This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend. Read the full disclosure here.
Book: “LOONEY!” by Stephen Kozeniewski & Gavin Dillinger
Publishing Info: French Press Publishing, April 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ebook from the publisher
Where You Can Get This Book: Amazon
Book Description: When beloved cartoon characters come crawling out of her TV, army recruiter Gabriella Harman expects a zany romp instead of the hellish nightmare that follows.
One night, haunted by her memories of Iraq, Gabriella downs a stomachful of pills and booze. When her favorite cartoon characters, the Kooky Toons, start crawling out of the TV, she assumes she is hallucinating.
But soon Gabriella finds herself locked in a battle of wits and wills with Herman Hyrax, the world-famous, wise-cracking mascot of the Kooky Korporation. Herman is more than just a stinker, though. He may be a monster, a demon, a god, or something entirely more unwholesome.
Is Gabriella’s descent into a world of cartoonish violence and psychological torment real? Or has she simply gone…
LOONEY!?
Review: Thank you to French Press Publishing for sending me a copy of this book!
When I was a kid I loved the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”. I remember watching it for the first time when I was in early grade school at a friend’s house, and thinking it was very funny (mind you I missed a GOOD majority of the jokes, especially the sexual ones), but also TERRIFYING as Judge Doom melted a toon shoe in a big ol’ barrel of Dip. And then revealed himself as a murderous toon and went fully HAM on Bob Hoskins. It was the first time I had thought about the absurd over the top violence of the old ‘Looney Tunes” cartoons and how in real life that kind of violence would be horrifying. I kept thinking about “Roger Rabbit” while reading “LOONEY!” by Stephen Kozeniewski and Gavin Dillinger, where a beloved Bugs Bunny-esque cartoon icon is revealed to actually be an otherworldly deity that craves violence and chaos, and has used cartoon fame to spread his word, and can only be stopped by a traumatized war veteran.
“LOONEY!” is written like a chaotic and tripped up love letter to “Looney Tunes” and old school Disney shorts soaked in a bit of blood and dark fantasy, and it’s so creative it generally works. Our primary antagonist is Herman Hyrax, a violent and maniacal entity that manipulated a cartoonist promising him fame and fortune, but then used his fame to try and create a cult following of fans to implement his bloodthirsty needs. Enter Gabriella, a war veteran with PTSD who finds herself face to face with Herman Hyrax and other characters from the “Kooky Toons” shows, but in real life, sowing discord while other thought to be cartoons try to stop him. As I said, it feels like “Roger Rabbit” if it was far more violent and gory. It’s such a creative idea, and I genuinely love the concept of a Bugs Bunny kind of icon actually being something malevolent and dangerous, hiding behind a charismatic persona of a cartoon character. I will say that some of it dragged on a bit, and there may have been a few too many side characters that were also deities masquerading as cartoons, but in terms of fun and over the top horror moments it hit the mark pretty well.
I also appreciated how the book kind of acknowledges that these old time cartoons, while filled with lots of warm and fuzzy nostalgia, had some pretty problematic elements to them just based on the time frame in which it was taking inspiration from. I remember having old Bugs Bunny cartoons on a VHS tape that my grandmother gave me (it was almost assuredly a bootleg of some sort) that had some WILDLY racist bits in it, which my parents were sure to shut down when they saw just what it was I was watching, and there are similar moments in the lore of Herman Hyrax and his other ‘kooky’ compatriots. And even a reference to WWII propaganda shorts much like the ones so many cartoon companies were making at the time. I felt like the book did a good honest job of capturing the vibes of the cartoons of this era, damaging bits and all (I also really enjoyed having the bits of screenplays from some of the episodes and seeing Herman become more and more unhinged with studio notes written in).
Overall, “LOONEY!” is a creative horror story that I found entertaining. If you like kind of weird and somewhat meta horror, this could be a good fit.
Rating 7: Very creative and like a demonic iteration of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, “LOONEY!” has some wild horror bits and a nostalgia for old time cartoons (while acknowledging the baggage that came with them).
Reader’s Advisory:
“LOONEY!” isn’t on any Goodreads lists yet, but it did make me want to re-watch “Roger Rabbit”.
The Library Ladies 