Boni v1: “The Last Bite of Carrot”

“Boni” is another one of those comic strips I had seen in Spirou magazine in recent times. Given how well things went with “Nelson,” I gave the first volume collecting those strips a chance.

Sometimes you can’t win them all…

Carrot-Filled Credits

The Carrot and the Stick

“Boni” is about a rabbit, his family, and his school friends and enemies. He has a whole pack of little siblings, a mother and a father, and a grandfather. He has a best friend who is his twin but with glasses. Then there’s the school bully.

I just don’t like any of them.

It’s a mean book. It’s a juvenile book. It’s a repetitive book.

I don’t care about anyone in it.

The book starts off with Boni’s father telling him repeatedly in a series of gags that he doesn’t want to be bothered with him. Later on in the book, his grandfather spends nearly every page fighting him off. The school bully is constantly beating him up. The baby sitter is mean, if not abusive.

It’s not that I can’t handle harsh humor. I love me some good sarcasm and witty banter. And, yes there are isolated jokes that made me laugh in this book. There’s 128 pages in the book, and about 124 of them are filled with gags. I can’t imagine misfiring on all of them.

But Fortin’s sense of humor is a tad too juvenile for me. And then he finds his themes and repeats them in minor variations. There’s a whole series of gags centered on trying to kick the bully in the balls. The gags start with the obvious and end with pain.

It’s not my thing.

But, Wait, The Art is Good, Right?

I’m not the right judge of that, I fear. This book is designed from the school of thought that’s given us all the popular cartoons of the last 20 years. Those are the kind that can’t afford animation, so they try super hard to make super-designy things that are super flat and super easy to animate with minimal cues. Picture most anything Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network has done since the 90s.

I’m an old school Warner Bros full animation fan. You can see where the culture clash is here.

“Boni” is infused with a minimalist’s mentality. Each page is a solid color for a background. The only art on the page is the character work, with the occasional prop. They get drop shadows underneath them, but that’s all the detail you’re going to get.

Every page is a three panel gag that should be one of three on a page. Instead, each gag is a full page for three drawings that don’t really deserve such space. It’s one thing if you’re Francois Schuiten and fill every drawing with an insane amount of detail, or if your art style is so detailed and obsessive about the most minor things that showing it off on a grand scale makes sense.

This is “Peanuts”-level detail at an Artist’s Edition size. Except Peanuts had line weight variation, blocked out black areas, backgrounds, and an interesting line style….

More Complaints

The book is so fast to read that it’s almost tiring to flip through. And I’m just swiping across an iPad screen!

I didn’t like this book so much that I also hated the lettering. I don’t like the font, which looks like a cheap free font. I loathe the word balloons, and this book doesn’t even use them There’s just a white background wrapping around the lines of lettering.

It annoys me.

The whole thing is just ugly to me. I do recognize, however, that the realities of the market make my longing for ancient animation something that nobody will ever again achieve. I can’t hold that against them. Also, I’m the only one who care about lettering.

But this book just isn’t very good, otherwise.

Recommended?

Ha!

Nope.

— 2019.012 —

Buy It Now

It’s not so bad, it’s good. But I’m not one to judge you, only the comics. If you insist, here are some links: