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When Dinosaurs Walked the Earth...
13 years ago
General
I have been asked how I got into Furry Fandom. Answer: I didn't. Not really. I just built a baseball field in my backyard and a bunch of people showed up.
I attended my first convention in 1968. I started selling art commercially in 1972. At that time, there were no "specialized" conventions. No anime, no comic, no furry --furry didn't even exist-- no gaming. All of that was lumped into the category of Science fiction/Fantasy and these first conventions were tiny. They were often extensions of college sci-fi clubs and were held on college campuses. A large art show might contain 60 pieces and those pieces were displayed on chairs. There was no digital --at all. Fanzines were run off of mineograph machines because Xerox was too expensive. And although a healthy group of "underground comics" had begun to flourish, comics for the most part were either superhero or cartoons. The idea of "funny animal" characters telling a serious story of any sort would get you laughed at.
Standing here, forty years later, it is hard to explain how limited the options were. "Robotech" was 11 years in the future. Japanese anime --for most of the American public-- was Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Star Trek was a break-through television show canned, by that time, by the establishment for being "weird" and was being kept alive by a dedicated set of fans who INVENTED the word "fandom". Also "fanzine", "fanboy" and "trekkie". The biggest electronic game at that time was PacMan. No slick computer graphics; no internet; no scanners; personal computers; no ipod. AND only about 6 tv channels because the cable-system had yet to conquer the world. If you wanted your art seen publicly, you gave illustrations free to fanzines and those illustrations were limited to whatever those fanzines were about.
I started doing anthropomorphic characters as an extension of sci-fi. Alien races based on Terran animals. Cats mostly. This race, which I called the Ormers --don't ask me where I got the name; I don't remember-- were a matriarchal empire where males (who were far in the minority) were all "married" to the Empress, available to the public for breeding purposes only and only by Imperial decree. This led to some interesting complications, which are too complex to go into now. Suffice it to say I liked cats, so I invented a cat race and that --I guess-- is where I started.
Now you have to jump forward to 1984. I had been doing fantasy art professionally for 11 years. My style did not lend itself well to paperback covers, which were almost exclusively in the Frazetta/J. Jones/M. Whelan mold, so I was confined to selling original fantasy stuff at shows, fantasy dolls at shows and doing comics and cartoon for anime-based APAs. I got that phone call in the middle of the night and although I knew nothing about laying-out a comic, I jumped at it. The result was Xanadu.
In 1984, the "funny animal" independent comics were starting to form themselves into a separate genre. You had Omaha, the Cat Dancer. Albedo. TMNT. Usagi Yojimbo. And several others. Xanadu joined the queue. These comics were popular enough to form their own fandoms and fanzines started-up, Among them Rowrbrazzle. Exactly when this group of "funny animal" fans started calling themselves "furries" I don't know, but the first large gathering of these fans occurred at San Diego Comic Con --which, like those first sci-fi club conventions, was tiny. Nowhere near the size of the mega-monster it is today.
The first exclusively furry convention occurred on the west coast around 1987. They spread east from there. And PCs were now affordable. The internet was digging in. It became easier for people with similar interests to communicate.
Well, you know the story from there. We're a slowly growing community, working on our second --maybe even third-- generation now. We are big enough to start fragmenting into our own specialist groups: Comic artists, gamers, fursuiters, MLP, etc. The fandom is now pushing 30 and I've been here for all of it.
Cool!
Comlink http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3191769/
I attended my first convention in 1968. I started selling art commercially in 1972. At that time, there were no "specialized" conventions. No anime, no comic, no furry --furry didn't even exist-- no gaming. All of that was lumped into the category of Science fiction/Fantasy and these first conventions were tiny. They were often extensions of college sci-fi clubs and were held on college campuses. A large art show might contain 60 pieces and those pieces were displayed on chairs. There was no digital --at all. Fanzines were run off of mineograph machines because Xerox was too expensive. And although a healthy group of "underground comics" had begun to flourish, comics for the most part were either superhero or cartoons. The idea of "funny animal" characters telling a serious story of any sort would get you laughed at.
Standing here, forty years later, it is hard to explain how limited the options were. "Robotech" was 11 years in the future. Japanese anime --for most of the American public-- was Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Star Trek was a break-through television show canned, by that time, by the establishment for being "weird" and was being kept alive by a dedicated set of fans who INVENTED the word "fandom". Also "fanzine", "fanboy" and "trekkie". The biggest electronic game at that time was PacMan. No slick computer graphics; no internet; no scanners; personal computers; no ipod. AND only about 6 tv channels because the cable-system had yet to conquer the world. If you wanted your art seen publicly, you gave illustrations free to fanzines and those illustrations were limited to whatever those fanzines were about.
I started doing anthropomorphic characters as an extension of sci-fi. Alien races based on Terran animals. Cats mostly. This race, which I called the Ormers --don't ask me where I got the name; I don't remember-- were a matriarchal empire where males (who were far in the minority) were all "married" to the Empress, available to the public for breeding purposes only and only by Imperial decree. This led to some interesting complications, which are too complex to go into now. Suffice it to say I liked cats, so I invented a cat race and that --I guess-- is where I started.
Now you have to jump forward to 1984. I had been doing fantasy art professionally for 11 years. My style did not lend itself well to paperback covers, which were almost exclusively in the Frazetta/J. Jones/M. Whelan mold, so I was confined to selling original fantasy stuff at shows, fantasy dolls at shows and doing comics and cartoon for anime-based APAs. I got that phone call in the middle of the night and although I knew nothing about laying-out a comic, I jumped at it. The result was Xanadu.
In 1984, the "funny animal" independent comics were starting to form themselves into a separate genre. You had Omaha, the Cat Dancer. Albedo. TMNT. Usagi Yojimbo. And several others. Xanadu joined the queue. These comics were popular enough to form their own fandoms and fanzines started-up, Among them Rowrbrazzle. Exactly when this group of "funny animal" fans started calling themselves "furries" I don't know, but the first large gathering of these fans occurred at San Diego Comic Con --which, like those first sci-fi club conventions, was tiny. Nowhere near the size of the mega-monster it is today.
The first exclusively furry convention occurred on the west coast around 1987. They spread east from there. And PCs were now affordable. The internet was digging in. It became easier for people with similar interests to communicate.
Well, you know the story from there. We're a slowly growing community, working on our second --maybe even third-- generation now. We are big enough to start fragmenting into our own specialist groups: Comic artists, gamers, fursuiters, MLP, etc. The fandom is now pushing 30 and I've been here for all of it.
Cool!
Comlink http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3191769/
I have some Xanadu issues (I think I missed the later ones), a lot of early Usagi issues, and some Albedos. I have a first edition boxed Albedo RPG box, and should Steve ever make it to germany again I shall have it signed. and Paul Kidd, too. ^^
in 84 I bought my first vinyl single ("1984" by Eurythmics), and in 87 I was starting a career as a
car screwerauto mechanic. didn't meet the fandom until 97... on a RPG con. :) some people consider me among the founders of german fandom. :PSounds like a virus, don't it?
with internet you find all kinds of people to gather, also those who are only marginally involved, but still interested. luckily most are worth knowing. :)
*atchew!*
XD
I got started in '95 just as the big transition to online was happening, so I had my foot in the fanzine and online camps right from the start. Was interesting to see it evolve.
I do love my 'zines and comics, but have no idea what I'm going to do with them all if I start moving around more often.
Hey! If you forget about them, your stuff could end-up on Storage Wars!
The 'zines began with the APAs -- first was VOOTIE in the late 70's (it was nominally a 'funny-animal' zine and did feature a lot of proto-furry work, but was actually intended for any comic work that wasn't superhero oriented.), followed by ROWRBRAZZLE, Q, Ink Spots and Gallery in the mid-80's. The first furry fanzine that wasn't a members-only APA, Furversion, came out in the late 80's, and was quickly followed by Yarf!.
Fred Patten, who's been involved in all of the fandoms since the late '60's, had written a comprehensive timeline of the early days of the furry fandom; I think it may have been posted to the Flayrah site.
I first got online in 1990, but didn't have easy access to any resources outside of the Prodigy online service ( *shudder* ), and I didn't become aware of Fidonet and all the other goodies that were available until much later. I was introduced to furry through comics, for the most part, and some very nice Sonic fans.
Though I didn't mean no one was online at the time; I just meant there was a very significant contingent of fans who'd never touched a computer back then, and almost everyone was familiar with (for example) Usagi Yojimbo and other such characters who probably introduced them to the genre. I found out about Albany Anthrocon in 1997 through an ad in the back of a comic book.
In a way, I miss the old days. Maybe that means I'm getting old, myself? :P
Greetings from Rochester. :)
(God I feel old sometimes...)
However it beats the alternative.
Needless to say, when I started attending conventions in 1993, the first thing I bought was the rest of the Xanadu stuff. Getting to finally get a picture from you yourself, at ConFURence East in 1995, was one of the highlights of my fan life back in the day.
And getting pics from you still is a highlight, Vicky. My only regret is that I can't get more, because of the rotten economy. What I can do, at least, is keep on encouraging you, and cheering you on, be it as a customer or from the sidelines. As I said, the day you put your pencil down for good will be the day one of the pillars of this fandom falls. May not register to most young post-internet fans, but it will to me.
But I'm more interested in hearing about "that phone call in the middle of the night"! What was Lex's sales pitch, and how did he convince you to take on Xanadu? (I'd be sceptical of any random crackpot with a sales pitch these days, since they usually see you as a stepping stone to Fame and Fortune that they can't acquire on their own merits...)
If this conversation happened in 1984, it took four years of development? Xanadu was first published in 1988, as I recall. What transpired in those four years?
But that was close to ..17 years ago???? Egad. Where does the time go.
Meeting you for the first time in 1993 is still a highlight of my life. ^.^
I remember you helping to CREATE furry fandom.
I would love to get a beer with you and hear more of these stories of fan convention evolution. You were the creator of the first furry things I ever bought, which had to be CF6, I think -- Xanadu, and a 16x20 matted original unicorn. Neither of which particularly dragony, which is saying a lot, considering my usual tastes. :)
Thanks for sharing!
I was an early starter (the humble age of 11) when we got the internet in our house, found the world of furry and felt at home!
But now I feel a generation older than what seems the common denominator these days (and even at just shy of 28 years old, I feel incredibly old at times around the majority of the fandom!)
Shows such as Capitan Bucky O'Hare, Thundercats were my upraising. (Now they are called retro... god help me!) Animals of Farthing Wood is incredibly memorable for me as it made normal looking British animals human in my young eyes, something not done for series, I know there was Watership Down (makes me all tearful to this day) and Bambi and so forth, but they were movies!
Thank you for sharing your memories, it's always wonderful to hear people reminiscing. I love the personal storeys people have to tell, it's humanising(?) I hope to hear more in the future! :)
It gave me a name for the ideas I had... I tried my hand at writing back then and got my work ripped apart by people I trusted so I shelved it. I was in and out of the Fandom for about 10-12 years I guess.
Things started to draw me back to it... Stumbled into Chakats Den and the Chakats.... I even got my sweetie to go with me to Rainfurrest and at first it was ohh then a pair of Foxes walked by and they looked real and that hooked her... She likes to costume so that got her to thinking and playing with ideas...
femm
I know I've been a fan of yours since I found "Xanadu" on the shelves of the local comic shop ages ago. And I fully admit, it had helped my interest in the fandom grow a lot stronger.
were basically furries. (Yogi Bear, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry [to some degree], etc.)
The influences of the Furry are deep within the details.
But my true first 'furry crush' definitely was Jenny from Bucky O'Hare. But nothing came from that, until I'm almost certain my first reads of Xanadu, which was about 1992 or 91. I'm still almost certain that I saw the books just a few months short of me joining FurryMUCK in 1991 or 2. Along with Omaha the Cat Dancer. Since then, I've been a confirmed 'furry' and never looked back on it in shame :) Empress Alicia's stunning beauty and I might add strong will, was only matched by Elfquest's stunning elf females :) But Alicia's leadership qualities also sold me.
You did it to me, Vicky! I still have that print you did for me at CFe1! My first con :)
A follow-up was written by Harry Warner in 1992, published in hardcover by Scifi Press, and carried the history forward to 1960. Unfortunately, Harry died shortly afterward. He had been a newspaper man by trade, and lived in a small town in Pennsylvania, Hagerstown. He had published one of the best fanzines in the 1940s, and continued to publish sporadic issues up through the 1970s. What Harry was mainly known for, though, was writing thousands of letters of comment, to fill the letter columns of other people's fanzines.
Harry himself was doubtful anyone would write a fanhistory of the 1970s or later. By then, fandom had grown far too large for anyone to have first hand experience of it all, or even second-hand. Instead, subsequent fan historians have written about selected subjects of fanhistory -- a regional fandom, say. I myself have written quite a bit about Canadian SF fandom, and recently collected the articles into one volume. (Alas, not into an actual book, but a fanzine that can be downloaded from eFanzines.com.) People have written books about early Trek fandom, the 1930s New York City fandom (they called themselves The Futurians), or, in one case, a single specific fan! I've also written articles on the history of notable SF fan artists.
Nobody could possibly write a complete history of all related or semi-related fandoms today. It wouldn't be a book, it would be a library. Or else it would be so sketchy that almost nobody could be mentioned by name and few events would be important enough to cover.
Got interested in this furry stuff in the 1980s with the Pogo comic strip reprints...political satire with funny animals with lovely artwork by Walt Kelly. Then came Albedo, Critters, Omaha, and Cutey Bunny.
The turning point after years of Harvey, Archie, and Gold Key comics fun in the 1970s. The mature slant of things with the Pogo books came after.
I was a bit late getting into furry though, late '80s or thereabouts, so I don't know that much about the earliest years outside of retrospectives like yours. I would have to say that by the time I got there, Xanadu was definitely one of the foundations to the fandom, at least from my experience. You were one of those on my "Whatever happened to...?" list for a few years before your account popped up here. As for adult-themed anthro cartoons which may have had influence on the budding furry fandom, I'm a little surprised there was no mention of Crumb or Bakshi.
Say, did you ever find spumoni ice cream? :O
http://furry101.com/?p=62
The main problem with all such resources is that they become lost. Nobody knows they are there after a short while. It used to be the same way with fanzines in SF fandom. You may hear of the "greatest" fanzine of the 1950s or 1960s... but where will you ever find a copy of it to read?
I was obviously born after the fandom made a bit of a name for itself, but I am fascinated by the history and even watched the "official" Anthrocon 1999 "documentary" (which included your full panel). Would you be willing to expand upon your story for the preservation of the history of the Furry Fandom? There are at least three persons trying to put together a book for the history of Furry, if you are willing, I can ask them to contact you.
PS- I don't know if I've watched all of Robotech, but I have watched all of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. XD