Review: Fluffy
Simone Lia, Fluffy (Jonathan Cape, 2007)
Little children say the funniest things, something Simone Lia clearly knows well. In her button-cute graphic novel, Fluffy, she puts words in the mouth of a little bunny rabbit and—surprise, surprise—it’s even funnier: “Who invented words?” and “I’ve forgotten how to breathe,” and “This ice cream is nice because of the ketchup,” and so on. Fluffy likes ice cream, tractors, pylons, turning light switches on and off, playground swings, people who have broken legs in a plaster and use crutches; all the hallmark wide-eyed innocence of a child. Fluffy not only thinks he is human, but that owner Michael Pulcino is his Daddy, and one exchange particularly pulls on the heart-strings:
- Fluffy, I’m not your real Daddy.
[Pause. Panel of Fluffy looking dejected]
- Yes you are Daddy.
- No. I’m a man and you’re a bunny.
- I’m not a bunny.
- You are a bunny. You’re a bunny rabbit.
[Panel of Fluffy visibly stunned]
- Why do you keep saying that?
- Because it’s true.
- I’M NOT A BUNNY. YOU’RE A BAD DADDY FOR SAYING THAT.
[Fluffy patters off, leaving behind a pile of droppings on the sofa]
Rabbit shit aside, Lia does charming in spades, sometimes to the point of sickening, but she also gets that enthusiastic pestering that kids are prone to doing down to a tee, the type that wears you down. On one page she draws the inner workings of Michael’s scrambled head, scrambled not only by Fluffy but also by his disillusionment with work and nagged by girlfriend problems: his sister tells him, “She sounds like a freaky bunny boiler.” Another child-like quality Lia employs and uses to good effect are the embarrassing, inappropriate things that slip-out in public. For example, Michael is taking Fluffy for a holiday in Sicily with is parents by train and the little rabbit proudly tells the other people in the carriage why the pair are not flying: “Last time on the aeroplane Daddy screamed…But you DID Daddy you were screaming, LOUD and everyone was scared. It was really scary then the air lady said ‘Get off the plane, please’ then we got off, because it didn’t leave the airport yet.’ And that’s why Daddy doesn’t like the aeroplane.”
Fluffy was originally released in four parts by Cabanon Press, a joint Simone Lia/Tom Gauld production, and the four-part format is kept for this handsome Jonathan Cape release. Part Two is interrupted by a narrator in the form of a dust particle, who sketches in background information on the new characters we meet in Sicily and the dust particle, “overwhelmed and honoured at this decision and I thank the panel for their unlikely choice,” pops up again in Part Three in place of a flake of dandruff who “had mood swings and was a bit too disruptive” and was thus axed. Flake O’Dandy does check in, first to dismiss the production as amateurish, then to admonish the ending as rubbish: “There was no story throughout. An awful script with no punch…My point is that the script is highly flawed and also unresolved.”
While I won’t pretend Fluffy is not all sweetness and light, there are some darker moments—when Michael’s sister’s boyfriend is thought to have been kidnapped by the Mafia, the character of Miss Owers (the psycho girlfriend)—and times of quiet reflection, but not that dark, it’s about a cute bunny for god’s sake. Nice characterisation is given over to Michael’s Jesus-obsessed mother and much put upon father, but Fluffy is the clear star of the show. Recently rabbits have occupied some pretty tenebrous corners, particularly in film (David Lynch’s Rabbits and in Donnie Darko). Fluffy has more bite than Miffy, but is endearing in much the same way—think Margery Williams’ tear-stained Velveteen Rabbit meets Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio by way of Matt Groening’s thick black lines in Life in Hell—and Simone Lia could be the big cross-over graphic novel of the year.
Susan Tomaselli lives in Ireland where she edits the inimitable Dogmatika and is Comics Co-Editor of 3:AM.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, March 13th, 2007.
