The Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want to Live Any More was published in 2003 by English author and comic illustrator Andy Riley. It was followed in 2004 by a sequel, Return of the Bunny Suicides, and in 2010 Riley released Dawn of the Bunny Suicides, a compilation more than twice as long as the two previous books combined, featuring many of the artist's sketches as "bonus material."
The Bunny Suicides series are gallows humour comics with no attendant captions or explanations, usually in single-panel or two-panel formats across each spread of two facing pages. Every comic features at least one adorably-drawn cartoon rabbit killing itself. Each comic is more elaborate and ridiculous in the rabbit's chosen suicide method, than the previous comic, such as a rabbit standing between a kitchen knife store and a gigantic magnet, or a rabbit arranging for itself to be drawn and quartered by NASA rockets about to launch. Many of the bunny suicides feature multi-step Rube Goldberg Machine setups which the reader must visually analyse to see how it will play out, creating the effect of a very complex and clever joke, with a sneaky and delightful punchline.
For all that the topic of suicide is a fraught and sensitive one, at no point do the comics convey any mockery toward readers with personal experience around the topic. If anything, the sheer endearment of how the rabbits are illustrated suggests an earnest sympathy and compassion toward people experiencing thoughts of suicide, and the silliness of the rabbits' chosen methods of dying is oddly gentle and ticklish, a kindly bid to win a startled laugh from a reader who might not feel very much like they have anything worth laughing about.
My own first encounter with this book was on the shelf of a university library, sorted among texts about mental health, where its vivid orange cover and tiny shape stood out starkly next to the solemn academic volumes to either side. I had previously run across another of Riley's comic books, D.I.Y. Dentistry and Other Alarming Inventions (2008), and I was delighted to encounter another. I recommend these books to anyone who enjoyed the morbid humour of the song "Dumb Ways to Die" by the artist Tangerine Kitty, or the webcomic series Perry Bible Fellowship and Cyanide & Happiness.
Iron Noder 2023, 27/30