If you mention Bucky O’Hare to anybody who was born after the year 2000, they’ll either think you made that name up or it’s some millennial cringe. But the reality is that this interstellar green rabbit is one of the most underrated media properties to come out of the ’90’s that deserves a second chance at stardom, yet so few people are aware the franchise exists. When you look back at the scale this franchise had from its inception, we’re talking about something that was clearly meant to go further than it ultimately did. Bucky had his yellow gloves in many places, from comic books to cartoons to toys and even a video game.
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Despite so much going into this IP and his universe, Bucky O’Hare fell flat on his furry green face. After its launch, there were no follow-ups to the comics, no second season to the show, and no sequel to the arcade cabinet or NES title. It quickly gained a cult following after its demise, one it still enjoys today with a small but dedicated community who remembers this odd bit of nostalgia. Over 30 years later, outside of a short-lived action figure line aimed at those adult fans, the series has languished in obscurity. With so much fruit on the vine, it feels like its time to revive this forgotten franchise and give it the respect this funky fresh rabbit deserves.
The Origin Story of Bucky O’Hare
The early days of Bucky O’Hare were filled with a Who’s Who of comic book superstars, beginning with thelegendary Larry Hama. Years before he became an integral part to many of our childhoods by creating the characters and world for G.I. Joe, Hama had an idea for a comic about furry animals in space (a tribute to his mentor Wally Wood). Wishing to keep the rights to the series, he took the concept to Neal Adams and his independent publishing company, Continuity Comics. Hama and Adams intended to draw and ink the book together based on Larry’s prose, but once Michael Golden stepped into the picture, a new vision came together.
Released initially as eight-page shorts in six anthology comics between 1984 and 1985, the story of Willy DuWitt breaking through to an alternate dimension where space alien mammals battled a war with toads sounds hilarious and goofy when you first hear it. But then you read the captivating story and become immersed in Golden’s dynamic art, and you understand this book wasn’t meant to be a mere parody. Bucky O’Hare was serious business with a silly underside, but as Army veteran Hama can attest, war is hell – and Bucky and the crew of the Righteous Indignation were fighting for their furry little lives. There were plenty of laughs along the way, but the heart of the book was the ongoing fight for freedom, a topic that Hama would spend much of his career expertly writing about.
Bucky O’Hare: The Animated Series
Hama once described Neal Adams as “a pit bull in polyester,” always working an angle to find his next big thing. His belief in Bucky was huge, outsized only by Adams’ charisma, salesmanship and masterful skill with a dip pen. Despite only 48 pages of the story existing, Adams was able to sell the idea as an animated series that would be the love child of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars, and one just as lucrative as its predecessors. I would have loved to have been in the room for that pitch meeting, but with Golden’s art and Hama’s brilliant writing, how could anyone say no?
Bucky O’Hare and The Toad Wars premiered in syndication in September, 1991, and was armed and ready to take over Saturday mornings. If the comic series was already energetic and action-packed, the animated series brought those pages to life in an even bigger way. The theme song was an S-Tier jam that will be stuck in your head for the rest of your life, the animation was solid, and the voice actors worked their butt off with some great scripts that expanded on the comics and built a full universe for the members of S.P.A.C.E and their fellow freedom fighters. This show had stakes to it, and didn’t rely much on classic tropes to instead tell a unique overarching story that featured our intrepid heroes as underdogs against a fascist toad leader and his amphibious military-industrial complex.
But Bucky O’Mania didn’t stop there, as Hasbro picked up the license to make action figures (conveniently in a similar scale to Playmates extremely popular TMNT line), and Konami scooped up the rights to make the video game version. Hama and Golden expanded their comic to make each story a full-sized issue instead of a short, with Adams’ Continuity Comics being the publisher to get into newsstands and comic stores around the country. The push to make Bucky relevant was intense, and with high-quality support from companies like these, it’s a wonder that it didn’t gain the success it should have had.
I can remember being excited to watch the latest episode on weekends when it first aired, and still have my original Bucky figure as part of my toy collection (as well as one in package that I bought as an adult). I had already begun to grow out of TMNT, so Bucky caught my attention as being something familiar while simultaneously different and exciting. Unfortunately, the series didn’t connect in the way its creators hoped, and after 13 episodes and five issues, Bucky O’Hare was adrift in space without a lifeline.
How does Bucky O’Hare fit into the future?
The Bucky license remained untouched for years until Boss Fight Studios began releasing action figures for adult collectors in 2017 based on the original toy line. Sadly, the line didn’t last long, leaving behind an incomplete crew for the Righteous Indignation and several other key characters to never be produced. No other company has grabbed the rights of this property yet, and after seeing the struggles it had when it was first released, it seems like a risky venture to get into. Similarly, Hama and Golden drew a second comic arc that has never seen the light of day, which might be the biggest shame out of this entire story.
If a revival of Bucky O’Hare were to happen, it needs to either be an animated reboot of the source material with minimal changes to its core, or move the story to a different point in time and maturing the plot up while still keeping the characters the same as fans remembered them. A complete reboot in the vein of Netflix’sShe-Ra and the Princesses of Powermight be too much, and even their rendition of Voltron might have walked a few steps too many from its origin point. Less is more with a property like this, and if put in the right hands can surely reach the astronomical heights its predecessor hoped to reach.
Bucky will still have an uphill battle, as we’ve learned from similar indy comics properties who have tried to refresh their franchise. A great example is Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo series, which continues to enjoy tremendous popularity as a comic but crumbled as a Netflix animated series targeting a new younger audience. However, the difference there was the cartoon was about a different character in the Usagi timeline and not the titular samurai rabbit fans were accustomed to — and wishing to see in animated form— for decades.
On a smaller scale, I’d personally be happy seeing the missing pages from Hama and Golden, and even getting a sequential art send-off to the characters. Perhaps the problem was Bucky stepping into shoes that were simply too big to fit. Any publisher willing to back this book as a Kickstarter project would likely do very well for themselves, and instead of overproducing for an unreceptive general audience, they could target it to the community who has waited years to get one more adventure with the crew of the Righteous Indignation. Ultimately, somebody could earn a lot of Simoleans if they brought this back the right way, so let’s make it happen and croak some toad one more time!
Do you remember Bucky O’Hare? Would you like to see this rabbit make a comeback in the 21st century, and how would you do it? Let us know in the comments!
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