Hitchcock and Roundabouts

Here's a sneak preview of tomorrow's Sunday strip.  It's a homage to Hitchcock of whom I am a great fan.  In addition to the appearance of Hitchcock himself (bottom center-left) I snuck in some references to Birds and Vertigo.

Lepus Interruptus

A fine David Borchart cartoon from this weeks New Yorker.

What's On TV?

This kinda reminds me of the melting ice cream truck sculpture by Glue Society.  Fun fact:  Salvador Dali used to walk his pet anteater around the streets of Paris.

Pen Porn

Here's a list of pens I use to create a Rabbits Against magic strip.  1. Copic Multiliner SP 0.3 (for very fine lines) 2. Pelikan technoliner 0.8 (a good all round backup)  3. Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen (for filling in and fast brush work)  4. Micron Pigma 08 (for lettering)  5. Micron Pigma Graphic Brush pen (for bold lettering occasional background work)  6. Kuretaki Sumi Brush Pen (my hardest working pen for borders and character lines) and 7. Papermate ProTouch II 0.5 Mechanical Pencil with 2B leads (brilliant for sketching and penciling).

More infor here.

Getting Away With It

I've been pushing the envelope this past week with some of the strips I've put off publishing due to their potential controversial nature. Well, at least in the world of comic strips which is seen as a family-friendly environment.

First I took on evolution. Got a few negative comments over at GoComics although I don't think I'm really taking a position on anything here. But just the mention of it seems to rile some people up.

Yesterday my napping editor didn't call out my devil worshiping reference. Actually that's what "djävulsdyrkan" means in Swedish.  I wonder if the furniture names in the Stockholm Ikea are in English.

Today I got away with an exposed nipple.

Tomorrow?  Well I can't decide if I want to insult the prophet Mohammed or address Roe Vs. Wade.  Then again, just using the word "suck" is often enough to get you banned from some newspapers, unless you're talking about a vacuum cleaner of course.

Rabbits Against Aniversaries

Yes, it's been exactly five whole years to the day since I started on this daily comic strip experiment.  That's  the "wood" anniversary for those who care about such things. So to celebrate, here are all the May 3rd strips through the years.

The very first Rabbits strip from 2008.

The 2009 May 3rd strip was on a Sunday.  This was a pretty ambitious strip. I wouldn't attempt a background like that these days. 

2010 it looks like I actually remembered ahead of time to do an anniversary themed strip.

The 2011 strip fell in the middle of a series about a ventriloquist dummy, or "figure".  My coloring had become a bit more "mature" by this stage and the inking has become a lot more finesse.

By 2012 Lettuce had entered the strip and was already up to her usual antics.

And by pure coincidence, she features in the 2013 strip as well. This is the end of a week-long series where her eyes glow red when she misbehaves. At least that's what I think it's about.  Anyway, I'm off to hoist a few brews to celebrate. Cheers everyone and thanks for reading!

Rabbits Against Mr. Magic

One of my all time favorite webcomics is Cat & Girl by the amazing Dorothy Gambrell.  The strip started in 1999 and runs three days a week.  I'm a huge fan and regular reader and have signed copies of all three of her books sitting on a shelf next to my desk. Today's strip has to be an all time favorite for obvious reasons.

1/150th of an Eisner Award

Wow!  The Team Cul-De-Sac book that came out last year (and features amongst many others, a Rabbits Against Magic tribute to Richard Thompson's sadly departed Cul-de-Sac comic strip) has been nominated for an Eisner Award for "Best Comics-Related Book"!  Big hearty congratulations to Chris Sparks who put the book together to raise money to fight Parkinson's Disease.  Here's a link to the full list of nominees.

Rabbits Submissions Package

For anyone interested, here are the samples of strips from 2012 that I included in my submissions package for the 2012 National Cartoonists Society Divisional Awards.

This year was only my second time submitting (I became an NSC member in 2011) and I went with all Sunday strips to highlight my coloring and art.  You are allowed to submit up to 12 pieces.

Reuben Rabbits

Last week, the National Cartoonist Society 2012 divisional awards for the Reubens were announced and incredulously, my little feature was named as one of the nominations for Best Online Comic - Short Form. It's truly a great honor to be nominated.  The other nominations are the incredible Ten Cats by Graham Harrop and the fabulous Mac by the uber-talented Michael McPharland so my chances of winning are minuscule but I hope to be in Pittsburgh to see them collect the award.  By a weird coincidence, all three of us hail from the British Isles, live in North America and are syndicated on GoComics!  Michael also has homefield advantage being a Gotham resident.

If you're curious about the nomination process for the Online Comics category, read this.

The full list of nominations is as follows:

TELEVISION ANIMATION Todd Kauffman, Executive Producer, “Sidekick” Alberto Mielgo, Production Design, “Tron: Uprising” Rich Webber, Director, Aardman Animation Studios, “DC Nation” FEATURE ANIMATION Rich Moore, Director, “Wreck-It Ralph” Joann Sfar, Director, “The Rabbi’s Cat” Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Director, “The Secret World of Arriety” NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION Mark Brewer Bob Rich Dave Whamond GAG CARTOONS Roz Chast Sam Gross Mick Stevens Jack Ziegler GREETING CARDS Bill Brewer George Schill Jem Sullivan NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS Brian Basset “Red and Rover“ Jeff Parker and Steve Kelley “Dustin” Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman “Zits“ NEWSPAPER PANEL CARTOONS Tony Carrillo “F-Minus” Dave Coverly “Speed Bump” Hilary Price “Rhymes with Orange” ONLINE COMICS – SHORT FORM Graham Harrop “Ten Cats“ Jonathan Lemon “Rabbits Against Magic“ Michael McParlane “Mac“ ONLINE COMICS – LONG FORM Vince Dorse “Untold Tales of Bigfoot“ Meredith Gran “Octopus Pie“ Pat N. Lewis “Muscles Diablo in Where Terror Lurks“ MAGAZINE FEATURE/MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION Barry Blitt Daryll Collins Anton Emdin BOOK ILLUSTRATION John Manders John Martz Dave Whamond EDITORIAL CARTOONS Clay Bennett Michael de Adder Jen Sorenson ADVERTISING and PRODUCT ILLUSTRATION Luke McGarry Ed Steckley Wayno COMIC BOOKS Amanda Connor “Silk Spectre” Evan Dorkin “House of Fun” Bernie Wrightson “Frankenstein Alive, Alive!” GRAPHIC NOVELS Derf- “My Friend Dahmer” Joseph Lambert “Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller” Chris Ware- “Building Stories” REUBEN AWARD FOR “CARTOONIST OF THE YEAR”: Brian Crane Rick Kirkman Stephan Pastis

Rabbits Against Bunday

Yet another shout-out for my favorite webcomic of all time, Laugh Out Loud Cats by the amazingly prolific Apelad.  The feature is currently up to #2229 and going strong (by comparison Rabbits Against Magic is only up to #1795).

Rabbits Against Egg Boiling

A festive bunny day to all readers of this blog.

Rabbits Against GoComic Gremlins

A sneak peak at Sunday's strip.  This is pretty much what my house looks like at the moment with a 21 month old toddler roaming around.

Surfin' Baby

Not sure why today's strip didn't load on GoComics but here it is for you to enjoy/groan at.