Bastard Bunny
Bastard Bunny was a rabbit of the early 1990s. In 1992 he appeared in his own eponymous comic and then in Deadline magazine along side Jamie Hewlett’s Tank Girl. In 1994 he moved to his own strip cartoon in the New Musical Express where he embodied the spirit of new punk that was at the time spitting and spluttering its way through Camden Town and Soho. As dance music got progressively harder and techno-tonic, he became aligned with Andrew Weatherall’s Sabres of Paradise record label and legendary Sabresonic club, where the BB rabbit head T shirts and lop ear hats multiplied weekly on the dance floor. If Tank Girl captured the riot girl spirit of early 90s grunge, then Bastard Bunny came to represent the DIY attitude of the London club scene. He appeared in magazines like The Face and Ministry and even in the Drum Club’s Sound System video.

In 1998 Virgin published his collected stories. And at that point, a bit like the club scene itself, he crashed and burned. Occasionally he would be spotted on stage and TV on a T shirt worn by the comedian Bill Bailey. Even today the T shirts sometimes appear and get snapped up instantly on eBay. But you can’t keep a good rabbit down. His adventures in exile are currently being animated by 12Foot6 (Modern Toss,Dog Judo) and will appear later this year on Paramount

Comedy Channel. Bastard Bunny is written by David Anderson and drawn by Martyn Smith.

Dave Anderson describes this original comic strip “The favourite cartoon ever of the NME editorial staff
but famously not published as the NME were refusing to publish any reference at all in the paper to the
former Smith’s man over alleged neo nazi sympathies. A real nose, face, spite scenario as the strip
was pinned to several notice boards across NME towers”.