BOOKS: The Book of Bunny Suicides / Return of the Bunny Suicides, Andy Riley (2004/2005)

In the gleefully tasteless spirit of 101 Uses for a Dead Cat come these two slim collections of wordless cartoons about depressed bunnies and their creative plans to off themselves.

Riley's cartooning skills aren't the greatest, but the jokes are occasionally very funny. His bunnies are remarkably patient -- one sits against a wall, holding a nail to his forehead, waiting for the sun to melt an enormous block of ice, inside which is frozen a hammer, tied to a rope, that will (eventually) swing down and strike the nail -- and quite creative, in a Rube Goldberg fashion; there's one terrific sequence, for instance, involving a bowling ball and a sieve.

And every now and then, Riley comes up with something utterly brilliant. In one cartoon, a young woman sits in a chair, surrounded by used tissues and a torn photo of a happy couple; across the room, a bunny slips a tape into the VCR: Fatal Attraction.