By: Jim Hankins
Art By: Ben Roman in “Just One of the Bears”, Rolando Mallada in “Rasputin” parts 1 & 2, Chris Moreno in “Winston”, Matt Wendt in “Cherished Memories”, and Christine Larsen in “Why I’m Mean”
Publisher: Ape Entertainment
I’d expect this from Slave Labor Graphics. Teddy Scares is based on the product of the same name, “zombie teddy bears” sold at Hot Topic and record stores. But don’t let that stop you from taking a look at this book. Obviously, zombie teddy bears in a junkyard are going to garner the same kind of imagery and humor as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac or (more precise) Lenore (both published by Slave Labor).
This collection is six stories that range from 3 pages to 19 pages. There are 5 sets of artists, but 1 writer. In the opening story, “Just One of the Bears”, you can get a good idea of what you’re getting into. That story centers on smashing things found in the junkyard. Sounds weak, but once you read the well spoken language of the two bears in the opening scene, featuring rhyme and iambic pentameter, you should at least smile (that is, if you like JTHM or Lenore).
While the characters are based on bios written for each kind of teddy bear that gets sold in the stores, Hankins really just made up his own characters. Reading those bios on the Teddy Scares website, it’s clear that the creators were more interested in designing the bears then writing about them. So it’s not a continuation of a corporate product.
Hankins created loveable characters with fun stories, but there is a vein of seriousness with the last story, “Why I’m Mean”. I liked that they decided to open with the story about smashing and finish with a story about a girl getting picked on and her teddy bear being thrown in a dumpster by bullies—a story for the emo crowd. It’s a 180 from irrelevance to an emotion driven story.
However, my favorite story was “Winston” which is also the longest. That story is about one of the bears being stuffed with cockroaches. He controls the roaches, but unlike Maggot of the X-Men there’s an entire army of them that he controls. They do his bidding until he gets out of control and they fight him for power.
Obviously these stories don’t demand great art. Since there are different sets of artists, the art itself ranges in style. Mostly it’s stylistic cartoon kinds of art. In “Winston” the art is dramatically different, with the characters having texture like a teddy bear that the other stories don’t have and a more 3-dimensional style.
The colors are done really well. In the opening story, the colors are bright to reflect the tone of that story. Since “Winston” is relatively a darker story, it has the darkest colors. What impressed me the most was how the last story was colored. It opens up introducing how nasty the character is, using a lot of browns and colors you see in dirt, dust, mold, etc. But then it goes into a flashback of better times, and the colors become light with a lot of pastels. Then there are a few pages about the girl getting picked on which are darker with a lot of grays. When she’s getting jumped and her teddy bear is taken away the scene is colored with grays and browns. Finally the last scene is mostly a mixture of green and brown with the background bland and monotone—a tone fitting the line “Now I just hate”.
Mostly, though, it’s fun and light-hearted.
What did you think of this book?
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