Fuzz & Pluck: Splitsville

From the Editors

<p><em>Fuzz & Pluck: Splitsville</em> tells the hilariously bizarre adventures of Pluck, an irritable and featherless rooster, and his best pal, the awkwardly unsocialized but lovable teddy bear known as Fuzz. These two usually inseparable and co-dependent misfits find themselves suddenly separated and alone. Pluck vows to establish his place in the world's pecking order by becoming a champion gladiator, while the more demure Fuzz finds himself a POW in a stuffed animal collection, only to escape and befriend a mercurial ferryman who recruits him for an impossible task. These absurdities pile on and eventually converge in a fatal collision course that reunites our heroes.</p><p><em>Fuzz & Pluck </em>is an odd, and unusually original graphic novel, a "funny animal" comic that is surprisingly human. Rich with pathos, wit, farce, existentialism and drama, often cruel, always funny, this superficially ridiculous struggle for survival is an <em>Alice in Wonderland</em> for grown-ups that reaches absurdly delightful heights. As <em>Simpsons</em> creator Matt Groening says, "This epic tale of a hapless li'l bear and his defeathered friend is why I love comics. All hail the peculiar <em>Fuzz & Pluck</em> and their creator, Ted Stearn!"</p><p>Ted Stearn is longtime storyboard artist for animation. <em>Fuzz & Pluck</em> is the author's most personal work, showcasing his vivid imagination and meticulous draughtsmanship.</p>
Product Description

Customer Response

weird, funny and excellent
plucked rooster and an old teddy bear as heroes.. you know it cant get any weirder.
this is one of the best comics ever. it is funny, morally incorrect, it reads like a 260 pages long strip that never slows down.
pictures are very detailed and the story actually reads like a page-turner (yes)!!
if you like something fresh it is for you.

Pure, Unabashed Fun
Fuzz is a socially awkward teddy bear whose once soft fur has long since been worn down. He is insecure and feeds off the praise of those he sees as superior. Pluck is a sometimes irascible, defeathered chicken who finds himself lashing out in physical ways.

They are just the kind of hapless creatures readers would expect to find having misadventures together on the Sunday funny pages. And that's why Ted Stearn's second collection of Fuzz & Pluck comic books works so well. It is a wonderful throwback to some of the best traits of newspaper comic strips, but fully fleshed out into a five-issue arc.

Splitsville, as its name suggests, finds the series' protagonists on separate paths. Pluck loses his job at Lardy's, a fast-food establishment, after he runs a few punk customers through the proverbial ringer after being ridiculed. Fuzz is riding high at Lardy's, as the apparent employee of the week/month/year, but he runs into trouble when a dog prevents him from making an important delivery.

Pluck's beat-down of the teens, however, garners the attention of a woman who manages a team of animal gladiators against Sourpuss, a grapefruit--yes, a grapefruit--villain. Pluck decides he will use the arena to make a name for himself. Meanwhile, Fuzz is taken captive by a strange young girl who adds him to her menagerie of bickering toys, of which there is already a surplus of bears. Fuzz eventually gets out of her grasp, but only to find himself faced with the impossible task of promoting a ferry service where a more convenient bridge has already been built.

Stearn uses the comics medium to its fullest, letting his art do much of the work. He has a brilliant sense of absurd visual humor, with scenes such as an arena of living fruit organisms slicing one another to bits with kitchen knives wielded like samurai swords.

Fuzz & Pluck: Splitsville succeeds primarily because it doesn't take itself too seriously. It is pure, unabashed fun with an oftentimes twisted spin at the expense of its funny animals. Stearn offers fantastically silly, imaginative scenes that remind of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at their best. And though it all wraps up with a focus on friendship and a question of fate, it is the lighthearted creativity that makes Fuzz & Pluck a joy to read.

-- William Jones

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