In "Minimum Security," a furious (yet adorable) bunny and his friends confront countless obstacles to pursue their dreams. Whether it’s to save the world or to break into the competitive world of accordion superstardom, they use everything from plucky grit to the willful denial of unrealistic expectations to achieve their goals. And, in Bunnista’s case, an impressive arsenal of gray-market weaponry.

The title is inspired by a prisoner who, after being released into general society, observed in an interview, "I’m still not free; I’m just in minimum security." "Minimum Security" is an allegory of a society headed over the precipice into who-knows-what.

Characters:

• Bunnista: After escaping from the mascara section of a cosmetics testing lab, Bunnista made it his mission to destroy evil as he sees it (one missing eye notwithstanding). Not so unrelatedly, he’s an ardent explosives and weapons enthusiast.

• Kranti: Kranti wears leaves and lives outside in a quest to rewild herself and to restore the planet as a whole to its natural state. Beneath her harsh, uncompromising exterior is a person who’s really hard to get along with.

• Bananabelle: With her good heart and cheerful nature, Bananabelle just wants everyone to get along and for everything to work out in the end. To keep hope alive, she embraces denial as her most effective tool.

• Nikko: Kranti’s brother deploys his considerable charm and intelligence to achieve a life of glamor, fun, comfort and junk food.

• Javier: Nikko’s boyfriend is passionate about politics and art. He’s convinced that the most effective way to change the minds of millions, and thus save the world, is by playing Animist riot-polkacore music on the accordion.

• Chip: He’s filthy rich, he’s narcissistic (not that those things necessarily go together, ahem), and he burns with the desire for true love (without really knowing what that is).

• Other characters include Fluffy , a dog who wants nothing more than a colossal mountain of bones (with little bits of rotting meat still attached), Bunnista’s mom , who wields her cleaning implements with fierce assertiveness, and a polar bear who eats oil company shareholders in an attempt to save the polar ice caps (plus they just taste so good).

About the artist:

Stephanie McMillan decided at age ten that she would become a cartoonist, and spent much of grade school reading Peanuts and copying the characters. She later revised her goal to animation, and created her first short animated film during the summer after high school at the film studio near Bonn, Germany that had been founded by her grandfather, animator Hans Fischerkoesen ("Das Loch im Westen," and "Die Vervitterte Melodie"). Awakening in high school to the dangers of nuclear war, she went on to work for many years as an activist against imperialism and for social justice issues.

Stephanie graduated from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1987 with a BFA in film, studying animation under Richard Protovin and John Canemaker. During this time she worked painting cels for an animated motivational film for Huggies, and as an intern for stop-motion animator Jane Aaron. She received an award for her student film.

In 1992 she was hired by a weekly magazine as an editorial assistant and offered her first professional cartooning opportunity. In 1999 she began self-syndicating cartoons for other publications, plus providing exclusive comic features and illustrations. Her work has appeared in, among others, Yes! Magazine, New Internationalist, Comic Relief, Amarillo Globe-News, Funny Times, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Boston’s Weekly Dig, ACTivist Magazine, Z Magazine, New Standard News, Working For Change, City Link, Anchorage Press, and American Libraries.

Currently "Minimum Secutity" is syndicated online by United Media’s comics.com, where it runs five days per week.

A collection of her cartoons, "Attitude Presents Minimum Security" was published in 2005 by NBM Publishing. She co-created, with writer Derrick Jensen, a graphic novel "As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial" (2007, Seven Stories). Her work is also included in "Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists" (2002), as well as in various textbooks and several books in the Opposing Viewpoints series by Gale Publishing Group.

Her cartoons have been included in exhibits at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (New York), the San Francisco Comic Art Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC), among other venues.

Professional Organizations:

* AAEC (Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, since 2007)
* Cartoonists With Attitude (founding member, since 2006)

Awards:

* First Place, Excellence in Postal Union Journalism, APWU National Postal Press Association, 2003 and 2005
* Honorable Mention, Creative Resistance Contest, Adbusters, 2000
* First Place, General Excellence in Editorial Cartooning, Florida Press Club, 1997 and 1994
* Second Place, General Excellence in Artist Illustration, Florida Press Club, 1996