2 out of 5

An interesting artifact that – as a Josh Simmons fan who jumped on board with the first Jessica Farm collection – I’m probably glad I didn’t read until now. I’d like to trust my ability to spot the skills in a creative at any stage in their career, but our tastes change and our abilities (and the culture) evolve; taking myself as a guinea pig, certainly the way I write now is not the way I used to write, and the things I used to find funny I still might, but with some caveats.

Humor-wise, Josh Simmons’ Happy pokes more directly at material he has continued to mine, but it’s matured significantly as he’s mapped his depictions of discomforts / dissatisfaction / ‘life is a bastard’ misanthropic observations to more (to me) interestingly subversive or surreal depictions of the same, often leaning into psychological horror. This is fine – I can appreciate the purposefully zine-y narrative here of Josh’s time (in issues 3 and 4) with a sideshow circus, and acknowledge that the edgelord stuff and controversy-baiting gags were of the early 00s era, and growing pains; the other longer narratives of a planet of eternally happy rabbits (issue #1) and a riff on obsessive and static autobio zines (issue 2) run on less abrasive but similar wavelengths. Meaning: had I been younger, this stuff probably would’ve landed more firmly for me (excepting the circus stuff; I’ve never been too bowled over by day-in-the-life tales of more extreme lifestyles).

But: the writing itself, and the flow of the art – woof, this is where I got stuck. It is interesting that Josh’s then-forthcoming GN, House, would be wordless, because that’s the main issue here: SO many words, just crammed into the pages. And there’s not much sense of editing to it, which allows for quite a bit of repetition, in addition to some sloppiness with voice and vocab overkill that makes comprehension of what’s being said, and the proper timing of punchlines, both a sticking point. If you stack this with the dated quality of the humor, the pairing only makes all the less positive qualities more noxious seeming. I accept that some of what I’m mentioning may just sound rather zine-y, and yes, but: extend several zine-y indulgences to nearly every cramped panel of every cramped page of a full-length comic book, and… well, to me, that becomes hard to get through.

As to the quality of the art, setting aside how consistently busy the pages are, this mostly has that kind of dreamlike Jessica Farm vibe to it – with some Crumb; with some Cooper – albeit moreso on coke than hallucinogens; the first issue, being the most entertaining to me is probably also the “best” art, but that’s absolutely subjective. If you enjoy the Circus issues, perhaps the rotating cast of characters and antics will appeal, but it felt less unique / identifiable to me versus the opener.

So, yeah, had I started here, I’m not positive I would’ve been as immediately drawn to JHS’ stuff as I’d become with later projects. But I am super glad to be able to piece them into the puzzle retroactively, and – in a world where I’d checked out with Happy – imagine I would’ve seen something later on like The Furry Trap, and been like, “hey, that guy…” and found my way to fandom then. Be not deterred, past me!