Here’s something you may not have known about me: I will read anything. This story was not for me in the least bit. Stories with drugs as the focus just don’t interest me. I know that some people find them humorous whether they relate to them or not, but I’m not one of those people. I will however give any comic a fair shake even if it takes me way too long to get to it. Thus is the case with Stoner Joe the Bunny. The problem I have with books with drugs as the central focus is not that it’s drugs. Your life is your own and as long as you don’t hurt others or intentionally harm yourself then I don’t care what you do with your life. No, my problem is that the drugs themselves are what the story is about and it usually can be summed up quickly and with little to no effort: “I want that, so I will try to get that at any cost.”
This story is about Stoner Joe trying to get medicinal weed because he wants to smoke weed. He runs into a “doctor” by the name of Mr. Spleen that runs him through a wide assortment of test and then writes him a lame prescription for weed that isn’t accepted, making his second failed attempt. That’s pretty much it.
That doesn’t leave me with much to say about the story and while I could go into my dislike for the characters that would be more indicative of my personal feelings and not the story itself. The characters are two-dimensional, but they need to be in order for this story to work. Everyone has their stereotype and if they don’t play to it they’ll come across confusing.
The art was unfortunately not for me. It’s not bad, but the style is too detailed for just black and white. I got lost in looking at Joe’s face because you forget that he’s a bunny unless you look at the tail. Really he just looks like a goofy guy that didn’t put on clothes. I’m definitely not being an ass when I say this, but Mr. Spleen looked like a worm. To be quite honest if you showed me a Spleen I’d have no idea what it was until you told me. Again the black and white nature of the story plays against this character as the detail doesn’t give enough indication as to what he is. If the book was colored it would probably solve all these problems, but that’s not cheap for independent titles. In which a different inking technic might need to be adopted. Currently it has an animated style especially with the lighting effects, but animation is colored so it doesn’t quite work. Slight update, in looking up the book it looks like it might be colored now, but the coloring didn’t exactly fix some of the problems I had with the art to be completely honest.
The book is upfront with the reader saying not to read it while sober. My problem is that I’m always sober unless you count caffeine which clearly didn’t work. Like I said I’ll try any comic and even if I don’t enjoy the story I can enjoy the art, but here it works against the story. While it’s not for me it might be for you. It’s independently created and produced so if you’d like to try you should support the creator. I’m going lower on my scoring because there is room for improvement regardless of content.
Score: 2/5
Writer/Artist/Creator: Christopher Blue Self-Published Price: $4.99 (Kindle) Website