Happy! is a comic-book miniseries created by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson, and published by Image Comics.
When a hit goes horribly, horribly wrong, ex-cop-turned-hitman Nick Sax takes a bullet in his side and finds himself wanted by cops and mobsters alike. In this dark hour, he gets an unexpected visit from Happy, a little blue flying horse, who enlists him to help find a little girl who's been kidnapped by a psycho in a Santa suit.
The miniseries has been adapted into a TV series of the same name.
This miniseries contains examples of:
- Bad Santa: Children are being abducted by a drunken pedophile in a Santa suit for a porno film the mafia is shooting.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nick dies of the wounds he got, but he was able to save his daughter and all the other kids the mafia abducted from being raped in a porno film.
- Dirty Cop: The NYPD in the Happy-verse is full of corrupt cops under the thumb of the mafia.
- Fallen Hero: Nick Sax used to be one of the NYPD's best officers before getting in trouble. Now he's a miserable old addict pulling hits for the mob just to keep himself awash in drugs.
- Genre Refugee: Happy is a brightly-colored, flying imaginary horse in a gritty crime story.
- Groin Attack: Smoothie tells his assistants that Nick is likely to respond (i.e. break) well when his penis is cut like salami.
- In the film version, he actually tells Nick that in the face, to which the man just replies "Gonna take you long time". A scene later, it turns out Smoothie has no qualms about using this technique because he himself is smooth (evirated), hence the nickname.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Children are being abducted for kiddie porn films being made by the mafia. One of them is Nick's daughter.
- The Most Wanted: In this miniseries, cop-turned-hitman Nick Sax is being hunted by both the cops and the mafia after a job gone bad.
- Refusal of the Call: Nick constantly refuses Happy's constant begging to help him find his kid on the grounds that he has no real stake in whether she lives or dies. He even shouts it in Happy's face at one point. He finally changes his tune when he discovers that Happy's kid is Nick's daughter.
- Torture Technician: Nick Sax is tortured by Smoothie, the mafia's resident torture expert.
