Incredibly Strange Rabbit Picture Number 45

Happy 2012.

Feelgood Rabbit Image of the Day

Cute, cuddly, nice and rounded and look at that nose.  And the girl isn't bad looking either.

Christmas Yahtzee!

I broke down this year and did a holiday themed strip for the first time.  Usually I only do themed strips for the offbeat holidays like April Fools, Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Day of The Dead but for some reason I was feeling festive.  I guess Vic Lee over at Pardon My Planet was having similar feelings because we both coincidentally did the same "toy not included" joke.  I'm afraid Vic's super awesome art blows mine right out of the water.

Rabbits Against Walking The Plank

I don't know what this means but Happy Holidays!

The Saddest of All Lugworms

The super wonderful and extra lovely Piers Baker announced yesterday that his daily comic strip, Ollie & Quentin is to end at the end of this month after four years of syndication.  In a sign of a continuing poor market for newspaper cartoon sales this is the latest in an ever increasing list of great strips (My Cage, It's All About You, What The Duck, The Quigmans, Clear Blue Water, Bob the Squirrel, etc.) that have been forced into premature retirement.  He writes in length about his decision on his blog.  The good news is that he has a mouth-wateringly beautiful new book out (also in e-book form) and Ollie & Quentin will re re-run from the very beginning on the Daily Ink.  My best wishes go to him and his future endeavors.

Ghosts In The Machine

Due to a "site upgrade", there seems to be a few bugs over at GoComics this week and as a result all my hard work on yesterday and todays strip never showed up! 

Sunday's strip featured a cupcake joke.  You don't see many of those these days now that the craze has died down.  I expect they'll be a flurry of gourmet donut jokes in the not too distant future. Notice the "guest" appearance of Horace and Chicken in panel five!

Today we see a confused Eightball lamenting his dead cuttlefish. There's a pet store on my way to the subway called "La Casa de Canarias" (House of Canaries) that has a huge pile of cuttlefish in the window.  They must be the canary equivalent of a juicy bone or a sticky bun.

Buni Against Magic

... and for good reason!  Ryan Pagelow's always excellent Buni strip appears every Monday, Wednesday and Friday over at GoComics.

Main Frames Against Laptops

There's a cafe in San Francisco that proudly offers no WiFi because of the proliferation of laptop enthusiasts who swarm every coffee shop in the area, usually for hours, carefully nursing a cup of coffee.  Many cafe owners have covered up their power outlets so that depleted batteries becomes a factor in freeing up the tables. I often feel inadequate entering these establishments with just a newspaper.

Rabbits Against Recipes

Yum!

¡Feliz Día de los Muertos!

A sampling of my annual Day of the Dead strips.

Creepy Rabbit Costume

Happy Halloween!

Hairy Gorilla Hand Against Magic

Another classic Tall Tale from the maestro Al Jaffee.

Arctic Hares Against Magic

The great Alex Hallatt has turned her hand towards the dark arts this week (and the end of last week as well) in her awesome strip Arctic Circle.  Go see for yourself over at Daily Ink and/or Comics Kingdom.

Russians Against Rabbits

Not  a magic rabbit per say, but a delightful retro cosmonaut image

nonetheless. 

Getting Sketchy With Picasso

I'm going to be sketching the patrons of the DeYoung Museum this Friday... in the style of Picasso!  The event is free* so if you're in the Bay Area, stop by and say hello and get an original Cubist sketch of yourself.

* Does not include admission to the special exhibits.

Victorian Gentlemen Dressed as Animals

I think I found my Halloween outfit for this year.

The Perils of Top Hats

A couple of great rabbits/magic panels this week from Dan Pirarro (Bizarro) and Dave Whamond (Reality Check).  Nice going guys.

Many Rabbits Against Magic

Not Disney's Oswald the *Lucky* Rabbit but  instead an obscure Dell comic from 1948.  According to the excellent Big Blog of Kids' Comics:

Dan Gormley was a principal artist for Four Color during the 1940s and 50s; and certainly one of the unsung names that made that historic comic so superb. He has become better known in recent years for providing a great deal of the artwork on John Stanley's take on Bushmiller's Nancy; but his best stuff came when working in his own highly individual style - usually on various Walter Lantz creations (like here with Oswald Rabbit). This is from Four Color No. 183, March 1948; and Gormley did all the pages as well as this super cover.

You can see the full comic here.  Thanks Mykal.

Rabbits Against It's Magic Charlie Brown

One of the "extra features" on the "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" is a heretofore unknown to me TV special called "It's Magic Charlie Brown" from 1981.  Amazingly this is the 21st television special out of a current total of 45 made featuring the Peanuts characters.  I had no idea they'd been so many.  I really enjoyed Woodstock with rabbit ears being pulled out of the hat.

Foxy Rabbit Cruelty

"A Magic Story" photographed by Ellen Von Unworth for Vogue Italia, September 1997.

Rabbits Against Magic Shopping Bags

An ingenious if slightly cruel shopping bag for Houdini's Magic Shop in Detroit.  Via.

Rabbits Against Cobbling Stands

We have several of those cobbling stands in our basement left over from when it was a cobbling shop, along with lots of wooden shoe-shaped devices for stretching shoes.  They're too nice to throw away but completely impractical to keep, except when you're looking for a idea for a comic strip.

Music Round

In my other incarnation as a second-rate musician, I contributed to this otherwise rather fine collection of David Bowie cover version all done in the twangy surf guitar instrumental style.  There's 22 tracks in all if you include the excellent "mystery track". My humble entry with my band Monkey Versus Robot, is a possibly ill-advised attempt at The Jean Genie.  You can see the full track list and buy it at a very reasonable price here.

Rabbits Against The Great Dino

The great Sam Henderson has been scanning and posting pages from his collection of browning Cracked magazines. over on his highly worthwhile Magic Whistle blog. This "silent" strip is from issue #95, September 1971, by Larry Barth.

Rabbits Against Dry Celebrities

Here's a couple of strips I did for the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation which is a non-profit provider of affordable housing for the low income residents of San Francisco.  Thy throw an annual ritzy event––all for a good cause––where celebrities are thrown into the pool at the extravagant Phoenix Hotel.  From what I understand, they're going to use my cartoons on large advertising billboards that appear on public toilets all over the city. I believe that my career can officially only go downhill from there.

Freaks!

This is the entire Freak Show series ran this week.  This is partly a homage to the Tod Browning movie (one of all-time my favorites) but also to the seminal Freak Show CD by The Residents.  If you're familiar with that album, you'll spot several tiny references I slipped into the last two strips including a tiny double headed Resident eyeball creature (final strip, second panel, bottom left).

Too Gruesome For Prime Time?

Here's an unpublished strip that I pulled from rotation on the grounds that it was just too darn gruesome.  Also, that stump could be misinterpreted as something less innocent than a severed appendage of gristle and bone. I drew it while waiting for a repair man to show up to fix our clothes dryer and he was four hours late so my bile must have been raised somewhat. The plan was to expound on this misfortune in future strips where Eightball is fitted with an artificial limb that was constantly going wrong with hilarious consequences but I have reservations that this is plain stupid, in somewhat poor taste and not entirely in sync with his character. Do any one of my five lovely blog readers have an opinion?

A Mad Man Made of Animals

Mad magic from the mind of Don Martin. The always interesting Comiccrazys Blog is running a whole bunch of Don Martin strips at the moment. As a child I was obsessed with Mad magazine, especially the first 23 issues. The switch from the comic book format to the black and white magazine was the beginning of a long slow but not disrespectful decline in quality and innovation. Don Martin made his first appearance in issue 29 and along with the great Sergio Aragonés maintained the senbalnce of respectable insanity. Martin left Mad in 1987 with bad blood flowing between him and editor Bill Gaines and reappeared in Cracked Magazine, the irony being that Mad, a parody publication was now being parodied by other publications.

Incredibly Strange Rabbit Picture Number 44

You won't find these at the Disney Store.

Just Add Lettuce

I brought back the previously un-named time-traveling rabbit from last year due to popular demand.  Thanks very much to the two people who e-mailed me suggesting it. I think she will fit in nicely as a foil for Weenus and a mischievous companion for Eightball.