Hoppy Easter from Hoppy The Marvel Bunny

Let's talk about Hoppy The Marvel Bunny, who is billed on his comic book as the "World's Mightiest Bunny."

It's true enough, of course, and it makes for a good boast, at least until you stop and think about it. He's still a bunny, after all.

Like, I might be the "World's Mightiest Guy Named J. Caleb Mozzocco," but that doesn't mean most 13-year-old girls couldn't defeat me in a round of arm-wrestling, a bench-pressing contest or hand-to-hand combat.

Of course, if you're a super-powered rabbit, there are worse ways to describe your physical prowess than "World's Mightiest Bunny!"



You could always go with "World's Mightiest Cottontail!"

I love all these old Hoppy covers, and would love to read the contents, although I doubt there's much chance of a Hoppy The Marvel Bunny Archive Edition in the near future. It's not just that I think animal versions of human superheroes are inherently interesting (although I did by that recent abominable JMS-written Spider-Ham special), but the artwork looks fantastic, and well, Hoppy just looks like such a total maniac, with his huge glassy-eyes and fixed, open-mouthed grin, that I'd really like to see just how insane his adventures are.

Heck, even the thugs he fights look like lunatics. Check out that giraffe firing on him in the cover above. The giraffe doesn't show any of the anger, fear or general consternation that you can read on the faces of the thugs that fire bullets at Superman or Captain Marvel. In fact, the giraffe seems to be just as overjoyed to find a bullet-proof bunny and be firing at it as Hoppy is to be bullet-proof and getting fired upon. Plus, there's this...



Thrill-chuckling! You don't see many comic books that promise honest-to-God thrill-chuckling inside.

Now, what the heck is "thrill-chuckling," and is it a good thing to have in a comic book?

Well, I'm sure it must be, since it's contained in a comic book about a barrel-chested rabbit who dresses like Captain Marvel and who battle joyous giraffes. As regular EDILW readers have probably noticed by now, I love Captain Marvel and his family of suporting characters and antagonists. It's always bugged me when people dismiss Captain Marvel as a Superman knock-off (which also describes ever single superhero from Batman on) or as too silly and childish for today's more sophisticated comics medium (with "sophisticated" usually meaning darker and more violent rather than, um, actually sophisticated).

I suppose that elements like an evil worm in coke-bottle glasses and a rabbit version of himself are among the things that Marvel haters have in mind when they say Cap's just too darn childish and retro, but, personally, I don't see them as any more ridiculous than, say, an evil imp in a bowler hat or a dog version of Superman. And that caped strongman has three ongoing titles, a JLA membership card and a team-up title with Batman.

Besides, it's not like Hoppy the Marvel Bunny existed in the same fictional universe as Captain Marvel—He lived in Funny Animal Land, which is either another planet or another dimension/Earth from the one Captain Marvel lived on, depending on what point of history we're talking about (At some points, Hoppy could read Captain Marvel comics). Hoppy was created in 1942 in Funny Animal #1 before earning his own eponymous title, where he was mild-mannered rabbit named Hoppy, who could transform into Captain Marvel Bunny by saying "Shazam!" and gaining the powers of Salamander, Hogules, Antlers, Zebreus, Abalone and Monkury (Oh come on, that's not any sillier than Winick's millions-of-Zeuses thing, is it?).





Jerry Ordway has written the only real post-Crisis, in-continuity story featuring Hoppy, in the above Power of Shazam! #29. At a birthday party, Billy Batson falls into a magician's hat, transforming into Captain Marvel as he goes down. His magic lightining is shared with one of the denizens of the funny animal land he finds himself in, however, which transforms a talking rabbit there into the Marvel bunny. After their adventure, Billy wakes up, and we're not sure if it was all a dream or not, which isn't a bad way to handle such things as diminutive interdimensional beings dressed like modern DCU superheroes.

I imagine this will probably remain the last Hoppy story for quite a while too, despite the existence of a Hoppy DC Direct action figure. While Jeff Smith would no doubt do the concept justice, I doubt he'll have time to get to Hoppy in his Monster Society of Evil miniseries (It's half over already, and he hasn't even gotten to Captain Marvel Jr yet). And given Judd Winick's mishandling of the Marvel Family on a conceptual level, I shudder to think what he might do with a funny animals superhero.

But who knows, DC has given Detective Chimp a one-shot and recently announced a new Captain Carrot series, so anything's possible, right?

In the mean time, we'll just have to settle for this tale of Superman, Captain Marvel and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny battling the evil alliance of King Kull, Mr. Mxyptlk and Mr. Mind (in an adorable little spaceship), over at Scans_Daily. I hope that makes it into a future volume of Showcase Presents: Shazam!.





Bonus rabbit strip from Scans_Daily: Green Lantern Alan Scott vs. a bunch of rabbits.







The Reason for the Season: Sorry about all the rabbits this Easter weekend. I know that, despite their ubiquity in modern American society this time of the year, they're not the real reason a lot of people celebrate the holiday. This guy is. So, in the interest of equal representation of Easter protagonists in comic books here on EDILW, here are some comic book versions of Jesus. Click to embiggen: