specific set of rules including a finite number of universes. 

DC First introduced the concept of the Multiverse in The Flash 123 “The Flash of Two Worlds” in 1961 where the new younger Silver-Age Flash was transported to the Earth of the Golden Age (earlier) Flash Jay Garrick. From then onwards DC’s history was split between Earth ONE (the newer prime universe of Barry Allan) and Earth TWO (The one with all the old guard in it). This lead to a slight problem, DC had relaunched many of their heroes into new personas like the new Green Lantern- Hal Jordan and an Alien Hawkman, but many of their heroes never left publication and interacted with the new heroes in the Justice League (the relaunch of The Justice Society). DC chose to not address this, which is why if you look up the first appearance of the Earth ONE version of Aquaman, Wonder Woman or Green Arrow it’s just a random story not an official first story (Green Arrow’s is even the second part of a story),but if you must have a logical first appearance of these characters I would go for The Brave And The Bold 28 (the first appearance of the Justice League as crossover stories where very rare at this time). Alternatively if you’re a real pedant you can pick Justice League 12 a prequel comic tells how the Justice League was formed, spoiler alert it was to stop an alien who tried to turn them all (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman and The Martian Manhunter) into trees. Of course as their flagship heroes Batman and Superman have a logical first appearance, Superman 76 a story that tells of the first time they met, a week when no crimes at all where committed in Gotham City and Commissioner Gordon insisted that Batman goes on holiday, so Bruce Wayne goes on a cruise that is taken over by Terrorists that capture Lois Lane who was reporting on the launch of the cruise for the Daily Planet. 

After Flash 123 turned out to be a success DC had a nearly annual tradition of having a “Crisis” storyline where 2 or more earth’s collide. The alternate earths had one of two purposes either to be a wacky what-if scenario (different from DC’s staple of the Imaginary tale like “What if Lex Luthor killed Superman”), like Earth THREE which was filled with the Justice League’s evil counterparts and had the lone hero of Alexander Luthor or Earth PRIME which had no superheroes in it (originally intended as our earth but DC got creative and added a Superman). The other was to show off that they had acquired new properties from the companies they had bought up. DC unlike Marvel is a conglomeration of other companies that got bought up by one company, DC even became DC after National Comics merged with ALL STAR Comics. With the merger of the two companies they needed a new name because having National distribution was no longer a brag and ALL STAR was the smaller company with it’s only big recognisable hero being Wonder Woman who was rejected by National. The name DC was not picked as commonly stated as an abbreviation of Detective Comics, because who would name their company after a book that only sold moderately well when Action Comics and Sensation Comics are both better names for your company. DC was chosen for it’s connotations with the Government. When the National and ALL STAR merged both publishers were only a couple years old and it was rare for their characters to meet each other. Batman and Superman wouldn’t be in a story together until 1954 with World’s Finest 71 and this was done as a finical decision as they where always both featured on the cover but had different stories inside. DC chose to shrink the size of the publication and with the shrinking publication the only way they could justify keeping the pair (often with Robin as well) on the cover was to create stories with the two of them together. By 1961 DC and their absorbed companies each had their own established universe, Charlton’s heroes often met, but if they suddenly appeared with Green Lantern with no explanation, it would raise the question as to why they had never met. This concept would only be made worse by Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family being introduced with Captain Marvel being a pastiche of Superman and him having Zeus shared in his origin’s like Wonder Woman. So these new heroes and their universes where given their own separate Earth to explain why they weren’t part of Batman’s softball team. 

DC established their multiverse and had them all clearly marked; Earth-ONE was your main universe where most stories happened, Earth TWO was older stories and where Black Canary originated from (during one Crisis story her husband was killed and grief stricken she chose to join the Justice League). Earth Zero was a square earth created by Bizarro where the laws of physics only worked when they felt like it (it was also entirely populated by distorted clones of other DC characters and is often referred to as “Bizarro World”). Earth THREE was the mirror universe, Earth FOUR was characters acquired from Charlton Comics (Blue Beetle, Captain Atom and The Question probably being the most notable). Earth AD was the setting of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi and Omac (despite these series explicitly being set in the future, Omac even being the Grandson of Superman and Lois Lane and Kamandi being Omac’s grandson). Earth-C the home of Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew (a superhero team consisting of anthropomorphic animals). Earth-S home to the Fawcett heroes (then called the Marvel family now known as Shazam). Earth-Prime a goofy world with just a Superboy. Earth-Quality home to the characters acquired from Quality Comics (probably the most famous of these being The Spirit) and the last one I’m going to mention The Anti-Matter universe where Sinestro first got his Yellow ring and home to the Anti-Monitor.

The DC Multiverse was changed forever in the 1986 storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths. All Earth’s got destroyed by the Anti-Monitor who was only defeated by The Flash (Barry Allan) when he ran so fast he absorbed both into the Speed Force. The only survivors of this being the Supermans of Earth ONE and TWO, Lois Lane of Earth TWO, Jay Garrick (EARTH TWO), Alexander Luthor Jr (EARTH THREE), Superboy (Earth Prime) and the Psycho Pirate (DC has ignored and retconned out the survival of Vandal Savage). It was now up to these surviving heroes and the Psycho Pirate to recreate the Earth, the result of which being New Earth. The Superman of Earth One, Jay Garrick and Psycho Pirate decided to live on this New Earth, although Superman would soon forget all about this as his whole history was about to be rewritten in John Byrne’s Man of Steel mini-series. Alexander Luthor Jr, Superboy Prime, Superman and Lois Lane of Earth Two would instead live in a dome outside the universe called Heaven. 

The Multiverse concept was gone for a while and replaced by the new idea of “Hyper-time”. Hyper-time was abandoned in 2005 to be replaced by the Multiverse because nobody understood Hyper-time. The storyline that reintroduced this into official continuity was Infinite Crisis, but this new version of the Multiverse had stricter rules, there could only be 52 Earths. This was stated because thats the amount of vibrational frequencies the Flash could generate and only worlds he could recreate the frequency of he could access. All Earths the Flash could access where number with a number like “Earth-1”. “Earth One” and “Earth-1” are different places in the multiverse, 1 is the next variant from New Earth and Earth One is for stand alone stories published in original graphic novels. The whole DC Multiverse has been mapped out by Grant Morrison for his mini-series’ Multiversity and even has 4 earths that nothing is known about other than “their purpose is sinister”. The Multiverse also temporarily housed the Milestone (Static Shock) and Wildstorm universes until they where both folding into the main universe during Flashpoint. The DCAU (DC Animated Universe of animated series) has a placement in the Multiverse as Earth-12.

Now there are two other concepts that need explaining as they are outside the DC Multiverse but effected their inhabitants; The Fifth Dimension and The New Gods. 

The Fifth Dimension is inhabited by cartoonish characters who can warp reality at their whims, notable examples would be Mr Mxsptlkz a being whose whole goal is to make Superman look foolish, Bat-Mite an obnoxious fanboy for Batman, QWSP a well intentioned imp who helped Aquaman in the 60’s and Mopee who before Crisis on Infinite Earths was said to have created the Speed Force. The Fifth Dimension is based on the idea that height, width and breadth are the first 3 dimension and time is the 4th, and we can’t perceive the 5th so it’s full of omnipotent beings. 

The New Gods are something different but similar, they are parasites that are the living embodiment of the concept they represent, the stronger their concept is in the Multiverse the stronger the New God is.The Supervillain Darkseid is the most famous of the New Gods and he is the embodiment of Hatred so the more people feel hatred the stronger he is. Of course some New Gods are positive things Bekka is the New God of Love and Mr Miracle is the embodiment of Hope (something that makes Tom King’s decision to make him suicidal even worse). The New Gods did have a placement in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earth’s multiverse as Earth FOURTEEN however this feels like a mistake even then when the “good” New Gods live on New Genesis and the Evil ones live on Apokolips. The New Gods can only enter the multiverse using devices known as Mother Box’s that create “Boom Tubes” which are portals that will alter their size so they can actually fit on the planet they wish to conquer or save (each New God is roughly the size of a Galaxy). 

And that I hope has made you wiser on how the DC Multiverse works and why it exists THANK YOU.