Dawn of the Bunny Suicides

August 15, 2011
This popular comic strip collection features rabbits who apparently don’t want to live, and each page features black and white (read: bloodless) illustrations of bunnies on their merry way to pushing up the daisies. Riley’s rabbits are endlessly inventive; some of their suicide machines are almost Rube Goldberg devices of death. Other suicides involve pop culture references (balancing on the oxygen tank at the end of Jaws, or speared by Harry Potter’s broomstick). All this sick humor is reminiscent of Gary Larson’s The Far Side, but Riley falls far short of Larson, since Riley employs but one punch line over and over again. Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of book you don’t want a third-grade class getting hold of, because it is a deadly combination of funny and just naughty enough to loudly disrupt a classroom for days.