Fox Bunny Funny, by Andy Hartzell

“The rules are simple,” says the overflap in Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny (Top Shelf Productions/$10.00). “You’re either a fox or a bunny. Foxes oppress and devour, bunnies suffer and die. Everyone knows their place. Everyone’s happy.” But when one young fox commits a great sin, he finds himself forced to choose between conformity and gratifications.

On the surface, Fox Bunny Funny appears to be little more than a silent black and white cartoon with anthropomorphic critters meant for kids. Below that surface, however, is a grisly parallel to the inhumanity that humans are capable of committing. The young protagonist is indoctrinated into the fox version of the Boy Scouts in the book’s second act, but the comparisons end with a road trip to where the bunnies live for random acts of slaughter, with trap-shooting guns in place of fangs and claws. Hartzell keeps the gore down, but there’s still enough to sink a reader’s heart. The final act swaps the violence for fantasy, as our hero – all grown up and fully conformed into society – gets another chance for redemption. Hartzell’s artwork shines with two double-page spreads of a bustling city that the nameless hero could only have imagined.

Fox Bunny Funny is Hartzell’s first book published by Top Shelf Productions, and he does fine work in about one hundred pages. Even without using visible words, the characters are easily understood, whether it’s the joy of the foxes’ hunt or the bunnies’ despair of being stalked.. The protagonist himself isn’t the ideal hero; he doesn’t seek to change the world, he just wants to be happy. And after going through this book, so will the reader.

-Jason Borelli