Bunny #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeBunny #1 (cover-dated December 1966) marks Harvey Comics' most ambitious attempt to break into the teenager humor market — a space almost entirely owned by Archie Comics — by introducing Bunny Ball, a blonde, jet-setting fashion model and teen beauty queen whose entire identity was rooted in the hyper-trendy youth culture of the mid-1960s. Unlike Harvey's usual roster of young children with single-minded fixations (Richie Rich and his money, Little Dot and her dots), Bunny was deliberately aimed at an older demographic, drawing on the template of Marvel's Millie the Model — right down to a dark-haired scheming rival — and on the reader-participation fashion pages pioneered by Archie's Katy Keene. The character was so thoroughly saturated in mod slang and Swinging Sixties references that her comics functioned almost as a time-capsule parody of the decade even while earnestly participating in it, giving the series a cultural specificity that most of Harvey's evergreen titles deliberately avoided.
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Bunny Ball originated not as a comic-book concept but as a proposed fashion doll intended to rival Barbie; a toy company approached Harvey Comics to serve as a cross-promotional publishing partner, and writer Warren Harvey — a son of one of the company's founders — and artist Hy Eisman developed the character together. When the toy manufacturer abandoned the project before any dolls were manufactured, Harvey elected to proceed with the comic alone, hoping Bunny could carve out a readership alongside the Archie stable. Because Harvey rarely credited its creative talent in print, the writer-artist team's names went unacknowledged on the indicia pages, and their contributions were only confirmed later through an interview Eisman gave for the comics-history journal Hogan's Alley. Leon Harvey is the credited editor on the first issue, per the Grand Comics Database.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Bunny Ball, billed in the indicia as 'Bunny Ball,' a teenage international fashion model and beauty queen who would headline 21 total issues from December 1966 through November 1976.
- First appearances of core supporting cast: younger sister Honey Ball, arch-rival Esmeralda (Esmy), love interest Fredric of the fictional rock group The Beagles, and spy-boyfriend Secret Agent O.O. Heaven.
- Issue #1 includes an origin story explaining how Bunny became a top fashion model and teen beauty queen — the only such origin told in the run.
- The 68-page giant format was launched with this issue and maintained throughout most of the series, offering an unusually large page count for a 25-cent comic of the era.
- Writer Warren Harvey (son of a company founder) and penciler/inker Hy Eisman (known for Katzenjammer Kids and Little Iodine) created the series; their credits were not printed in the comic but were later documented via Eisman's interview in Hogan's Alley #15.
- Issue #1 contains a one-page Neal Adams advertisement for Goodyear, as well as a Batman Aurora model-kit back cover — notable interior ephemera for Adams completists.
- The recurring backup character Fruitman — a superhero parody about a man named Percival Pineapple who transforms himself into various fruits — first appears in the series starting with issue #2 (per GCD, his debut within the 'Bunny Ball Fantasy Theater' feature is noted at issue #3) and eventually received his own one-shot special in 1969.
- In November 1999, MGM announced a feature-film adaptation with Jennifer Love Hewitt attached to star as a college student doubling as a James Bond–style spy; director Stephen Sommers was in talks, but the project was never produced.
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Reprinted in Wendy the Good Little Witch #6 (1992)
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