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.

 

Destined for Greatness Bun Toons! YAY!

To think I knew them when…

Well, it’s Canada Day Weekend, as well as the 4th of July, as well as Pride Week, as well as the second weekend of Summer…so in honour of all those events, the Bun Toon has nothing to do with any of that.  Instead, we present the lives of great comic characters…

                                                                   Ty the Guy OUT!

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Speaking of “Before they were famous”…You ever wondered how Bugs Bunny got his name?

It’s also where the “Looney” part comes from.

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for last week’s Bun Toon, click here.

For the Bun Toon archive, incomplete, but hey, it’s free…click here.

The REAL Return of Bun Toons! YAY! YAY! YAY!

I’m afraid I have to charge you people a little more for these now, you’ll all be getting my bill.

Like MacArthur, I have returned.

I’ve returned to creating new issues of Batman ’66.  Returned to teaching….

and to whatever motivates me to draw the rabbit.

Apparently tomato juice and lemonade is good for chasing that musty smell out of my flesh.  It’s hard for me to judge, I have no nose.

Ty the Guy OUT!

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This is hardly the first time I’ve drawn Zombie Rabbits, by the way.  Here’s a page from an issue of Mad Magazine I did a couple of years ago, poking fun at DC’s habit of torturing all their heroes, and wondering when they were going to start on the kid’s characters…

In this case, Bugs is LITERALLY a stinker.

And there’s this:  I’ve already done two store appearances since the heart attack, and when asked to draw my Bunny in a fan’s sketchbook, here’s what I did…

Back to work, now net-peeples.

Speaking of…since the Bootcamp classes are starting up again, spread the word for me, okay?  We’re running an anatomy class and an inking class starting in a couple of weeks, and would love to see some of you there.

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For the first “return of Bun Toons” from a couple of weeks ago, ambitious though wrong…click here.

For the last original Bun Toon before the recent unpleasantness, click here. (It was back in EASTER!?!?)

For the Bun Toon Archive, going back years and NOT mentioning heart attacks at all…click here.

Bun Toon Countdown….#2!!

We’re back with the almost last look at the most and least popular Bun Toons of the year 2011!

The #2 most popular sparked quite a bit of controversy in out comments section, where Peter David, Kurt Busiek, Leonard Kirk and a host of others got “into it” with our regulars about the meaning, philosophy and specific point of my little Bunny Funny for the week.  Also: racism in America and the comics industry in general was discussed.

All because of some new kid playing Spider-Man in the Ultimate Universe…

For a normal post, we might get five or ten comments on a Bun Toon.  This one got comments into the hundreds, and sometimes the conversation got nasty.

Our Unpopular Bun Toon entry got nasty on panel, with some grim dialogue about killing the Easter Bunny.  It was one of my personal favourites for the year actually,  but it didn’t get much of an audience when it went up on Easter Sunday.   Is the Easter Bunny a religious icon?  Is it sacrilege to mess with him now?

It’s equally possible the Easter Bunny/Comic Book Bonus moment is what frightened people off that day….

It sure scared the hell out of me.

See you tomorrow, with the final entry of 2011, the top rated Bun Toon of 2011, and one of my favourite failures.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Easter Bun Toons! Yay!

It's Officially Bunny Day!

Eggs!  Chocolate!  Religion!  It’s like Christmas, only with more cholesterol.  But there’s only room for one king of the cartoon bunnies around here.  And I play for keeps.

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Of course Bugs wins.  I was foolish to face him.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your bonus comic book / creepy Easter Bunny moment:

The rabbit's eyes! They burn into my soul! THEY BURN!!

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BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ve been made an “Editor Em-hare-itus” at DC.

Now it can be revealed.

I’ve been keeping this particular

I'm leaving this one as it is. You don't mess with perfection.

news under wraps for the last few weeks, while we ironed out the specifics, but now that it’s finally April 1st, I can announce that I’ve been offered (and have happily accepted) a job editing a new line of comics for DC called “The Hare Line”.

I hope the whole thing isn’t an elaborate joke about me being bald.  But I’ve looked at the contracts and it seems legit.

It’s a line of comics for kids that feature FUNNY ANIMALS as the lead characters, in an attempt to get readers into comics at the age of five or six, when they tend to be wary of stories about actual human beings.

Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. Now a GLBT character, in an attempt to teach tolerance.

Super-Rabbit will be traveling the world, learning to tolerate the locals and their odd religious beliefs.

As a lifelong DC fanatic who has spent much of his freelance career there, and a huge fan of some of their more prominent funny animal characters, I think this is going to be my most fun gig in years.    I’ve been given quite a bit of free reign to create new characters and revive old ones, and I’m looking for strong ideas as I settle into the job.  It’s more than just a chance to launch new DC titles, this is a chance to shape young minds, and teach life lessons in each title.  Perhaps making a gay friendly rabbit book, or a comic that teaches vegetarianism as a legitimate lifestyle choice.

Submitted by a fan, our first "BAT-HARE" pitch isn't doing it for me.

As I said,  I’m looking for input from regular readers of this blog to help me choose who I should go with for the first wave of books.  I’m leaning towards a line-up featuring HOPPY THE SIMPLY MARVELOUS BUNNY, CAPTAIN CARROT, SUPER-RABBIT: The TOLERATING FRIEND, and some sort of Bat-Hare title, but I haven’t “found” it yet.

Oh, and I’ll spend a couple of dollars suing THUNDER BUNNY out of existence.  I know it hasn’t been published in years, but it skirted so close to the trademarks on HOPPY, THE MARVEL BUNNY, that I’ve wanted to put it to THUNDER BUNNY creator,  Martin Greim since I first saw the title back in the Eighties.

I'm digging up this long dead series and putting a stop to it, once and for all.

Can’t wait to get started…I’ll keep you posted as we settle on the first wave of titles!  I certainly hope this editor-ship lasts longer than just the 1st of April.

Ty the Guy

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