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Posted 8 years agoI have a table at AnthroCon and should be there if all goes well.
This year I am NOT planning to apply for a table at Further Confusion. I did OK there this year, but I didn't care for the split dealer's room layout, and a lot of the friends I used to go there to hang out with don't go any more. I just found it overall kind of a depressing experience.
After being turned down two years in a row for BLFC, it's obvious someone on their selection committee doesn't like me, and I see no point in trying to get in again this coming year.
I am going to TRY to get into Texas Furry Fiesta for next year, but since I don't know anyone on their selection committee God only knows if I'll have any better luck with that.
Beyond that, any other out-of-state cons are not financially feasible for me to try and get to. The only reason I can do TFF is there's friends going I can room with.
This year I am NOT planning to apply for a table at Further Confusion. I did OK there this year, but I didn't care for the split dealer's room layout, and a lot of the friends I used to go there to hang out with don't go any more. I just found it overall kind of a depressing experience.
After being turned down two years in a row for BLFC, it's obvious someone on their selection committee doesn't like me, and I see no point in trying to get in again this coming year.
I am going to TRY to get into Texas Furry Fiesta for next year, but since I don't know anyone on their selection committee God only knows if I'll have any better luck with that.
Beyond that, any other out-of-state cons are not financially feasible for me to try and get to. The only reason I can do TFF is there's friends going I can room with.
CaliFur bound
Posted 8 years agoI'll be at CaliFur in the dealer's room this Friday and Saturday (and possibly Sunday) with 
Scott_Ruggels I'll have tons of the ChocoEgg animal figures, plus I'll be offering sketches and small watercolor character portraits.
Scott_Ruggels I'll have tons of the ChocoEgg animal figures, plus I'll be offering sketches and small watercolor character portraits.One book and Four Comics
Posted 8 years agoI got overly ambitious and wrote up some reviews of one book and four comics.
Kismet by Watts Martin.
The first full-length novel by long-time short story and novella author Watts Martin, Kismet could best be described as social SF with elements of hard SF. It takes place in a world of space ships controlled by AIs, city-sized habitats scattered through the solar system, and humans transformed into animal-form ‘totemics.’ But the plot could be taken from today, with fears of terrorism, anti-totemic sentiment from ‘cisform’ humans, estranged siblings and children trying to deal with the legacy of a famous parent.
Gail, a young female rat totemic, inadvertently gets on the wrong side of a powerful corporation during what should be a routine salvage operation, and soon finds herself, her friends and her adopted sister drawn into a far-reaching conspiracy.
“Ripped from today’s headlines” is kind of a cliché`, but if you replace ‘totemic’ with ‘transgender,’ the things the totemic characters deal with will seem eerily familiar to contemporary readers. Referring to unaltered humans a ‘cisform’ just drives it home (in a way that term is a bit too current and will date the book. In a few hundred years I’m pretty sure there will be another term in use that means the same thing.)
The first half of the book has a lot of discussion about totemic rights between Gail, her friend Ansel the fox totemic, her wolf totemic sister and a human law enforcement officer. Gail’s mother, a famous totemic rights activist who was killed by a terrorist’s bomb, makes Gail both a rallying point and an object of hatred, depending on which side someone is on. Her trying to deal with that legacy is one of the themes that run through the story.
While the action does pick up during the latter part of the book, much of the story is devoted to Gail’s personal and professional struggles, speculations on corporate motivations as well as discussion about problems and discrimination faced by totemics.
I had no problem with the prose, although the choice of some terms and names was puzzling. I already mentioned that ‘cisform’ may quickly be outdated, but I honestly had a lot more trouble with the names of the two big corporations: Keces and Quanata. Why would anyone name their company something that’s one letter off from ‘feces?” That’s what I saw every time I saw the word. And Quanta is very close to the famous Austalian airline Qantas, which was also distracting because I kept thinking the characters were talking about the airline.
Of course, other people’s mileage may vary on how distracting they might find the names. This story is definitely not the nasty dystopian SF world that seems so common now, and will appeal not only to furry readers but those interested in a SF take on contemporary social issues.
Next I’ll be reviewing four current furry comics. Most of my heavy critiquing is on the art, since that's what I actually have a background in, but beyond all that I hope to alert people to comics they might not know about otherwise.
Beyond the Western Deep, 2 hardcopy volumes (so far), ongoing internet series. Alex Kain (W) and Rachel Bennet (A). The online strip has a separate side- story arc with art by Jerome Jacinto, which hasn’t been collected in book form yet, so I won’t be covering that here.
Published by Action Lab press, Beyond the Western Deep is presented in two very slick full-color graphic novels of 79 and 96 pages respectively. The story is nothing groundbreaking—set in a familiar medieval world of castles, kings, swords and northern barbarians, an uneasy truce between hostile factions is about to be broken. The main characters are young (teenage?) red squirrel Quin & his otter friend Dak, who live in the forest kingdom of Sunsgrove (composed of otters and squirrels, naturally!) They’re accompanying the Dak’s father to a border castle belonging to the militaristic Canin (wolves), which are Sunsgrove’s allies by treaty, even if they don’t really act like it in person. The other main players are the Ermehn (weasels), the Canin’s traditional enemy exiled to the northern wastes. There’s also desert foxes, sea-going ferrets and wild cats, but they don’t play a part in these first two episodes.
Nothing much happens in the first volume beyond introducing the main characters and the setting. Volume 2 introduces the Canin, more background history, and there’s a big battle. They’re both fast, easy reads. But at a total of 175 pages, that’s not a lot of story covered for the amount of pages. Online volume 3 is being released at one page a week.
Here’s a legend I read once: High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away to the ground, then a single moment of eternity will have gone by.
Keep that tale in mind when thinking about trying to follow Beyond the Western Deep at one page a week. Because that’s what it feels like. “Glacial” doesn’t begin to describe it.
On the other hand, I do have good things to say about the art. I’ll admit I’m partial to animation-style character designs and artwork, which drew me to the series in the first place (it sure wasn’t the blazingly exciting storyline.) The art is very clean, bright and easy to follow, and generally the layouts are good. My only major complaint is the Ermehn all look too much alike, and you need to study the tribal markings and clothing to tell them apart. I've also heard complaints from a couple of other people that all the characters had the same type of face and mouth regardless of species, but honestly that didn’t bother me. Another comic I’m covering here (Autumnlands) the animal characters look radically different from each other, and then I hear complaints that they all look too ugly. If the reader can easily tell a squirrel from an otter from a wolf, then they can have the same type of mouth as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not sure how many volumes the story is supposed to last, and given the abysmal track record of webcomics actually finishing anything, I’m not going to hold my breath. If I could give the creators one piece of advice it would be this—for the love of God, pick up the story pace so there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of finishing it before that little bird wears down that mountain.
Dreamkeepers 4 volumes (so far), art and story by Dave & Liz Lillie (there’s no breakdown about who does what, so for purposes of this discussion I’ll just be referring to the creators as “them.”)
I already reviewed the first two volumes some time back, but two more have been released since then, and for this discussion I’m going to be taking a different track than a straightforward review.
I’ll lead off by saying that they’ve done a remarkable thing with this series, producing 4 full-color volumes of very high-quality work. They’ve been relentless promoting it online, with multiple Kickstarters, an elaborate website, extensive involvement of fans, cross-posting on different galleries, creating a card game based on the comics, running side stories about the characters, attending conventions, and basically working their asses off to promote the book.
(especially compared to me. My idea of promotion is to mention on FA and Facebook I’m going to have a new book out soon, and maybe, if I’m feeling really ambitious, posting a couple of pages from it.)
Bonus points for the series include it being an unusual fantasy, non-pornographic, and steering clear of pandering towards the LGBT audience that seems to be the backbone of most current furry books and comics. The art style and character designs are unique and instantly recognizable, a welcome change from the vague anime-type designs or hyper-realism that are currently predominating.
So with all those things going for it, why do I find the comic unreadable?
I’ve studied it and thought about it, compared it to other books that I found easy to read and follow, and finally came up with some ideas.
#1: Each page is way, way too busy and crowded, making it impossible to take in what’s going on at a glance. For some of the pages you practically need a magnifying glass to see what’s happening. This is exacerbated by the printing in some scenes, which comes out so dark you literally can’t see what’s going on. A lot of the pages are crammed with dialogue and a bunch of characters in each panel, so the reader has no idea what to focus on. Even when there's not tons of characters in each panel, there's invariably a minutely detailed background where it's work to pick out the characters and what they're doing. The few times the action focuses of one or two characters and each panel isn’t cluttered with super-detailed backgrounds, the action becomes much easier to follow.
This brings up a problem I see over and over again in these ambitious graphic novels out of furry fandom—it’s obvious when the creators don’t read comics, haven't studied the classic how-to books on the art of comics, and haven’t spent a lot (or any) time doing comics before launching their magnum opus. If you spend years reading and practicing comics, eventually you learn what does and doesn’t work, and that there’s reasons the pro artists lay out pages a certain way.
#2: There are too many characters. Oh God are there too many characters. This results in half a dozen different scenes with different characters that need to be kept track of per book, and often switching in the middle of a page. Eventually I gave up trying to figure out who was who, who was on what side and what their relationship (if any) to the other characters were. As soon as I’d sort of figured out what was going on, there’d be another scene switch with 10 new characters to keep track of in an entirely separate location. The one good thing I can say is the characters all do look different, even if I don't know who they are and what they're doing. At the very least provide a dramatis personae with notes about the characters in each book.
#3: The story is unnecessarily convoluted. There is a reason editors exist. There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t seem to advance the plot much, and just muddies the waters. Of course, action with no advancement is still preferable to some of the comics I’ve seen where the characters just sit around and talk for page after page.
And despite all this, I’ll still get volume #5 when it comes out. Because, you know, I do like looking at the pretty pictures.
Animosity, Marguerte Bennet (W) & Rafael DeLatorre (A)
This comic is put out by a ‘mainstream’ comic publisher (albeit a very small one.) It’s one of five things I’ve read in recent years with the same premise—animals inexplicably develop sentience overnight. (two are books, Mort(e) and The Awareness, and three are comics, Elmer, Animosity and Squarriors)
So far there’s been 5 issues, along with a 1-shot series with a different artist. It follows a girl, Jesse, and her bloodhound Sandor. The first issue jumps right into the action, with the animals suddenly becoming sentient and gaining speech and (of course) immediately turning on humanity. Jesse, her parents and Sandor struggle to survive the initial chaos in the first couple of issues. Then the story switches to a road trip with Sandor escorting Jesse across the country in an attempt to find her half-brother in California.
The series does address some of the issues that would come up—mainly about finding food to feed everyone when all prey animals are suddenly intelligent. The obvious solution (which happens in Mort(e) ) is for the animals to start eating the very abundant humans, but I guess they didn’t want to turn this into a Walking Dead-type horror comic. Other than a mention of some humans raising soybeans for protein, we’re not really sure what the predators eat. There’s also a brief mention of trying to get both human and animal populations within sustainable limits, but that is never resolved either.
Issue #2 has an intriguing scene showing a ‘free market’ in Central Park where chickens sell their eggs, cows their milk, and donkeys rent out their transportation services. But that cooperation vanishes into anarchy by the end of the issue, setting the stage for the next few chapters.
Overall the writing is decent, except for a very odd story skip. (spoilers ahoy!!)
At the end of issue #2 Sandor is nearly beaten to death by Jesse’s father. Then the scene abruptly switches a year ahead, with a fully recovered Sandor leading Jesse out of a ruined city, after both her parents are dead. The reader has no idea how Sandor recovered from his beating, and what happened to Jesse’s parents. At least spare the reader a short caption explaining what happened!
The art has the major problem that always seems to come up when a non-furry publisher does a comic with animals—the artist is great at drawing humans, but can’t draw decent animals. The animals are barely passable, and most good furry artists could draw rings around him. It’s always frustrating when what could be a very good book gets dragged down by substandard animal art. There’s also some weird animal anatomy (the koala with a gun, forgetting koalas have those oddly shaped front hands), and the deer with grenades on his antlers (what exactly is he going to do with them? It’s not like he can pull the pin and throw it!) A lot of the animals in the “Animilitary” wear steel-jawed traps to give them extra biting power, but those traps were clearly drawn with no references at all and only vaguely resemble actual steel-jaw traps.
The animal art is even worse in the side-story series (called Animosity: The Rise), and the humans in that don’t look great either.
Overall I give the series a B, with the crappy animal drawings and the occasionally disjointed story pushing it down. I’ll keep getting it, though, because I do give them an A for effort. Not sure about The Rise, however. The art in that is so bad…
The Autumnlands volume 2: Woodland Creatures Kurt Busiek (W) and Benjamin Dewey (A)
I reviewed the first volume of this last year (I think) but I’m including this here as an example of a comic where everything comes together—a veteran writer who knows how to write and pace a comic, and an excellent artist who can draw both humans and a variety of animal characters.
Some furry fans may find the animal characters a little too realistically drawn (i.e. not the beautiful idealized furries that are de rigueur in most furry art) but (for me at least) they integrate well into the style of the book and I don’t have a problem with them not looking like drop-dead gorgeous models. Maybe one day I’ll review Grandville, where all the characters, even the ones who are supposed to be attractive, are aggressively ugly.
The story picks up right where the first volume left off, following the teenage bull terrier Dusty and the human Learoyd (a computer augmented soldier from the near future magiked into Dusty’s far-future world in the previous volume). Where volume 1 had a well-defined goal and story arc, volume 2 is a little more nebulous. In addition to Dusty’s self-appointed duty of being the Learoyd’s companion and guide in the Autumnlands, he also wants to find out why magical energy (“hastas”) is slowly draining away, and hopefully restore it. Learoyd just wants to find out why he’s there, and maybe find out how to get back, but doesn’t seem to have any plan for that other than start walking and see what they find.
What they find includes a land slowly being poisoned, hostile mountain goats, friendly sheep, mutated monsters, ancient living statues, and a mysterious human woman with god-like abilities. Volume 2 concludes the story arc about the poisoned land, but the larger questions are left for further installments.
There’s a surprising amount of (human) nudity in this. Learoyd manages to lose his clothes in both volumes, and the living statues have very large breasts and don’t wear tops. Learoyd also swears constantly. In contrast the furry characters seem the model of civility.
I have no real complaint with any of the art, beyond a few odd panels where the character’s faces suddenly go off-model. But in the great scheme of things those are very minor, and this title stands head and shoulders above the others as an example of both excellent writing and artwork.
Kismet by Watts Martin.
The first full-length novel by long-time short story and novella author Watts Martin, Kismet could best be described as social SF with elements of hard SF. It takes place in a world of space ships controlled by AIs, city-sized habitats scattered through the solar system, and humans transformed into animal-form ‘totemics.’ But the plot could be taken from today, with fears of terrorism, anti-totemic sentiment from ‘cisform’ humans, estranged siblings and children trying to deal with the legacy of a famous parent.
Gail, a young female rat totemic, inadvertently gets on the wrong side of a powerful corporation during what should be a routine salvage operation, and soon finds herself, her friends and her adopted sister drawn into a far-reaching conspiracy.
“Ripped from today’s headlines” is kind of a cliché`, but if you replace ‘totemic’ with ‘transgender,’ the things the totemic characters deal with will seem eerily familiar to contemporary readers. Referring to unaltered humans a ‘cisform’ just drives it home (in a way that term is a bit too current and will date the book. In a few hundred years I’m pretty sure there will be another term in use that means the same thing.)
The first half of the book has a lot of discussion about totemic rights between Gail, her friend Ansel the fox totemic, her wolf totemic sister and a human law enforcement officer. Gail’s mother, a famous totemic rights activist who was killed by a terrorist’s bomb, makes Gail both a rallying point and an object of hatred, depending on which side someone is on. Her trying to deal with that legacy is one of the themes that run through the story.
While the action does pick up during the latter part of the book, much of the story is devoted to Gail’s personal and professional struggles, speculations on corporate motivations as well as discussion about problems and discrimination faced by totemics.
I had no problem with the prose, although the choice of some terms and names was puzzling. I already mentioned that ‘cisform’ may quickly be outdated, but I honestly had a lot more trouble with the names of the two big corporations: Keces and Quanata. Why would anyone name their company something that’s one letter off from ‘feces?” That’s what I saw every time I saw the word. And Quanta is very close to the famous Austalian airline Qantas, which was also distracting because I kept thinking the characters were talking about the airline.
Of course, other people’s mileage may vary on how distracting they might find the names. This story is definitely not the nasty dystopian SF world that seems so common now, and will appeal not only to furry readers but those interested in a SF take on contemporary social issues.
Next I’ll be reviewing four current furry comics. Most of my heavy critiquing is on the art, since that's what I actually have a background in, but beyond all that I hope to alert people to comics they might not know about otherwise.
Beyond the Western Deep, 2 hardcopy volumes (so far), ongoing internet series. Alex Kain (W) and Rachel Bennet (A). The online strip has a separate side- story arc with art by Jerome Jacinto, which hasn’t been collected in book form yet, so I won’t be covering that here.
Published by Action Lab press, Beyond the Western Deep is presented in two very slick full-color graphic novels of 79 and 96 pages respectively. The story is nothing groundbreaking—set in a familiar medieval world of castles, kings, swords and northern barbarians, an uneasy truce between hostile factions is about to be broken. The main characters are young (teenage?) red squirrel Quin & his otter friend Dak, who live in the forest kingdom of Sunsgrove (composed of otters and squirrels, naturally!) They’re accompanying the Dak’s father to a border castle belonging to the militaristic Canin (wolves), which are Sunsgrove’s allies by treaty, even if they don’t really act like it in person. The other main players are the Ermehn (weasels), the Canin’s traditional enemy exiled to the northern wastes. There’s also desert foxes, sea-going ferrets and wild cats, but they don’t play a part in these first two episodes.
Nothing much happens in the first volume beyond introducing the main characters and the setting. Volume 2 introduces the Canin, more background history, and there’s a big battle. They’re both fast, easy reads. But at a total of 175 pages, that’s not a lot of story covered for the amount of pages. Online volume 3 is being released at one page a week.
Here’s a legend I read once: High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away to the ground, then a single moment of eternity will have gone by.
Keep that tale in mind when thinking about trying to follow Beyond the Western Deep at one page a week. Because that’s what it feels like. “Glacial” doesn’t begin to describe it.
On the other hand, I do have good things to say about the art. I’ll admit I’m partial to animation-style character designs and artwork, which drew me to the series in the first place (it sure wasn’t the blazingly exciting storyline.) The art is very clean, bright and easy to follow, and generally the layouts are good. My only major complaint is the Ermehn all look too much alike, and you need to study the tribal markings and clothing to tell them apart. I've also heard complaints from a couple of other people that all the characters had the same type of face and mouth regardless of species, but honestly that didn’t bother me. Another comic I’m covering here (Autumnlands) the animal characters look radically different from each other, and then I hear complaints that they all look too ugly. If the reader can easily tell a squirrel from an otter from a wolf, then they can have the same type of mouth as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not sure how many volumes the story is supposed to last, and given the abysmal track record of webcomics actually finishing anything, I’m not going to hold my breath. If I could give the creators one piece of advice it would be this—for the love of God, pick up the story pace so there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of finishing it before that little bird wears down that mountain.
Dreamkeepers 4 volumes (so far), art and story by Dave & Liz Lillie (there’s no breakdown about who does what, so for purposes of this discussion I’ll just be referring to the creators as “them.”)
I already reviewed the first two volumes some time back, but two more have been released since then, and for this discussion I’m going to be taking a different track than a straightforward review.
I’ll lead off by saying that they’ve done a remarkable thing with this series, producing 4 full-color volumes of very high-quality work. They’ve been relentless promoting it online, with multiple Kickstarters, an elaborate website, extensive involvement of fans, cross-posting on different galleries, creating a card game based on the comics, running side stories about the characters, attending conventions, and basically working their asses off to promote the book.
(especially compared to me. My idea of promotion is to mention on FA and Facebook I’m going to have a new book out soon, and maybe, if I’m feeling really ambitious, posting a couple of pages from it.)
Bonus points for the series include it being an unusual fantasy, non-pornographic, and steering clear of pandering towards the LGBT audience that seems to be the backbone of most current furry books and comics. The art style and character designs are unique and instantly recognizable, a welcome change from the vague anime-type designs or hyper-realism that are currently predominating.
So with all those things going for it, why do I find the comic unreadable?
I’ve studied it and thought about it, compared it to other books that I found easy to read and follow, and finally came up with some ideas.
#1: Each page is way, way too busy and crowded, making it impossible to take in what’s going on at a glance. For some of the pages you practically need a magnifying glass to see what’s happening. This is exacerbated by the printing in some scenes, which comes out so dark you literally can’t see what’s going on. A lot of the pages are crammed with dialogue and a bunch of characters in each panel, so the reader has no idea what to focus on. Even when there's not tons of characters in each panel, there's invariably a minutely detailed background where it's work to pick out the characters and what they're doing. The few times the action focuses of one or two characters and each panel isn’t cluttered with super-detailed backgrounds, the action becomes much easier to follow.
This brings up a problem I see over and over again in these ambitious graphic novels out of furry fandom—it’s obvious when the creators don’t read comics, haven't studied the classic how-to books on the art of comics, and haven’t spent a lot (or any) time doing comics before launching their magnum opus. If you spend years reading and practicing comics, eventually you learn what does and doesn’t work, and that there’s reasons the pro artists lay out pages a certain way.
#2: There are too many characters. Oh God are there too many characters. This results in half a dozen different scenes with different characters that need to be kept track of per book, and often switching in the middle of a page. Eventually I gave up trying to figure out who was who, who was on what side and what their relationship (if any) to the other characters were. As soon as I’d sort of figured out what was going on, there’d be another scene switch with 10 new characters to keep track of in an entirely separate location. The one good thing I can say is the characters all do look different, even if I don't know who they are and what they're doing. At the very least provide a dramatis personae with notes about the characters in each book.
#3: The story is unnecessarily convoluted. There is a reason editors exist. There’s a lot going on here that doesn’t seem to advance the plot much, and just muddies the waters. Of course, action with no advancement is still preferable to some of the comics I’ve seen where the characters just sit around and talk for page after page.
And despite all this, I’ll still get volume #5 when it comes out. Because, you know, I do like looking at the pretty pictures.
Animosity, Marguerte Bennet (W) & Rafael DeLatorre (A)
This comic is put out by a ‘mainstream’ comic publisher (albeit a very small one.) It’s one of five things I’ve read in recent years with the same premise—animals inexplicably develop sentience overnight. (two are books, Mort(e) and The Awareness, and three are comics, Elmer, Animosity and Squarriors)
So far there’s been 5 issues, along with a 1-shot series with a different artist. It follows a girl, Jesse, and her bloodhound Sandor. The first issue jumps right into the action, with the animals suddenly becoming sentient and gaining speech and (of course) immediately turning on humanity. Jesse, her parents and Sandor struggle to survive the initial chaos in the first couple of issues. Then the story switches to a road trip with Sandor escorting Jesse across the country in an attempt to find her half-brother in California.
The series does address some of the issues that would come up—mainly about finding food to feed everyone when all prey animals are suddenly intelligent. The obvious solution (which happens in Mort(e) ) is for the animals to start eating the very abundant humans, but I guess they didn’t want to turn this into a Walking Dead-type horror comic. Other than a mention of some humans raising soybeans for protein, we’re not really sure what the predators eat. There’s also a brief mention of trying to get both human and animal populations within sustainable limits, but that is never resolved either.
Issue #2 has an intriguing scene showing a ‘free market’ in Central Park where chickens sell their eggs, cows their milk, and donkeys rent out their transportation services. But that cooperation vanishes into anarchy by the end of the issue, setting the stage for the next few chapters.
Overall the writing is decent, except for a very odd story skip. (spoilers ahoy!!)
At the end of issue #2 Sandor is nearly beaten to death by Jesse’s father. Then the scene abruptly switches a year ahead, with a fully recovered Sandor leading Jesse out of a ruined city, after both her parents are dead. The reader has no idea how Sandor recovered from his beating, and what happened to Jesse’s parents. At least spare the reader a short caption explaining what happened!
The art has the major problem that always seems to come up when a non-furry publisher does a comic with animals—the artist is great at drawing humans, but can’t draw decent animals. The animals are barely passable, and most good furry artists could draw rings around him. It’s always frustrating when what could be a very good book gets dragged down by substandard animal art. There’s also some weird animal anatomy (the koala with a gun, forgetting koalas have those oddly shaped front hands), and the deer with grenades on his antlers (what exactly is he going to do with them? It’s not like he can pull the pin and throw it!) A lot of the animals in the “Animilitary” wear steel-jawed traps to give them extra biting power, but those traps were clearly drawn with no references at all and only vaguely resemble actual steel-jaw traps.
The animal art is even worse in the side-story series (called Animosity: The Rise), and the humans in that don’t look great either.
Overall I give the series a B, with the crappy animal drawings and the occasionally disjointed story pushing it down. I’ll keep getting it, though, because I do give them an A for effort. Not sure about The Rise, however. The art in that is so bad…
The Autumnlands volume 2: Woodland Creatures Kurt Busiek (W) and Benjamin Dewey (A)
I reviewed the first volume of this last year (I think) but I’m including this here as an example of a comic where everything comes together—a veteran writer who knows how to write and pace a comic, and an excellent artist who can draw both humans and a variety of animal characters.
Some furry fans may find the animal characters a little too realistically drawn (i.e. not the beautiful idealized furries that are de rigueur in most furry art) but (for me at least) they integrate well into the style of the book and I don’t have a problem with them not looking like drop-dead gorgeous models. Maybe one day I’ll review Grandville, where all the characters, even the ones who are supposed to be attractive, are aggressively ugly.
The story picks up right where the first volume left off, following the teenage bull terrier Dusty and the human Learoyd (a computer augmented soldier from the near future magiked into Dusty’s far-future world in the previous volume). Where volume 1 had a well-defined goal and story arc, volume 2 is a little more nebulous. In addition to Dusty’s self-appointed duty of being the Learoyd’s companion and guide in the Autumnlands, he also wants to find out why magical energy (“hastas”) is slowly draining away, and hopefully restore it. Learoyd just wants to find out why he’s there, and maybe find out how to get back, but doesn’t seem to have any plan for that other than start walking and see what they find.
What they find includes a land slowly being poisoned, hostile mountain goats, friendly sheep, mutated monsters, ancient living statues, and a mysterious human woman with god-like abilities. Volume 2 concludes the story arc about the poisoned land, but the larger questions are left for further installments.
There’s a surprising amount of (human) nudity in this. Learoyd manages to lose his clothes in both volumes, and the living statues have very large breasts and don’t wear tops. Learoyd also swears constantly. In contrast the furry characters seem the model of civility.
I have no real complaint with any of the art, beyond a few odd panels where the character’s faces suddenly go off-model. But in the great scheme of things those are very minor, and this title stands head and shoulders above the others as an example of both excellent writing and artwork.
Furry Books read in 2016, plus a few others
Posted 8 years agoA list with brief reviews of the books I read in 2016 that qualify as furry or anthropomorphic, plus a few others I enjoyed. Just as a note, these were not all published last year, some were, but a lot weren't. Almost all of these were read as ebooks. Sorry I'm not going to link to them all (lazy bum that I am!) , but they're all easy to find on Amazon.
**** A Pack’s Closing Story (Lost Stories of the Wild 1), A Fox Child’s Journey (Lost Stories of the Wild 2) by Jim Galford
Two novellas set in the same world as his Fall of Eldvar series (a mixed-world fantasy series with furry main characters, but also mages, elves, humans, dwarves, zombies and dragons), one is a prequel (A Fox Child’s Journey) and one is a side-story (A Pack’s Closing Story). These aren’t really stand-alone, so it definitely helps to have read at least the first book in the Eldvar series. A Pack’s Closing details the last stand of Feanne’s parents against their enemies. A Fox Child’s Journey is about Feanne’s early life up until she meets Estin, and is probably the superior story, but both are excellent.
*** Barsk: The Elephant’s Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen
This could be considered a breakout furry book, since it was published by a mainstream company (TOR books). Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of furry-in-name-only, where the characters don’t really need to be furry. Because the other uplifted animals find their appearance icky, elephants are exiled to a backwater world, from which they developed a drug that allows a select few to interact with the dead. Some of the off-world animals arrive to try and break the monopoly on the drug. Main characters include an elephant who is one of the dead speakers, and the bastard son of his deceased best friend, who is ostracized because of his birth. But like most outcasts in stories, he has special abilities that will prove unexpectedly useful. Despite its furry-in-name-only characters, it was good enough that I’ll read any other books in the series.
*The Builders by Daniel Polansky
I don’t remember a whole lot about this. A bad-ass mouse that used to head a company of soldiers or mercenaries or something decides to get them back together for some nefarious purposes of his own. The book’s animal characters are animals in name only—there’s no reason they can’t be replaced with humans. The author also makes the blatant mistake of making a calico cat male, which takes major points from his furry street cred. He also works overtime to try and make the characters seem as bad-ass as possible, which gets tiresome. For some reason this thing was nominated for a Hugo award, too. (it didn’t win.)
*** Centaur of the Crime (Fantasy and Forensics #1) by Michael Angel
I generally don’t like whodunits. I can never figure out whodunit, which makes me feel stupid, and who wants to read books that make you feel stupid? But this had a bunch of mythological creatures in it, so I thought I’d give it a try. A female forensics expert is brought into a fantasy world to solve the murder of a king. She’s assisted by a centaur, a griffin and a fairy deer, (plus some talking owls) and the investigation eventually leads back to our world. A decent read, but so far I haven’t read any of the rest of the series, because, in the end, I still don’t really like whodunits regardless of who the cast is.
**** Culdesac (War with no Name) by Robert Repino
Not a sequel, but a novella side-story to the earlier (and quite excellent) Mort(e), detailing an incident in the career of bobcat military operative Culdesac , interspersed with flashbacks from his early, pre-sentient life. For those unfamiliar with the original novel, all mammals are suddenly ‘uplifted’ by an immortal ant queen, and given not only human-level intelligence and speech, but hands and the ability to walk on two legs. In exchange for those gifts, the ant queen wants the uplifted animals to help her wipe out humanity in the War With No Name. However some animals, mostly former pets, sympathize with the humans…
*** DogForge by Casey Calouete
This is a YA novel in the vein of all those recent YA dystopia novels, except this is with dogs. Labrador retriever Denali is an outcast on a planet where most of the dogs are big fighting breeds like Rottweilers, pitbulls and mastiffs. (these are all 4-legged dogs, but they have human-level intelligence.) In order to gain the gifts of the ‘machine gods’ like metal teeth and armor, she has to undergo a series of life-or-death trials, which lead to multiple revelations about her background and the truth of her world. This was a decent (if somewhat cliché) book, but I’m pretty sick of orphaned bullied teens with a secret heritage, regardless of whether they’re dogs or human or anything else. This is the first of what’s supposed to be a series.
*** Doglands by Tim Willocks
Another dog book (obviously), this one is regular talking dogs in our world, although there are some fantasy elements. Furgul is born to a greyhound in a greyhound racing kennel (with the obligatory brutal owner) but is actually only half greyhound, his father is a famous outlaw wolfhound Argal. When his owner discovers this Furgul will be killed along with his littermates, which leads to him escaping to various adventures and misadventures among wild and domestic dogs. The fantasy elements include the mythical Dogways, where dogs can travel a great distance much faster than normal, and the fact that some humans can speak to and understand dog-speech.
***** Domino by Kia Heavey
A talking-animal book about barn cat Domino, who has to deal with an interloper Siamese cat with some unusual ideas about how predator and prey should get along. When the Siamese is able to convince the other neighborhood cats that rats are friends rather than a meal or vermin to be hunted, that sets in motion a catastrophic series of events. This book could be viewed as a social commentary, but I honestly think it was meant to be just an adventure book with cats. The only real problem I had with it was the author sometimes describes the cats as ‘meowing’ their dialogue, and as anyone who owns multiple cats knows, cats don’t meow at each other, only at us clueless humans. This book also contains some pretty brutal scenes, so it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.
*** Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon by H. Leighton Dickson
By the author of the excellent Tails from the Upper Kingdom, this delivers what the title promises—the story of a dragon, told from his POV, from hatching until late in life. He lives quite an adventurous life, from wild beginnings, to being a captive fisher-dragon, to fighting pits and farm work and beyond. An entertaining read.
** The Furred Reich by Len Gilbert
Nazis meet furries! If you ever thought about what would happen if WWII German soldiers ended up in a furry world, this is the book for you. Sticking Nazis in a furry fantasy world means you don’t have to deal with unpleasantness like the Holocaust, and clears the way for the real action—the naïve (but extremely open-minded!) German soldier jumping into bed with furry babes. There’s also an invasion of lizard-creatures that the Nazis help the local wolf packs deal with. This isn’t an awful book, just kind of eye-rolling when you have characters from the 1940’s dealing with things as a modern furry fan would (for example, I don’t think anyone from the 40’s would refer to a furry babe he’d been banging as his ‘mate.’) But what the hell, I’ll read the sequel when or if it comes out.
*** Kingdom of the Sun and Moon by Lowell H. Press
Two field mice brothers living in and around a historical palace in Austria have to deal with both corrupt leaders and natural dangers. A Watership Down-type scenario with talking, ‘realistic’ mice. Not bad, but not particularly memorable either.
** The Legacy (Shadow of the Unicorn book 1) by de Montigny
In a world where unicorns, dinosaurs and humans inexplicably coexist, the young unicorn protagonist first has to deal with a world-changing asteroid strike, then with invading humans. Overall too juvenile for my tastes, but then again I’m probably not the target audience. Your mileage may vary.
*** Man: It’s What’s For Dinner by Mike Beaske
Now this was a weird book. Remember the old Muppets skit Pigs in Space? Well, this is it. Space pig invaders have conquered Earth, and humans are reduced to livestock, vermin, pets and experimental subjects. The author tries to reduce the impact of what would read like a horror novel by giving the pigs cute names: the protagonist is Wilbur, his teacher is Miss Piggy, is girlfriend (sowfriend?) is Babe, etc. Wilbur’s girlfriend is trying to convince him to become a vegetarian, but he just loves meat soooo much… The space pigs also have racial tension, with the wild boars at the top of the pecking order, followed by regular pigs, with warthogs the oppressed minority. Cute names aside, the book does read like a fucked-up horror novel, which I suppose was the point of it. It’s also written in a very odd second-person narration that is kind of distracting. Be that as it may, the book definitely stuck with me, which is more than I can say for a lot of the others I read this year.
*** The Mosque Hill Fortune, Guardian’s Rise (The Sons of Masguard 1 & 2) by Vivienne Mathews
A traditional funny-animal tale about two separated otter brothers, one a decorated by-the-book captain and the other an outlaw marauder (with a heart of gold, of course), and their fights against each other, the enemies of the kingdom, and attempts to reach a mythical land and treasure. An entertaining if not earth-shattering tale.
**** Persimmon Takes on Humanity: The Enlightenment Adventures, book 1 by Christopher Locke
What would happen if PETA and ALF (Animal Liberation Front) were formed by animals? Raccoon Persimmon, her brother Scraps, and an opossum friend take interest in the veal calves on a nearby farm and eventually decide to rescue them. The leads to other rescue attempts at a mink fur farm and a circus, with Persimmon’s original group being joined by others. The book shows the practical problems of trying to free veal calves (most of them can’t even walk any more), or of freeing circus animals in the middle of a city. The group eventually splits over ideological differences, with one group advocating fighting humans directly, and the other wanting to educate them. Like a couple other books I read this year, this moves back and forth between overly cute and surprisingly brutal. I had trouble believing some of the animals deciding to become vegetarian, but do give the author props for being realistic in other areas. If the series continues I’ll definitely get the next book.
** The Stone God Awakes by Philip Jose Farmer
An old (from the 1970’s) book by SF grandmaster Farmer, I’d been meaning to read this for a while and finally picked up a copy at a used book store. There’s multiple versions with different covers. By all that’s holy get the one with the hot cat babe on the cover, not the ugly-ass bat-creature. A man from (around) our time who is accidentally petrified is then accidentally un-petrified in the far future to find the world inhabited by humanoid cats, bats, etc. The latter half of the story is taken up by his adventures in a continent-spanning tree. The book is a bit dated, obviously, but still not bad.
*** The Taken Trilogy (Lost and Found, The Candle of Distant Earth, The Light years Beneath my Feet) by Alan Dean Foster
A man from earth is abducted by privateer aliens, who kidnap unusual species to sell to other aliens as curiosities. I’m including this with the furry and anthro books because all the other characters are various aliens, and one of the main characters is a dog from earth who has been artificially uplifted to sentience. Other main characters are an octopus-like alien, and a big monster-type alien. The first book of this was the best, and I was very disappointed with how the trilogy ended. The word cop-out comes to mind. I really liked some of Alan Dean Foster’s early works, but nothing he’s done since the 80’s has really grabbed me.
**** Theo and the Forbidden Language, The Queen and the Dagger by Melanie Ansley
Reading is outlawed and a capital crime, but young rabbit Theo was taught in secret. After being caught reading one too many times he faces exile, but is rescued by a bear warrior. It soon becomes apparent the entire region is in danger from an invading human army, which is able to revert animals to an unintelligent state. The first book is basically a set-up for the rest of the series, introducing the characters and the world, with the main downside being there is no second book out yet. The Queen and the Dagger is a novella prequel, showing the background of the rabbit princess Indigo, one of the main characters from Theo, as she deals with politics and treachery from within. Both come highly recommended.
Non-furry books of interest
*** ½ Alien Species Intervention #6609: books1-7 by J.K. Accinni
This was one of the stranger books I read this year. Although it’s broken into 7 books, it reads like one long story, and I’ll treat it like that here. I don’t know if the world needed a book that’s a cross between ET and Mad Max, but here it is. An adorably cute alien with glowing antlers arrives on earth during the great depression and befriends an abused woman. Various weird and horrible things happen as a result. Later on that first alien’s adorably cute and innocent offspring befriends a single mother and her children in a miserably depressing near-future, with more weird stuff happening. The cute alien is tasked with wiping out humanity, but also ordered to save some animals. So eventually the book segues into end-of-the-world misery, which leads to more weirdness. I couldn’t give this a poor rating because it definitely held my interest and kept me reading, but I couldn’t give it a 4 or 5 star rating because it did have a lot of problems. For example, it definitely didn’t need a whole chapter devoted to the bad guys torturing some helpless victim just to show how awful they were, and that girl being 9 months pregnant for 100 years was just freaky (and that’s just some of the weird shit in this book). But if you want a ‘different’ type of story, this does deliver.
**** Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
A page-turner by the author of the Wayward Pines books. The protagonist is a physics professor that gave up a promising career to marry the girl of his dreams and have a family. He unexpectedly kidnapped by an unknown person for unknown reasons, and finds himself in an alternate reality where instead of giving up his career, he invented a way to travel to infinite realities. And then it gets really weird. I did read a review that complained the science behind this was kind of dubious, but since I’m not a physicist I sure don’t know. I do know I’d definitely recommend this book as one wild ride.
**** Flame of Requiem trilogy by Daniel Arenson
A nation of shape-shifting dragons is conquered and enslaved for centuries by Seraphs (angelic beings in appearance if not actions), until a slave family starts a rebellion. Lots (and lots) of brutality here. But the books are fast-paced and interesting, if not terribly original (shades of the story of Moses are apparent). Gave it 4 stars because it certainly kept me reading.
*** Kronos Rising: Kraken (volume 1) Max Hawthorne
Kronos Rising, the Next Generation. A sequel to Kronos Rising (duh), which starred a studly guy and a gorgeous scientist battling giant prehistoric reptiles freed from a collapsed volcano (don’t ask), this follows the adventures of their equally studly and gorgeous sons fighting not only giant prehistoric reptiles, but giant octopus (octopi?). One son is a brilliant scientist but sort of a nerd, the other is a super-athlete alpha-male, but the author makes sure to point out they’re both hung like horses, and can fuck like porn stars. At the end you’re kind of rooting for the giant octopus. And this is just the first volume!
**** The Hunter From the Woods by Robert McCammon
A sequel to McCammon’s excellent Wolf’s Hour, about a Russian-born British spy during WWII who is also a werewolf. This is a series of chronological short stories and novellas rather than one long novel, but should definitely not be missed by anyone who enjoyed the first book.
***** Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy book 3) by Marcus Sakey
Five stars for the series as a whole, which details the internal strife the US goes through trying to deal with the ‘Brilliants,” 1% of the population born with savant-like abilities. An excellent near-future thriller.
**** A Pack’s Closing Story (Lost Stories of the Wild 1), A Fox Child’s Journey (Lost Stories of the Wild 2) by Jim Galford
Two novellas set in the same world as his Fall of Eldvar series (a mixed-world fantasy series with furry main characters, but also mages, elves, humans, dwarves, zombies and dragons), one is a prequel (A Fox Child’s Journey) and one is a side-story (A Pack’s Closing Story). These aren’t really stand-alone, so it definitely helps to have read at least the first book in the Eldvar series. A Pack’s Closing details the last stand of Feanne’s parents against their enemies. A Fox Child’s Journey is about Feanne’s early life up until she meets Estin, and is probably the superior story, but both are excellent.
*** Barsk: The Elephant’s Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen
This could be considered a breakout furry book, since it was published by a mainstream company (TOR books). Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of furry-in-name-only, where the characters don’t really need to be furry. Because the other uplifted animals find their appearance icky, elephants are exiled to a backwater world, from which they developed a drug that allows a select few to interact with the dead. Some of the off-world animals arrive to try and break the monopoly on the drug. Main characters include an elephant who is one of the dead speakers, and the bastard son of his deceased best friend, who is ostracized because of his birth. But like most outcasts in stories, he has special abilities that will prove unexpectedly useful. Despite its furry-in-name-only characters, it was good enough that I’ll read any other books in the series.
*The Builders by Daniel Polansky
I don’t remember a whole lot about this. A bad-ass mouse that used to head a company of soldiers or mercenaries or something decides to get them back together for some nefarious purposes of his own. The book’s animal characters are animals in name only—there’s no reason they can’t be replaced with humans. The author also makes the blatant mistake of making a calico cat male, which takes major points from his furry street cred. He also works overtime to try and make the characters seem as bad-ass as possible, which gets tiresome. For some reason this thing was nominated for a Hugo award, too. (it didn’t win.)
*** Centaur of the Crime (Fantasy and Forensics #1) by Michael Angel
I generally don’t like whodunits. I can never figure out whodunit, which makes me feel stupid, and who wants to read books that make you feel stupid? But this had a bunch of mythological creatures in it, so I thought I’d give it a try. A female forensics expert is brought into a fantasy world to solve the murder of a king. She’s assisted by a centaur, a griffin and a fairy deer, (plus some talking owls) and the investigation eventually leads back to our world. A decent read, but so far I haven’t read any of the rest of the series, because, in the end, I still don’t really like whodunits regardless of who the cast is.
**** Culdesac (War with no Name) by Robert Repino
Not a sequel, but a novella side-story to the earlier (and quite excellent) Mort(e), detailing an incident in the career of bobcat military operative Culdesac , interspersed with flashbacks from his early, pre-sentient life. For those unfamiliar with the original novel, all mammals are suddenly ‘uplifted’ by an immortal ant queen, and given not only human-level intelligence and speech, but hands and the ability to walk on two legs. In exchange for those gifts, the ant queen wants the uplifted animals to help her wipe out humanity in the War With No Name. However some animals, mostly former pets, sympathize with the humans…
*** DogForge by Casey Calouete
This is a YA novel in the vein of all those recent YA dystopia novels, except this is with dogs. Labrador retriever Denali is an outcast on a planet where most of the dogs are big fighting breeds like Rottweilers, pitbulls and mastiffs. (these are all 4-legged dogs, but they have human-level intelligence.) In order to gain the gifts of the ‘machine gods’ like metal teeth and armor, she has to undergo a series of life-or-death trials, which lead to multiple revelations about her background and the truth of her world. This was a decent (if somewhat cliché) book, but I’m pretty sick of orphaned bullied teens with a secret heritage, regardless of whether they’re dogs or human or anything else. This is the first of what’s supposed to be a series.
*** Doglands by Tim Willocks
Another dog book (obviously), this one is regular talking dogs in our world, although there are some fantasy elements. Furgul is born to a greyhound in a greyhound racing kennel (with the obligatory brutal owner) but is actually only half greyhound, his father is a famous outlaw wolfhound Argal. When his owner discovers this Furgul will be killed along with his littermates, which leads to him escaping to various adventures and misadventures among wild and domestic dogs. The fantasy elements include the mythical Dogways, where dogs can travel a great distance much faster than normal, and the fact that some humans can speak to and understand dog-speech.
***** Domino by Kia Heavey
A talking-animal book about barn cat Domino, who has to deal with an interloper Siamese cat with some unusual ideas about how predator and prey should get along. When the Siamese is able to convince the other neighborhood cats that rats are friends rather than a meal or vermin to be hunted, that sets in motion a catastrophic series of events. This book could be viewed as a social commentary, but I honestly think it was meant to be just an adventure book with cats. The only real problem I had with it was the author sometimes describes the cats as ‘meowing’ their dialogue, and as anyone who owns multiple cats knows, cats don’t meow at each other, only at us clueless humans. This book also contains some pretty brutal scenes, so it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.
*** Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon by H. Leighton Dickson
By the author of the excellent Tails from the Upper Kingdom, this delivers what the title promises—the story of a dragon, told from his POV, from hatching until late in life. He lives quite an adventurous life, from wild beginnings, to being a captive fisher-dragon, to fighting pits and farm work and beyond. An entertaining read.
** The Furred Reich by Len Gilbert
Nazis meet furries! If you ever thought about what would happen if WWII German soldiers ended up in a furry world, this is the book for you. Sticking Nazis in a furry fantasy world means you don’t have to deal with unpleasantness like the Holocaust, and clears the way for the real action—the naïve (but extremely open-minded!) German soldier jumping into bed with furry babes. There’s also an invasion of lizard-creatures that the Nazis help the local wolf packs deal with. This isn’t an awful book, just kind of eye-rolling when you have characters from the 1940’s dealing with things as a modern furry fan would (for example, I don’t think anyone from the 40’s would refer to a furry babe he’d been banging as his ‘mate.’) But what the hell, I’ll read the sequel when or if it comes out.
*** Kingdom of the Sun and Moon by Lowell H. Press
Two field mice brothers living in and around a historical palace in Austria have to deal with both corrupt leaders and natural dangers. A Watership Down-type scenario with talking, ‘realistic’ mice. Not bad, but not particularly memorable either.
** The Legacy (Shadow of the Unicorn book 1) by de Montigny
In a world where unicorns, dinosaurs and humans inexplicably coexist, the young unicorn protagonist first has to deal with a world-changing asteroid strike, then with invading humans. Overall too juvenile for my tastes, but then again I’m probably not the target audience. Your mileage may vary.
*** Man: It’s What’s For Dinner by Mike Beaske
Now this was a weird book. Remember the old Muppets skit Pigs in Space? Well, this is it. Space pig invaders have conquered Earth, and humans are reduced to livestock, vermin, pets and experimental subjects. The author tries to reduce the impact of what would read like a horror novel by giving the pigs cute names: the protagonist is Wilbur, his teacher is Miss Piggy, is girlfriend (sowfriend?) is Babe, etc. Wilbur’s girlfriend is trying to convince him to become a vegetarian, but he just loves meat soooo much… The space pigs also have racial tension, with the wild boars at the top of the pecking order, followed by regular pigs, with warthogs the oppressed minority. Cute names aside, the book does read like a fucked-up horror novel, which I suppose was the point of it. It’s also written in a very odd second-person narration that is kind of distracting. Be that as it may, the book definitely stuck with me, which is more than I can say for a lot of the others I read this year.
*** The Mosque Hill Fortune, Guardian’s Rise (The Sons of Masguard 1 & 2) by Vivienne Mathews
A traditional funny-animal tale about two separated otter brothers, one a decorated by-the-book captain and the other an outlaw marauder (with a heart of gold, of course), and their fights against each other, the enemies of the kingdom, and attempts to reach a mythical land and treasure. An entertaining if not earth-shattering tale.
**** Persimmon Takes on Humanity: The Enlightenment Adventures, book 1 by Christopher Locke
What would happen if PETA and ALF (Animal Liberation Front) were formed by animals? Raccoon Persimmon, her brother Scraps, and an opossum friend take interest in the veal calves on a nearby farm and eventually decide to rescue them. The leads to other rescue attempts at a mink fur farm and a circus, with Persimmon’s original group being joined by others. The book shows the practical problems of trying to free veal calves (most of them can’t even walk any more), or of freeing circus animals in the middle of a city. The group eventually splits over ideological differences, with one group advocating fighting humans directly, and the other wanting to educate them. Like a couple other books I read this year, this moves back and forth between overly cute and surprisingly brutal. I had trouble believing some of the animals deciding to become vegetarian, but do give the author props for being realistic in other areas. If the series continues I’ll definitely get the next book.
** The Stone God Awakes by Philip Jose Farmer
An old (from the 1970’s) book by SF grandmaster Farmer, I’d been meaning to read this for a while and finally picked up a copy at a used book store. There’s multiple versions with different covers. By all that’s holy get the one with the hot cat babe on the cover, not the ugly-ass bat-creature. A man from (around) our time who is accidentally petrified is then accidentally un-petrified in the far future to find the world inhabited by humanoid cats, bats, etc. The latter half of the story is taken up by his adventures in a continent-spanning tree. The book is a bit dated, obviously, but still not bad.
*** The Taken Trilogy (Lost and Found, The Candle of Distant Earth, The Light years Beneath my Feet) by Alan Dean Foster
A man from earth is abducted by privateer aliens, who kidnap unusual species to sell to other aliens as curiosities. I’m including this with the furry and anthro books because all the other characters are various aliens, and one of the main characters is a dog from earth who has been artificially uplifted to sentience. Other main characters are an octopus-like alien, and a big monster-type alien. The first book of this was the best, and I was very disappointed with how the trilogy ended. The word cop-out comes to mind. I really liked some of Alan Dean Foster’s early works, but nothing he’s done since the 80’s has really grabbed me.
**** Theo and the Forbidden Language, The Queen and the Dagger by Melanie Ansley
Reading is outlawed and a capital crime, but young rabbit Theo was taught in secret. After being caught reading one too many times he faces exile, but is rescued by a bear warrior. It soon becomes apparent the entire region is in danger from an invading human army, which is able to revert animals to an unintelligent state. The first book is basically a set-up for the rest of the series, introducing the characters and the world, with the main downside being there is no second book out yet. The Queen and the Dagger is a novella prequel, showing the background of the rabbit princess Indigo, one of the main characters from Theo, as she deals with politics and treachery from within. Both come highly recommended.
Non-furry books of interest
*** ½ Alien Species Intervention #6609: books1-7 by J.K. Accinni
This was one of the stranger books I read this year. Although it’s broken into 7 books, it reads like one long story, and I’ll treat it like that here. I don’t know if the world needed a book that’s a cross between ET and Mad Max, but here it is. An adorably cute alien with glowing antlers arrives on earth during the great depression and befriends an abused woman. Various weird and horrible things happen as a result. Later on that first alien’s adorably cute and innocent offspring befriends a single mother and her children in a miserably depressing near-future, with more weird stuff happening. The cute alien is tasked with wiping out humanity, but also ordered to save some animals. So eventually the book segues into end-of-the-world misery, which leads to more weirdness. I couldn’t give this a poor rating because it definitely held my interest and kept me reading, but I couldn’t give it a 4 or 5 star rating because it did have a lot of problems. For example, it definitely didn’t need a whole chapter devoted to the bad guys torturing some helpless victim just to show how awful they were, and that girl being 9 months pregnant for 100 years was just freaky (and that’s just some of the weird shit in this book). But if you want a ‘different’ type of story, this does deliver.
**** Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
A page-turner by the author of the Wayward Pines books. The protagonist is a physics professor that gave up a promising career to marry the girl of his dreams and have a family. He unexpectedly kidnapped by an unknown person for unknown reasons, and finds himself in an alternate reality where instead of giving up his career, he invented a way to travel to infinite realities. And then it gets really weird. I did read a review that complained the science behind this was kind of dubious, but since I’m not a physicist I sure don’t know. I do know I’d definitely recommend this book as one wild ride.
**** Flame of Requiem trilogy by Daniel Arenson
A nation of shape-shifting dragons is conquered and enslaved for centuries by Seraphs (angelic beings in appearance if not actions), until a slave family starts a rebellion. Lots (and lots) of brutality here. But the books are fast-paced and interesting, if not terribly original (shades of the story of Moses are apparent). Gave it 4 stars because it certainly kept me reading.
*** Kronos Rising: Kraken (volume 1) Max Hawthorne
Kronos Rising, the Next Generation. A sequel to Kronos Rising (duh), which starred a studly guy and a gorgeous scientist battling giant prehistoric reptiles freed from a collapsed volcano (don’t ask), this follows the adventures of their equally studly and gorgeous sons fighting not only giant prehistoric reptiles, but giant octopus (octopi?). One son is a brilliant scientist but sort of a nerd, the other is a super-athlete alpha-male, but the author makes sure to point out they’re both hung like horses, and can fuck like porn stars. At the end you’re kind of rooting for the giant octopus. And this is just the first volume!
**** The Hunter From the Woods by Robert McCammon
A sequel to McCammon’s excellent Wolf’s Hour, about a Russian-born British spy during WWII who is also a werewolf. This is a series of chronological short stories and novellas rather than one long novel, but should definitely not be missed by anyone who enjoyed the first book.
***** Written in Fire (The Brilliance Trilogy book 3) by Marcus Sakey
Five stars for the series as a whole, which details the internal strife the US goes through trying to deal with the ‘Brilliants,” 1% of the population born with savant-like abilities. An excellent near-future thriller.
? vs. ?
Posted 9 years agoIf you found the Frogs vs. Turtles amusing, I can put together some others. Potential warring parties:
Bunnies
Insects and crustaceans
Fish
Felines
Canines
Mustelids
Chickens and ducks
Birds of prey
Dinosaurs
Songbirds
Snakes and lizards
Dinosaur skeletons
Weird prehistoric critters
Primates
Squirrels and mice
Salamanders and newts
(and yes, I am working on new art. There should be a large art dump some time next week.)
Bunnies
Insects and crustaceans
Fish
Felines
Canines
Mustelids
Chickens and ducks
Birds of prey
Dinosaurs
Songbirds
Snakes and lizards
Dinosaur skeletons
Weird prehistoric critters
Primates
Squirrels and mice
Salamanders and newts
(and yes, I am working on new art. There should be a large art dump some time next week.)
Updates
Posted 9 years agoJust a quickie note to let people know what I'm working on and what new to expect in the near future.
I recently finished a fairly complex for-hire project that I'm not allowed to post (sorry!). It may be posted by the person who commissioned it at a later date, if that happens then I'll be sure to provide a link.
Now that I'm done with that, I wanted to take a few weeks to work on a couple of personal projects that I've been putting off for a while. One I'm almost done with and should be posted next week. The other is a short story/ novella (not sure how long it will end up being) that will eventually be posted as a Kindle single. I may ask for some first readers on that once I get the initial draft finished.
I'm also planning to get the revised Kickstarter for Griffin Ranger up and running within the next couple of weeks. Sorry this has taken so long-- that before-mentioned work for hire thing threw a wrench into my schedule.
I also recently did a short story for an upcoming anthology titled Symbol of a Nation, which I believe will be published in February of next year. Once again I will provide a link when it's available.
And the ubiquitous reminder that Patreon sponsors get first look at all art and writings, as well as commission perks. Link on my front page.
I recently finished a fairly complex for-hire project that I'm not allowed to post (sorry!). It may be posted by the person who commissioned it at a later date, if that happens then I'll be sure to provide a link.
Now that I'm done with that, I wanted to take a few weeks to work on a couple of personal projects that I've been putting off for a while. One I'm almost done with and should be posted next week. The other is a short story/ novella (not sure how long it will end up being) that will eventually be posted as a Kindle single. I may ask for some first readers on that once I get the initial draft finished.
I'm also planning to get the revised Kickstarter for Griffin Ranger up and running within the next couple of weeks. Sorry this has taken so long-- that before-mentioned work for hire thing threw a wrench into my schedule.
I also recently did a short story for an upcoming anthology titled Symbol of a Nation, which I believe will be published in February of next year. Once again I will provide a link when it's available.
And the ubiquitous reminder that Patreon sponsors get first look at all art and writings, as well as commission perks. Link on my front page.
Old furry 'zines
Posted 9 years agoA reminder that the main auctions for the old furry 'zines ends tomorrow. I also added a few new things yesterday.
https://www.furbuy.com/seller/RGibson.html
There's also EBay auctions that have some furry stuff. The entries that are marked 'adults only' are non-furry adult stuff from the same collection.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/custer/m.ht.....pg=&_from=
https://www.furbuy.com/seller/RGibson.html
There's also EBay auctions that have some furry stuff. The entries that are marked 'adults only' are non-furry adult stuff from the same collection.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/custer/m.ht.....pg=&_from=
Old Furry Art up for grabs (taken!)
Posted 9 years ago** the lot of xeroxes is taken and postage paid for. When the rest of the collection (the 'zines and portfolios) are listed, I will post links here.**
I was recently given a large collection of old (late 80's, early 90's) furry art and 'zines to sell, which belonged to a graymuzzle who is deceased. This includes some very rare items, including about a dozen issues of the old FurVersion 'zine (basically the first adult furry publication), an almost-complete set of ConFurence program books, including the CF 0 book from 1989, and a metric ton of furry digest 'zines and portfolios from that period.
Most of the publications I'm planning to put up on FurBuy and EBay, but there's also a lot of loose xeroxes of art from that era, including about a dozen adult pieces from MTG artist Quinton Hoover (RIP). I don't feel comfortable selling xeroxes of artwork, but I don't want to just throw them out, either.
So I'm offering to send these to anyone (over 18, of course) who is willing to pay postage (about $8 in US)
In addition to Quinton Hoover, this stack also includes work by:
Brian O'Connell (lots)
Terrie Smith
"Riley"
some xeroxed hentai story of (I think) the Dirty Pair
Robert DeJesus
Shon Howell
Lia (Tygger) Graf
Phil Foglio
Someone with the initials of SW
Fred Perry
2 color photo prints by Steve Martin featuring the Family Guy characters doing obscene things, and Minerva Mink and Lola (or Babs) bunny also doing obscene things.
Plus some artists I don't recognize.
These are all straight-- ie. females, M/F, or F/F images.
Comment or note if you're interested. If no one wants them, they're going in the trash Thursday night. I don't have room for them, nor is the subject relevant to my interests (although Quinton Hoover was a damn good artist....)
I was recently given a large collection of old (late 80's, early 90's) furry art and 'zines to sell, which belonged to a graymuzzle who is deceased. This includes some very rare items, including about a dozen issues of the old FurVersion 'zine (basically the first adult furry publication), an almost-complete set of ConFurence program books, including the CF 0 book from 1989, and a metric ton of furry digest 'zines and portfolios from that period.
Most of the publications I'm planning to put up on FurBuy and EBay, but there's also a lot of loose xeroxes of art from that era, including about a dozen adult pieces from MTG artist Quinton Hoover (RIP). I don't feel comfortable selling xeroxes of artwork, but I don't want to just throw them out, either.
So I'm offering to send these to anyone (over 18, of course) who is willing to pay postage (about $8 in US)
In addition to Quinton Hoover, this stack also includes work by:
Brian O'Connell (lots)
Terrie Smith
"Riley"
some xeroxed hentai story of (I think) the Dirty Pair
Robert DeJesus
Shon Howell
Lia (Tygger) Graf
Phil Foglio
Someone with the initials of SW
Fred Perry
2 color photo prints by Steve Martin featuring the Family Guy characters doing obscene things, and Minerva Mink and Lola (or Babs) bunny also doing obscene things.
Plus some artists I don't recognize.
These are all straight-- ie. females, M/F, or F/F images.
Comment or note if you're interested. If no one wants them, they're going in the trash Thursday night. I don't have room for them, nor is the subject relevant to my interests (although Quinton Hoover was a damn good artist....)
What comic would you prefer? (Closed)
Posted 9 years agoLooks like Pictures wins! Thank you all!
///
I'm going to be scarce with the art for a while, as I get a couple of writing projects done, or at least past the first draft stage.
So I was thinking about posting one of my older comics here, a few pages a day.
Would you prefer to see: The Mule-- a pretty violent Jack Salem story drawn by me?
or
Pictures at an Exhibition-- a not-quite-as violent (but still violent) Jack Salem story with art by
driprat and myself?
///
I'm going to be scarce with the art for a while, as I get a couple of writing projects done, or at least past the first draft stage.
So I was thinking about posting one of my older comics here, a few pages a day.
Would you prefer to see: The Mule-- a pretty violent Jack Salem story drawn by me?
or
Pictures at an Exhibition-- a not-quite-as violent (but still violent) Jack Salem story with art by
driprat and myself?AnthroCon + Griffin Ranger #2
Posted 9 years agoIf all goes well, I should be at AnthroCon next weekend, my first con (not counting the small Califur) in about 2 years. I'll have 1 brand-new comic (Simone's Story/ The Crappy Christmas Party) and the new Furplanet reprints of Blacklight and City of Ice, plus the novel Griffin Ranger. And since I haven't done any big cons for a while, I'll have a ton of really cool animal figures for sale, including a bunch I've never had before.
Right now I'm listed as having a half table at C08; I'm hoping to get switched to a full table, and if I have to move in order to do that, I will make sure to leave a notice at C08 saying where I moved to.
After a bunch of delays, I'm nearly ready to launch the Kickstarter for Griffin Ranger #2. I'm hoping to have it running by this coming Wednesday, so I can promote it at the con. Rest assured I will post a link to it as soon as it's available.
Right now I'm listed as having a half table at C08; I'm hoping to get switched to a full table, and if I have to move in order to do that, I will make sure to leave a notice at C08 saying where I moved to.
After a bunch of delays, I'm nearly ready to launch the Kickstarter for Griffin Ranger #2. I'm hoping to have it running by this coming Wednesday, so I can promote it at the con. Rest assured I will post a link to it as soon as it's available.
Where I am
Posted 9 years agoSince everyone else is doing it.
I'm pretty active on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show.....590676-rgibson
Very active on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martes
Just as an FYI regarding Facebook-- I'm not one of those people who adds everyone I know. I have a bunch of non-furry friends and relatives on FB, and I've had to de-friend people who kept posting adult or inappropriate material. I generally only friend back people I know personally who I am reasonably sure won't post inappropriate material.
I have a Weasyl account, but it is inactive and I don't plan on using it again. I was nagged into getting the account, didn't enjoy it, and quit using it. Made a vow to never again let myself be bullied into getting an account somewhere that I had no interest in.
I do have a Twitter: https://twitter.com/griffinranger I don't post much, but I do read and sometimes comment.
I have a Tumbler, but once again, don't post a whole lot: http://rgibson63.tumblr.com/
I'm still sporadically active on Livejournal: http://martes.livejournal.com/ Generally for longer posts that won't fit on Facebook, or for stuff I want to have friends-only (I don't trust Facebook's privacy settings at all.)
And, of course, the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=376709&ty=h For those who complain they don't like the commission work I do, if I was making more at this, then I wouldn't HAVE to do so much commission work and could concentrate on my own comics and projects.
I'm pretty active on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show.....590676-rgibson
Very active on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martes
Just as an FYI regarding Facebook-- I'm not one of those people who adds everyone I know. I have a bunch of non-furry friends and relatives on FB, and I've had to de-friend people who kept posting adult or inappropriate material. I generally only friend back people I know personally who I am reasonably sure won't post inappropriate material.
I have a Weasyl account, but it is inactive and I don't plan on using it again. I was nagged into getting the account, didn't enjoy it, and quit using it. Made a vow to never again let myself be bullied into getting an account somewhere that I had no interest in.
I do have a Twitter: https://twitter.com/griffinranger I don't post much, but I do read and sometimes comment.
I have a Tumbler, but once again, don't post a whole lot: http://rgibson63.tumblr.com/
I'm still sporadically active on Livejournal: http://martes.livejournal.com/ Generally for longer posts that won't fit on Facebook, or for stuff I want to have friends-only (I don't trust Facebook's privacy settings at all.)
And, of course, the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=376709&ty=h For those who complain they don't like the commission work I do, if I was making more at this, then I wouldn't HAVE to do so much commission work and could concentrate on my own comics and projects.
So you want to do comics?
Posted 9 years agoYou have a fabulous, groundbreaking idea that will be a kick-ass comic, and you're looking for an artist? Valuable piece of advice #1: learn to draw comics yourself. Unless you're independently wealthy, or are good friends with an artist, that's the only way it will get done.
Both the blessing and the curse of the internet age is instant access to other artists. But it also creates unrealistic expectations, where people are no longer willing to put in the years of effort it takes to become good at something. When I was in middle school and high school, I had NO access to any other artists. I didn't even know anyone else who drew.. I was a voracious reader of comics (mostly fringe comics like Elfquest, or fantasy-SF like Heavy Metal or Epic Illustrated.) I desperately wanted to get my work in books like that. I had no one to help me, or give any advice, or anything. But I started drawing my own comics. My first efforts were pretty bad, and without any kind of artistic mentor I didn't even know what I could do to improve them. But I also thank God there was no internet then, where early bad efforts at things are mocked and derided.
I kept on for literally years, working in a vacuum. It wasn't until I went to art school in my early 20's that I was finally around other artists and a place where I could learn something and get structured critiques. As a result my work took a huge leap forward in quality during that period, but comics are their own beast, and in addition to just doing pretty drawings you have to learn how to render, do layouts, perspective, pacing and writing. I see a lot of comics today with nice drawings, but artists who have no clue how to write, layout or pace a story.
I did literally hundreds of pages of comics before anything I did was public. I worked my ass off learning to draw comics. I made not a dime off of anything comics-related until well into my 30's. That's why I shake my head when I see announcements of multi-volume graphic novels, that all die after the first issue, when the person realizes how much work it is, for basically no money, and the unpleasant realization that being able to draw a pretty picture does not always translate into being able to tell a story through comics. You mean you have to draw hundreds and hundreds of pages in order to get any good at it? Whoops!
If you have a great idea for a comic, draw it yourself. If it's not worth investing the countless (and thankless) hours laboring over in your own life, why in the world would anyone else be expected to labor over it? Edison had the famous "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" quote, but it seems few people are willing to put in that 99% part any more. Ideas are cheap, but having finished product to show people that you did yourself, that's something else.
Both the blessing and the curse of the internet age is instant access to other artists. But it also creates unrealistic expectations, where people are no longer willing to put in the years of effort it takes to become good at something. When I was in middle school and high school, I had NO access to any other artists. I didn't even know anyone else who drew.. I was a voracious reader of comics (mostly fringe comics like Elfquest, or fantasy-SF like Heavy Metal or Epic Illustrated.) I desperately wanted to get my work in books like that. I had no one to help me, or give any advice, or anything. But I started drawing my own comics. My first efforts were pretty bad, and without any kind of artistic mentor I didn't even know what I could do to improve them. But I also thank God there was no internet then, where early bad efforts at things are mocked and derided.
I kept on for literally years, working in a vacuum. It wasn't until I went to art school in my early 20's that I was finally around other artists and a place where I could learn something and get structured critiques. As a result my work took a huge leap forward in quality during that period, but comics are their own beast, and in addition to just doing pretty drawings you have to learn how to render, do layouts, perspective, pacing and writing. I see a lot of comics today with nice drawings, but artists who have no clue how to write, layout or pace a story.
I did literally hundreds of pages of comics before anything I did was public. I worked my ass off learning to draw comics. I made not a dime off of anything comics-related until well into my 30's. That's why I shake my head when I see announcements of multi-volume graphic novels, that all die after the first issue, when the person realizes how much work it is, for basically no money, and the unpleasant realization that being able to draw a pretty picture does not always translate into being able to tell a story through comics. You mean you have to draw hundreds and hundreds of pages in order to get any good at it? Whoops!
If you have a great idea for a comic, draw it yourself. If it's not worth investing the countless (and thankless) hours laboring over in your own life, why in the world would anyone else be expected to labor over it? Edison had the famous "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" quote, but it seems few people are willing to put in that 99% part any more. Ideas are cheap, but having finished product to show people that you did yourself, that's something else.
NEW ACCOUNT NOTICE!!
Posted 9 years agoI have set up an adult commission account: 
1963_commission_account (sorry for the uninspired name). From now on ALL my adult and fetish commissions will be posted there. My main account (here) will be used for personal art, my comics and writing projects, and non-adult commissions. I put off doing this for a long time because I was lazy, but it was finally made clear to me that this was something I needed to do. None of the adult work currently on this account will be moved, but it will not be added to either. I apologize for any inconvenience this switch causes.
1963_commission_account (sorry for the uninspired name). From now on ALL my adult and fetish commissions will be posted there. My main account (here) will be used for personal art, my comics and writing projects, and non-adult commissions. I put off doing this for a long time because I was lazy, but it was finally made clear to me that this was something I needed to do. None of the adult work currently on this account will be moved, but it will not be added to either. I apologize for any inconvenience this switch causes.RainFurrest Redux: Moot point
Posted 9 years agohttps://www.rainfurrest.org/2016/20.....nfurrest-2016/
Looks like all the hotels do indeed talk to each other.
Looks like all the hotels do indeed talk to each other.
RainFurrest redux
Posted 9 years agoRainfurrest announced dealer's room sign-up again. Having been chased out of Seattle due to bad behavior of the attendees, they're apparently setting up shop in Spokane. That kills any ability to go to the con for me-- the only way I could afford to attend was it being in Seattle, where I had crash space and wouldn't need to pay for a hotel, and there were one or two people I could share a table with.
They now have an elaborate system for choosing dealers that's supposed to stop any charges of nepotism or favoritism. Unfortunately, due to the fact that many (most) furry artist's styles are instantly recognizable, there's no possible way they can be anonymous. Who is not going to recognize Rukis,or Sofawolf, or Marci McAdam, or Dark Natasha,Max Blackrabbit or Cooner? Unless you're a complete unknown, anyone who is familiar with current furry artists will know who is applying after taking one look at their art. I think sending a bunch of links to comics that have BY ROZ GIBSON in big letters on the cover might be kind of a give-away of who is applying! Ditto anyone else with published material. And saying people will recuse themselves from voting if they know a particular applicant is ridiculous-- pretty much everyone knows the popular artists and dealers to some extent. So, yeah, if you were rejected last year and have a recognizable art style or product, I don't see much point in applying again this year. Talk about a catch-22 for some people-- if you don't send art samples you won't get in, but if you do send the samples you'll be instantly recognized as one of the unworthy and still won't get in.
To forestall "How would you do it?" questions-- lottery is the only truly unbiased way. If they're so worried about 'diversity' in the dealer's room (which I think is a smokescreen to give cons carte blanc to cheery-pick applicants) then they can hold lotteries for different groups, depending on what they sell. Hell, that would contribute to the sought-after 'diversity' by giving complete unknowns a chance they wouldn't have otherwise.
In any event, here's the new dealer's guidlines for your perusal.
To our dealers and attendees,
As many of you may know last year we switched to a curated system for selecting out dealers. We are continuing to use a curated system in 2016, but we are making significant changes to our process based on feedback from our dealers and attendees. We are doing this to make it as fair, as equitable, and transparent as possible for our dealers and attendees.
About the Selection Process
Our Dealers’ Den Curation Committee will be made up of this year’s Chair, Vice-Chair, Business Executive, Business Co-Seconds, Dealers Lead, Dealers Second, and Marketing Lead.
Our goal will be to keep these principles in mind:
The Den should have a diverse mix of goods and services represented.
Dealer selection should be based on professionalism and quality, not speed of application.
Dealer selection should be done as transparently and fairly as possible.
Blind Selection Process
Before the curation committee receives the applications, a group of staff members not on the committee will anonymize the applications. Names will be removed from all applications, as well as other identifying demographic data, and stored in a separate spreadsheet so that the committee does not know who has submitted which application. Location information may be used as a small factor in the committee’s deliberations. While some on the committee may recognize art styles or specific reference pictures, the goal of this process is to allow as many of the committee as possible to make recommendations solely on relevant data, not on personal relationships. Committee members who have a personal relationship with any applicant will not be allowed to vote on that applicant.
Categories
The curation team will divide the dealer applications into several categories by type of merchandise as was stated by the dealer on their application: apparel, fursuits, fursuit parts & accessories, artists, publishers, jewelers, musicians, crafters, comics, et cetera. A dealer may be indicated in multiple merchandise groups.
We will go through the categories one at a time, starting with the category with the fewest number of applicants. We will make sure to include at least one dealer in each category of merchandise.
In a category with only one or two dealers offering wares, the chances are very high for them to be selected. As we continue to categories with more and more applicants, dealers will face more and more competition from their fellow dealers for the remaining tables. Of course, some dealers sell multiple types of merchandise (for example, an artist may also sell hoodies or hats). If a dealer is not selected in a previous category, they will be considered again in every other category where they had merchandise for sale.
Selection Criteria
Within each category, we will compare the applications based on the description of the products listed in the application, and the references that were listed. The more information is listed on an application, the more information we have to weigh in our decisions. Quality, originality, consistency, variety, etc. of work will be considered, as well as the balance of art styles among the dealers selected.
Improve Your Chances
Dealers who sell many types of product will be more likely to be selected, for a few reasons. First, they will be considered in more categories. Second, they displayed a breadth of work that would help contribute to the diversity of products in the Dealers’ Den. Third, since they are considered in more categories, they will be considered in a smaller pool first (since we went from smallest to largest categories).
Dealers who displayed a unique style or great quality of work are also more likely to be selected. Unique styles are very valuable for contributing to dealer diversity. Quality of work also becomes important when competing in a large pool of applicants.
It is very helpful for the Dealers’ Den curation committee if applications are completely filled out. The more information we have the better. Specifically a description, references, and images of your products.
Prediction-- nothing will change, and the dealers this year will be pretty much identical to the dealers last year (allowing for people who were there last year not applying for this year, which may be a few due to the change of venue or the reputation the con has gotten.)
They now have an elaborate system for choosing dealers that's supposed to stop any charges of nepotism or favoritism. Unfortunately, due to the fact that many (most) furry artist's styles are instantly recognizable, there's no possible way they can be anonymous. Who is not going to recognize Rukis,or Sofawolf, or Marci McAdam, or Dark Natasha,Max Blackrabbit or Cooner? Unless you're a complete unknown, anyone who is familiar with current furry artists will know who is applying after taking one look at their art. I think sending a bunch of links to comics that have BY ROZ GIBSON in big letters on the cover might be kind of a give-away of who is applying! Ditto anyone else with published material. And saying people will recuse themselves from voting if they know a particular applicant is ridiculous-- pretty much everyone knows the popular artists and dealers to some extent. So, yeah, if you were rejected last year and have a recognizable art style or product, I don't see much point in applying again this year. Talk about a catch-22 for some people-- if you don't send art samples you won't get in, but if you do send the samples you'll be instantly recognized as one of the unworthy and still won't get in.
To forestall "How would you do it?" questions-- lottery is the only truly unbiased way. If they're so worried about 'diversity' in the dealer's room (which I think is a smokescreen to give cons carte blanc to cheery-pick applicants) then they can hold lotteries for different groups, depending on what they sell. Hell, that would contribute to the sought-after 'diversity' by giving complete unknowns a chance they wouldn't have otherwise.
In any event, here's the new dealer's guidlines for your perusal.
To our dealers and attendees,
As many of you may know last year we switched to a curated system for selecting out dealers. We are continuing to use a curated system in 2016, but we are making significant changes to our process based on feedback from our dealers and attendees. We are doing this to make it as fair, as equitable, and transparent as possible for our dealers and attendees.
About the Selection Process
Our Dealers’ Den Curation Committee will be made up of this year’s Chair, Vice-Chair, Business Executive, Business Co-Seconds, Dealers Lead, Dealers Second, and Marketing Lead.
Our goal will be to keep these principles in mind:
The Den should have a diverse mix of goods and services represented.
Dealer selection should be based on professionalism and quality, not speed of application.
Dealer selection should be done as transparently and fairly as possible.
Blind Selection Process
Before the curation committee receives the applications, a group of staff members not on the committee will anonymize the applications. Names will be removed from all applications, as well as other identifying demographic data, and stored in a separate spreadsheet so that the committee does not know who has submitted which application. Location information may be used as a small factor in the committee’s deliberations. While some on the committee may recognize art styles or specific reference pictures, the goal of this process is to allow as many of the committee as possible to make recommendations solely on relevant data, not on personal relationships. Committee members who have a personal relationship with any applicant will not be allowed to vote on that applicant.
Categories
The curation team will divide the dealer applications into several categories by type of merchandise as was stated by the dealer on their application: apparel, fursuits, fursuit parts & accessories, artists, publishers, jewelers, musicians, crafters, comics, et cetera. A dealer may be indicated in multiple merchandise groups.
We will go through the categories one at a time, starting with the category with the fewest number of applicants. We will make sure to include at least one dealer in each category of merchandise.
In a category with only one or two dealers offering wares, the chances are very high for them to be selected. As we continue to categories with more and more applicants, dealers will face more and more competition from their fellow dealers for the remaining tables. Of course, some dealers sell multiple types of merchandise (for example, an artist may also sell hoodies or hats). If a dealer is not selected in a previous category, they will be considered again in every other category where they had merchandise for sale.
Selection Criteria
Within each category, we will compare the applications based on the description of the products listed in the application, and the references that were listed. The more information is listed on an application, the more information we have to weigh in our decisions. Quality, originality, consistency, variety, etc. of work will be considered, as well as the balance of art styles among the dealers selected.
Improve Your Chances
Dealers who sell many types of product will be more likely to be selected, for a few reasons. First, they will be considered in more categories. Second, they displayed a breadth of work that would help contribute to the diversity of products in the Dealers’ Den. Third, since they are considered in more categories, they will be considered in a smaller pool first (since we went from smallest to largest categories).
Dealers who displayed a unique style or great quality of work are also more likely to be selected. Unique styles are very valuable for contributing to dealer diversity. Quality of work also becomes important when competing in a large pool of applicants.
It is very helpful for the Dealers’ Den curation committee if applications are completely filled out. The more information we have the better. Specifically a description, references, and images of your products.
Prediction-- nothing will change, and the dealers this year will be pretty much identical to the dealers last year (allowing for people who were there last year not applying for this year, which may be a few due to the change of venue or the reputation the con has gotten.)
Furry Books I read in 2015 (plus a few others)
Posted 9 years agoThe really good, the merely good, and the crappy, they're all here. Sorry I'm too lazy to do all the links. Just cut-and-paste in Amazon if you're interested in any of these.
* Acorn 666 Episode 1: Fire Sky by St. John
This was a serialized story that I honestly don’t remember that much about. Something about the apocalypse going on in New York City caused by evil owls, and the evil owls would give magic acorns to other animals to turn them into evil owls. I just remember thinking it was stupid and not getting the rest of the series.
** Aldair, Master of Ships by Neal Barrett Jr.
This is an old book from the 70’s, part of a 4-book series. The first one is Aldair in Albion. This is the second, and the other two are Aldair: Across the Misty Seas and Aldair: Legion of Beasts. This is a 100% furry book, with the typical scenario of humans long gone, and uplifted animals in their place. The animals seemed doomed to repeat human history, as the story takes place during the “Roman” sera, with pigs representing the Romans, wolves the Germanic barbarians, bears the Vikings, crocodiles the Egyptians, elephants the Africans, ect. The writing style is very 70’s, and probably wouldn’t be of much interest to modern furry fans, but sombody looking for something different might want to try the series.
**** Bones of the Empire (The Fall of Eldvar Book 5) by Jim Galford
The fifth and final installment of the very epic Eldvar series, this follows the (surviving) protagonists from the previous books as they try to destroy the enemy necromancers at their stronghold. While not technically a furry book, most of the lead characters are furry (a ring-tailed lemur, wolves, a fox/wolf/lioness, fennecs, ect.). There’s also elves, zombies, humans (Gypsies), orcs, dragons and lots of magic. A highly recommended series for those willing to invest the time (each volume is LONG.)
**** The Border by Robert McCammon
(non-furry SF) The earth is the latest battleground for two alien races that have been at war for millennia. They have no more regard for humans than humans would have for ants on a WWII battlefield. The surviving remnants of humanity live in terror not only of becoming collateral damage as the aliens fight each other, but prey for cannibalistic mutants that roam the cities and countryside at night. An injured boy with no memory is rescued by one of the surviving groups of humans, and may hold the key to saving the earth, if he can survive. This is a brutal story to read, but is ultimately about the human will to survive no matter what, and that humanity might be worth saving after all. And, unbelievably, this is a self-contained story. Not part of a series, with a definite end. Highly recommended.
* Corr Syl the Warrior & Corr Syl the Terrible by Garry Rogers
For some inexplicable reason the author of these wanted me to review them, and sent me copies. I just wish the books were better. The basic premise is that animals evolved sentience and human-type bodies ages ago, and have since developed a super-high tech, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society. They’re so mentally advanced that they can heal themselves of pretty much anything, carry on simultaneous t rains of thought, move super-fast, climb up walls, make themselves vanish into the background, dodge bullets, ect. Humans are shown to have evolved later, and are still the brutish, short-sighted creatures we are today (human technology exists at modern levels). When the greedy humans are manipulated by an evil spider to try and start a war with their peaceful animal neighbors, it’s up to the special warrior caste to stop them. While I’m not a gamer, I know what the term ‘over-powered character” means, and this book is that in spades. The animals are so ridiculously overpowered it’s like watching Superman fight a retard with a club, and there’s absolutely no tension about who will win.
***Dinoworld Scarface: Origins by K. Thomas Olsen
Ever wanted to see a raptor learn martial arts in outer space? If so, then this book is for you! A prequel of sorts to Dinoworld: Dawn of Scars, this is the origin story of the human-hating Scarface raptor. From his childhood struggling to survive on “Dinoworld,” he’s taken as a pet/attack dog by a bounty hunter, and gets all sorts of advanced combat training, including a stint at a ninja-type temple and in a blood sport arena, before returning to his home planet and revenge against the humans who killed his family. It’s all very silly, but would be of interest to dinosaur fans.
***** Darkeye by Lydia West
Intelligent dogs of every species, wild and tame, roam an abandoned human city. Mysterious automated food distribution centers provide enough for all, and packs of cape hunting dogs enforce the peace. But the feeding stations are starting to break down, and no one knows what will happen if they stop working altogether. Mhumhi is a young cape hunting dog in a mixed pack of ‘orphans’ raised by a domestic dog. His siblings include a dhole, a brush dog and an Ethiopian wolf. Mhumhi’s search for his missing adoptive mother leads to one revelation after another, and eventually takes him outside the city in search of answers. There’s a few things in the series that require a huge suspension of disbelief, but that isn’t enough to detract from the story overall. My only caveat is this is not a tale for the squeamish. Nonetheless, this has my highest recommendation.
** Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel Book 1) by Deborah O'Neill
This is kind of a weird book about a dinosaur-type alien who works to prevent the KT extinction and make sure intelligent dinosaurs evolve so he’ll have companionship. Some humans and rogue intelligent dinosaurs work to thwart his plans. Not a bad book, but nothing too exciting, either.
** Either Side of the Strand (Alysha Forrest Book 4) by M.C.A. Hogarth
A book set in the Pelted Alliance universe of uplifted furries, humans and aliens, this is a very Star Trek-type of saga about first contact and politics within the star fleet. The all-female crewed Stardancer explores ruins on a planet, only to discover the intelligent telepathic space octopuses are not entirely gone. Not much in the way of action, but lots of introspection, talking, angst and philosophical discussions. If you’re sick of reading crapsack world stories or non-stop violence, this might be your speed.
***** The Forges of Dawn (Iron Lyons Book 1) by E. Kinsey
Magic and war among lions, as young lioness Uhuru loses her family and pride to the expansionist lions the Pale Ones. She eventually succeeds where no one else has in crossing the magical wastes keeping Africa isolated from the rest of the world, and find allies and enemies in the wider world before returning to her homeland to take on the Pale Ones. There’s a LOT more to the story than that, but I don’t want to give away too much. A must-read for lion and big cat fans.
*** Freed (The Flightless Trilogy Book 3) by Emily Matthew
The third and final book in the Flightless trilogy, this follows crippled eagle Keereet and his friends Lola the vixen and Gabbo the otter into (literally) the dragon’s lair, to try and find out about the history and future of Keereet’s avian race. What they find isn’t pretty, and Keereet must return to his floating city home to try and set things right. While this trilogy isn’t the best thing evah, it was entertaining and recommended to avian fans.
**** The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly
Jurassic Park with dragons. That’s pretty much all you need to know. Non-stop action, lots of people getting eaten, and duplicitous Chinese officials. What’s there not to like?
*** Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel
Technically not a furry book, this takes place in the 70’s, and is about the teenage son of a psychology professor who decides to ‘adopt’ a chimpanzee baby and try to teach him sign language. Heavily inspired by the RL stories of signing chimps Washoe, Lucy and Nim Chimpsky, the author did his research, and a lot of the incidents in the book were taken directly from those RL experiments. The human son, Ben, is initially reluctant to have anything to do with his chimpanzee ‘brother,’ but eventually grows to love and care for him more than his professor father. I thought the book had too much space devoted to Ben’s social life in high school and romance with a friend’s sister, but I guess that’s to be expected in a book aimed at teen readers.
** Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles Book 1) by Rick Johnson
This is one of those ‘furry in name only’ books, where the characters are supposed to be anthro animals, but they do nothing to indicate that, and the story could just as well be told by humans. I don’t remember much of the plot—Helga, her family and all the wood cows are driven out of their ancestral home unfairly, she gets separated from her family and has various adventures with other animals, and eventually realizes she has to lead a rebellion against the bad ruler who exiled her kind. It wasn’t a horrible book, but the fact I can’t remember much of it does not bode well, and I didn’t bother to get the other books in the series.
***** Hunters Unlucky: Complete Series by Abigail Hilton
Half a dozen sentient species share a very large island. The ferryshafts are herding animals that are a best described as a deer/wolf mix. Years ago they lost a war with the big cat Creasia, and ever since have been subjected to periodic population culls, and rules against learning their own past. A ferryshaft foal named Storm learns how to avoid the Creasia culls, and becomes a rallying point for the other discontents in his herd. Other inhabitants of the island include the fox/badger Curbs, giant eagles, and huge white-furred sea creatures unlike anything on our world. Highly recommended.
** In A Dog’s World by Mary Lowd
A furry book in the truest sense, this takes place in the “Otters in Space” universe, of uplifted dogs, cats and otters. Despite the nominal SF setting with rockets and space stations, this story is very much a high school and college coming-of-age and romance book. Katasha is a feline high school senior who wants to go to a mostly-dog technical school, and secretly wants to date and hang out with dogs instead of cats. This is a gentle slice-of life story; not super-exciting, but okay if this is the type of story you like.
*** IN NATURA: a science fiction novel (ARZAT SERIES Book 2) by David Samuel Frazier
There are some premises that are so utterly improbable it’s hard to take that suspension of disbelief jump. This is a sequel to an earlier book where it is discovered that intelligent raptors have somehow discovered how to induce suspended animation for tens of millions of years, and they’re woken up by humans as they’re digging a shelter from another impending extinction-event size asteroid strike. This is the sequel after the strike, where the two human scientists and their dinosaur companions awake to a changed world, and discover that somehow other groups of intelligent raptors have awoke and are striving for control with surviving groups of humans. It might be nice to (just once) read something where post-apocalyptic humans haven’t been reduced to caveman or medieval-level living conditions.
* Internshipping: A romantic comedy with a furry twist! by Lex Rovi
Another furry-in-name-only story, I get the impression the author took an already existing romance and stuck furry descriptions into it. And the sex parts were not worth plowing through the rest of this tripe for.
*** Kronos Rising by Max Hawthorne
A kronosaur suddenly appears in Caribbean waters and starts eating people. This has all the tropes you’d expect from a Jaws-type book—the incredibly smoking-hot brilliant Japanese female scientist, the studly small-town cop who is tormented by his war-time experiences, the eager side-kick, the loyal black second-mate, the corrupt politician, the sadistic hunter, the elderly mentor, and, of course, the kronosaur with the insatiable appetite. I’d like to see one of these stories, just once, have an old, ugly female scientist, and a fat, out-of shape policeman, and an honest politician. In any event, this has lots of action and a very large body count, and for the genre, is as good a book as any.
** Love and Ordinary Creatures: A Novel by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
A mainstream fiction book, Love and Ordinary Creatures is told through the eyes of a cockatoo in love with his very human caretaker. Snatched in a net from his Australian homeland as a young parrot, Caruso has adapted to captivity and has learned all he knows of love from his previous owner, who was obsessively fixated on his childhood sweetheart. Now in his new home with the beautiful and talented Clarissa, Caruso has found both love and happiness—until a handsome stranger arrives in town and sets his sights on Clarissa. (Sorry I got lazy and copied the Amazon description) In my experience, captive cockatoos are psychopaths that scream constantly, self-mutilate, and try to bite off your finger at every chance. The cockatoo in this story is the calmest, most mellow bird in the history of the universe. Other than that, this is just another lame romance book. And I didn’t understand the ending.
**** Mort(e) by Robert Repino
This was a very weird but interesting book. Sebastian is a typical housecat owned by a typical family. He makes friends with a dog owned by the neighbor that his owner’s wife is having an affair with, and that friendship is one of the driving forces in the book. Inexplicably, every mammal in the world suddenly gains sentience, hands and the ability to walk on two legs. Sebastian takes the name Mort(e), and becomes a soldier with a group of cats involved in tracking down the last remnants of humanity. But he never forgets his dog friend, and is obsessed with finding out what became of her. Its eventually revealed what is behind the animal’s transformation, and Sebastian/ Mort(e) must decide where his loyalties lie.
*** The Mount: A Novel by Carol Emshwiller
An improbable race of aliens referred to as ‘Hoots’ take over the earth, and force humans into beasts of burden like horses. People who are into pony-play would probably enjoy this book. Otherwise, it’s just kind of bizarre.
*** Raven Quest by Sharon Stewart
A Watership Down-type talking animal book, Tok the raven gets banished from the raven community for a crime he didn’t commit, and sets out to find the legendary “Gray Lords,” which he hopes will enable him to rejoin his flock.
**** Salome's Daughters: An Epic Cat Fantasy (The House of Bast) by Jane F. Tatam
Humans are gone, degenerated into mindless creatures called gorribles, with stupid dogs as their companions. Cats rule in their place, with Siamese as the royal clan. There has been peace for many years, but when the old queen dies she appoints the more politically connected daughter as heir, and things go quickly downhill. The new queen Belvedere shows her true colors, killing or driving out any perceived rivals, and soon the cat kingdoms are on the brink of civil war. Exiled princess Alice must rally her supporters to try to win back her throne. While this sounds like a kid’s book, there’s a lot of adult stuff, including graphic mating scenes and extensive violence, such as a shocking scene where Belvedere cannibalizes her offspring as they’re born. I’d still recommend it; just be aware that it’s not exactly G-rated.
* The Soar (The Chronicles of Argon Book 1) by Hannah O'Neal
I was wondering why this book was so bad, and then I read in the description it was written by a teenager. OK then. This is basically a swipe of the Guardians of G’Hoole, so if you liked that series, you’d probably like this. I didn’t, and I didn’t.
*** The Starling God by Tanya Sousa
An orphan starling is raised by a good Samaritan and released back into the wild. Mentored by a kindly pair of mourning doves, the other birds eventually come to believe he is a promised messiah-figure, born of a human. Some of his fellow starlings, who consider their kind favored by humans among all other birds, don’t like this threat to the status quo. The Starling God eventually goes on a journey to discover human’s and bird’s place in the world.
**** Swallowtail & Sword: The Scholar's Book of Story & Song.. by H. Leighton Dickson
An anthology of stories covering the history of the various characters from her superlative Tails from the Upper Kingdom series, this is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed those books. And if you haven’t read the earlier books, what are you waiting for??
**** The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
(non-furry)A near-future story of the battle over water rights in a parched and ruined southwest USA. The protagonist is a ‘water knife,’ an enforcer for Las Vegas charged with cutting off the illegal flow of water. Along with a relocated reporter from the Midwest, he gets drawn into the fight over some newly-discovered documents that could change the balance of power in the area. This is recommended for Bacigalupi’s fine writing style and speculation on how water politics will eventually shape the southwest.
**** White as the Waves by Alison Baird
Moby Dick as told from the point of view of the whale, this covers White-as-Waves story from birth, through his bachelorhood, and as an adult bull sinking whaling ships in order to protect and avenge his fellow whales. Recommended.
* Acorn 666 Episode 1: Fire Sky by St. John
This was a serialized story that I honestly don’t remember that much about. Something about the apocalypse going on in New York City caused by evil owls, and the evil owls would give magic acorns to other animals to turn them into evil owls. I just remember thinking it was stupid and not getting the rest of the series.
** Aldair, Master of Ships by Neal Barrett Jr.
This is an old book from the 70’s, part of a 4-book series. The first one is Aldair in Albion. This is the second, and the other two are Aldair: Across the Misty Seas and Aldair: Legion of Beasts. This is a 100% furry book, with the typical scenario of humans long gone, and uplifted animals in their place. The animals seemed doomed to repeat human history, as the story takes place during the “Roman” sera, with pigs representing the Romans, wolves the Germanic barbarians, bears the Vikings, crocodiles the Egyptians, elephants the Africans, ect. The writing style is very 70’s, and probably wouldn’t be of much interest to modern furry fans, but sombody looking for something different might want to try the series.
**** Bones of the Empire (The Fall of Eldvar Book 5) by Jim Galford
The fifth and final installment of the very epic Eldvar series, this follows the (surviving) protagonists from the previous books as they try to destroy the enemy necromancers at their stronghold. While not technically a furry book, most of the lead characters are furry (a ring-tailed lemur, wolves, a fox/wolf/lioness, fennecs, ect.). There’s also elves, zombies, humans (Gypsies), orcs, dragons and lots of magic. A highly recommended series for those willing to invest the time (each volume is LONG.)
**** The Border by Robert McCammon
(non-furry SF) The earth is the latest battleground for two alien races that have been at war for millennia. They have no more regard for humans than humans would have for ants on a WWII battlefield. The surviving remnants of humanity live in terror not only of becoming collateral damage as the aliens fight each other, but prey for cannibalistic mutants that roam the cities and countryside at night. An injured boy with no memory is rescued by one of the surviving groups of humans, and may hold the key to saving the earth, if he can survive. This is a brutal story to read, but is ultimately about the human will to survive no matter what, and that humanity might be worth saving after all. And, unbelievably, this is a self-contained story. Not part of a series, with a definite end. Highly recommended.
* Corr Syl the Warrior & Corr Syl the Terrible by Garry Rogers
For some inexplicable reason the author of these wanted me to review them, and sent me copies. I just wish the books were better. The basic premise is that animals evolved sentience and human-type bodies ages ago, and have since developed a super-high tech, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society. They’re so mentally advanced that they can heal themselves of pretty much anything, carry on simultaneous t rains of thought, move super-fast, climb up walls, make themselves vanish into the background, dodge bullets, ect. Humans are shown to have evolved later, and are still the brutish, short-sighted creatures we are today (human technology exists at modern levels). When the greedy humans are manipulated by an evil spider to try and start a war with their peaceful animal neighbors, it’s up to the special warrior caste to stop them. While I’m not a gamer, I know what the term ‘over-powered character” means, and this book is that in spades. The animals are so ridiculously overpowered it’s like watching Superman fight a retard with a club, and there’s absolutely no tension about who will win.
***Dinoworld Scarface: Origins by K. Thomas Olsen
Ever wanted to see a raptor learn martial arts in outer space? If so, then this book is for you! A prequel of sorts to Dinoworld: Dawn of Scars, this is the origin story of the human-hating Scarface raptor. From his childhood struggling to survive on “Dinoworld,” he’s taken as a pet/attack dog by a bounty hunter, and gets all sorts of advanced combat training, including a stint at a ninja-type temple and in a blood sport arena, before returning to his home planet and revenge against the humans who killed his family. It’s all very silly, but would be of interest to dinosaur fans.
***** Darkeye by Lydia West
Intelligent dogs of every species, wild and tame, roam an abandoned human city. Mysterious automated food distribution centers provide enough for all, and packs of cape hunting dogs enforce the peace. But the feeding stations are starting to break down, and no one knows what will happen if they stop working altogether. Mhumhi is a young cape hunting dog in a mixed pack of ‘orphans’ raised by a domestic dog. His siblings include a dhole, a brush dog and an Ethiopian wolf. Mhumhi’s search for his missing adoptive mother leads to one revelation after another, and eventually takes him outside the city in search of answers. There’s a few things in the series that require a huge suspension of disbelief, but that isn’t enough to detract from the story overall. My only caveat is this is not a tale for the squeamish. Nonetheless, this has my highest recommendation.
** Dragon Dawn (Dinosaurian Time Travel Book 1) by Deborah O'Neill
This is kind of a weird book about a dinosaur-type alien who works to prevent the KT extinction and make sure intelligent dinosaurs evolve so he’ll have companionship. Some humans and rogue intelligent dinosaurs work to thwart his plans. Not a bad book, but nothing too exciting, either.
** Either Side of the Strand (Alysha Forrest Book 4) by M.C.A. Hogarth
A book set in the Pelted Alliance universe of uplifted furries, humans and aliens, this is a very Star Trek-type of saga about first contact and politics within the star fleet. The all-female crewed Stardancer explores ruins on a planet, only to discover the intelligent telepathic space octopuses are not entirely gone. Not much in the way of action, but lots of introspection, talking, angst and philosophical discussions. If you’re sick of reading crapsack world stories or non-stop violence, this might be your speed.
***** The Forges of Dawn (Iron Lyons Book 1) by E. Kinsey
Magic and war among lions, as young lioness Uhuru loses her family and pride to the expansionist lions the Pale Ones. She eventually succeeds where no one else has in crossing the magical wastes keeping Africa isolated from the rest of the world, and find allies and enemies in the wider world before returning to her homeland to take on the Pale Ones. There’s a LOT more to the story than that, but I don’t want to give away too much. A must-read for lion and big cat fans.
*** Freed (The Flightless Trilogy Book 3) by Emily Matthew
The third and final book in the Flightless trilogy, this follows crippled eagle Keereet and his friends Lola the vixen and Gabbo the otter into (literally) the dragon’s lair, to try and find out about the history and future of Keereet’s avian race. What they find isn’t pretty, and Keereet must return to his floating city home to try and set things right. While this trilogy isn’t the best thing evah, it was entertaining and recommended to avian fans.
**** The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly
Jurassic Park with dragons. That’s pretty much all you need to know. Non-stop action, lots of people getting eaten, and duplicitous Chinese officials. What’s there not to like?
*** Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel
Technically not a furry book, this takes place in the 70’s, and is about the teenage son of a psychology professor who decides to ‘adopt’ a chimpanzee baby and try to teach him sign language. Heavily inspired by the RL stories of signing chimps Washoe, Lucy and Nim Chimpsky, the author did his research, and a lot of the incidents in the book were taken directly from those RL experiments. The human son, Ben, is initially reluctant to have anything to do with his chimpanzee ‘brother,’ but eventually grows to love and care for him more than his professor father. I thought the book had too much space devoted to Ben’s social life in high school and romance with a friend’s sister, but I guess that’s to be expected in a book aimed at teen readers.
** Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles Book 1) by Rick Johnson
This is one of those ‘furry in name only’ books, where the characters are supposed to be anthro animals, but they do nothing to indicate that, and the story could just as well be told by humans. I don’t remember much of the plot—Helga, her family and all the wood cows are driven out of their ancestral home unfairly, she gets separated from her family and has various adventures with other animals, and eventually realizes she has to lead a rebellion against the bad ruler who exiled her kind. It wasn’t a horrible book, but the fact I can’t remember much of it does not bode well, and I didn’t bother to get the other books in the series.
***** Hunters Unlucky: Complete Series by Abigail Hilton
Half a dozen sentient species share a very large island. The ferryshafts are herding animals that are a best described as a deer/wolf mix. Years ago they lost a war with the big cat Creasia, and ever since have been subjected to periodic population culls, and rules against learning their own past. A ferryshaft foal named Storm learns how to avoid the Creasia culls, and becomes a rallying point for the other discontents in his herd. Other inhabitants of the island include the fox/badger Curbs, giant eagles, and huge white-furred sea creatures unlike anything on our world. Highly recommended.
** In A Dog’s World by Mary Lowd
A furry book in the truest sense, this takes place in the “Otters in Space” universe, of uplifted dogs, cats and otters. Despite the nominal SF setting with rockets and space stations, this story is very much a high school and college coming-of-age and romance book. Katasha is a feline high school senior who wants to go to a mostly-dog technical school, and secretly wants to date and hang out with dogs instead of cats. This is a gentle slice-of life story; not super-exciting, but okay if this is the type of story you like.
*** IN NATURA: a science fiction novel (ARZAT SERIES Book 2) by David Samuel Frazier
There are some premises that are so utterly improbable it’s hard to take that suspension of disbelief jump. This is a sequel to an earlier book where it is discovered that intelligent raptors have somehow discovered how to induce suspended animation for tens of millions of years, and they’re woken up by humans as they’re digging a shelter from another impending extinction-event size asteroid strike. This is the sequel after the strike, where the two human scientists and their dinosaur companions awake to a changed world, and discover that somehow other groups of intelligent raptors have awoke and are striving for control with surviving groups of humans. It might be nice to (just once) read something where post-apocalyptic humans haven’t been reduced to caveman or medieval-level living conditions.
* Internshipping: A romantic comedy with a furry twist! by Lex Rovi
Another furry-in-name-only story, I get the impression the author took an already existing romance and stuck furry descriptions into it. And the sex parts were not worth plowing through the rest of this tripe for.
*** Kronos Rising by Max Hawthorne
A kronosaur suddenly appears in Caribbean waters and starts eating people. This has all the tropes you’d expect from a Jaws-type book—the incredibly smoking-hot brilliant Japanese female scientist, the studly small-town cop who is tormented by his war-time experiences, the eager side-kick, the loyal black second-mate, the corrupt politician, the sadistic hunter, the elderly mentor, and, of course, the kronosaur with the insatiable appetite. I’d like to see one of these stories, just once, have an old, ugly female scientist, and a fat, out-of shape policeman, and an honest politician. In any event, this has lots of action and a very large body count, and for the genre, is as good a book as any.
** Love and Ordinary Creatures: A Novel by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
A mainstream fiction book, Love and Ordinary Creatures is told through the eyes of a cockatoo in love with his very human caretaker. Snatched in a net from his Australian homeland as a young parrot, Caruso has adapted to captivity and has learned all he knows of love from his previous owner, who was obsessively fixated on his childhood sweetheart. Now in his new home with the beautiful and talented Clarissa, Caruso has found both love and happiness—until a handsome stranger arrives in town and sets his sights on Clarissa. (Sorry I got lazy and copied the Amazon description) In my experience, captive cockatoos are psychopaths that scream constantly, self-mutilate, and try to bite off your finger at every chance. The cockatoo in this story is the calmest, most mellow bird in the history of the universe. Other than that, this is just another lame romance book. And I didn’t understand the ending.
**** Mort(e) by Robert Repino
This was a very weird but interesting book. Sebastian is a typical housecat owned by a typical family. He makes friends with a dog owned by the neighbor that his owner’s wife is having an affair with, and that friendship is one of the driving forces in the book. Inexplicably, every mammal in the world suddenly gains sentience, hands and the ability to walk on two legs. Sebastian takes the name Mort(e), and becomes a soldier with a group of cats involved in tracking down the last remnants of humanity. But he never forgets his dog friend, and is obsessed with finding out what became of her. Its eventually revealed what is behind the animal’s transformation, and Sebastian/ Mort(e) must decide where his loyalties lie.
*** The Mount: A Novel by Carol Emshwiller
An improbable race of aliens referred to as ‘Hoots’ take over the earth, and force humans into beasts of burden like horses. People who are into pony-play would probably enjoy this book. Otherwise, it’s just kind of bizarre.
*** Raven Quest by Sharon Stewart
A Watership Down-type talking animal book, Tok the raven gets banished from the raven community for a crime he didn’t commit, and sets out to find the legendary “Gray Lords,” which he hopes will enable him to rejoin his flock.
**** Salome's Daughters: An Epic Cat Fantasy (The House of Bast) by Jane F. Tatam
Humans are gone, degenerated into mindless creatures called gorribles, with stupid dogs as their companions. Cats rule in their place, with Siamese as the royal clan. There has been peace for many years, but when the old queen dies she appoints the more politically connected daughter as heir, and things go quickly downhill. The new queen Belvedere shows her true colors, killing or driving out any perceived rivals, and soon the cat kingdoms are on the brink of civil war. Exiled princess Alice must rally her supporters to try to win back her throne. While this sounds like a kid’s book, there’s a lot of adult stuff, including graphic mating scenes and extensive violence, such as a shocking scene where Belvedere cannibalizes her offspring as they’re born. I’d still recommend it; just be aware that it’s not exactly G-rated.
* The Soar (The Chronicles of Argon Book 1) by Hannah O'Neal
I was wondering why this book was so bad, and then I read in the description it was written by a teenager. OK then. This is basically a swipe of the Guardians of G’Hoole, so if you liked that series, you’d probably like this. I didn’t, and I didn’t.
*** The Starling God by Tanya Sousa
An orphan starling is raised by a good Samaritan and released back into the wild. Mentored by a kindly pair of mourning doves, the other birds eventually come to believe he is a promised messiah-figure, born of a human. Some of his fellow starlings, who consider their kind favored by humans among all other birds, don’t like this threat to the status quo. The Starling God eventually goes on a journey to discover human’s and bird’s place in the world.
**** Swallowtail & Sword: The Scholar's Book of Story & Song.. by H. Leighton Dickson
An anthology of stories covering the history of the various characters from her superlative Tails from the Upper Kingdom series, this is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed those books. And if you haven’t read the earlier books, what are you waiting for??
**** The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
(non-furry)A near-future story of the battle over water rights in a parched and ruined southwest USA. The protagonist is a ‘water knife,’ an enforcer for Las Vegas charged with cutting off the illegal flow of water. Along with a relocated reporter from the Midwest, he gets drawn into the fight over some newly-discovered documents that could change the balance of power in the area. This is recommended for Bacigalupi’s fine writing style and speculation on how water politics will eventually shape the southwest.
**** White as the Waves by Alison Baird
Moby Dick as told from the point of view of the whale, this covers White-as-Waves story from birth, through his bachelorhood, and as an adult bull sinking whaling ships in order to protect and avenge his fellow whales. Recommended.
Well that's that
Posted 10 years agoI just heard that I was rejected for the BLFC dealer's room. At this point I'll have to accept defeat and give up. The terrorists have won. In light of what seems to be a concerted effort to bar me from any major con, and the fact I can't financially afford to go to smaller, far-flung cons, anyone not local to me will probably never see me again. It also bodes ill for my comics, since FurPlanet doesn't bring them to cons I don't attend, and if i can't get to be a dealer at any cons my books won't be available except through their mail-order.
As they say, it's been real...
As they say, it's been real...
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Posted 10 years agoI was in a discussion on Facebook about the artists formerly known as 
blotch, which lead to questions about whether Nordguard would ever be finished. I said that since one of the Blotch team was currently doing and promoting a brand-new graphic novel, and the other half has made no noises about finishing it, it was probably safe to say that it was dead and buried.
So that made me wonder if, among the wreckage of dead comics strewn across the road, if there's any that actually have a snowball's chance in hell of finishing?
I was thinking maybe
Dreamkeepers, but since that is apparently dependent on the two creators staying married until it's done, that is a bit of a roll of the dice.
Then I thought maybe the old titles Shanda the Panda and Katmandu, both which are within one issue of completion, but there's been no movement on those in years.
Rukis seems determined to keep doing Red Lantern, but since the page rate has slowed to maybe one every other month, it's not looking good getting it finished before the turn of the century.
I can think of other graphic novels abandoned after 1 volume, as well as countless online strips left unfinished. That's why I rarely check out any 'fabulous new online comic" someone posts about. Post about it again when it's finished.
blotch, which lead to questions about whether Nordguard would ever be finished. I said that since one of the Blotch team was currently doing and promoting a brand-new graphic novel, and the other half has made no noises about finishing it, it was probably safe to say that it was dead and buried.So that made me wonder if, among the wreckage of dead comics strewn across the road, if there's any that actually have a snowball's chance in hell of finishing?
I was thinking maybe
Dreamkeepers, but since that is apparently dependent on the two creators staying married until it's done, that is a bit of a roll of the dice.Then I thought maybe the old titles Shanda the Panda and Katmandu, both which are within one issue of completion, but there's been no movement on those in years.
Rukis seems determined to keep doing Red Lantern, but since the page rate has slowed to maybe one every other month, it's not looking good getting it finished before the turn of the century. I can think of other graphic novels abandoned after 1 volume, as well as countless online strips left unfinished. That's why I rarely check out any 'fabulous new online comic" someone posts about. Post about it again when it's finished.
Sort-of recent furry comics by non-furry creators
Posted 10 years agoSaying these are recent might be a bit inaccurate, but they’re new to this decade, and frankly there’s not a lot of anthro comics done by non-furry artists to choose from, so one must take what they can get.
I’ve noticed that comics with furry or animal characters done by people outside the fandom often have similar reoccurring problems. One of the biggest is that the artist simply can’t draw animals at all. For the books I’m talking about here that’s not a problem, but they do have these other issues:
Ugly characters. Call me paranoid, but sometimes it seems that the artists are deliberately making the characters as unappealing as possible to avoid getting positive furry attention. Elephantmen and Grandville are a couple of examples of the ugly character trope.
Lack of expressions. Drawing believable expressions on animals takes practice and a feel for the animal characters. Iron is the worse example of this, where the characters have expressionless masks for the entire story. Mouse Guard is another example, although the artist there sometimes can overcome that with body language. Sandwalkers has that problem too, but at least there the artist is trying to be realistic, and you can’t get much expression on a beetle’s face no matter how good you are.
Characters look alike. A huge problem in several of the titles. If you can’t tell who’s who at a glance, that stops the story dead.
(I'm not covering Grandville here because I don't have any of the issues at hand, most furries who like comics have already read it, and the characters are all fugly. Even the ones who are supposed to be pretty are fugly. I was going to cover the latest Mouse Guard series, but I can't find my copies. Oh well.)
(Links to all comics at the end of the reviews)
Iron or The War After by S. M. Vidaurri. This book LOOKS really good. The copy I have is a fancy hardback with an embossed cover and high printing quality. The interior is a very dreary gray, black and white. It looks like watercolor, but with computers now-a-days, who knows? I don’t remember much of the story. It had something to do with this rabbit spy and two rabbit kids that end up in an orphanage, and a bunch of government officials plotting against each other. I don’t think it was ever clear who was fighting over what, and I honestly didn’t care. This book is a prime example of the ‘animal heads stuck on human bodies’ school of art, and while meticulously rendered, the characters have virtually no expressions, no matter what happens to them. I guess the characters communicate telepathically, because no one ever opens their mouth to speak. In the entire 150+ pages, I saw maybe 3 or 4 panels with an open mouth. The rabbits and some of the other characters aren’t even drawn with mouths! The book might be worth getting if you’re a fan of interesting art styles or rendering techniques, but the story and characters are as compelling as a wet dish rag.
Elmer by Gerry Alanguilan. Did you ever wonder what would happen if all the world’s billions of chickens suddenly gained sentience and the ability to speak? I honestly never wondered that, but the guy who did this comic did. A mysterious and unexplained event causes all chickens to suddenly become sentient, with the power of speech. Other than the premise, the most unusual thing about the book is it’s setting in the rural Philippines. The book follows a Philipino farmer (Farmer Ben) and a family of chickens (including the Elmer of the title). During the first crazy hours, when most of the rural people are terrified of the ‘possessed’ chickens and killing them, Ben takes pity on several chicken refugees and hides them in his home. The rest of the book covers the chicken’s attempts to integrate into human society, and the economic repercussions of abruptly losing such an important food animal. The book is meant to be an allegory of immigration and assimilation, with the chickens suffering the same type of violence and discrimination human migrants do. This art in this book is done in a traditional cartoon black-and-white style, and the artist/author is an experienced pro who knows how to tell a story in comic form. The story moves back and forth in time a lot (many flashbacks) that can sometimes get confusing, but the main art problem is the chickens look a lot alike. If you don’t pay close attention to things like comb size or tail feathers, it was often hard to tell them apart. But that’s a relatively minor thing. This book would be of interest to anyone who wants an unusual setting, non-anglo characters, or has an interest in animal rights.
Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians by Ricardo Delgado. This is the latest Age of Reptiles series, and has all the pluses and minuses of the previous ones. Ricardo Delgado has done a lot of dinosaur and monster concept work for Hollywood, and his draftsmanship and research are absolutely top-rate. Like the previous books, this is told with no captions or dialogue. Because I like to read a comic book, I generally don’t care for silent ones. Just a personal taste. But on the practical side, it often makes it tough follow. Delgado says in his editorials for this particular series, that he was inspired by the lone gunman spaghetti westerns, and the Japanese ronin stories. In this case, the lone gunman is a battle-scarred Spinosaurus, who arrives in a swampy and densely wooded area inhabited by several groups of meat-eating dinos and a bullying herd of sauropods. Our Spinosaurus gets a booty call, while the local dinosaur groups are involved in an ongoing turf war. These are not The Good Dinosaur dinosaurs. In addition to a lot of graphic killings, these dinosaurs pee, shit and vomit with abandon. With no captions, it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s happening. One particularly confusing event is the Spinosaur killing a bunch of hatchlings of his own species, which were in the nest of his new baby momma. While males will kill the offspring of their new mate (which is why a human mother’s new boyfriend or husband can be deadly to her existing children, particularly infants and toddlers) why would the female lead him right to them, and then do nothing why he kills them? This series also has the ‘all the characters look alike’ problem. While there are differences in the characters of the same species, they can be subtle and you really have to look closely. And because this takes place in a densely vegetated jungle and swamp, and Ricardo Delgado is fanatical about rendering every single detail, the characters are often lost in the background. Coloring might’ve helped, but a lot of the dinosaurs are cryptically colored! Realistic, but a headache if you’re trying to follow the action. But despite flaws, I would still recommend the books for dinosaur fans or people who want something different from the usual comics.
Last of the Sandwalkers by Jay Hosler. The artist/author of the superlative Clan Aphis is back with another insect epic, this time with beetles. A blended family of beetle scholars, along with another academic, leave their isolated city in the desert to see what lies beyond. The mom is a bombardier beetle, the dad a lightning bug, the main character, Lucy, is a desert beetle, and her ‘brother’ is an enormous rhinoceros beetle. The story is a mix of old-fashioned, Indiana Jones type of exploration, lots of scientific facts about beetles and insects in general, and the conflict between the status quo and new discoveries. The author is a vocal Darwinist, and the book has a strong religion vs. science theme that religious people might find too heavy-handed. The story is nearly 300 pages long, and drags in places, but not enough to be a problem. The main gripe about the story I had was that one of the characters (I won’t say who) turns out to be a cyborg, and multiple times during the story will suddenly have an ability that just happens to solve a particular problem the characters are facing. This deus ex machina is used too frequently, as if the author didn’t want to take the time to have the characters figure out how to save themselves, so instead has the cyborg able to do “x” and save the day. This is still not enough to ruin the book—it was just something I noticed. The art is gorgeous, well laid out, with a strong use of black and white you don’t see much anymore. No problem telling the characters apart here, or picking them out from the scenery. Some people might have a problem telling the girls from the boys, since the characters have no mammal style sexual characteristics and all look completely genderless. Because the author sticks close to real beetles, expressions can be an issue in characters that don’t blink and have unmoving facial features. He gets around that limitation pretty well using a mix of antenna and body language that is light years beyond the stiff and expressionless characters of Iron. This book is worth checking out both for its excellent art and as an example of what you can do with nonhuman characters. Plus you’ll learn a lot about beetles.
The Love series (Le Tigre, Le Renard and Le Lion) by Frederic Brremaud and Frederico Bertolucci. Another wordless series, chronicling the adventures of a tiger, a lion and a fox, plus the other animals that share their lives. There’s not much of a plot in any of these, just them going about their animal lives. Le Renard has the closest thing to a story, with the fox and other animals having to deal with an exploding volcano somewhere in the north Atlantic. Le Tigre follows a tiger trying to find a meal, and Le Lion shows a lone male lion trying to find his way in the world. The fox and tiger story are pretty straight forward and easy to follow. The lion saga is a little more difficult, due to problems telling one lion or lioness apart from another. But really, the main reason to check these out is the gorgeous artwork, not a pulse-pounding narrative. The art is lush, fully rendered color, and the artist is excellent at drawing the animals and their expressions. All the volumes feature multiple types of animals. The fox story is particularly crowded, with bears, killer whales, musk ox and even great auks! Generally these all seem well-researched and reasonably true-to-life, but there’s a couple of glaring errors. In the tiger book there’s a scene with piranhas, which are strictly a South American species. The volcano eruption in the fox book is more Hollywood and Disney than realistic. In most volcanoes, the pyroclastic flow would incinerate every living thing there in seconds, and there would be no jumping from rock to rock over lava (how many cartoons have we seen that in?) But those quibbles aside, this is a series worth seeking out for any fans of big cats and realistic animal artwork.
Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw by Kurt Busiek and Ben Dewey. Among the titles discussed here, this is closest to a traditional furry comic. Published by Image, the artwork, writing and pacing are pure American super hero style. This is not a bad thing. Done well, that style produces a very readable comic with easy to follow artwork. Artist Ben Dewey handles the animal characters skillfully, with an interesting number of species. The lead characters are an adolescent bull terrier, a warthog and giraffe, a coyote, a bison and a father and daughter horned owl. These are drawn standard furry style, animal heads on a mostly human body, although some are shown with digitigrade legs or (in the case of a snake and walrus) a realistic animal body. It’s made clear from the beginning this takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where most of the ‘civilized’ animals live on magically floating cities, in an antagonistic relationship with the Native American-type bison herds on the ground. Magic has slowly been draining away, and a warthog sorceress proposes that the magicians in the different cities pool their powers to raise the mythical ‘great champion’ that will recharge the world’s magic. The attempt ends in disaster, when the floating city they’re on crashes to the ground. But they do raise the champion, a human soldier with cybernetic implants. The rest of the series covers the survivors from the city’s fall, with the help of the soldier, trying to hold off the hostile bison long enough to be rescued, while fighting among themselves. I have no real complaints about the book artistically, other than some of the animals skirt pretty close to the ‘deliberately ugly’ camp. But there are enough appealing characters that this is probably just the artist trying to make a realistic mix of character types, which I have no problem with. The book is definitely a must-have for furry comic fans who are interested in SF, fantasy and action-adventure.
Squarriors by Ash Maczko and Ashley Witter. I’m actually surprised I’ve heard no talk about this title at all in furry circles. Another post-human world, where animals have mysteriously gained sentience and have gone to war with each other over conflicting philosophies. The ‘good’ group, the Tin Kin, is composed mostly of squirrels and field mice (with the odd bird and fox) and believe that their intelligence should be used for bettering themselves and learning. A rival group, the Maw (more squirrels, weasels, raccoons and opossums) have a ‘might makes right’ philosophy, although they apparently have an on-again/ off-again truce with the Tin Kin. Domestic cats form the Amoni, and keep prey animals in concentration camp-like ‘meat farms,’ although they’re shown occasionally working with the Maw towards common goals. Despite their sentience, these are all shown to be realistic 4-legged animals (although the squirrels and mice are shown using tools and weapons with their front paws.) The most notable thing about this series is the artwork, which is stunning. The animals are rendered realistically, but the artist is still able to get expressions on them. This book does suffer from “all the characters look alike” issue. Since most squirrels and field mice look alike in RL, the only advice I’d give the artist would be to provide the characters with more distinctive garb, maybe color-coded to indicate which faction they belong to. The layout and staging is fine, and the action is easy to follow. The only technical problem is a lot of the scenes are dark, and that may be a printing issue (computer-colored art tends to print too dark.) I was frankly blown away by the art, and at this point in my life it’s VERY rare I find any comic I can say that about. The plotting and writing, however, has some major problems. Each of the 4 issues has a ‘prologue’ that takes place in the human-controlled world. It indicates some sort of war or societal breakdown, but there’s no clue how this directly ties into the main story. In the afterword in the first issue, the author/creator says he ‘never got into’ reading comics (he just liked the ‘idea’ of comics.) and that he never attended a ‘How to write comics the Marvel Way” panel. Oh boy, does it show. I never understood how people think they can do something they don’t partake in themselves. I keep running into authors who ‘don’t have time’ to read books, and comic artists who don’t read comics. The result in Squarriors is a difficult-to-follow, sometimes confusing story. Add art where it’s difficult to tell the squirrel and mouse characters apart, and you get a big dose of WTF is going on here? In the initial 4 issue series, none of the major story points are resolved. There’s also no mention of any other animals. Where are the dogs, the larger animals such as deer, or the rest of the birds? This book has good ideas and a lot going for it, but I would beg the author to read some fucking comics and learn how to put together a series with resolving story arcs. There’s a reason for the saying “You have to learn the rules before you can break them.”
Iron, or the War After http://www.amazon.com/Iron-War-Afte...../dp/193639328X
Elmer http://www.amazon.com/Elmer-Gerry-A.....sap_bc?ie=UTF8
Age of Reptiles, Ancient Egyptians https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/27-.....-Egyptians-TPB
Last of the Sandwalkers http://www.amazon.com/Last-Sandwalk...../dp/162672024X
Love series http://stuartngbooks.com/love-the-tiger.html
http://stuartngbooks.com/love-le-lion.html
http://stuartngbooks.com/love-le-renard.html
Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw https://imagecomics.com/comics/seri.....tooth-and-claw
Squarriors http://www.squarriors.com/
I’ve noticed that comics with furry or animal characters done by people outside the fandom often have similar reoccurring problems. One of the biggest is that the artist simply can’t draw animals at all. For the books I’m talking about here that’s not a problem, but they do have these other issues:
Ugly characters. Call me paranoid, but sometimes it seems that the artists are deliberately making the characters as unappealing as possible to avoid getting positive furry attention. Elephantmen and Grandville are a couple of examples of the ugly character trope.
Lack of expressions. Drawing believable expressions on animals takes practice and a feel for the animal characters. Iron is the worse example of this, where the characters have expressionless masks for the entire story. Mouse Guard is another example, although the artist there sometimes can overcome that with body language. Sandwalkers has that problem too, but at least there the artist is trying to be realistic, and you can’t get much expression on a beetle’s face no matter how good you are.
Characters look alike. A huge problem in several of the titles. If you can’t tell who’s who at a glance, that stops the story dead.
(I'm not covering Grandville here because I don't have any of the issues at hand, most furries who like comics have already read it, and the characters are all fugly. Even the ones who are supposed to be pretty are fugly. I was going to cover the latest Mouse Guard series, but I can't find my copies. Oh well.)
(Links to all comics at the end of the reviews)
Iron or The War After by S. M. Vidaurri. This book LOOKS really good. The copy I have is a fancy hardback with an embossed cover and high printing quality. The interior is a very dreary gray, black and white. It looks like watercolor, but with computers now-a-days, who knows? I don’t remember much of the story. It had something to do with this rabbit spy and two rabbit kids that end up in an orphanage, and a bunch of government officials plotting against each other. I don’t think it was ever clear who was fighting over what, and I honestly didn’t care. This book is a prime example of the ‘animal heads stuck on human bodies’ school of art, and while meticulously rendered, the characters have virtually no expressions, no matter what happens to them. I guess the characters communicate telepathically, because no one ever opens their mouth to speak. In the entire 150+ pages, I saw maybe 3 or 4 panels with an open mouth. The rabbits and some of the other characters aren’t even drawn with mouths! The book might be worth getting if you’re a fan of interesting art styles or rendering techniques, but the story and characters are as compelling as a wet dish rag.
Elmer by Gerry Alanguilan. Did you ever wonder what would happen if all the world’s billions of chickens suddenly gained sentience and the ability to speak? I honestly never wondered that, but the guy who did this comic did. A mysterious and unexplained event causes all chickens to suddenly become sentient, with the power of speech. Other than the premise, the most unusual thing about the book is it’s setting in the rural Philippines. The book follows a Philipino farmer (Farmer Ben) and a family of chickens (including the Elmer of the title). During the first crazy hours, when most of the rural people are terrified of the ‘possessed’ chickens and killing them, Ben takes pity on several chicken refugees and hides them in his home. The rest of the book covers the chicken’s attempts to integrate into human society, and the economic repercussions of abruptly losing such an important food animal. The book is meant to be an allegory of immigration and assimilation, with the chickens suffering the same type of violence and discrimination human migrants do. This art in this book is done in a traditional cartoon black-and-white style, and the artist/author is an experienced pro who knows how to tell a story in comic form. The story moves back and forth in time a lot (many flashbacks) that can sometimes get confusing, but the main art problem is the chickens look a lot alike. If you don’t pay close attention to things like comb size or tail feathers, it was often hard to tell them apart. But that’s a relatively minor thing. This book would be of interest to anyone who wants an unusual setting, non-anglo characters, or has an interest in animal rights.
Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians by Ricardo Delgado. This is the latest Age of Reptiles series, and has all the pluses and minuses of the previous ones. Ricardo Delgado has done a lot of dinosaur and monster concept work for Hollywood, and his draftsmanship and research are absolutely top-rate. Like the previous books, this is told with no captions or dialogue. Because I like to read a comic book, I generally don’t care for silent ones. Just a personal taste. But on the practical side, it often makes it tough follow. Delgado says in his editorials for this particular series, that he was inspired by the lone gunman spaghetti westerns, and the Japanese ronin stories. In this case, the lone gunman is a battle-scarred Spinosaurus, who arrives in a swampy and densely wooded area inhabited by several groups of meat-eating dinos and a bullying herd of sauropods. Our Spinosaurus gets a booty call, while the local dinosaur groups are involved in an ongoing turf war. These are not The Good Dinosaur dinosaurs. In addition to a lot of graphic killings, these dinosaurs pee, shit and vomit with abandon. With no captions, it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s happening. One particularly confusing event is the Spinosaur killing a bunch of hatchlings of his own species, which were in the nest of his new baby momma. While males will kill the offspring of their new mate (which is why a human mother’s new boyfriend or husband can be deadly to her existing children, particularly infants and toddlers) why would the female lead him right to them, and then do nothing why he kills them? This series also has the ‘all the characters look alike’ problem. While there are differences in the characters of the same species, they can be subtle and you really have to look closely. And because this takes place in a densely vegetated jungle and swamp, and Ricardo Delgado is fanatical about rendering every single detail, the characters are often lost in the background. Coloring might’ve helped, but a lot of the dinosaurs are cryptically colored! Realistic, but a headache if you’re trying to follow the action. But despite flaws, I would still recommend the books for dinosaur fans or people who want something different from the usual comics.
Last of the Sandwalkers by Jay Hosler. The artist/author of the superlative Clan Aphis is back with another insect epic, this time with beetles. A blended family of beetle scholars, along with another academic, leave their isolated city in the desert to see what lies beyond. The mom is a bombardier beetle, the dad a lightning bug, the main character, Lucy, is a desert beetle, and her ‘brother’ is an enormous rhinoceros beetle. The story is a mix of old-fashioned, Indiana Jones type of exploration, lots of scientific facts about beetles and insects in general, and the conflict between the status quo and new discoveries. The author is a vocal Darwinist, and the book has a strong religion vs. science theme that religious people might find too heavy-handed. The story is nearly 300 pages long, and drags in places, but not enough to be a problem. The main gripe about the story I had was that one of the characters (I won’t say who) turns out to be a cyborg, and multiple times during the story will suddenly have an ability that just happens to solve a particular problem the characters are facing. This deus ex machina is used too frequently, as if the author didn’t want to take the time to have the characters figure out how to save themselves, so instead has the cyborg able to do “x” and save the day. This is still not enough to ruin the book—it was just something I noticed. The art is gorgeous, well laid out, with a strong use of black and white you don’t see much anymore. No problem telling the characters apart here, or picking them out from the scenery. Some people might have a problem telling the girls from the boys, since the characters have no mammal style sexual characteristics and all look completely genderless. Because the author sticks close to real beetles, expressions can be an issue in characters that don’t blink and have unmoving facial features. He gets around that limitation pretty well using a mix of antenna and body language that is light years beyond the stiff and expressionless characters of Iron. This book is worth checking out both for its excellent art and as an example of what you can do with nonhuman characters. Plus you’ll learn a lot about beetles.
The Love series (Le Tigre, Le Renard and Le Lion) by Frederic Brremaud and Frederico Bertolucci. Another wordless series, chronicling the adventures of a tiger, a lion and a fox, plus the other animals that share their lives. There’s not much of a plot in any of these, just them going about their animal lives. Le Renard has the closest thing to a story, with the fox and other animals having to deal with an exploding volcano somewhere in the north Atlantic. Le Tigre follows a tiger trying to find a meal, and Le Lion shows a lone male lion trying to find his way in the world. The fox and tiger story are pretty straight forward and easy to follow. The lion saga is a little more difficult, due to problems telling one lion or lioness apart from another. But really, the main reason to check these out is the gorgeous artwork, not a pulse-pounding narrative. The art is lush, fully rendered color, and the artist is excellent at drawing the animals and their expressions. All the volumes feature multiple types of animals. The fox story is particularly crowded, with bears, killer whales, musk ox and even great auks! Generally these all seem well-researched and reasonably true-to-life, but there’s a couple of glaring errors. In the tiger book there’s a scene with piranhas, which are strictly a South American species. The volcano eruption in the fox book is more Hollywood and Disney than realistic. In most volcanoes, the pyroclastic flow would incinerate every living thing there in seconds, and there would be no jumping from rock to rock over lava (how many cartoons have we seen that in?) But those quibbles aside, this is a series worth seeking out for any fans of big cats and realistic animal artwork.
Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw by Kurt Busiek and Ben Dewey. Among the titles discussed here, this is closest to a traditional furry comic. Published by Image, the artwork, writing and pacing are pure American super hero style. This is not a bad thing. Done well, that style produces a very readable comic with easy to follow artwork. Artist Ben Dewey handles the animal characters skillfully, with an interesting number of species. The lead characters are an adolescent bull terrier, a warthog and giraffe, a coyote, a bison and a father and daughter horned owl. These are drawn standard furry style, animal heads on a mostly human body, although some are shown with digitigrade legs or (in the case of a snake and walrus) a realistic animal body. It’s made clear from the beginning this takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where most of the ‘civilized’ animals live on magically floating cities, in an antagonistic relationship with the Native American-type bison herds on the ground. Magic has slowly been draining away, and a warthog sorceress proposes that the magicians in the different cities pool their powers to raise the mythical ‘great champion’ that will recharge the world’s magic. The attempt ends in disaster, when the floating city they’re on crashes to the ground. But they do raise the champion, a human soldier with cybernetic implants. The rest of the series covers the survivors from the city’s fall, with the help of the soldier, trying to hold off the hostile bison long enough to be rescued, while fighting among themselves. I have no real complaints about the book artistically, other than some of the animals skirt pretty close to the ‘deliberately ugly’ camp. But there are enough appealing characters that this is probably just the artist trying to make a realistic mix of character types, which I have no problem with. The book is definitely a must-have for furry comic fans who are interested in SF, fantasy and action-adventure.
Squarriors by Ash Maczko and Ashley Witter. I’m actually surprised I’ve heard no talk about this title at all in furry circles. Another post-human world, where animals have mysteriously gained sentience and have gone to war with each other over conflicting philosophies. The ‘good’ group, the Tin Kin, is composed mostly of squirrels and field mice (with the odd bird and fox) and believe that their intelligence should be used for bettering themselves and learning. A rival group, the Maw (more squirrels, weasels, raccoons and opossums) have a ‘might makes right’ philosophy, although they apparently have an on-again/ off-again truce with the Tin Kin. Domestic cats form the Amoni, and keep prey animals in concentration camp-like ‘meat farms,’ although they’re shown occasionally working with the Maw towards common goals. Despite their sentience, these are all shown to be realistic 4-legged animals (although the squirrels and mice are shown using tools and weapons with their front paws.) The most notable thing about this series is the artwork, which is stunning. The animals are rendered realistically, but the artist is still able to get expressions on them. This book does suffer from “all the characters look alike” issue. Since most squirrels and field mice look alike in RL, the only advice I’d give the artist would be to provide the characters with more distinctive garb, maybe color-coded to indicate which faction they belong to. The layout and staging is fine, and the action is easy to follow. The only technical problem is a lot of the scenes are dark, and that may be a printing issue (computer-colored art tends to print too dark.) I was frankly blown away by the art, and at this point in my life it’s VERY rare I find any comic I can say that about. The plotting and writing, however, has some major problems. Each of the 4 issues has a ‘prologue’ that takes place in the human-controlled world. It indicates some sort of war or societal breakdown, but there’s no clue how this directly ties into the main story. In the afterword in the first issue, the author/creator says he ‘never got into’ reading comics (he just liked the ‘idea’ of comics.) and that he never attended a ‘How to write comics the Marvel Way” panel. Oh boy, does it show. I never understood how people think they can do something they don’t partake in themselves. I keep running into authors who ‘don’t have time’ to read books, and comic artists who don’t read comics. The result in Squarriors is a difficult-to-follow, sometimes confusing story. Add art where it’s difficult to tell the squirrel and mouse characters apart, and you get a big dose of WTF is going on here? In the initial 4 issue series, none of the major story points are resolved. There’s also no mention of any other animals. Where are the dogs, the larger animals such as deer, or the rest of the birds? This book has good ideas and a lot going for it, but I would beg the author to read some fucking comics and learn how to put together a series with resolving story arcs. There’s a reason for the saying “You have to learn the rules before you can break them.”
Iron, or the War After http://www.amazon.com/Iron-War-Afte...../dp/193639328X
Elmer http://www.amazon.com/Elmer-Gerry-A.....sap_bc?ie=UTF8
Age of Reptiles, Ancient Egyptians https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/27-.....-Egyptians-TPB
Last of the Sandwalkers http://www.amazon.com/Last-Sandwalk...../dp/162672024X
Love series http://stuartngbooks.com/love-the-tiger.html
http://stuartngbooks.com/love-le-lion.html
http://stuartngbooks.com/love-le-renard.html
Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw https://imagecomics.com/comics/seri.....tooth-and-claw
Squarriors http://www.squarriors.com/
Ralph Bakshi's new film
Posted 10 years ago https://vimeo.com/142427253 (NWS, NMS)
Although for various reasons I like to see animated films, particularly 2D ones, succeed, I can't say I can get behind this particular film. I don't think I've seen such an aggressively grotesque piece of animation. Who exactly is this film supposed to appeal to? While I liked some of Bakshi's earlier films, particularly Wizards and Fritz the Cat, this one just sort of inspires a "WTF." Curious about other opinions on this.
Although for various reasons I like to see animated films, particularly 2D ones, succeed, I can't say I can get behind this particular film. I don't think I've seen such an aggressively grotesque piece of animation. Who exactly is this film supposed to appeal to? While I liked some of Bakshi's earlier films, particularly Wizards and Fritz the Cat, this one just sort of inspires a "WTF." Curious about other opinions on this.
Patreon Live
Posted 10 years agoThe Patreon page for the comic projects me and driprat are doing is up: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=376709&ty=h
He did a neat little animation to go with it, if anyone's interested in hearing how I sound over a speaker phone!
This is being set up to support both our joint projects, and our individual ones. Part of the reason it's taking me so long to finish my comics and writing is I need to do commissions pretty much constantly to keep up with bills and living expenses. Although I've been VERY fortunate to have some patrons and fans who supported me through commissions and the occasional monetary gift, it's still not quite enough. In addition, due to the new trend of furry cons doing a 'juried' dealer room selection to get rid of the artists they no longer consider relevant, my yearly income has taken a big hit with the loss of that convention money.
As well as the comics I'm doing with Dave, I also need to get the second half of Griffin Ranger ready to go to Kickstarter.
If anyone has any suggestions for level rewards or anything else, let me know!
driprat are doing is up: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=376709&ty=hHe did a neat little animation to go with it, if anyone's interested in hearing how I sound over a speaker phone!
This is being set up to support both our joint projects, and our individual ones. Part of the reason it's taking me so long to finish my comics and writing is I need to do commissions pretty much constantly to keep up with bills and living expenses. Although I've been VERY fortunate to have some patrons and fans who supported me through commissions and the occasional monetary gift, it's still not quite enough. In addition, due to the new trend of furry cons doing a 'juried' dealer room selection to get rid of the artists they no longer consider relevant, my yearly income has taken a big hit with the loss of that convention money.
As well as the comics I'm doing with Dave, I also need to get the second half of Griffin Ranger ready to go to Kickstarter.
If anyone has any suggestions for level rewards or anything else, let me know!
Folders
Posted 10 years agoI went through my gallery and assigned pretty much everything to various folders. Hopefully this will make it easier when looking for a particular subject, image or comic.
Projects, schedules, conventions, Patreon, etc.
Posted 10 years agoFor anyone interested in the status of various projects.
Next comic: I'm currently working on another collaboration with driprat starring Jack Salem and Simone. This is currently being penciled. Ordinarily the release date I'd be shooting for would be FC, but since in their infinite wisdom the powers-that-be decided i was not worthy to attend as a dealer, I don't really have a release date planned, other than before AnthroCon.
Griffin Ranger #2-- I need a solid couple of weeks to do the revisions before getting ready to launch the Kickstarter. So far I can't figure out where I'm going to get that time.
Patreon. Everyone and his brother is getting one, no doubt lured by the thousands of dollars they're seeing other artists get. If they look closer, it would become apparent that the people making the big bucks are very popular pornographic artists, or people with wildly popular webcomics before they even started their Patreon. As a result the market is flooded, and most mid-level furry artists are lucky to clear over $100 a month.
Conventions: Despite being rejected from the Rainfurrest dealer's room in favor of people selling leather fetish gear, I was considering going because there were several friends I wanted to visit in that area. However, it's starting to look like I can't come up with the funds for the flight up there, so once again I'm doubly SOL. I will probably try for AnthroCon next year, if only because I can reasonably expect to get a table due to the size of the dealer's room. People are encouraging me to go to BLFC, but if they too have a juried dealer's room, my chances of getting a table are probably nil. I may simply have to reconcile with the fact I won't be able to attend conventions as a dealer any more, which means i can't attend them period. Trying to replace that lost income is not going to be pretty.
Unless my employment or financial situation radically changes, the comic and the second half of the Griffin book will be the last of my own personal projects. I am emotionally and physically worn down by the constant fight to keep ahead, and the constant stress of wondering how I'm going to pay bills X Y or Z. In order to do any of my own projects, I have to put aside paid commission work for days or weeks, which means I have to scramble extra-hard to make up the difference, and I can't do it any more. My chances of getting a decent office job like I used to have, which would relieve the financial pressure, are also nil. They simply don't hire people my age for that type of work. Lack of funds also prevents me from going back to school to get some additional training that might make me a little more employable.
The only person who warned me what would happen as I got older was my dad, and of course like an idiot I didn't listen to him. And when you're old enough to know better, then it's too late.
Next comic: I'm currently working on another collaboration with
driprat starring Jack Salem and Simone. This is currently being penciled. Ordinarily the release date I'd be shooting for would be FC, but since in their infinite wisdom the powers-that-be decided i was not worthy to attend as a dealer, I don't really have a release date planned, other than before AnthroCon.Griffin Ranger #2-- I need a solid couple of weeks to do the revisions before getting ready to launch the Kickstarter. So far I can't figure out where I'm going to get that time.
Patreon. Everyone and his brother is getting one, no doubt lured by the thousands of dollars they're seeing other artists get. If they look closer, it would become apparent that the people making the big bucks are very popular pornographic artists, or people with wildly popular webcomics before they even started their Patreon. As a result the market is flooded, and most mid-level furry artists are lucky to clear over $100 a month.
Conventions: Despite being rejected from the Rainfurrest dealer's room in favor of people selling leather fetish gear, I was considering going because there were several friends I wanted to visit in that area. However, it's starting to look like I can't come up with the funds for the flight up there, so once again I'm doubly SOL. I will probably try for AnthroCon next year, if only because I can reasonably expect to get a table due to the size of the dealer's room. People are encouraging me to go to BLFC, but if they too have a juried dealer's room, my chances of getting a table are probably nil. I may simply have to reconcile with the fact I won't be able to attend conventions as a dealer any more, which means i can't attend them period. Trying to replace that lost income is not going to be pretty.
Unless my employment or financial situation radically changes, the comic and the second half of the Griffin book will be the last of my own personal projects. I am emotionally and physically worn down by the constant fight to keep ahead, and the constant stress of wondering how I'm going to pay bills X Y or Z. In order to do any of my own projects, I have to put aside paid commission work for days or weeks, which means I have to scramble extra-hard to make up the difference, and I can't do it any more. My chances of getting a decent office job like I used to have, which would relieve the financial pressure, are also nil. They simply don't hire people my age for that type of work. Lack of funds also prevents me from going back to school to get some additional training that might make me a little more employable.
The only person who warned me what would happen as I got older was my dad, and of course like an idiot I didn't listen to him. And when you're old enough to know better, then it's too late.
1989 Retro comics
Posted 10 years ago(x-posted from my LJ because I thought some FA people might find it interesting.)
I was recently given a ton of old magazines by a friend who was doing some house cleaning. Among them was a copy of Amazing Heroes Swimsuit special 1989. An interesting time capsul of who was around and doing what then, including a number of furry artists. As Megan said when we looked at it earlier this week, back when people still inked everything by hand.
At the begining of the issue there's a list of upcoming comics from publishers. Out of 37 publishers listed, only Dark Horse, DC, Fantagraphics, Kitchen Sink (do they still exisit?) and Marvel are still around.
People who contributed pin-ups to the issue:
Colleen Doran with A Distant Soil. That comic appeared right after I got out of high school, and it's still not done!
Donna Barr with the Desert Peach, which is still around in some mutated online form called Afterdead.
The late Deal Whitley with two illustrations from his early furry comic Opporknockitytoons, which sadly never saw a single issue appear.
Jim Groat with Red Shetland and Equine the Uncivilized, and a cross-over drawing of Red Shetland with Donna Barr's Bosom Enemies characters. Back in the stone age when everyone all got along and would do crossovers like this regularly.
Phil Foglio pre-Girl Genius and XXXenophile.
Joshua (Richard Lester) Quagmire never missed an opportunity to put his Cutey Bunny character out there. He only stopped contributing to the SDCC souvenier book when they banned including your own characters in your submission. His illo in this issue includes Brian Buniak drawing his Thunder Bunny character, which I doubt more than a few people remember any more.
Chuck (Phantom Bunny) Fiala has a picture, but it is non-furry.
Charles Vess did a picture with the characters from Rupert the Bear.
Dave Garcia does Panda Khan. I still see him in artist's alley at ComiCon, but I don't think he does Panda Kahn any more.
Scott Shaw does The Completely Mental Adventures of Ed Grimley. Who remembers that? I sure didn't...
A couple of pictures of the Adventures of Captain Jack characters by Mike Kazaleh.
The [b]Weasel Patrol[/b] by Lela Dowling.
Gary Fields draws Superswine.
The late J.P. Morgan draws Fission Chicken.
That guy who did that awful Duck "Bill" Platypus has a picture in the book, of course.
Stan Saki, with a drawing of not only Usagi Yojimbo but Nilson Groundthumper proves he was just as good then as now.
Steve Purcell does Sam and Max, and Betty and Veronica!
That guy who did the comic Lizards (appeared in Critters and I think Furrlough) contributes one of his trademark lovingly rendered but really ugly characters.
Fan-favorite artist Fred Hembeck has a couple illos, but I can't think of anything I've seen his art in recently. Or even not-so-recently. Did he die?
Reed Waller with Omaha the Cat Dancer. With some clothes on! Or at least a swimsuit.
The Fish Police. Blast from the past indeed.
Another Cutey Bunny picture.
And lastly, the perennial Ben Dunn, with the perennial Ninja High School.
I was recently given a ton of old magazines by a friend who was doing some house cleaning. Among them was a copy of Amazing Heroes Swimsuit special 1989. An interesting time capsul of who was around and doing what then, including a number of furry artists. As Megan said when we looked at it earlier this week, back when people still inked everything by hand.
At the begining of the issue there's a list of upcoming comics from publishers. Out of 37 publishers listed, only Dark Horse, DC, Fantagraphics, Kitchen Sink (do they still exisit?) and Marvel are still around.
People who contributed pin-ups to the issue:
Colleen Doran with A Distant Soil. That comic appeared right after I got out of high school, and it's still not done!
Donna Barr with the Desert Peach, which is still around in some mutated online form called Afterdead.
The late Deal Whitley with two illustrations from his early furry comic Opporknockitytoons, which sadly never saw a single issue appear.
Jim Groat with Red Shetland and Equine the Uncivilized, and a cross-over drawing of Red Shetland with Donna Barr's Bosom Enemies characters. Back in the stone age when everyone all got along and would do crossovers like this regularly.
Phil Foglio pre-Girl Genius and XXXenophile.
Joshua (Richard Lester) Quagmire never missed an opportunity to put his Cutey Bunny character out there. He only stopped contributing to the SDCC souvenier book when they banned including your own characters in your submission. His illo in this issue includes Brian Buniak drawing his Thunder Bunny character, which I doubt more than a few people remember any more.
Chuck (Phantom Bunny) Fiala has a picture, but it is non-furry.
Charles Vess did a picture with the characters from Rupert the Bear.
Dave Garcia does Panda Khan. I still see him in artist's alley at ComiCon, but I don't think he does Panda Kahn any more.
Scott Shaw does The Completely Mental Adventures of Ed Grimley. Who remembers that? I sure didn't...
A couple of pictures of the Adventures of Captain Jack characters by Mike Kazaleh.
The [b]Weasel Patrol[/b] by Lela Dowling.
Gary Fields draws Superswine.
The late J.P. Morgan draws Fission Chicken.
That guy who did that awful Duck "Bill" Platypus has a picture in the book, of course.
Stan Saki, with a drawing of not only Usagi Yojimbo but Nilson Groundthumper proves he was just as good then as now.
Steve Purcell does Sam and Max, and Betty and Veronica!
That guy who did the comic Lizards (appeared in Critters and I think Furrlough) contributes one of his trademark lovingly rendered but really ugly characters.
Fan-favorite artist Fred Hembeck has a couple illos, but I can't think of anything I've seen his art in recently. Or even not-so-recently. Did he die?
Reed Waller with Omaha the Cat Dancer. With some clothes on! Or at least a swimsuit.
The Fish Police. Blast from the past indeed.
Another Cutey Bunny picture.
And lastly, the perennial Ben Dunn, with the perennial Ninja High School.
Meme, why not?
Posted 10 years agoName: Roz
Nickname: n/a
Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Los Angeles "edge city.")
Age: Older than you.
Height: 5'5"
Zodiac sign: Cancer
Pets: 4 cats, some fish.
Favorite thing about yourself: I don't know.
Worst habit: I do eat and drink stuff I shouldn't.
Fun fact: I was accepted into CalArts on my first try, with no art training beyond 1 year of high school art.
Identity, Sexuality & Personality
Gender identity: Female
Sexual preference: Male
Romantic preference: male
"Kinsey Scale" no clue
Relationship status: Married
Myers/Briggs type: No clue
Hogwarts house: Probably Hufflepuff. I'm too apathetic to be Slytherin.
Routine
"Early Bird" or "Night Owl": Night Owl
First thought in the morning: What time is it? (ie-- can I sleep a little more, or should I get up?)
Last thought before falling asleep at night: I honestly can't remember. Probably nothing interesting. I wake up multiple times during the night due to sleep apnea and blood pressure meds that make me have to pee at least twice a night.
School/Work
Do you work or are you a student: Freelance artist. Hoping to get back into a 'normal' office job.
What do you do well: I read a lot.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years: No idea. 5 years older, hopefully.
Habits (Do you…?)
Drink: Never. Anti-drinking to a fanatical degree.
Smoke: Nope.
Do Drugs: Smoked some pot years ago, but it didn't interest me enough to keep doing it.
Exercise: Not as much as I used to. A lot of factors, but bad joint pain is top among them.
Have a go-to comfort food: I do like pasta...
Have a nervous habit: I like to shred paper, or just fiddle with it if I'm bored or have nothing to do with my hands.
What is your favorite…?
Physical quality (in yourself): I used to have great teeth, back when I could afford regular dental visits.
In Others: Never thought about it that much.
Mental/emotional quality (in yourself): Extreme focus and stubbornness, which is why I finish my projects.
Food: pasta & chocolate
Drink: Dr. Pepper, ice water
Animal: Kittehs, birds.
Colors: It varies.
Artist/Band/Group: Muse, Jeff Lynne
TV shows: BBC nature documentaries, Gotham, Hoarders, a lot of other shows.
Video game: Don't game.
Movie: Not a huge movie buff. A lot of the usual stuff people of my generation like.
Nickname: n/a
Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Los Angeles "edge city.")
Age: Older than you.
Height: 5'5"
Zodiac sign: Cancer
Pets: 4 cats, some fish.
Favorite thing about yourself: I don't know.
Worst habit: I do eat and drink stuff I shouldn't.
Fun fact: I was accepted into CalArts on my first try, with no art training beyond 1 year of high school art.
Identity, Sexuality & Personality
Gender identity: Female
Sexual preference: Male
Romantic preference: male
"Kinsey Scale" no clue
Relationship status: Married
Myers/Briggs type: No clue
Hogwarts house: Probably Hufflepuff. I'm too apathetic to be Slytherin.
Routine
"Early Bird" or "Night Owl": Night Owl
First thought in the morning: What time is it? (ie-- can I sleep a little more, or should I get up?)
Last thought before falling asleep at night: I honestly can't remember. Probably nothing interesting. I wake up multiple times during the night due to sleep apnea and blood pressure meds that make me have to pee at least twice a night.
School/Work
Do you work or are you a student: Freelance artist. Hoping to get back into a 'normal' office job.
What do you do well: I read a lot.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years: No idea. 5 years older, hopefully.
Habits (Do you…?)
Drink: Never. Anti-drinking to a fanatical degree.
Smoke: Nope.
Do Drugs: Smoked some pot years ago, but it didn't interest me enough to keep doing it.
Exercise: Not as much as I used to. A lot of factors, but bad joint pain is top among them.
Have a go-to comfort food: I do like pasta...
Have a nervous habit: I like to shred paper, or just fiddle with it if I'm bored or have nothing to do with my hands.
What is your favorite…?
Physical quality (in yourself): I used to have great teeth, back when I could afford regular dental visits.
In Others: Never thought about it that much.
Mental/emotional quality (in yourself): Extreme focus and stubbornness, which is why I finish my projects.
Food: pasta & chocolate
Drink: Dr. Pepper, ice water
Animal: Kittehs, birds.
Colors: It varies.
Artist/Band/Group: Muse, Jeff Lynne
TV shows: BBC nature documentaries, Gotham, Hoarders, a lot of other shows.
Video game: Don't game.
Movie: Not a huge movie buff. A lot of the usual stuff people of my generation like.
