Andy Hartzell has won the Maisie Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration, which aims to encourage independent creators of quality mini-comics and includes a monetary prize (it may not be thousands of dollars, but I’m sure it still helps an artist to get on with making more comics, which is the point). Andy won for the self-published version of Fox Bunny Funny; the work has recently been printed by the very fine independent press Top Shelf and I’ve got to say I thought it was terrific – a very unusual, wordless comic (meaning the reader has to supply more of the story by engaging their imagination with the art, this drawing them more deeply into the narrative) exploring the nature of identity, by turns touching, funny, sweet, violent and disturbing and with art which, to my mind, often hints at old 20s style black and white cartoons. At some points it has the air of a nursery rhyme or fairy tale, then darker elements surface, more disturbing, like a nightmare pushing into a pleasant dream – or like the more original, darker versions of fairy tales before they were sweetened up for modern audiences. If you haven’t read it yet and like finding unusual little comics gems then I’d highly recommend it to you – and it comes at a very reasonable price, even before our generous discount, so why not go ahead, take a risk and try something unusual. (link via Tom at Comics Reporter)
(cover to the Top Shelf edition of Andy Hartzell’s Fox Bunny Funny)
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October 2nd, 2007 at 1:16 pm
[...] The ever-reliable Joe Gordon informs us about this year’s Maisie Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration. This is an award for small, independent comics. As Joe announces here, this year’s award has gone to Fox Bunny Funny by Andy Hartzell. We asked Joe to tell us a little bit more about the story. This is what he said: A society of foxes, who act like jocks and like to party and to chase and kill bunnies, bunnies who like to frolic around and try not to get killed by nasty foxes and a fox who really doesn’t want to be doing all this vicious, macho fox stuff and would like to embrace his bunny side a bit more but is relentlessly pushed by peer pressure. Nice fantasy tale touching on the nature of identity, expected roles to be played in society and so on via anthropomorphised animals, all ‘silent’, i.e. no speech bubbles. [...]