Lady, That's My Skull: Bunny's Rainbow Dream

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Bunny's Rainbow Dream

From Bunny #13 (January 1970) Harvey Comics once again gets away with portraying extreme drug use in a comic book. For a character that is supposed to be a wholesome, empowering role model for young women Bunny sure acts like the over-exposed famous-for-being-famous faux-celebrities that we see grace the screens of our televisions and gossip mags today.

In the story The Rainbow Dream, the fabulous fetish-model Bunny Ball ingests something psychotropic while off panel. For some reason, readers are gypped out of the image of Bunny doing drugs even symbolically, unlike what occurred here previously. The readers only get to join her story as she begins to feel the effects of whatever drug she had taken. Bunny starts to hallucinate, babble nonsense and promptly passes out on a nearby park bench. Since the Big City of Bunny's world is a really happy, groovy place she is amazingly not molested, robbed, killed or arrested while in the throes of her chemically-induced trip to whacky-land.

Here in Maryland not a day goes by that someone doesn't overdose on on a bench in a public park. Since this isn't New York or Los Angeles, in most cases the person occupying the bench isn't a hot, wealthy super model and they often die from a combination of exposure and the harmful effects of their recreational narcotics. But in the comic book world of the 1970's unless you were a character written by Denny O'Neil people rarely expired as a result of their self-destructive habits.

Harvey Comics heroine and all around groovy babe Bunny Ball is one of those comic book characters that routinely survived all sorts of ill-advised and personally risky behavior. She went to wild, week-long parties, had clandestine meetings with weird men in camera clubs and visited the middle east wearing a bikini. The sensation-addicted Bunny handily survives all her exploits, takes on all comers and then enthusiastically attacks and devours the next happening experience without pause or thought to the consequences.

Once again, this story is Comics Code approved, gang!