Bugs IS “Super-Rabbit, The Rabbit of Tomorrow!” 

This month, we are celebrating the Chuck Jones-directed animated short, Super-Rabbit starring the rascally wabbit, Bugs Bunny with an exclusive April feature special. Add a One-of-a-Kind Contemporary Model Cel from the animated short to your collection. Mention ‘Super Rabbit’ and receive a ‘Super Rabbit’ lobby card as a special gift. 

Released on April 3, 1943, Super Rabbit was the 16th Bugs Bunny cartoon and the 47th one directed by Chuck Jones. The cartoon is a parody of the popular DC comic book and radio character Superman. Who could forget the opening narration? “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” introduced as a montage in the Fleischer shorts.  

Owing to Chuck Jones‘s success with his Rover Boys parody a year earlier – he was the perfect animation director to create a Superman parody. And in true form, Jones and Ted Pierce visually captured the opening in classic Warner Bros. style. A cork gun is substituted for the dry-brushed bullet whizzing across the screen. A dog-tired steam train replaces the modernized locomotive from the Fleischer short – a visual contradiction to the “faster than a locomotive” declaration. Finally, Bugs stumbles on the pointy tip of the skyscraper, causing him to fall which becomes the pinnacle switch from the ‘leap to the highest building’ gag. 

In the second Superman theatrical release, “The Mechanical Monsters” (1941), the film features Clark Kent (for the first time) using a telephone booth to dispose of his street clothes to transform into Superman. Bugs Bunny follows the same narrative. As the test subject (Rabbitus idioticus americanus), Bugs devours a carrot (my great–my greatest experiment! A super-vitamin with locked-in flavor, modern-design super carrot) in Professor Canafrazz’s laboratory and transforms into Little Bo Peep … and then into the superhero. Bugs declares: “This looks like the job, for Super-Rabbit!”  

With his new Super Rabbit persona, he soars through the sky to Deepinaharta, Texas to fight the notorious rabbit hater, Cottontail Smith, and his horse. Even as the Super Rabbit persona, Bugs holds on to his own personality and antics while still posing as a superhero.  

This looks like a job for a real Superman! The U.S. Marine Corps was so thrilled that Bugs Bunny decided to become a Marine in this cartoon that they insisted the character be officially inducted into the force as a private, which was done, complete with dog tags. The character was regularly promoted until Bugs was officially “discharged” at the end of World War II as a Master Sergeant.  

American writer-animator, Ted Pierce creates an effective balance of  Superman references and gags for this Bugs Bunny short.  Jones’s confidence is all over the cartoon – and creating one of the funniest parodies from the Warner Bros. cartoon library. Not only does the short scream with energy and excitement – but it takes complete pride in the studio’s style of animated shorts; and it shows that when lampoon Fleischer, as the gags are done so creatively and incisively.  

From bold expressions and energetic sequences and timing, this animated short remains an iconic part of Chuck Jones’s legacy and is an important part of the history of animation.  

CLICK HERE to shop One-of-a-Kind Contemporary Model Cels from the Super Rabbit animated short. If you have not seen ‘Super Rabbit,’ CLICK HERE to watch the short.