Review by Frank Plowright

After the initial manic rush of Bunny vs. Monkey, Jamie Smart began introducing what for a young audience are mind-bending ideas. Alternates, omnipotent beings and philosophical questions featured in The Impossible Pig and Bunny Bonanza, and Smart drops his biggest surprise to date in The Great Big Glitch! What if Bunny and Monkey’s world is a computer simulation where the characters all follow programmed behaviour?

The start of that suggestion is seen on the sample art, with Monkey and Skunky experiencing the first glitch, and despite a few reboots, those glitches recur. The eventual result is that the end of all things is imminent, but before then there are plenty of opportunities for hijinks and mayhem. Even before anything serious kicks off Bunny discovers that he’s able to influence nature causing things to grow more rapidly. Other cast members acquire the ability to better themselves, transforming into idealised versions of themselves, which in some cases is dangerous. Monkey remains trivial and obsessed with destruction, but Skunky able to alter reality is a different threat altogether, and Smart elevates him to the level of an omnipotent Jack Kirby character. Except Bunny vs Monkey is funny, so Skunky’s rewriting of reality results in dubstep beats emerging from the river and the world transformed into a giant whale.

There are quieter moments, and Lucky trying on hats is actually rather sweet, but as ever, we’re never far from Monkey’s disruption. However, you don’t want to know about all that existential pondering, do you? You want to know what destructive devices Skunky develops for Monkey this time, and the tip of the iceberg is robot vampire snakes, the all-consuming gelatinous blob and the Pug of Doom. Don’t worry about too many spoilers, as they’re all in the opening thirty pages, and this collection has another 210 to run with Smart’s overactive imagination sparking all the way to the end.

Better still, for precocious children with enquiring minds, instead of just hitting the reset button Smart provides an actual explanation for everything, making one of the greatest comic clichés work for him. Truly the kids of today are blessed with Bunny vs Monkey.