Smoking ain't good for your health.
"It wasn't always called Gritty City. It used to be called Glimmer City. Nothing glimmers here anymore."
AntiBunny
is a webcomic launched in 2006 by artist Vinnie D, and follows a cast of anthropomorphic rabbits who live in the mostly human populated Gritty City. It draws heavy influence from Film Noir, and makes use of mostly black and white images with splashes of color to provide emphasis to key traits. There are two main storylines split between two sub series.
The first is The Gritty City Stories, which is still ongoing, and follows protagonist Pooky Bunny, an androgynous white rabbit dealing with depression, and occasional hallucinations. Pooky is a former reporter who is trying to return to a normal life, and ends up stumbling into a new mystery. Pooky is supported by an older brother figure Hannibal and a clingy, but well meaning friend Penelope.
The second sub-series is Nailbat, a superhero story that takes place two years prior to the Gritty City Stories. When a cowardly rabbit named Mors meets the grim reaper he finds out his exact time of death, but with it realizes he also can't die until his appointed time. With this knowledge, he puts aside his fear and sets out to break the rules of life and death, and start saving lives.
AntiBunny: The Gritty City Stories
This comic provides examples of:
- Art Evolution: The first chapter is rough pencils, and changes over time to more detailed designs and cleaner line art.
- Babies Ever After: Because (A) Nailbat needs a legacy before too many fans get themselves killed trying to be the Nail, and (B) Nailbat's awareness of his terminal illness caused an excessive desire for sex.
- Badass Adorable: The cast is mostly rabbits, several of whom pack guns.
- Batter Up!: In a world where most everyone uses a gun, Nailbat is a superhero wielding a pair of baseball bats with spikes in them.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nailbat; Though the titular hero dies, he saves the world from Malphas, and gives Knell the courage to go on living.
- Summer in the City ends with Mister Big dead and Auntie Fae folding her real estate takeover, but Nailbat II is framed for Big's murder and Pooky's archnemesis takes the reigns of the criminal empire.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Most of the main cast are bunnies.
- City Noir: It's not called The Gritty City Stories for nothing.
- Deadly Upgrade: Nailbat When pushed beyond his limits Mors discovers he can trade off his dwindling lifespan for more power.
- Don't Create a Martyr: Malphas is more interested in breaking Nailbat than killing him.
- Dual Wielding: Knell and Furi tend to wield two of any given weapon. Typically a pair of handguns. Nailbat gets a clue and by his second outing has two bats.
- Fantastic Racism: Humans and rabbits don't generally like each other.
- Film Noir: The visual style is heavily inspired by the Film Noir genre.
- Foregone Conclusion: Nailbat's death is established as inevitable from very early in the story, and is a matter of fact for the simultaneously running Gritty City Stories which takes place 2 years later.
- A God Am I: Malphas upon merging with Darkness and the NBK-03 declares "I am a golden god."
- Good Is Not Nice: Nailbat may not kill people, but he doesn't really care if his opponents never walk again, and his entirely ok with shattering limbs with a bat.
- Grey Rain of Depression: It's frequently raining, especially when Pooky's around.
- The Grim Reaper: There are actually a bunch of grim reapers in this world, most notably is Dee, the reaper for rabbits and rabbit related deaths. Actually a pretty mellow guy.
- Half-Identical Twins: Pluto and Persephone.
- High Collar of Doom: Malphas is fond of these.
- Hope Spot: As Mors walks away from the final battle seemingly victorious, he shares a smile with his wife, the long ordeal seemingly over. Only for the villain to get up and stab him in the back. Of course, we were all expecting that to happen since he overclocked his superpowers by cranking the timer holding up his personal Sword of Damocles to five minutes.
- Implacable Man: The NBK-2.5 shrugs off several rounds of 9mm to the face, jumping off a building, and getting hit by a semi truck.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Pooky may be cynical, bitter, and a downright jerk, but Pooky ultimately knows and does what's right when it really matters.
- Just Following Orders: Played for tragic effect. Jimbo doesn't regret following his orders to slaughter people in the Vietnam War. What he does regret, thoroughly, is that he isn't allowed to stop. Ever. The PTSD, amputated leg, and negative public opinion of Vietnam veterans has left him a mentally disturbed hobo whose only friends are others who are constantly discriminated and abused in front of him, leaving him unable to get better. His former orders to kill have been warped by the PTSD into killing anyone who pushes him too hard. In the end, he wanted to follow orders, but now he wants to stop following orders and he can't.
- Legacy Character: Nailbat has a huge fanbase and a family. Currently, the strip features Nailbat II. One of the slaves Nailbat freed took up the mantle two years after the original's chest was caved in by Malphas.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Rabbits are actually a small minority compared to humans.
- Mecha-Mooks: Replacing the Loan Sharks Gang is the NBK series robots.
- Mook Lieutenant: Runo first appeared as one.
- MookâFace Turn: Runo eventually does this when he realizes his boss is total lunatic, and his paycheck isn't worth it.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Sometimes the rabbits resort to running on all fours.
- Psychic Powers: Malphas has tremendous psychic power. Pooky has some as well. Both indicated by their glowing blue eyes.
- Rogue Agent: Eddie Van Once worked with Wesson under the name Smith as private agents for the Wauldt corporation.
- Secret-Identity Identity: It isn't long before Mors sees himself as Nailbat in his own mind.
- Speech Bubbles: Though most characters have typical round bubbles, some get unique bubbles that set their voices apart as sounding unnatural. Darkness has thick outlines and dripping borders, Dark Pooky has squiggly borders, and robots have square speech bubbles.
- Spit Take: Behold - https://antibunny.net/comics/41
- Splash of Color: Most of the art is black and white with certain eye colors standing out, as well as the red at the tip of a cigarette. Very rarely there are moments of full color that stand out to symbolize someone rising above the oppressive gray of the world around them.
- Snow Means Death: It snows throughout the entire final chapter of Nailbat.
- Someone to Remember Him By: Knell's pregnancy is implied halfway through the final chapter of Nailbat. It's outright stated when Malphas says he can hear two heartbeats. Though Mors dies, his wife lives on to give birth to their son. His ghost manages to witness the birth before finally moving on, though not without realizing the irony of leaving his son a dead hero rather than a living father, just as his father had done before him.
- Technical Pacifist: Nailbat will shatter bones, cause concussions, and even use torture, but at the end of the day leaves the bad guys breathing.
- Technicolor Eyes: Glowing ice blue eyes indicate psychic power. Red eyes have the power of life and death. Flaming green eyes belong exclusively to Darkness. All robots have glowing yellow eyes.
- Uplifted Animal: The lagosapiens are escaped lab animals who were exposed to "U-cells," which caused them to rapidly evolve. Sometimes one of them pops up who has psychic powers as well.
- Villainous Breakdown: Malphas' plans crushed, and thoroughly defeated goes on a rant about how he owns everything in the city, and that he'll just keep trying again. He doesn't realize that cameras are rolling.
- Eddie and Wesson try to convince a third party with the gun, Pooky, into siding with one of them; expose a volatile conspiracy, or bury it for good. When Pooky refuses to get involved with their bitter war on the principle of making choices that are her own, they fight each other with tooth and claw "like the animals humanity saw us as".
- Webcomic Time: Being a weekly, The Gritty City Stories started in winter and 9 years later is now only reaching Summer. It also skips around the timeline with at least 3 sequential chapters occurring during the same time frame from different perspectives and locations.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Eddie Van thinks blowing up buildings can make the world a better place.
- White Bunny: The main character, Pooky.
- World of Weirdness: Magic exists. A superhero battled an army of evil robots, and ordinary life goes on. Pooky writes for a Weekly World News type rag, and every bit of it is true. That's not even getting into what goes on in haunted junction.
- Your Days Are Numbered: In Nailbat, Mors discovers that his remaining lifespan is locked at one year. What's a normally cowardly rabbit to do with one year of immortality and a certain death at the end? Become a superhero of course.
