*** Welcome to piglix ***

Squee!


Squee! was a four-issue series by Jhonen Vasquez, published by Slave Labor Graphics, featuring a supporting character from Vasquez's previous series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. The series was eventually collected as the TPB, titled Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors.

The series focuses on a young boy named Todd Casil, otherwise known as Squee. An introverted and bullied little kid with a less than supportive family, Squee has been forced to mature a bit more quickly than his peers. He is fond of writing, but only receives criticism from his teacher and taunting from his classmates. Any attempts he makes to deflect these hostilities only results in being shoved into the dirt or otherwise further humiliated. Squee's mother is addicted to some form of pill and spends a lot of time lying around in a nearly incoherent state. She often forgets who Squee is, or that she even has a child. His father, painfully aware of Squee's existence, loathes the boy and never forgets to mention that he blames Squee for "ruining" his life, claiming that he "hasn't smiled once since [Squee] was born". Having little patience for anything Squee says or does, he eventually becomes convinced that Squee is mentally unstable, and by the end of the series, has him committed to the "Defective Head Meat Institute". Squee also has a grandfather who justifiably believes his children are only waiting for him to die to collect some kind of inheritance. His grandfather claims to keep healthy and young by consuming his children's first-borns, and subsequently attempts to devour Squee, only to reveal in horrifying fashion that he is in fact a cyborg and quite possibly insane.

Squee's next door neighbor is Johnny C., a.k.a. "Nny" (pronounced "knee"), the main character of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Nny regularly visits Squee late at night by breaking into his room. JTHM focused more on the "mentoring" or "big brother" aspect of Nny and Squee's relationship, but little interaction occurs in Squee!, aside from the occasional drawing or note left in Squee's room, or short references to "the crazy neighbor man" (he does appear as an out-patient of "Defective Head Meat Institute", who Squee is oddly pleased to see). Squee has only one friend, albeit a possibly imaginary one, the dilapidated teddy bear affectionately referred to as Shmee. Only one real person makes any attempt to befriend Squee, a boy named Pepito who happens to be the Antichrist. During the course of the series, Squee encounters a killer chihuahua (that fatally mauls the only classmate who was friendly to him), zombified classmates, sporting mishaps, alien abductions, near recruitment into Satan's army, an encounter with his future self, a ghostly visitor, a giant murderous dust mite and eventual committal to a mental institution despite being one of the most sane characters in the comic. These experiences lead him to remark to a "lamb-baby-dog-thing" in one strip that some bitter cartoonist must be drawing his life and therefore he doesn't want to get too attached to anyone or anything in it.


...
Wikipedia

...