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Why I'm Archiving
8 years ago
General
"It's a journal from Summercat! And he writes:"
Tonight while updating some items in the Furry Archive Library, I ran into a big reason why I'm doing this.
His name is Mark Shaw, and I bet most of you haven't heard of him before. No, don't look him up on Wikifur, he doesn't have a page and has a sole mention as a contributor to the 4th and final issue of The American Journal of Anthropomorphics. His comic, "Walter Kitty", likewise does not have an article, with "The Hollow Earth" listed solely on the article for Vision Entertainment Group, the publisher of three issues.
There's a clue - a post to alt.fan.furry backed up by Google, where Mark Shaw announces that Walter Kitty moved to a (now defunct) website and that the Hollow Earth story is complete. It also mentions that he and his (presumed) wife worked for Egmont and was working on an ebook called "The Devil In Texas", which I'm not finding any information on.
But that's literally it. That's all I've been able to find. I'm certain there's people out there who know more about Mark Shaw's work, and the Walter Kitty comic. Eric Schwartz apparently did the covers for The Hollow Earth (I have already emailed him to confirm and am waiting a reply back), and Ed Zolna has one issue of Walter Kitty for sale in his shop. I'm certain if I dug more, I could find more leads and more information.
I don't recall hearing of Mark Shaw before tonight. I'm certain before reading this journal, most of you haven't heard of him either. Mr. Shaw's work is quite possibly mostly lost to us as a fandom. Comics sitting in boxes or on hard drives, stored in a closet isn't really saved or available to us. Tonight was just another reminder of how much the Furry Fandom has lost and how much is at risk of being lost.
That's why I'm archiving. That's why I'm spending my time typing up info on comics, uploading the covers, researching information for entries, and going to cons to talk them.
So that we don't lose or forget about what we have done.
If anyone has any information on Mark Shaw, please. Let me know.
His name is Mark Shaw, and I bet most of you haven't heard of him before. No, don't look him up on Wikifur, he doesn't have a page and has a sole mention as a contributor to the 4th and final issue of The American Journal of Anthropomorphics. His comic, "Walter Kitty", likewise does not have an article, with "The Hollow Earth" listed solely on the article for Vision Entertainment Group, the publisher of three issues.
There's a clue - a post to alt.fan.furry backed up by Google, where Mark Shaw announces that Walter Kitty moved to a (now defunct) website and that the Hollow Earth story is complete. It also mentions that he and his (presumed) wife worked for Egmont and was working on an ebook called "The Devil In Texas", which I'm not finding any information on.
But that's literally it. That's all I've been able to find. I'm certain there's people out there who know more about Mark Shaw's work, and the Walter Kitty comic. Eric Schwartz apparently did the covers for The Hollow Earth (I have already emailed him to confirm and am waiting a reply back), and Ed Zolna has one issue of Walter Kitty for sale in his shop. I'm certain if I dug more, I could find more leads and more information.
I don't recall hearing of Mark Shaw before tonight. I'm certain before reading this journal, most of you haven't heard of him either. Mr. Shaw's work is quite possibly mostly lost to us as a fandom. Comics sitting in boxes or on hard drives, stored in a closet isn't really saved or available to us. Tonight was just another reminder of how much the Furry Fandom has lost and how much is at risk of being lost.
That's why I'm archiving. That's why I'm spending my time typing up info on comics, uploading the covers, researching information for entries, and going to cons to talk them.
So that we don't lose or forget about what we have done.
If anyone has any information on Mark Shaw, please. Let me know.
I genuinely wish archiving like this was something taken far more seriously back in the day. I'm stoked that there is someone taking up such a task! And proud to be able to say I know the person doing it!
I don't know much about him myself but I had recently purchased several issues of the awk comics release of hollow earth that I've scanned in and put up on the internet archive, if you'd like you could add those as a entry in your library :)
https://archive.org/details/walter-.....earth-Part1-12
Issue 15 has a couple older release covers printed on page 51 and 52.