YMMV / Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

• Angst? What Angst?: Not because Nny forgets about his issues, at least long-term, but the man's tried to kill himself only to be stopped by TV or soda. He hops between Manic and Depressive more often than most people sleep. Probably because he goes out of his way not to sleep.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • That guy Nny captures and force-feeds because he hasn't cleaned out the fridge in a while. Satisfied his food is okay, he lets the guy go free without a scratch. End story.
  • Three pages into Johnny's Heaven escapades, we get a one-page comic of him in his torture cellar drilling a hole in some guy's head (and getting sandwiches for both himself and the newly-trepanned). The next page, he's back in Heaven.
    Caption Box: This strip had nothing to do with the storyline. Still, it's adorable, don't you think?
  • One page, Johnny's driving a scythe through a woman's mouth and writing in his Die-ary that inside he's "pretty fucking ugly." Then he's on The Date with Devi and being nothing short of Adorkable. They Almost Kiss. One Moment Killer Curb-Stomp Battle later, and he's happily rampaging through a convenience store. ...Huh. Somewhat Subverted in that Devi does pop up again, but it's still pretty at odds with the rest of his actions.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Jimmy and Johnny (Mmy and Nny) seems to be quite popular amongst some fans, despite Jimmy being nothing but a caricature of an extremely annoying misguided fan who clearly evokes nothing but disgust in Johnny.
  • Johnny and Edgar used to have quite the following back in the day, for various reasons.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The comic is essentially a Black Comedy about an insane killer who graphically murders people.
• Crossover Ship: The most common are Squee/Lenore, Johnny/Zim, Johnny/Dib, and Johnny/Bloody Bunny (No, really).
• Cult Classic: The series has always been fairly popular and critically well-received, but it has never completely gained mainstream recognition, and is generally more well-known for being the comic written by the creator of Invader Zim than it is for any of its actual content.
• Death of the Author: Per Word of God, the comic is a scathing satire on the toxicity of urban America filtered through a blatantly hypocritical Villain Protagonist. This is typically lost on many (mostly pre-adult) readers, who see it more as a brooding goth wish-fulfillment fantasy about a tragic Byronic Hero who's a victim of his own demons. Jhonen Vasquez admitted that this was partially his fault, as his inexperience as a writer caused him to humanize Johnny more than he had intended.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Johnny and Jimmy. Especially the latter, considering he crosses lines Johnny won't.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The "Meanwhile" strips, especially Happy Noodle Boy, to Jhonen's consternation.
  • He mentioned in the introduction to the compilation of Wobbly Headed Bob strips in Squee's Wonderful Big Giant Book of Unspeakable Horrors that "it would seem that [the Meanwhile strips] were some of the most popular parts of the books with readers, often getting more attention than the books' title characters themselves. This angers me, and makes me want to kick strangers in the nuts, regardless of gender."
  • Edgar Vargas. He appears only in one chapter (a four page chapter) and dies during it, but is remembered and loved by many a fangirl. Probably because he's one of the few characters who possess any sort of decency (See the Asshole Victim entry above), and unlike Squee, he's legal to ship.
  • Jimmy/Mmy. Like Edgar, he was a one-shot character, but also has plenty of fanart. See Crack Pairing above.
• Escapist Character: Johnny is this to more misanthropic readers of comics. Sure, his life is pure misery and he hates everyone and everything around him (including himself), but all of us feel like that sometimes. Not all of us can blow off steam by going on a sadistic killing spree and get away with it.
• Fan Nickname: The Wall Monster is often referred to as "The Moose" by fans due to the combination of a line by Krik mistakenly assuming it to be one and a design on Johnny's shirt reading "777^note Johnny's home address: Number of the Moose". Whether this was an intentional Call-Back or merely a coincidence (mooses are one of the many Inherently Funny Words that come up often in Jhonen Vasquez's works), it was more than enough material for the fanbase to role with.
• Iconic Outfit:
  • Johnny is generally always drawn wearing his long boots and a striped-sleeved shirt with a "Z?" logo on it in fanart. Whether he has his Badass Longcoat or Hair Antennae tends to vary Depending on the Artist, though. It even gets lampshaded in Issue 7, when Jimmy, wearing that exact outfit, expresses annoyance that Johnny himself isn't wearing it.
  • Squee is almost never drawn in anything other than his striped pajamas in fanart.
• Jerkass Woobie: Nny can be disturbingly good at garnering sympathy from the reader, all things considered.
  • There's just something about a character who doesn't want to be a monster, but knows he's far too broken to ever be fixed. After committing suicide (he got better), he calls Devi and tells her that, since he will never be safe to be around, he will show his love for her by never going near her again to protect her from himself and allow her to leave her house unafraid (he fails). And when he saves Squee from a rapist, he tries to prevent Squee from turning the man into a nightmare monster... by ripping out the guy's guts to show he is just as human and as mortal as anyone. Of course, he fails to reassure the kid, but the fact that he was trying to prevent Squee's mental scarring... Poor guy just wanted to help.
  • Any time Nny cries makes him Woobie material. Special mention goes to the Johnny The Suicidal Maniac strips, where he actively tries to kill himself and is portrayed in a sympathetic manner. There's a certain strip where Johnny has a conversation with Nailbunny over how he feels like he's being controlled by The Thing Behind The Wall. He walks down some stairs and says, "I wish...I wish someone would just switch me off and...fix me."
    Nny: Bunny?
    Nailbunny: Yes, Nny?
    Nny: I'm not happy.
• Minority Show Ghetto: A variant. JtHM has been stigmatized as being a "goth comic" since its inception, despite the author never having intended for it to be seen as such (goths are one of the primary targets of mockery, and Johnny himself, who is often accused of being goth-like in his sensibilities, is intended to be viewed as a delusional hypocrite), which has caused it to remain relatively niche even after Jhonen Vasquez has become more established in the industry.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • JtHM is surprisingly popular among goths, as explained in Minority Show Ghetto above, even though the subculture itself is thoroughly mocked by the comic and every character who is shown to be a goth is shown to be a shallow and judgmental jerkass, and characters like Tess and Anne Gwish exist largely for the reason of criticizing the subculture and it's values, with part Tess's character arc being about realizing how judgemental and toxic the subculture really is and then abandoning it to be her own individual, and Anne Gwish mocks it by pointing out some of the paradoxical aspects of goth culture, such as having a derivative fashion sense yet claiming to be unique and an individual, and also blindly following and abandoning the trends within their own subculture without a second thought, while hypocritically judging people who aren't like them, making them ironically no different from the mainstream culture that they've divorced themselves from.
  • No, you are not supposed to root for Johnny or agree with any thing he says, no matter how coherent he may seem while saying them. Quite the opposite in fact. Notably, Jimmy, a character created to be a blatant Take That, Audience! toward this section of the fanbase, ended up being embraced by many as the perfect partner (romantic or otherwise) for Johnny.
• One-Scene Wonder: Several of Nny's murder victims, most particularly Edgar Vargas and Mmy.
• The Scrappy: Not many people care for Wobbly-Headed Bob due to his rants on life being pointless and cruel coming off as Wangst and his tendency to force his viewpoints on others and look down on everyone he considers dumber than he is.
• Tear Jerker: For an artist best known for absurdist black comedy, the comic is surprisingly sad a lot of the time.
  • “I wish... I wish someone would just switch me off and... fix me.”
• Ugly Cute: Even with their spooky paint jobs and disgusting personalities, the doughboys do still manage to look kind of cute in some panels.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The series' preoccupation with things like malls and goths firmly places it in the mid-90's. The Columbine High School Massacre, which would go on to become the defining example of such an event in the American public consciousness, also doesn't so much as get alluded to due to happening just two years after the comic ended.
  • The idea of someone recording one of Johnny's murders on their cell phone or posting about them on the internet never gets entertained, as neither was widespread enough at the time of the comic's creation for it to be something the average person would think of.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Johnny is intended to come off as a tragic character, the audience isn't meant to view him as anything beyond exactly what he is: a deranged and hypocritical murderer. This hasn't stopped who knows how many people from believing him to be misunderstood and even downright heroic. Upon reflection, Jhonen Vasquez blames himself for not making Johnny's monologues about how he hates both himself and the rest of humanity seem melodramatic enough.
  • And then there's the whole issue of Johnny becoming a serial killer in the first place due to falling under the influence of the wastelock system after failing to fight it off...
• Unpopular Popular Character: Johnny and Squee. Neither are much liked in-universe, but fans adore them.
• Wangst:
  • Word of God states that Johnny's philosophical rants were intended to make him come across as a person so stuck up his own ass that he has been rendered completely desensitized to the blatant hypocrisy of everything he says and does.
  • Wobbly-Headed Bob on every day. Pretty much every appearance has him go into a pessimistic rant on how meaningless and insufferable life is.
• The Woobie: Squee. His mother is incredibly neglectful, his father has no regret in telling Squee that he hates Squee's existence, and he lives next to a psycho.

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