Happy New New Year Bun Toons! YAY!

Happy New Year everybody (he said, knowing it isn’t)!  Wasn’t last night a blast (probably  not)?

It’s OFFICIALLY the first of the new year,  here at Bun Toon Central, and time for the Most and Least Popular Bun Toons of 2014 to be revealed.

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Our champion of the year was read by far, far more folks than possibly any Bun Toon of all time.  There’s almost no way to tell.  Normally, I use the local webcounter here, and tally up all the links back to determine how many eyeballs landed on my humble bunny funnies, but this little viral monster ended up everywhere online, on everyone’s ELSE’S tumbler, on their website and eventually onto the printed page as a poster (available exclusively at Reno’s Wizard World Comic Convention last year!).  I can’t count up other people’s tumbler numbers, and couldn’t even guess at how many people lifted this Bun Toon whole cloth, so we’re just going to say “lots and lots” and leave it at that.

And it’s all for the love of Mr. Finger…

That version above is actually the “cleaned up” version of the strip, which originally ran in a much cruder form, but it was hard to read, and I wasn’t proud of the pastiche style…

The original looked like this:

But who can read that lettering?

Best parts of crusading for Bill The Boy Wonder last year:  Creating awareness of his story, and getting to talk to his granddaughter Athena Finger.  The tide is starting to turn towards justice for Bill’s place in history:  If you go to Batman’s wiki page, it says co-created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger nowadays.  It’s only DC Comics that can’t admit it, but the part of fandom that isn’t controlled by an iron-clad legal document that keeps Finger from getting his due credit, is happy to embrace Batman’s other papa.

Finally.  Batman fans have been given the Finger.

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Time for hilarious failure.

When they decided to kill off Wolverine, right after bringing Peter Parker back from the dead, slightly after the return of Jean Gray, but after the murder of Professor X, which was followed by the return of Nightcrawler…I started to think there was no choice…at least if I wanted my Bun Toons to catch on.

That’s Ortiz, the Hispanic Pool Boy in the last panel, a beloved ethnic slur that showed up in the strip a few times over the summer.  He wasn’t popular either.

That strip up there was only the SECOND least read Bun Toon of the year…the honour of being dead LAST was earned the very next week when I decided to keep up with this silly Dead Bunny Saga…and NO ONE showed up to play along.

The Pepsi drinking version of the Bunny (with the backwards signature on his shirt) hosted Bun Toons for the rest of the summer, but I quickly stopped making reference to his being an evil twin as no one seemed to notice or care.

Sigh.

Eventually, I simply put the signature on the shirt the right way ’round again in September, and the readership boycott drew to a close.

I thought it was a funny “take” on the industry’s fondness for slaughtering its heroes, but I’ve never been so wrong in my instincts before.

Which means, the epic, twenty-eight part “Return of the Bunny” will never see the light of day.  It’s a pity, because I would have brought back the Watcher, Gwen, Jor-El and Lara, and Jack Kirby in successive chapters.

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See you NEXT week for the start of Bun Tooning 2015!  (No entry tomorrow, I don’t want to overstay my welcome with six Bun Toons in a row!)  What’s coming up will surprise you, because it will surprise me.  I never know what these little stories will be about until Saturday morning.

Ty the Guy OUT for 2014!

Just a Second Bun Toons! YAY!

Normally my #1 Bun Toon of last year comes on the FIRST day of the new year, but yesterday, essentially without warning, I was whisked away in a car with my wife and children to a town far far away from my home for a larger family gathering of my wife’s brother/sister/mother peoples.  Delightful time was had by all, and many of the family are still there as I type this…but as for me, I was delinquent in yesterday’s Bun Toon entry for reasons of merry making, family and good will to all.   So there.

As a result,  I’m dragging the New Year out for one more day in my virtual reality Bunny World.  How can that be a bad thing?  You get to get blind drunk again, as we all get to look at the SECOND most popular Bun Toon  (and the nearly least popular Bun Toon) of 2014 on this, not really New Year’s Day.

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If  I had to list the Marvel Characters I’d Care Least About Getting Their Own Movie, The Guardians of the Galaxy would have made my bottom five…at least in their original Marvel form.  I mean, I actually READ those comics when they first came out in the Seventies…and I might have been the only one…

This Bun Toon was shared, and clicked, and linked to, and posted all over the interweb when I put it up this summer, and I’m going to assume it was the free publicity that it generated for the movie that made Guardians into last year’s runaway hit film.  Marvel has yet to thank me.

I also rescued Constantine from cancellation last fall with the following Bun Toon, done in a similar vein.

It just squeaked out of the top five, so in theory you shouldn’t be seeing it here…I suspect Constantine put some sort of a spell on me…

Ah, the power I have over Hollywood.  He started smoking on the show the very next week….

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Now for another Bun Toons From The Dustbin of History.

Once again, it’s a sentimental, holiday themed Bun Toons that didn’t move the web-clickers.  The big audience just wants to see cars explode and things on fire and people getting their ears cut off…

Caution:  Trigger warning for anyone who’s ever had their ears cut off…

I told you.  No exploding cars – That was the problem.

But I was IN a car with the wife and kids yesterday, which is why you didn’t see this Bun Toon when you were supposed to.

META!!!

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See you guys tomorrow for NEW NEW YEARS DAY!   YAY!

Seriously, I’m keeping up the lie.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Third, But Not Least Bun Toons!

Half way through the Top Five,  and our entry at the middle spot was my least favourite Bun Toon to draw, ever.

This was one of the most read Bun Toons of the year, so it goes in the countdown, but I’d really rather it had never been drawn.

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Another of the year’s most read Bun Toons  (in a virtual tie for third place so I’m putting it here as a balance) is one of my all time favourite Bun Toons.

CONTEXT:  Alan Moore had done a lovely interview towards the beginning of the year in which he had described his opinion of Grant Morrison as one of mild disdain for the sycophantic attention Grant had paid him for decades.

Too much like another famous cartoon relationship in my mind, to pass up this entry…

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Onto my failures.

It seems that holiday themed Bun Toons simply don’t work (as yesterday’s low scoring Santa Story proved).  If I do a nice comic savaging a fellow professional for his opinion, there’s a line-up around the block to read it, but something I draw that pays tribute to a special day in the  year is culled from the honour rolls like bread mould at the back of a rye.

I often do an Easter themed Bun Toon on Easter Bunny Day, and I sometimes do a marijuana themed Bun Toon on 4-20….and when Easter fell on 4-20 this year, I thought this was funny…

Clearly, one has not properly done Stoner Humour if it doesn’t piss off the North Korean Government or the people that imprisoned Tommy Chong, the American Government.  I have to work on angering the fascists more directly and use less bunnies.

More holiday-themed Bun Toons will be showing up on this top and bottom list…coming up tomorrow!

You’ll have to wait to find out if it was a hit or a miss.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Go Forth, Young Bunny! YAY!

This year’s #4 position, BOTH the most popular and the least popular, come from the last couple of weeks.  It was a wild swing in readership from one week to the next this December, but that’s standard around here.  You fickle monsters make me paint my backside and dance, and sometimes you love me, and sometimes it’s head first into the mud holes.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  I know how complaining comic book artists get treated on the internet….

For example…

For those who don’t recall this tempestuous teapot, back at the beginning of December, a comic book artist (of my generation) named Pat Broderick had a word or two to say about cosplayers ruining conventions for people who turned out to be the same age, height and weight as Pat Broderick.  It was something about women in skimpy outfits blocking aisles, not earning their place, and generally being on his lawn when he clearly wanted to get them off his lawn.

Pat’s probably a wonderful guy, and the backlash was more about how inelegantly he complained about getting older, than any real animosity towards him, but for god’s sake, don’t wear any odd hats around the man…he’s nervous.

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Our #4 LEAST favourite Bun Toon was the following week.   My fame and fortune crumbled and died in a scant seven days, and all because I cut off Santa’s foot.

I’ve learned my lesson.  No more hurting Santa Claus.  To make it up to my emotionally damaged readers, here’s one of my MOST popular Christmas Bun Toons from a couple of years ago, in which I do not hurt Santa at all, except for one or two moments in the “agonizer”.

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See you tomorrow, for the THIRD most and least popular Bun Toons of the year….neither of which will be from the month of December, I promise.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Bun Toons Countdown YAY!

Good lord, are we ending another year again?  I keep insisting we only do this once every decade or so, but something was said about calendars being important to the economy, and I, as a gentleman, deferred.

So, to honour tradition, we re-present our best and worst of the year – starting with those FIVE Bun Toons that soared above all others in popularity, touching the hearts of the internet across the globe… and including the five LEAST popular Bun Toons – the ones that no one clicked on or read, and even my mother disdainfully shat on.   I feel as an artist, I must air my dirty laundry or else how annoying could I really be?

Our fifth most popular Bun Toon is no surprise, as it features Comicdom’s most popular character in his most popular story, written at the top of my game.

What I especially love is that the Robin that was most recently dead when I wrote this, IS in fact, alive again at this point.  My powers of prognostication are strong!

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Let us turn now to failure.

Perhaps I’ve loved Good-Man more than he deserves, as I keep doing more and more Good-Man comics over the years.  I think we’re up to episode forty-eight with this character and we get nothing but hate mail when I publish each instalment – shocking, vitriolic stuff that makes Gamergate look like a valentine card…but I don’t care, I shall never give up on the character.  Good-Man represents all that is good and honest and true in this world, and they really don’t take me very long to draw.

See, and here I am, making you read another one.

I’m such a bully.

TOON in tomorrow, when I reveal the 4th most and least popular Toons of the year, and possibly say something amusing whilst presenting them to you.  ‘Tis my nature.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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Also a tradition around here, we wish a happy birthday to STAN THE MAN LEE, co-creator of the Marvel Universe, and father of Bruce Lee, the famous kung fu movie star.

He’s 92 this year (Stan, not Bruce), and can still beat me at full contact kick boxing, though we haven’t gotten in the ring together since July, so I might be able to take him by now.

Happy Happy Stan Day.

Stan Lee’s kickboxing action figure.  It’s rare to find them “mint in box”, as they usually punch they own way out.

And a Merry Blue Year! YAY!

See you guys for the Bun Toon Countdown next week!

Happy happy.

Ty, the Guy.

Because The Internet Is Asking For Someone To Do This Bun Toons! YAY

And no one is going to do it, but me.

You remember, years ago, when America was the home of the brave and the land of the free?

Sigh.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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The comics industry saw three major creators retire this week, and it’s worth noting their passing.

Legendary artist Jack Davis is officially putting down his pencil. At ninety years old, he says it’s time to go fishing.  Considering his astounding body of work, and the personal inspiration he’s always been to me, he’s already caught the big one.

Creator of Tek Jansen and Alpha Squad Seven. Stephen Colbert, is also retiring this week. Though Tek Jansen wasn’t a top selling series for ONI Press, there was a lot to recommend it, and I doubt that Mr. Colbert will stay retired long.

Craig Ferguson, the actor who played Aquaman on CBS’s Late Late Show (shown above with Tim Gunn) has left the series for wetter pastures elsewhere. We wish him luck, and have our fingers crossed that he gets the nod should there ever be a big budget Aquaman movie.

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For last week’s sweet and charming look at Christmas, click here.

For the Bun Toons archive, click here.

Christmas Season Bun Toons! YAY!

Hurry up with the kissing, I ain’t waiting all day.

This is a Christmas story my father told me when I was young.

You can see where I get my spirit of the holiday from…

Ty the Guy OUT!

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Here are a couple of the Christmas Covers I’ve done over the years…

Because it’s the Phantom Stranger, it’s possible those decorations are the living souls of the Justice League. AAAAAHHHH!!

My cover for the DC Christmas anthology from a couple of years ago.  This is the unpublished version of the cover…points for anyone who has the published version, who can tell the difference!

A cover I laid out, drawn by Stephen DeStephano I believe…

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For last week’s bun toon, click here.

For the Bun Toon Archive, click here

Are We Still Talking About This Bun Toons?!?

Everything Old Is Nuisance Again!

Sigh…

This is, of course, a portrait of no one individual in particular.  Unless you recognize yourself, and then it’s you.

Of course, our hero is the only one in colour.  He’s the only one in the real world.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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Just in case there was some confusion as to when cosplay started, and how recent a trend it is.

No one would dress like the dude in the blue outfit during any decade but the 70s.

This didn’t happen recently.  Who cosplays as T’Pring?

1975: the amazing Captain Sticky with someone similarly tactile.

Wendy Pini cosplaying as Red Sonja on the Mike Douglas show…with JAMIE FARR!

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For last week’s Star Wars themed Bun Toon, click the Jedi Bunny

For the Bun Toons archives, click here

May the Rabbit Be With You Bun Toons! YAY!

These ARE the toons you’re looking for.

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Maybe it’s because the world kinda sucks right now, Ghomeshi, Cosby, Ferguson…maybe I just want a silly little space opera to be an empty confection.  That would be lovely.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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A couple of months back, Marvel announced it was publishing the Star Wars comics, moving forward, now that the synergy of Marvel/Disney/Star Wars is all the same mega-corporation…

 

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For last week’s attack on another fictional institution, click here.

For the Bun Toons archive, click here.