BEAR AND BIRD

Four slice-of-life stories starring best friends Bear and Bird.

In the first—and slightly mean-spirited—tale, Bird sits on a flower, falls in, and get stuck. Bear hears the “flower” crying and decides to cheer it up by regaling it with stories of Bird’s “silly” mistakes. Unsurprisingly, this fails to amuse Bird. Bear smells the flower, and his subsequent sneeze inadvertently frees Bird. He proceeds to show Bird the “talking flower,” and, in a role reversal, Bird now deems Bear silly for believing a flower could speak. In the next story, Bear falsely claims that he has prepared for their picnic and then, to avoid getting caught lying, offers alternatives to all of the supplies he was supposed to bring, successfully escaping consequences—with a final reveal that Bird was aware but played oblivious to keep Bear happy. Next, Bird is jealous of Bear’s painting talent, so Bear cheers her up by lying about liking Bird’s artwork (which backfires when Bird makes Bear’s house a ton of paintings). In the final story, jealous Bird frets that Bear seems to prefer a new friend—but in fact he’s just been spending time snuggling with his beloved blanket. The art—digitally rendered thick-lined watercolorlike images on sepia—is large and far more attractive than the friendship model presented, with characters too often relying on lies to fix their problems.

Goes too far in avoiding moralistic characters and instead actively endorses bad behavior.