Seaguy

Seaguy is a three-volume comic book miniseries written by Grant Morrison with art by Cameron Stewart and published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. The first volume of Seaguy was released in three issues beginning on May 19, 2004. The second volume, Slaves of Mickey Eye, was released in three issues beginning on April 1, 2009. The third and final volume, Seaguy Eternal, is yet to be published.

The story revolves around Seaguy, an unpowered superhero in a scuba suit, and his best friend and sidekick Chubby Da Choona, a talking, cigar-smoking tuna.

Publication history

Morrison has expressed on various occasions that Seaguy represents a deliberate effort to move away from conventions of the current era of comics: "I had the idea to develop Seaguy into a weapon I could use to fight back against the trendy and unconvincing 'bad-ass' cynicism of current comics, most of which are produced by the most un-'bad-ass' men you can possibly imagine". Morrison believes that in this fashion the work represents a new vanguard in the development of comics. Morrison expressed similar sentiments about Zenith, one of the earliest series they worked on, when they said that it "was a reaction against torment superheroes".

Seaguy was planned as a trilogy, the second and third volumes were to be entitled "The Slaves of Mickey Eye" and "Seaguy Eternal" respectively, but due to the lower-than-expected sales of the comic, it was thought that the sequels were unlikely to be published. In 2006, a fan reported to a comics rumor column that Morrison was holding DC Comics' 52 weekly limited series for ransom. They reportedly offered to help write the series as long as they allowed him to go forward on the Seaguy sequel.

In April 2008, Morrison said that both sequels would go ahead and gave an overview of the ideas they have about the different parts:

The first sequel, Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, was released on April 1, 2009 by DC Comics/Vertigo.

Morrison has expanded on the broader themes:

Plot

Seaguy is a super-hero who has never really had an adventure and spends his days in New Venice playing chess with Death, watching Mickey Eye (a cartoon show about an all-seeing, all-knowing, psychopathic eye, and an obvious spoof on Mickey Mouse) and going to the Mickey Eye amusement park. He constantly expresses his wish to go on adventures and impress a beautiful bearded warrior woman named She-Beard, but he never seems to get around to it because he's told the world doesn't need heroes anymore. However, when Seaguy and Chubby discover that a new food staple called Xoo is sentient, they decide to protect it from evil forces and bring it home.

Seaguy exists in a seemingly perfect world in which all the super-heroes no longer save lives or do much of anything except ride the rides at the Mickey Eye amusement park. It is public knowledge that all the evil in the world was finally destroyed after a powerful entity called the Anti-Dad was destroyed by all the super-heroes, effectively leaving the heroes without jobs. The style of the book is equal parts dark tragedy and light-hearted whimsy as the main character travels from one adventure to the other, but with each adventure becoming more tragic than the one before it, until Seaguy discovers the secret history of the moon.

Collected editions

The first volume has been collected into a trade paperback:

• Seaguy (104 pages, 2005, )

References

• Template:Gcdb series
• Template:Comicbookdb

External links

• Seaguy interview with Cameron Stewart, Comiccon
• Review of the trade at Comics Bulletin
• Seaguy TPB review by Jeffery Klaehn at Graphic Novel Reporter, March 2009
• Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye Spanish Review @ kopodo