Column SFF Bestiary Dat Wascally Wabbit: Bugs Bunny and His Dearest Frenemies Like all great comic characters, Bugs is more than a set of gags or a laugh line… By Judith Tarr | Published on June 22, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Warner Brothers on YouTube has performed a great service to the world: It has posted multiple mega-compilations of Looney Tunes cartoons. Bugs Bunny. Daffy Duck. Porky Pig. Sylvester and Tweety Bird. They’re all there, along with Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam and a constantly shifting roster of special guests. Talk about rabbit holes. The number-one character, the greatest star, especially if you ask him, is a grey-and-white, long-eared rabbit (or hare) with a wisecracking personality and a serious carrot habit. Bugs Bunny first evolved in the 1930s; by 1940 he’d taken the form we all know and love. He was the second cartoon character to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, after Mickey Mouse, and like Mickey for Disney, he became the spokesbunny for Warner Brothers. He’s still going in multiple forms, from comic books to feature films to games and, of course, cartoon shorts on television. Bugs is the epitome of cool. Very little fazes him. With carrot in hand, he’s always ready to deliver his signature line, “What’s up, Doc?” Late-era Bugs lives in a regular house, but for decades he inhabited a rabbit hole, complete with mailbox with his name on. The hole can crop up anywhere. When he stops for the night in a remote mansion that turns out to belong to a group of gangsters, he drills a hole in the floor and makes himself comfortable. Bugs’ original and frequent adversary is Elmer Fudd. Elmer takes various forms over the decades, but ur-Elmer is a hunter, and he wants you to be very, very quiet, because he’s hunting rabbits. Hunting is Elmer’s passion. He doesn’t even eat what he hunts. “I’m a vegetarian,” he says. “I hunt for sport.” Bugs gives him all the sport he’ll ever want or need. So does Bugs’ best frenemy, Daffy Duck, who vies with him to convince Elmer that it’s hunting season for the other’s species. Rabbit season? Duck season? Poor Elmer collapses in confusion. Confusion is the way of this world, and Bugs is the king of the tricksters. There are no rules that can’t be broken, except one: The rabbit always wins. He’s smarter than anybody else, and there’s no obstacle he can’t find a way around, over, under, or through—or that he can’t talk himself out of. The only time he’s even close to flummoxed is when the fourth wall comes down and The Artist takes control. The moving finger writes, the pencil draws and then erases, and even Bugs’ ingenuity can’t stop The Artist from taking sometimes violent liberties. That’s only fair, we learn, when we see who The Artist is: none other than Elmer Fudd. Finally, he says, I got even with that wascally wabbit. But tomorrow is another day, and another cartoon, and Bugs is back, triumphant as ever. He extends across worlds. He steps in for the Roadrunner as the quarry for Wile E. Coyote, self-proclaimed Genius. He stars in takeoffs on the classics: “The Scarlet Pumpernickel.” “Mutiny on the Bunny.” “A Star Is Bored.” And to my mind the greatest of them all, “What’s Opera, Doc?” Like all great comic characters, Bugs Bunny is more than a set of gags or a laugh line. He’s an archetype. No matter what you throw at him, he always has a comeback. You can’t beat him. You can’t even damage him—unlike his friend/rival/adversary, Daffy Duck, who all too often catches the flak that’s aimed at Bugs. The heart of Bugs’ power is incongruity. Rabbits in myth and lore are timid and shy. They’re prey. They don’t hunt; they’re hunted. Nor are they known for their ability to outsmart their hunters. The one thing they really are good at is making more rabbits. And here’s a rabbit who outsmarts everybody. Hunters can’t catch him. Predators can’t touch him. He’s afraid of nothing. He’s everything a rabbit is not supposed to be—but there he is. Long ears. Big teeth. Crunching his carrot. Cracking wise. Owning the world and everything in it.[end-mark] The post Dat Wascally Wabbit: Bugs Bunny and His Dearest Frenemies appeared first on Reactor.