Happy! is an obvious attempt to sell an idea to a bigger market, and a successful one at that. The job of making something light enough to carry out of the pitch meeting doesn't allow anyone involved to show what kind of comic they can make on a good day, but both Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson manage one magic trick while trying to close the sale. 

For Morrison, it takes the form of a scene on a commuter train, where the writer flexes their love for overheard dialogue and works it up into a symphony of human misery. For Roberston, it's in the design of Happy himself. This winged equine grotesquerie has the feeling of something that is being seen too close to the eye at all times - fitting for a childhood fantasy lost in a world of rote murder and callous laughs.

SIDENOTE:  While the TV version of Happy! isn't perfect, its improvements on the comic are so comprehensive that it was a little disorienting to come back and realise how little there was to the crime plot here, how much Richie Coster brings to the role of Blue, and how much further Morrison was able to push their psychotropic ambitions once the sales meeting was over. 

Over the course of two seasons, Christopher Meloni revealed himself to be one of Morrison's most enthusiastic collaborators. As soiled detective and scarf-clad hitman Nick Sax, Meloni moves like a cartoon creature unleashed on an unsuspecting reality. The rules of physics do not seem to apply to him, but at various points he convinces you that sheer misery might kill him where an anvil to the head would fail.