Bird and Rabbit

Creator: HON3YSKU11
Genre: Drama, Psychological
Schedule: Concluded
Rating: 3.5

One shot comics are fairly popular, commonplace works. They're the sequential art equivalent of a short story, telling complete stand-alone tales. The typical one shot focuses specifically on one particular concept or character with little time invested in world-building and exposition. Genres run the entire spectrum, allowing readers to get a quick fix of whatever their favorite type of story is. Most one shots aren't especially complex due to their brevity, but done well, they can effectively explore their theme of choice within a condensed format. Bird and Rabbit is one such webcomic, focusing on particularly heavy themes; it's a story about loneliness and suicidal emotions presented with minimalist art.

The comic is hosted on SmackJeeves and uses one of the available templates. It looks nice, but the main container has a set width while page dimensions vary wildly, which can look awkward in terms of layout. There's not much else to say about the site design. It functions as it should, but there's nothing remarkable about it.

Artistically, this comic doesn't draw much attention. It attempts minimalism, but the result is mostly flat and unrefined with pixelated drawings that could be made in minutes using MS Paint. Even though there are only two characters, they both look generic. The art isn't terrible, it's just dull. The only traits of interest are some pages have a nice combination of colors and the inoffensively vanilla art serves as a contrast for the dark narrative. The idea of minimalism being used to represent inner turmoil has possibilities, but the execution is simply too plain for its own good.

While the art is nothing special, the writing has an expected level of depth. It focuses on a lonely rabbit and its conversation with a bird. The bird tries to spur the rabbit into committing suicide to escape being lonely while the rabbit tries to overcome its hopelessness and justify a reason to live. The bird starts out unsettlingly sweet, talking about death in a cheerful manner, but becomes increasingly insistent and creepy the more the rabbit refuses to die. The bird grows in size until it's monstrously huge, only to be killed by an unseen force. In the end, the rabbit is left alone with the bird's remains, but rather than feel relieved, it just continues to feel lonely.

The internal dialog early on suggests the rabbit has encountered the bird before. That one establishing line sets the tone for the entire story. This isn't just a single occurrence and feeling lonely may very well trigger the bird's arrival. The bird, of course, symbolizes the rabbit's depression and internal struggle. Despite the lackluster art, the idea that drives it is potent. This story plays out as a battle of wills between the part of the rabbit that wants to live and the part that wants to give up. Not only does the rabbit actively wrestle with its dark feelings, but it's something that isn't solved at the end, even with the bird's death. It's a snapshot of the everyday challenge a real person contemplating suicide would endure. The bird's menacing nature and the rabbit's persistent loneliness are very true to life. Unfortunately, like the drawings, it tends to oversimplify things. Near the end, the bird just shrieks "die" ad-nauseum as opposed to the blithe goading seen earlier. Perhaps with more interesting art, this simple repetition would have a more creepy effect, but that's not the case here. Repetitive dialog combined with boring art leaves very little impact.

Bird and Rabbit is one of those comics has the potential to be fascinating and thought-provoking, but its uninspired presentation bogs it down. It's a shame, because it's actually much deeper than it seems. The old saying 'don't judge a book by its cover' would apply here, except there's really no reason the cover couldn't have been better. The idea is wasted on a relatively poor execution when little more effort could have done a lot for it. The story itself is succinct but open-ended and there's something truly genuine about the feelings the rabbit and bird represent. Readers who like works heavy on psychological angst may find it surprisingly engaging.

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