Another one bites the Bun Toon.

I have no muzzle, but I must scream.

There was a quote on that Harlan poster:  “I am a blatant elitist.  Five or ten percent of the population move society forward and the rest are drones.  Anyone who can’t see that is a damned fool.”

Harlan was a pissed off young man, then an angry middle aged man, and probably an ornery old man.  He was also an astounding writer, and a major inspiration to me in my career and life.

I think I was dickish to him as a way of joining in his merry dance of aggressive energy and constant scorn.  But instead of spotting a kindred soul, he simply didn’t much like me.

But I loved him like crazy.  And I take back all the dickishness.

Ty the Guy OUT!

There’s so, so many great Harlan short stories and screenplays.  Of course there’s CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER, and there’s REPENT HARLEQUIN, SAID THE TICK-TOCK MAN, and there’s DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND, and SOLDIER, and every single essay he wrote for Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.

But if I had to bring it down to one story, it’s JEFTY IS FIVE.  This is a heartwrenching fantasy story that I’ve only ever found in one place:  This issue of F&SF–

I can’t exactly tell you guys to run out and get a copy of a forty year old magazine, long out of print.

But run out and get a copy of something.  Star Trek, the Outer Limits, hell, even BOY and his DOG.  Something with Harlan’s name on it that he didn’t sue the publisher or producer.  (He did that a lot…but he was always right.)

I have a pile of Ellison books on my shelf I recently found in a used bookstore, and since I’ve known Harlan was ill, I’ve avoided reading them, as I didn’t want to be in the middle of one when he passed away.

I’ll be reading them now.  I’ll be reading Harlan Ellison for the rest of my life.

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For the last Bun Toon, another tribute to a lost legend, click the cat above.

 

Bun Toons.

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Isis has shown up in the BUN TOON a few times over the years….here’s one of them from 2013.

Very tough week around my house.

Ty the Guy OUT.

 

Click the rabbit above for the last BUN TOON.

Silly Pointless Bun Toons! YAY!

In these troubled times, there is no greater message than pointlessness.

Bunny attendance has been spotty, but he remains your humble hopping reporter of reality….here with another Honest-To-God-True-Life-Adventure!

Of course, I realise tomorrow is Memorial Day for my neighbours to the South, and not Weasel Day.  But few Americans are living on BRONSON TIME!

More’s the pity.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Just in case you’re into La Jour Des Weasels, there’s a comic book for you.

So many Weasels

Again, with weasels…

Are we not men?  We are WEASELS!

and of course, comic-dom’s most famous weasel….

What is it with the Marvelous Mustelidae that so catches the imagination of us all?

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For the most recent (of the recently rare) Bun Toons, click the singing pastry above.

Very Late Bun Toons! YAY!

Hoppy Birthday to me.

Wow.  This isn’t just late, it’s DAYS late.

We had a blackout on the weekend, and I couldn’t get this Bun Toon up on Free Comic Book Day as I had planned….and then the blackout fried my computer, and I couldn’t get to the password that allowed me to post on my blog.

Oy, such a mess.

So here’s the Bun Toon.  Half a week too late to be topical.  But seriously, what’s happened in the last few days worth talking about?

FCBD is our version of Christmas, only we get to do ALL the giving…hoo-hah!

I don’t know about you folks, but even four days later, I haven’t finished all the fantastic FCBD issues I picked up! (I had a special deal where I got one of each, and that’s about thirty or forty issues to dig through).

Personal faves so far:

This was ridiculously charming.

 

Didn’t love the cover, as I didn’t realize this was Vaughan and Martin for a while (hard to read their credits).  When I finally opened the book, I was BLOWN AWAY by everything in this.

Yup.  Patton Oswalt, Dan Harmon and the best WORLD’S FINEST story evah.

My buddies Dan and Fernando always bring their best for their Grown-Up-Wendy-the-Witch-with-Boobies parody.  

More of the ridiculously charming (Cats, with a dog secret identity?!?) from the ridiculous and charming Ian Boothby and Nina Matsumoto.

The perfect translation of the series into comic form.  What’s not to adore?

Ty the Guy OUT!

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For the previous BUN TOON, click the annoyed rabbit above.

The Metaphor Goes Up, Up, and Awry!

It occurs to me this might sound like behind the scenes, Superman is a real sausage party.  Nothing of the sort.  Get your mind out of the sausage gutter.

Ty the Guy OUT!

 

Someday, I’ll share you with you, how I became an “brother of the Fraternity of the Sausage” with Neal Adams and Scott Hampton, both of whom have contributed their own links to the wonder of Superman.

It happened in Paris, many years ago.

I’m still haunted by it.

 

For last week’s BUN TOON, click above

A Tale of the Heart, and of Chickening Out! YAY!

Bun Toon Resurrection!

Haven’t been around for a few weeks….I had a crippling deadline with a Moon Knight project that kicked my white Canadian butt for a couple of weeks, and I literally didn’t have the five spare minutes it would have taken to scribble a rabbit.  Then I was in Indianapolis for a convention.  Then I was recovering from a brief con-flu.

What I’m saying is that I’m still here.

I still love.

I still bunny.

But I am human, after all.

(Well, more lagomorph than human, technically, but you know what I meant).

On with the silly rabbit.

I walk for exercise nowadays, and one of the routes I often take walks me straight through the parking lot of a KFC down the street from my house.

I look forward to April 15th SO much every year.

Ty the Guy OUT!

KFC looms large in my legend, and I have Bun Tooned about the Colonel a few times.

Don’t get me started about the family history of this story.  My brother claims I’ve stolen one of his memories, I claim the same.  Someday it will all end up in court.

Mr. Sanders (he wasn’t really a colonel) has become quite the comic book icon of late…

That’s a real comic book.

Friends of mine worked on it, it’s real, I swear.

The madness continues…

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For the last Bun Toon, click the waving bunny above!

 

Ford Model-D Bun Toons! YAY!

They had the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Toronto today, so you’re getting a green background.  I’m part Irish.  It’s a duty.

Speaking of Toronto….

There’s nothing funny about Doug Ford.

What the hell is happening to the planet reality?

Ty the Guy OUT!

Just in case anyone from out of town is reading this, a quick refresher on the one-two joy bash that was the Ford Brothers from their heyday.

Pretty well all the above quotes are true.  More or less-ish.

Woof! Bark! Arf! Bark! Bark! Bun Toons YAY!

The dogs are barking.  I think that means we’re due for an earthquake.

Fenrir tends to like blues songs or Ringo Starr songs.  She’s absolutely devoted to “Octopus’ Garden” and “Yellow Submarine” and comes running to the piano as soon as she hears the opening notes.

The real trouble with this arrangement is that I have three cats who hang around the living room.

They’re not happy about this new dog thing, but none of them have even TRIED to take the instrumental solo verse when I play, so screw them.  The dog’s in the band.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Dogs and comic books go together like squirrels and nuts…which is to say one tries to eat the other….

But dogs are occasionally the comic book star.

This is a “Who’s Who in DC Comics” art entry from fairly early in my career.  Rex the Wonder Dog, originally drawn by Gil Kane, but drawn badly here by me.  Who doesn’t love wonder dogs?  Writer James Robinson bought this piece of original art from me because he too loves the wonder dogs.

This is some of the art from a series of Seinfeld/Superman ads for American Express that included Jerry’s dog cavorting with Krypto.  I got to do the artwork for the ads, but never got to meet Jerry’s dog even though Jerry’s dog got to meet Krypto.  There are no perks in cartooning like there are in sit-com stardom.

For last week’s Bun Toon, also animal based, click the bunny above

The Leporidae and the Felidae: A Love Story Bun Toon! Yay!

My brother from another scientific sub-order.

Sorry I wasn’t here last week.  I was in Kansas City, helping to raise money for the wonderful HERO INITIATIVE  (Click on the name and go donate!) so, I could not come to the Bun Toon.

But I did do something this week that I’ve been waiting to do for decades.

No punch line this week.

Just jumping for joy.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Long time readers of this Bunny blog are familiar with my connection to Avengers #58.

It all begins here

I’ve “re-imagined” the story at least twice while writing different Avengers books over the years, and make no secret of my love of the Vision.

But the Black Panther holds a similar place in my heart because of that issue, and I made a point of including Panther as often as I could manage it when working on Marvel projects.

When Dan Slott and I were putting together plans and ideas for the Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series we did, Dan asked if I had any wishes for the plot.  “Black Panther” was my only request, and he appeared in issue #4.

When I was writing the AVENGERS UNITED mini-series in the early 2000s, I was given a set of Avengers to work with (Wasp, Vision, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Wonder-Man, Tigra, Falcon) and Black Panther was not amongst them.

Nevertheless, in the premiere issue of that series, the Avengers first appear on page 2-3 in a sequence where they’re working out in the training room…

….You’ll notice Black Panther is there, in the background.  The story claims he’s “visiting” the mansion while he’s in New York, even though he’s not an Avenger.  I’m sneaky that way.

Some months later, the Avengers are captured by the Collector and find themselves on the Collector’s ship, in orbit around Earth.

…you’ll notice T’Challa is there, behind cap’s leg.  Apparently the Collector didn’t know The Panther wasn’t an Avenger and he captured him along with the team “accidentally”.

He’s there in the next couple of issues, too.

I made sure the Black Panther appeared in as many issues as the editor would let me get away with.  I wasn’t writing the Avengers without him.

Why?

Because the Black Panther is the ultimate heroic character.  He’s insanely wealthy, he’s king of his own country, he’s young, handsome and good looking and a genius inventor….but he spends his time helping the less fortunate instead of wallowing in his remarkable good fortune.  And unlike Batman, T’Challa’s not doing the heroic bit because of personal trauma or compulsion…he’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do.  It’s his moral position that those who can help, must help.

As a kid, I never wanted to be Batman, because of the whole orphaned childhood thing.  And I never wanted to be Superman…it’s too weird that you could fly.

But I wanted to BE Black Panther.

Who wouldn’t?

Some pages from the amazing “Panther’s Rage” story that introduced Killmonger and the whole concept of a two hundred page comic book story.  Art by Billy Graham (the other one).

Nice job on the movie, guys.  You could have screwed it up and ya didn’t.  Thank you from this happy five year old boy who waited patiently.

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The Gloves are Off Bun Toons!

Literally.

Tradition is a weak reason to continue things that are echoes of a truly awful past.

Ty the Guy OUT!

When you compare the outfit that minstrel show player above is wearing and the shapes of light/dark in the face above….to THIS common image of Mickey Mouse below…

….a beloved children’s character suddenly becomes part of a ghastly, terrifying “tradition” that starts bringing up the lunch.

I only really began to look into this recently, after hearing a tossed off joke about it on the Samantha Bee show this week.

Disney has known about this for every minute of the last ninety years and they’re fine with it.  No big redesign since the early Minstrel Show roots:

Hmm…

Bugs Bunny is certainly aware of his roots as well.  There’s PLENTY of disgusting stuff in the Warner Brothers/ Bugs Bunny library that never played on your TV when you were a kid, because of how awful it was.

THE CHARACTER ON THE LEFT IS LITERALLY NAMED “BOSKO THE NEGRO BOY”.

These images are quite tame compared to what’s out there.

“It was a different time.”  That’s usually how the tradition is excused.

So let’s leave the tradition to another time.

The past.

Krazy Kat was created by George Herriman…who was black, by the way.

Make sense out of that.

For last week’s Bun Toon, Click the not-at-all-racist depiction of an Inuit fellow above.