The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Ninja Bunny

by Philip Spence

When last we spoke of Ninja Bunny it was a little thing of black and white beauty, perfectly formed and a great little bit of fun, and I said as much in the review:

The Adventures Of Ninja Bunny is 66 pages of all out fighting bunny action, one panel per page, and each and every page is lovingly drawn and delightfully told with a confident, easy art style. It might not be commercial, but it’s definitely worthwhile. It’s fun and light and silly but it’s great entertainment and as such, great art. You’ll read it, like I did, from cover to cover with a huge smile on your face.

Well, it’s still small, it’s still a thing of beauty, it’s still perfectly formed and it’s still a great little bit of fun. But if you take a trip over to Philip Spence’s Ninja Bunny website you’ll find it’s become something far more ornate, detailed and colourful entirely.

Philip recently hit the 300th episode of his fantastic webcomic and celebrated by going insane. No, not quite right. He celebrated by redesigning the website, doing the strips in colour and tried to post a strip a day throughout  most of November 2008. Okay, I was right first time. Madness.

But very, very worthwhile. Here’s the 300th strip:

(“This was no day out at the beach” by Philip Spence.)

And here’s the very first Ninja Bunny from September 5th 2005:

(“Ninja ultimate death stare” by Philip Spence.)

Such a difference, such an improvement in the art style. You see the panels now and they’re practically unrecognisable from the early stuff.

Like Philip says on his blog: “My most recent posts have all been heavily inspired by a book on Katsushika Hokusai, while you might not recognise the name, you’ll definitely recognise his artwork. I’d like to think my trip to Japan earlier in the year also gave me loads of ideas, which no doubt you’ll see cropping up over the coming weeks.”

And true to his word, the Japanese stylings and flourishes have been coming thick and fast since then, although the madness seems to have passed and Philip is planning on getting back to a regular twice a week schedule at some point.

Not that the old stuff was anything but fantastic:

(“Only One thing went through his mind – anything but the groin” & “Does my bum look big in this” by Philip Spence.)

Just that the new stuff, the colour stuff just looks better, and still has the same laugh out loud moments to it:

(“The octopus just wanted to snuggle” and “This was not the time to suddenly turn into a pincushion” by Philip Spence)

Reading the online webcomic is completely different from the mini-comics that Phillip does. Obviously the comics have more narrative, more story driven artwork, whereas the webcomic just allows the panel to do whatever it needs. Both work beautifully well, just in different ways. If I had to be picky I’d take the comic over the webcomic, purely because the story always beats the art for me. But in an ideal world I really, really want to see Philip do Ninja Bunny 4 as a fully coloured comic. But that would cost a fortune.

Which leads us to Philip Spence’s Ninja Bunny website. There’s a Ninja Bunny shop there for you to fund this colourful new bunny experience. Otherwise he’s going to have to do more real work and that means less bunny. And less bunny is a bad thing.

Richard Bruton lives in Yorkshire, home to the Samurai Sheepdog.