YMMV / The Unfunnies

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Exactly how much control did the characters have over themselves?
  • Some people theorize that Troy Hicks' switching into the world of his comic doesn't actually happen in-universe and the entire thing is just his Dying Dream as the electric chair gets flipped on.
• Anvilicious:
  • When Birdseed Betty and her kids find God and seem to get their lives back together, they get literally crushed under an anvil because salvation is a lie and religion can't save you.
  • The plot where a mother is convinced to murder her 10 year-old and call it an abortion, complete with pro-choice language.
• Bile Fascination: And even then, those who do read it will look back at this comic later on with abject horror. Or even worse, bored disgust.
• Complete Monster:
  • Troy Hicks is a comic book artist who gets arrested for raping and killing eight children. Using an occult ritual to contact the world he created, Hicks proceeds to introduce his creations to sex and violence, eventually filling the world's prison with murderers and rapists. Troy eventually convinces local mailman Frosty Pete to switch places with him and leaves him to fry in the electric chair before sexually blackmailing Birdseed Betty, a desperate woman whose husband he corrupted with child porn. He then restarts his child murders until the police catch up to him. Hicks then uses his occult powers to massacre the entire police department, cementing himself as the god of this world. His first act is to give Betty's family a chance at a happy life before crushing them with an anvil, ending the comic completely successful.
  • Dr. Despicable introduces himself talking a woman into letting him have her problematic child killed, a service he implies he regularly provides. Later tricking a rundown actor into thinking he's got testicular cancer so Despicable can castrate him to win a bet with another depraved practitioner, when disqualified for cheating, he suggests a new competition: stealing kidneys.
• Crosses the Line Twice: This may be the darkest black comedy of all time. Some people would say that it crosses the line three times until it's no longer disturbingly funny, just disturbing. Although calling it a "comedy" might be a bit generous. Mark Millar claims it isn't, in a bizarre inversion of Parody Retcon.
• Funny Moments:
  • Not in the story, but in one interview Mark Millar gave us this piece of wonder:
    Mark Millar: My wife got about six pages into it when she was reading it in the bath the other night and she just threw it at me. She said it was the most horrible thing she'd ever read in her life and she didn't want to think this sort of shit even went on in my head. I tried to explain that the crow was sucking cock for a REASON, but it actually does sound kind of creepy saying it out loud.
  • Possibly the only joke in the comic itself that lands on its own merits is the introduction to Mr. Pussywhisker, a classy actor who's an Expy of Snagglepuss, as he gears up for a performance.
    Mr. Pussywhisker: Of course they are [waiting for me], you sniveling poltroon! I'm the best there is at what I do!
    (puts on a clown nose with a dead-serious expression)
• Memetic Mutation: "The crow was sucking cock for a REASON, but it actually does sound kind of creepy saying it out loud.''^ExplanationAn excerpt from Mark Millar's interview where he tells about his then-to-be wife's reaction at reading the comic's first issue. Many people tend to make fun of the line, especially when taking it out of context.
• Moment of Awesome: Birdseed Betty beats her landlord to death after he tells her he wants to molest her kids.
• Narm: While the entire comic qualifies on some level, due to feeling like it was written by an overly-edgy teenager, one of its most ridiculous aspects has to be its use of real-life photography alongside the cartoony artstyle. Special mention goes to Troy Hicks himself, who is portrayed by photos of a real man who not only doesn't look that intimidating on his own, but the faces he makes to look scary just make him look goofy instead.
• Nightmare Fuel: All over the place.
  • An example is a scene when Allie Gator gets kidnapped by Despicable's people in order to get medical termination.
  • Another example strikes in a "yourself in their shoes" situation. Imagine you are one of Hicks' characters, like Sheriff Dribble, and you find out that he's been doing godawful stuff. You try to stop him with all your effort and find it's all in vain because he controls everything you do. And whether it's being sacrificed, killed in gruesome ways, Cold-Blooded Torture, or whatnot, you are completely helpless to stop him.
• Tear Jerker:
  • What Birdseed Betty goes through in the comic with losing her husband, seeming like she lost her child, and the humiliation and pain she endures in the process.
  • Moe the Crow going to jail for something he had absolutely no control over, gets raped by a lot of inmates, gets raped by a dog with AIDS, his wife leaves him, and then his family gets massacred. If he doesn't die by the time he finds out, he'll probably just drop dead then and there.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The idea of a Darker and Edgier Hanna-Barbera style cartoon universe drawn by a cartoonist who acts like a corrupting, evil god would've sounded great—if not for the fact that it relied too heavily on shock value such as child pornography and rape, thus ruining what could've been a great comic.
  • In the end, this comic has a heavy meta bent, but the fact that the in-universe comic pretty much exists in a vacuum leaves a lot of its most potentially-interesting ideas off the table. For instance, we never really see anything from the real world outside the comic book, like if it's still being somehow written into a physical book and if so, if anyone else would be able to influence it if they were to find it. We also get nothing about the real Frosty Pete's situation in Troy Hicks' body except very briefly at the very end. Basically any attempt at an actual story or narrative is left unexplored in favor of ultra-edgy grossout gags.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Everything is so absurdly depraved and horrible, it just feels ridiculous. The story starts off with a character we just met on the first page getting arrested for child porn on the second. For some, it's effective (see the Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel sections) but for others, it feels too sophomoric and detached from reality to have any kind of impact. Not helped much by the fact that we have virtually no time to get to know the characters before they all start doing horrible things.

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