FUZZ & PLUCK IN SPLITSVILLE #1 (of 4)

First of four in Stearn's latest hard-luck tale

By Mike Whybark     June 28, 2002

Stearn published a full-length book featuring these characters, FUZZ AND PLUCK, in 2000, and is probably most familiar to most readers as a storyboard artist for BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD and DARIA. Fuzz is a teddy Bear, while Pluck is a banty roster who, in an unfortunate twist of fate, has been plucked so thoroughly that he has no feathers. Their personalities reflect our preconceptions about them: Fuzz is slow, kind, and not the sharpest stick in the eye; Pluck is full of piss and vinegar, short-tempered, and combative.

Our tale opens with the two employed at a fast food restaurant, Lardy's; as you might imagine, Fuzz fits in better than Pluck. Pluck gets into a fight and kicks three people's asses while Fuzz is out on a delivery; he's then recruited to perform in a kind of American Gladiators sideshow for animals. Meanwhile, Fuzz runs into trouble with an unfriendly guard dog, wrecking his daydreams of approval from Mr. Lardy.

The spare linearity of Stearn's art brings to mind early Chester Brown, as does an abstracted quality to the way in which the characters inhabit their world. However, Stearn uses larger and more varied panel shapes than early Brown, and also employs mechanical shading and texturing tools to increase the toothiness of his drawings. There's an undeniable slapstick humor at work, with three separate sequences of hapless unfortunates experiencing one moment of comedic violence or another - up to and including the beloved "hits self on head with sledgehammer gag".

In fact, Kim Deitch's WALDO books appear to be a strong influence as well, from the unrelentingly grim world the characters inhabit to the choice of animals as protagonists. The book has a distinct voice, however, and I look forward to the next installment of the series. I don't get a sense of any real hidden depth to the story - it's just a contrasting buddy story that has a great deal of humor, set in a cynical, harsh world - but it made me laugh. I suspect that Stearn is also looking at Ren and Stimpy as a precursor (that bare chicken flesh reminds me of a certain Chihuahua), and if that's where he wants to go, he needs to amp up the gags until I shake my head in disbelief. He's got a shot at it.