“Bears” by Leah Bobet opens with one of those sweeping statements that just beg to be justified:
Ninety-eight percent of all fictional deaths are directly attributable to being eaten by bears.
Bullshit, you say? What about those shooting and stabbings and drownings and beatings and death by Doomed Gay Manlove?
Well, it’s not my problem if you can’t see the bears.
The narrator is a grad student who does see the bears crawling around the comics his friend is reading. Then the true dangers of cheap entertainment are revealed–when the bears get out. In this silly story about college students plagued by narrative bears, the humor is filled with references to philosophy, literature, criticism and getting thrown out of the campus library. Oh, and zombies, too.
My favorite parts are what the bears do, and the imagery of it, even if they don’t seem any more threatening than teddy bears. But don’t let that fool you. Stephen Colbert is right.
Writing Every Day 
Bears? For my birthday this year, my brother sent a card that reads: “It’s when you can’t hear the bats, that’s when the bats are coming.” It’s genius.
But did you go waltzing with bears?