Bunny Mask is a 2021 horror comic written by Paul Tobin, with art by Andrea Mutti. It is published by AfterShock Comics.
14 years ago, Dr. Tyler Severin and his partner from Child Protective Services visited the home of Bee Foster and found her father waiting. After Leo Foster killed his partner, he forced Tyler into a cave and made him dig, telling him about the voice of "the Snitch" and that he was trying to find "a revelation." And then Tyler broke through a wall in the cave and unleashed something even more horrific — something which took the form of a young girl in a bunny mask.
In the present day, all Tyler wants to do is go about his life and forget the events of fourteen years ago, but when he unexpectedly finds Bee again, now working as a young artist, he realizes that their lives are more intertwined than he first thought.
And the girl in the Bunny Mask is much older and darker. And now she walks our world.
Tropes in Bunny Mask:
- Ax-Crazy: Leo Foster. He kills Tyler's partner, forces Tyler to dig through a cave, and when Tyler finally does find something, Leo shoots him in the leg and prepares to kill him.
- Ambiguously Evil: Bunny Mask is intensely creepy... thing, but most of her worse actions involve attacking the cruel and sadistic, and she seems to have some desire to help Tyler. It would be possible to read her as a Terror Hero- but sometimes her acts are malicious enough to cast doubts.
- Body Motifs: Bunny Mask has a strong fixation on teeth, and they show up a lot referring to her.
- Black Speech: In the backmatter, a recording of some drug dealers being killed by the girl in the bunny mask is transcribed. The girl in the bunny mask says two things, the first of which is unintelligible (it could be "You are useless" or "Is there success?" or it might be a cat hissing), but the second (which comes after twenty seconds of silence) is the girl clearly saying "I will hide in the bees. They will be my cave." Her voice is described as "strangely clear," as if she's speaking directly into the microphone (which is hidden in the ceiling).
- Creepy Cave: Leo Foster tells Tyler he's been digging through a cave, "the Snitch's Cave, digging my way through the truth of the mountain." Later, Tyler breaks through one of the walls of the cave to find an entire cave system (which Leo calls "a revelation"), with strange symbols and carvings on the wall. Fourteen years later, when the police finally find it, the holes inside the cave look like mouths.
- Dead All Along: Tyler meets Bee Foster again after fourteen years, but the local cops find the hidden cave system and the dead bodies of everyone Leo Foster killed and Bee Foster is one of them.
- Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: In the sequel, Tyler ends up in what is almost a relationship with Bunny Mask. Deconstructed, in that its intensely unhealthy largely due to his utter incomprehension of her and the massive power differential.
- Everyone Can See It: Tyler and Bee, once she's grown.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Snitch, who's some huge underground thing with a single eye, and is seemingly omniscient, choosing people on the surface as minions to spread truths.
- Hair-Raising Hare: The book is called Bunny Mask and features a humanoid abomination wearing, well, a bunny mask. But rabbits are also carved into the cave walls.
- Hearing Voices: Leo Foster heard the voice of "the Snitch." Bee indicated that she also heard it.
- Humanoid Abomination: The girl in the bunny mask. She looks human, but can melt into the shadows. She killed Leo Foster with a touch and healed Tyler's leg by licking it.
- In the sequel, we also get the Hollow, who looks like a bland middle aged man, but is an ancient void and can Retgone people.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Leo Foster killed Tyler's partner with a tree branch and then put her in the car and pushed it off a cliff into the river. The tree branch made it look like they hit a tree, so the authorities would think it was an accident.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The girl in the bunny mask is definitely magic, but we don't know yet about "the Snitch." Leo Foster was clearly insane, but the Snitch apparently told him things he couldn't have known — like he would be getting a visit from Child Protective Services.
- It's very real, and now it's looking for a new agent.
- Scary Teeth: The first issue begins with Leo Foster chipping the teeth of his daughter, Bee, so that they are broken and jagged.
- Word-Salad Horror: A lot of Bunny Mask's speech is this, so intensely metaphorical and poetic it's near impossible to figure out what she's trying to say.
