Spin-Off from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Squee ran four issues and followed the titular next-door-neighbor-of-aforementioned-maniac as he encounters aliens and all other manner of paranormal activity.
Tropes used in Squee (comics) include:
- Adults Are Useless: The only adults in Squee's life are apathetic/evil/corrupt/Stupid/Satan/dangerously psychopathic, etc. So you can imagine they're not much help.
- Abusive Parents: Squee's parents are of the horribly neglectful variety.
- Anal Probing: When the wheelchair-bound aliens try to abduct Squee again, one of the two aliens goes to his parent's room and subjects Mr. Casil to this.
- The Antichrist: Pepito, and not trying to hide it: he has horns, and his father is not in disguise when Squee comes to visit. And then there's "Stand back, amigo! This looks like a job for... THE ANTICHRIST!"
- Bedlam House: Squee! has the "Defective Head Meat Institute". There's talk of a new phrenology department, lobotomies, using patients as "lab monkeys" and a random nurse walking by thinking "Whoa! I'm the angel of death!". The staff is so incompetent that they keep Squee as a patient and let Johnny go free.
- Blatant Lies: Squee's reaction to having his parents abducted is "I am full of guilt". While watching movies and eating snacks.
- The idiot aliens lying about their wheelchairs.
- Character Title
- The Chew Toy: Squee, full stop.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: In the first issue of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Johnny yells at Shmee the teddy bear as if he was sentient and stabs him. As we find out, Shmee actually is sentient.
- Crapsack World
- Deal with the Devil: Offered, but averted.
- Downer Ending
- Evil Teacher: Ms. Bitters. Yep, that one.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: Located in Pepito's basement.
- Funny Background Event: Plenty. Most notably, several panels have Johnny terrorizing various people.
- I Have Many Names: How Pepito begins his introduction.
Pepito: Son of the dark prince, child of darkness. Some call me the altar boy of doom. Others will know me as the second coming of damnation. My mom calls me Pepito. |
- Improbable Weapon User: At the "Defective Head Meat Institute", Johnny says to a dream-studying scientist that he dreamed about killing her with a bag of ramen noodles.
- Happily Married: Pepito's parents seem to be this...despite the fact that his father is Satan. Subverted with Squee's parents, who are still together but with obvious instability between them.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Pretty much Squee's life story, though it's not always hilarious.
- Interspecies Romance: Señor Diablo and his wife (Pepito's mother) could count as this. Also, one of the Meanwhile comics features a guy forced to mate with a chicken so that his aliens captors can research human sexual encounters. To make matters worse, it's revealed that the man eventually marries the chicken and has kids with her.
- Kids Are Cruel: Squee tends to be bullied mercilessly by every kid he ever meets for no apparent reason. The only exception is Pepito, who's fairly nice to Squee. Too bad he has a nasty habit of melting his other classmates faces' off, but at least he's nice to Squee.
- Lighter and Softer: Less paranoia and debilitating mental disorders and serial killings than in JTHM. Ok, I tell a lie, but here it's all Played for Laughs.
- Mad Eye: As per a Jhonen Vasquez production, Squee is depicted with one after Pepito blows up the school to save Squee from zombies.
- No Name Given: Ms. Bitters is never addressed as such.
- Nightmare Sequence: Once every issue, there's a page devoted to "Dreamtime", which is basically a page of Squee's horrific nightmares.
- One-Man Army: Pepito, who takes down an entire school of evil zombie children by himself.
- Only Sane Man: Squee himself.
- Pay Evil Unto Evil: Squee arranging for his abusive parents to get kidnapped by aliens.
- Although before that he seemed quite convinced that hurting them would be wrong.
- But yet..."I am full of guilt."
- Ping-Pong Naivete: Closer to ping-pong innocence. How aware Squee is of how screwed up his world is and how much he's willing to do something about it tends to vary from storyline to storyline.
- Resentful Guardian: Squee's dad, to the point where[1] in his spare time he watches Squee's birth video in reverse.
- Take That, Audience!: Jhonen Vasquez takes a jab at the JTHM Fan Dumb through the rantings of Squee's teddy Shmee.
Shmee: Why, if sickness were a socially acceptable thing, those degenerative loons would be writing your neighbor fan-mail, telling him how "cool" he is! They would admire his illness and aspire to it! |
- Toilet Humor: Tons of it. Special mention goes to the unseen man in the restaurant bathroom stall in Issue Two. Holy shit.
- Transplant: The stupid, wheelchair-bound aliens show up to abduct Zim, whose teacher (Ms. Bitters) is also Squee's teacher. The horned, purple aliens are revealed in Zim to be residents of the planet Vort, which is conquered by the Irkens. The big one, however, is Zim himself, who shows up on various posters in Squee's room.
- Unnamed Parent: Both of Squee's.
- Pepito's mother.
- We Can Rule Together: Señor Diablo offers Squee a position in Hell. He politely declines.
- Weirdness Magnet: Squee.
- ↑ if Jhonen's snarky caption boxes are to be believed