Unicorns are supposed to come with rainbows, sparkles, and happily-ever-afters.In Ryan Pagelow's Buni, the pink unicorn trades all of that for something far more mischievous. Pagelow, a Chicago-based cartoonist whose work has also appeared in Mad magazine, created Buni in 2009 for Amazon's Comic Strip Superstar contest, sketching it out in just three weeks. His goal was to make a tragic comic drawn in a cheerful, Hello Kitty-style look, and that clash between sweet visuals and dark outcomes has defined the series ever since. Four years later, the National Cartoonists Society named it Best Online Comic, and today Buni counts more than 600,000 followers on Instagram.
At its core, Buni is a masterclass in dark absurd comedy. Its candy-colored world of teddy bears, cupcakes, zombies, and unicorns looks lifted from a nursery wall, yet almost every strip ends with a twist that is gloomy, bizarre, or both. Pagelow never planned for the comic to be wordless, but silence soon became its trademark, letting a cute setup slide into misfortune within a few panels. For the artist, the punchline lives in subverting expectations: where readers anticipate a happy ending, he delivers a dark one instead.
Below, we've gathered some of our favorite comics starring Buni's most deceptively adorable character. Scroll down and see how quickly magic turns into mayhem.
