Plot
The story opens up outside of a nightclub, where Sadie (who was shot in the head sometime prior, leading her to have mental delusions of invulnerability) beats up a bouncer and later a gang member. The main characters are all introduced inside, where Runco tries to convince them to go to Spain to steal a painting. When they refuse, he calls the Pinkertons, a group of thugs working to find Sadie for her father, who quickly advance on the nightclub. Meanwhile, Donnie shoots heroin in the bathroom, and Danny tries to tell Sadie he loves her, with no success.
In a flashback, it is revealed how Danny met Sadie. He worked in a Brown Bag Superstore, a chain of stores owned by Sadie's father. Danny planned to go to a concert with his questionably best friend Kenny, who betrays Danny by revealing he is taking Sadie after he lies to their friend Joanie about taking her. Ronald, his boss and Joannie's brother, forces Danny to work to indirectly anger Kenny (not knowing Kenny lied to Danny too). Danny abandons work for the concert and finds Kenny, who says Sadie left him after the pair arrived for cooler attendees. At the concert, the Pinkertons arrive for Sadie, a self-absorbed, verbally abusive woman, who escapes with and warms to Danny after he steals alcohol for her and the two go carousing. When he gets home, Danny finds Kenny's severed head in the fridge, and his mom and brother dead, a message from the Pinkertons.
Back to the Nightclub in the present, the group flee the Pinkertons just as the police raid the building, while Donnie is having an overdose. Outside, they encounter the gang member from before with his friends. The Pinkertons kill the gang members, but Sadie steals a garbage truck and they make their escape. They take Donnie to a hospital, where a Pinkerton takes Sadie at gunpoint. Sadie and Danny kill him, which freaks out the others. They decide to flee the country, and go to Spain on Runco's theft plan.
On the cruise to Spain, Danny and Sadie have sex. They abandon the ship and go the rest of the way by lifeboat, after finding out Runco lied about paying for the tickets. Once they get there, Sadie goes missing and turns up at a Bar, where she befriends a thug, Puss Bag. Danny reveals (to the reader) he worked for Sadie's father as a clown (part of Sadie's dad's strange obsessions) and that is what started his fascination with her.
Danny drinks with Big C, and tells her that it was actually him who shot Sadie in the head. The two drunkenly have sex, but are interrupted by Maxim, the leader of the Pinkertons. He castrates Danny and rapes Big C, but then is attacked by Donnie and Puss Bag, who stabs him in the eye, and he jumps out a window.
Danny leaves the hospital, determined to save Sadie. Puss Bag tells him that she went with Runco and Annie X to steal the painting. In flashbacks, Sadie is getting shot in the head. She killed a man (though she claimed he was one of the 'Spiders from Mars') and Danny helped her cover it up. Sadie constantly belittles Danny and in a rage, he chases her down and shoots her.
Meanwhile, Runco and Annie contact the Pinkertons in hopes that they will be rewarded, but instead get captured. When the others arrive, Runco gets killed, and the Pinkertons demand to know where Sadie is. Sadie drives through the window on a motorcycle and kills all the Pinkertons. Immediately after, she has a stroke resulting from the bullet lodged in her brain and collapses. Danny attempts to kill himself, but Puss Bag knocks him out.
In an odd flashback, Sadie is on Mars, where the Spider race is planning to use her to lay thousands of eggs and amass an army to conquer the earth. She listens to the Earth DJ Danny Duoshade, and wins a contest to go to a concert. She stows away on a flying saucer heading to Earth, and causes it to crash land. She takes a spider form and possesses a young girl, whose parents look like Danny and Big C. However, other spiders have also survived, including Sadie's father, who impregnates her with eggs. The DJ Danny Duoshade (who also looks like Danny) arrives, and Sadie is able to acquire a gun from him. She kills all but five of the Hatchlings, and vows to get the others.
Back in "the real world", Danny reveals (to the reader) that he created the Duoshade identity to try to manipulate Sadie and bring her out of the coma. Danny, Puss Bag, and Sadie visit her mother, as Sadie wants to destroy all of the 'Martian spiders'. In a gunfight, Sadie's mother and brother are killed and the group escapes.
Two flashbacks reveal that Cee was once pregnant and miscarried, and manipulated Danny into sleeping with her so she'd have leverage against Danny. She later miscarries again and saves the fetus' developed arm and keeps it in a box. Danny finds out, and throws it in a garbage disposal. CeeCee is sent away and returns later, not recalling sleeping with Danny or the fetus's arm.
Returning to the present, Sadie and her friends stage a showdown against the Pinkertons at her father's home. In the midst of the ensuing carnage, where Puss, Jackie, C, and Donnie all die, Danny commands the Pinkertons to release Sadie, shedding his shirt to show his burn scars and a spider tattoo underneath it, declaring himself the King of all Spiders.
He is then killed by Sadie, and events show Danny at a home for the mentally disturbed and interviewing a psychiatrist. Danny is told that Sadie Dawkins died at age 6, CeeCee doesn't know the name of Danny Noonan, and can only identify his face as a possible rapist. Danny is somewhat startled by this, and eventually he is sent home under observation, where his father, mother, and brother are all okay. He goes to stalk CeeCee, and she screams when she sees him. He runs away, and eventually encounters Donnie, Runco, and Annie X, all alive, but not wanting anything to do with him. He then skips town to Browning, Arizona, the home of Sadie's sister Loreli. He introduces himself as "Johnny Jukebox".
Six months later, "Johnny" and Loreli are together, and he is a musical hit along with his best friend, Kenny (engaged to Joannie), suddenly resurrected. "Johnny" is able to do what he wants in the tiny town thanks to his big time popularity, but Kenny is beaten. At one point, he sets fire to his house, only to have it miraculously undamaged and even cleaned when he returns home. He asks Loreli to marry him.
Danny lives through a haze of drugs from a nurse, Jackie (Annie X), and when he stops taking them, he begins to recall the "real" events of his life and that his real name is Danny. He threatens Loreli, forcing her to put a wig and racing jacket on, but she can't recall anything about him. Jackie reveals that she is working for the spiders, but is a double agent feeding him information. He begins to try to leave Browning along with Loreli, but is constantly thwarted until he confronts some of the local enforcement, who shoot her. He escapes, and finds a wall. Tearing through it, he witnesses some events pertaining to his job as a clown.
When Danny angers Loreli after leaving her for dead, she has hooked up with Puss Bag. She tells him that Danny is always talking to some spider named Jackie. Jackie is carried off, and Danny shows Loreli that he has killed Puss Bag. The two notice a spider was in his skull after all, and they blow up the house to kill it.
Events then shift to years before when Browning, Arizona was just Freedom, an area near an Indian reservation. There, Ronald (Danny's former boss at the Brown Bag) and Joanie (his friend) live with their diabetic mother. Ronald uses his college funds to create a sandwich shop, and Joanie eventually leaves for a while. She comes back with the wealthy Brown Bag owner, claiming him as their father, and a Brown Bag superstore is opened in Freedom. Joanie begins stealing and getting away with many crimes, even helping her boyfriend Kenny steal things. Their mother is put on a waiting list for new kidneys. Joanie then loses her newfound privileges when she tells her family that she lied and said that she was the missing Brown Bag daughter, Loreli, who has returned. Angered by many events caused by Brown Bag appearing, Ron spits in Loreli's sandwich, and to pay him back she has the Bag open a cheap sandwich shop that closes his and she removes Joanie's mother from a kidney waiting list, which causes her to die. Ron becomes a manager at the Brown Bag.
In the present, Danny wakes up in a hospital after having a strange dream about himself interviewing Danny Duoshade, who is speaking for David Lapham and saying people didn't really get what he was saying. Danny tells Loreli he realized some things, and that many of the people they know in Browning are actually his "real life" friends, Runco, Annie, and Donnie. He is unable to find the "real" CeeCee, but eventually Annie sends her over to Browning. Danny says he saw a harsh wake up call through the wall earlier, and that he is a monster. He saw himself as a clown, raping Sadie. CeeCee tells Danny and the others that they must blow up the town to kill all of the Spiders from Mars.
While the group is talking, the Pinkertons show up, saying Sadie is hard to find, after Danny nearly kisses CeeCee. Loreli runs off and comes back, violently killing all the Pinkertons and saying she has found herself as Sadie. Danny is ready to blow up the place and leave, but CeeCee says they must kill every spider, and he is one of them. He eventually submits, and Donnie gets high. Sadie tells him that she loves him, whoever he is, when the bomb goes off. A note appears, saying "I never lied to you".
Danny then wakes up in bed with a spider beneath his head, and proceeds to put on clown makeup, back in Sadie's home.
