SCOTT SHAW! SATURDAYS…
By SCOTT SHAW!
Harvey Comics must have been listening to The In Crowd, a popular tune in 1964 by Dobie Gray, when the publisher created Bunny, The Queen of the In-Crowd!
Harvey did all sorts of stuff — horror, romance, military, humor, kiddie, teenage, newspaper strips, before Richie Rich became the publisher’s most successful character. When a toy company contacted Harvey to create a hip teenage character to base their new, contemporary doll on, writer Warren Harvey (one of the company’s founders) and artist Hy Eisman developed Bunny Ball.
The doll manufacturer lost interest in the project, but Harvey decided to go ahead with the character anyway. The publisher felt that she would make a legitimate rival of Archie Comics’ Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge.
Blonde Bunny Ball — who debuted in Bunny #1, released in September 1966 — was a teenage beauty queen, international model and actor, which meant she had a lot of fans and potential boyfriends, many of whom had cool jobs. Bunny also had a little sister named Honey, and in like many teenage comics, she had her own rival, Esmeralda.
She may have been “hip, mod, and boss,” but she wasn’t doing what many teenagers were doing at the time: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. OK, the last one was allowed, but with imitations of the top bands of the day, including the Soular System, the Beagles, Marmalade Mirage, the Kaleidoscopic Zoo, among others.
Bunny’s unusual boyfriends included Fredric (a member of the Beagles); Secret Agent O. O. Heaven; Arnold Van Greenpockets; Jacques Cheri; Marc Shlumper; Elmer Snapper; Malcolm Mildmanners; Sandy Spicesplice; and William Wordfellow.
Rather than using contemporary slang, the middle-age creators of Bunny created their own lame lingo like “zoovy,” “yvoorg,” “ultrazoovy,” and so on.
Like Bill Woggon’s Katy Keene, published by Archie, each issue featured fashion designs by its readers, as well as polls.
Harvey and Eisman created every issue of Bunny, which were 68 pages long for a quarter, and with a second character, the Oddball superhero Fruitman, who eventually got a one-shot special. Toward the end of the run, Bunny went down to 52 pages and there were reprints of earlier stories. Sol Brodsky did some inking over Hy’s pencils, while Howard Post occasionally drew “Sooper Hippie,” and Henry Scarpelli drew an episode of Fruitman. Bunny also appeared in Harvey Pop Comics #2, which spotlighted the bands from her comics.
The series ran 20 issues, lasting into 1971, with a final issue of mostly reprints appearing on the spinner racks five years later, in 1976.
The final issue
Surprisingly, in November 1999, Jennifer Love Hewitt was attached to headline an MGM feature film based on the Oddball teen. Hewitt was to play a young woman who simultaneously attends college and goes on far-flung, James Bond-esque spy missions. Stephen Sommers was in talks to direct but it failed to get the green light.
From that point on, Bunny was truly “outta sight.”
—
MORE
— ODDBALL COMICS: Wallace Wood’s BUCKY RUCKUS. Click here.
— ODDBALL COMICS: Ross Andru’s THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT — Which I Clearly Remember. Click here.
—
For over half a century, SCOTT SHAW! has been a pro cartoonist/writer/designer of comic books, animation, advertising and toys. He is also a historian of all forms of cartooning. Scott has worked on many underground comix and mainstream comic books, including: Fear and Laughter (Kitchen Sink); Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie); Simpsons Comics (Bongo); Weird Tales of the Ramones (Rhino); and his co-creation with Roy Thomas, Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew! (DC).
Scott also worked on numerous animated cartoons, including producing/directing John Candy’s Camp Candy (NBC/DIC/Saban); Martin Short’s The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (NBC/Hanna-Barbera Productions); Garfield and Friends (CBS/Film Roman); and the Emmy-winning Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies (CBS/Marvel Productions), among many others. As senior art director for the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency, Scott worked on dozens of commercials for Post Pebbles cereals with the Flintstones. He also designed a line of Hanna-Barbera action figures for McFarlane Toys.
Scott was one of the comics fans who organized the first San Diego Comic-Con, where he has become known for performing his hilarious Oddball Comics Live! slide shows.
Need funny cartoons for any and all media? Click here! Scott does commissions!
June 28, 2025
As much as macho little me avoided “girls’ comics,” nonetheless I never missed an issue of BUNNY once I discovered it with the 3rd or 4th issue.
June 29, 2025
In 3rd grade, so no later than spring of 1968, I joined the Bunny Ball In-Club, paying a whole quarter — half my weekly allowance! — for a membership card and a color button. That had to have been the first thing I ever joined and also pretty close to the last.