by Simone Lia
published by Cabanon Press

Fluffy is an almost impossibly cute bunny rabbit, one that speaks, walks on two legs, and can use round-tipped children’s scissors to cut pictures out of library books. Michael Pulcino is Fluffy’s Daddy, but of course not really, as he is a man and Fluffy is a bunny. Not that you can tell Fluffy this — Fluffy throws a fit at the idea. Michael is afraid to fly, afraid of getting into a relationship with Miss Owers, and an uncertain parent.

All this is to say Lia has created a charming and offbeat story in Fluffy.

In Part One, Lia establishes Fluffy as intensely curious, full of child-like determination (“Can I keep this book Daddy? Can I? Can I keep the book?”) and unknowingly mischevious. Michael’s idiosyncrasies are more developed in Part Two, as he avoids planes and embarks on a train and boat journey to visit his parents.

I keep thinking I’m not getting to real reason I loved these books so much: it is just as simple as the bunny is entrancing, and the little stories seem so true in their impossibilities.

Lia’s art is a combination of simple, bold lines with enough details to evoke the real-life clutter of a kitchen counter or a swaying passageway on a train. The layouts vary from whole-page panels to grids without whitespace to polaroid photo album effects. Everything is printed in navy blue ink with a variety of screens.

The comics are just over six-inch not quite square-format books, around forty pages each. Covers are card stock, and the pages are high-quality paper. Most importantly, Fluffy is completely adorable, and Fluffy’s Daddy is charmingly neurotic. Books like these make me hate the independent comic book publishing “schedule”: God only knows how long I will have to wait for Part Three. Highly recommended.