The Moolah Tree

Fuzz & Pluck #3

by Ted Stearn

A bear and chicken have darkly comic adventures in this Winnie the Pooh -for-adults-esque graphic novel. Pluck, an irritable and featherless rooster, and his best pal, the awkward-but-lovable teddy bear known as Fuzz, met long ago in a garbage truck. A tenuous―if decidedly co-dependent―friendship followed, sending them on a series of not-so-heroic adventures. But now, we find them on a ramshackle barge, slowly drifting out to sea. How did they get there? How will they escape? Black & white illustrations throughout.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 2016

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am kind of between 3 and 4 stars for this mild and mildly amusing adventure tale about Pluck, an featherless rooster perpetually in a bad mood, and his sidekick, the more vulnerable teddy bear, Fuzz, This story, various people's interest in finding The Moolah Tree, would seem to bear some relationship to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in helping us see the pursuit of money as the root of all evil, but in addition to that, it is drawn really well but is also really odd, with a possible appeal to all ages.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE MOOLAH TREE is the third collection of the wacky adventures of Ted Stearn’s Fuzz and Pluck characters. It’s also the last. Stearn died earlier this year. The detailed cartoony renderings and creative layouts we expect are here as is the screwball family-friendly storyline of the tattered teddy bear and his defeathered chicken pal. I’ll miss the oddball tales of these two. Ted was a friend and I’ll miss him even more.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read, one that is arguably all-age. It's more mature than a kid's story, but there's nothing here that a child couldn't read and enjoy. It's been a while since we had any Fuzz and Pluck stories.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Fuzz & Pluck, and this adventure in which they endeavor to find a tree that grows money is no exception. I do wish that things would go better for Fuzz sometimes, though. Pluck can be a real jerk.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ted Stearn's passing in 2019 was sad, but this idiosyncratic cartoonist left us three volumes of the adventures of Fuzz & Pluck, so the legacy persists.

Stearn was a talented creator, capable of beautiful pen and ink line work, and the odd yet cohesive universe he created for Fuzz (an animate teddy bear) and Pluck (a featherless rooster) has a strange harmony that allows off-kilter ideas to flourish. In this final volume of the series, our heroes encounter a flowered donkey (aka "flonkey") and a tree that grows cash money, and it all just makes sense within its own little hermetic universe. I grew up reading Goscinny and Uderzo's Asterix & Obelix comics, and in many ways, Fuzz & Pluck strikes me as a worthy successor to those wonderful stories, albeit oriented to a post-adolescent mindset.

There's nothing deep or revelatory in these pages, but at the same time the world of Fuzz & Pluck has great appeal: the author was a master of the comics lineage, and in The Moolah Tree he riffs on all sorts of narrative and visual ideas that flow from that rich history, all while creating something very distinctly his own.

[Yvette · Rating 4 out of 5]

好心肠的受气包毛毛熊Fuzz 与坏脾气的毒舌拔毛鸡Pluck 这对活宝也太有趣了。配角们也非常出彩，比如非专业海盗船长和船员三人组，囤积狂小姐姐，三女巫银行催收员，放屁能飞的开花驴。对白颇无厘头。剧情也是一波三折。画风很可爱，Fuzz那可怜巴巴的样子让人笑出眼泪。决定马上去看这个系列前两部。