Cute, If Somewhat Insane...

May I present Detective Honeybear, an amusing comic set in an old-school, black-and-white detective style, but featuring a modern, English-speaking, cartoon bear.Writer Alex Zalben and author Josh Kenfield have clearly had a lot of fun with this one! While the text can be a bit tedious at times, this funny (and family friendly!) comic book is very entertaining.

As the text format was already mentioned, I think I will go into that first. To be fair, it is mostly very easy to read; the font is fairly simple and looks like many other comic book styles. It is Honeybear's speech which is difficult, as all of his r's and l's have been replaced with w's. The overall effect of this is that his voice comes across very much like Tweety Bird's. It does, however, force the reader to go slowly, and sometimes repeatedly, over his speech bubbles in order to understand them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as his words become the most memorable and are arguably the most important (usually). Certainly his text is larger and bolder, and the font slightly different, indicating a certain uniqueness to the character's voice. The other characters are given a font that looks vaguely like newspaper print, which fits better with the overall theme. Zalben also uses larger or smaller size to indicate yelling, shouting, whispering, or distance. Emboldened words indicate emphasis.

Moving on to Kenfield's work, we find that the most obvious part of the appearance is it's black-and-white imagery. The style is very realistic, involving shadowing, angles, wrinkles, and various other details such as a 3D design. The overall effect looks very much like something out of an old movie. Detective Honeybear stands out in sharp contrast to both of these; not only is he in colour, but he is also very recognizably a cartoon.

This comic has some lovely old detective references. There are the obligatory fedora and trench coat combo, while the partner wears a suit. Such era-familiar tropes as the dead man's wing-tip shoes, the police chief's door with its label on the pseudo-window, and the various dramatic reveals by the detective (not to mention his grand entrance complete with headlights in the background) are all as enjoyable as they are nostalgic. The lack of helpful technology such as computers and cell phones adds to the flavour of an old-time classic. As already mentioned, there is the speech trope belonging to a Looney-Tunes character. And then there is a Paddington Bear joke, when Honeybear stores a sandwich under his hat and later begins munching on it while in conversation.

This comic series is a lot of fun to read, and can easily be enjoyed repeatedly. Honeybear is adorable, with his strangely childish speech-pattern while using adult language, his little hat and coat, and his penchant for snuggling the grumpy old chief of police. But perhaps the most interesting thing about Detective Honeybear is the fact that, as cute as he seems, he is apparently quite the little trouble-maker. On multiple occasions, it is discovered that he already knew something the others did not and simply chose not to inform them. At the very end, too, he pronounces "agreed" perfectly and, at the other characters' surprise, instantly corrects himself with "I mean, agweed." This indicates he can speak perfectly fine and chooses not to, for whatever reason; perhaps for the cuteness factor or perhaps to annoy the others. Finally, he is inappropriately excited over a man's death because it gives him a mystery to solve; this is a very Sherlock Holmes type of emotion and, while called out on it briefly at the time, he never gets any sort of flak about it, despite the fact that he is professionally employed by the government (unlike Holmes).

In essence, as cute as this little detective is, there is something a little off about him. Perhaps there will be more about this interesting duo-persona in the next issue, which I am eager to read.

- Rachel Reed