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“Hopping Down The Bunny Trail” - Best Horror Comic...
Transcript of “Hopping Down The Bunny Trail” - Best Horror Comic...
“Hopping Down The Bunny Trail”
Originally Published: “Unexpected” 202, DC Comics, September 1980
Writer: Michael Uslan
Art By: Tenny Henson
Lettering: Esphidy
Colored By: Tatjana Wood
Editor: Jack C. Harris.
Managing Editor: Joe Orlando
Submitted by: E.M. Tonner
Preface
In our endeavor to find the best horror stories ever told in comics, what consideration does one
give to a code-approved comic? The Comics Code Authority was meant to sound the death knell
for horror comics in 1954. It didn’t kill horror comics but it did make them very scarce (and
juvenile) for the next twenty years. Thankfully, the code did lighten in 1971, allowing DC’s
‘horror’ line to produce stories that were able to frighten your average eight year old.
“Hopping Down The Bunny Trail” is actually scary. It’s not a story of how the deeds of evil men
haunt them, with final retribution by the supernatural. Instead, it’s a story about one of DC ‘s most
common plot devices for its horror covers: kids in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Teny
“Tenny” Henson art really works here. His depiction of children is excellent. The shift at the split
panel at the bottom of page two is amazingly effective. You just know these wide-eyed kids are in
a world of trouble as soon as you turn the page and that the big pot of black ink will be coming
out.
I admit to having a soft spot in my heart for this story. I read it as an eleven year old when it first
came out. It was a time when the newsstand horror comics didn’t seem scary to me anymore. I
started eating chocolate Easter bunnies’ feet-first after reading this…
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Afterword
Five pages long… Short, and sweet.
It’s amazing that Uslan and Henson were able to pack that much into five pages. The fact that DC
was able to depict a grade-schooler having his head bitten off (or about to) and still have Code
approval was revolutionary. Code approval had meant that all comics carried a G-Rating. This
wasn’t. 1980 was a good year for comics.
What are interesting here are two things: the victims are children and they really haven’t
misbehaved. I suppose there is the argument of gluttony, but the parents sanction this egg hunt
after all. If there’s any moral to this story it’s that parents should keep a closer eye on their
children, or perhaps don’t be the last people left in the spooky house. This really is wrong place,
wrong time for kids with just enough foreshadowing.
Is this the greatest horror story ever told in a comic? Probably not. If you use the argument that
‘Creepy’, ‘Eerie’ and the like are actually magazines, it might have a shot. In the realm of code-
approved comic stories, it rates even higher. As something that sparked an eleven year-olds
imagination and produced a chill, it certainly ranks as a favorite.
“The true history of these fertility symbols, rabbits and eggs, is completely unknown to all the unsuspecting
children who have been led by adults to think them so special.”
- David C. Pack
“The True Origin of Easter”
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Reprinted In:
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DC may include ‘Unexpected’ in a Showcase Presents series at a future date.