Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Media

March 8, 2019

Second Life’s philosophy of genuine expression for Furries.

by Patch O'Furr

Announcement – until March 31, vote for the Ursa Major Awards to support the best works of furry fandom!

Luca is a long time Second Life user who recently sniffed her way to my inbox with a news tip: many furries in that world want to show this one what they’re all about. (I noticed that she’s pretty good at this – having appeared on Vice’s Motherboard with a video about the huge size of the world. It tells me that while it may not be as big as it was a while ago, it’s still very active.)

Luca believes that Second Life’s philosophy of Virtual Existentialism / Embodiment allows furries to genuinely, fully express who they are without physical limits. So she made a video to promote their wish to transcend the inner self on the virtual plane of existence.

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March 7, 2019

Shanda the Panda #50, by Mike Curtis and Razorfox – review by Roz Gibson

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Announcement – until March 31, vote for the Ursa Major Awards to support the best works of furry fandom!

Welcome to Roz Gibson, furry artist and animator in Southern California. Roz was guest of honor at Confurence and created the Jack Salem comic character that first appeared in Rowrbrazzle in 1987. This is Roz’s furry graphic novel review part 4 of 6 on the way. Read in order as they post: 1) Myre 2) Angelic Book 1  3) Marney the Fox 4) Shanda the Panda  5) Cinderfrost 6) Tim’rous Beastie. See Roz’s tag for the rest. Roz is a community access guest and contents are hers.

Shanda the Panda #50 

Written by Mike Curtis 
Art by Razorfox 

Part of the furry comics boom in the early 1990’s, Shanda the Panda recently published its fiftieth and final issue. Written by Mike Curtis, illustrated by a dozen or so artists over the years, it was one of the longest-lived furry titles. Following the life and loves of the titular character and featuring a large cast of friends, family and neighbors, it was the quintessential slice-of-life furry comic. Each issue featured a main story, with one or two back-up comics focusing on the supporting characters. 

Over the 50 issue series there was a lot of stuff going on, with side plots and a cast of thousands. The main story followed Shanda (the panda) and her courtship with Richard (a Cajun raccoon). This is complicated by her lesbian best friend Terri, who wants to be more than just friends, and Richard’s very vindictive ex-wife.  Shanda works as a movie theater manager, and the other employees (mostly high school kids) provide a lot of the supporting cast. Shanda’s very traditional Chinese family, who doesn’t want her dating anyone other than another panda,  Richard’s nasty ex-wife and a misogynistic panda from Hong Kong provide some antagonists to keep things interesting. 

And “interesting” is certainly a word to describe this series. A furry soap opera is probably closer to what Shanda the Panda is than simple slice-of-life. Among the issues the characters deal with: domestic abuse, incest, unplanned pregnancy, kidnapping, murder and alcoholism. There’s also lots of sex among the cast, particularly the randy high school kids and the lesbian Terri. One of the kids is nicknamed “Tripod” because he has an enormous penis, and the main character attribute for a rabbit girl is that she’s extremely promiscuous.  

Characters grow and evolve over the course of the series. Enemies become friends, couples break up and form new relationships, people die or move on.  Despite the lack of plausibility with some of the events or character motivations (Richard is unrealistically tolerant of Terri’s pursuit of Shanda, for example) I always found the book to be extremely readable. There were several distinct multi-issue story arcs, as well as stand-alone issues that made it easy for new readers to jump into the series, with the back-up stories adding extra depth to the world. 

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March 6, 2019

Marney the Fox, by Scott Goodall and John Stokes – review by Roz Gibson

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Welcome to Roz Gibson, furry artist and animator in Southern California. Roz was guest of honor at Confurence and created the Jack Salem comic character that first appeared in Rowrbrazzle in 1987. This is Roz’s furry graphic novel review part 3 of 6 on the way. Read in order as they post: 1) Myre 2) Angelic Book 1  3) Marney the Fox 4) Shanda the Panda  5) Cinderfrost 6) Tim’rous Beastie. See Roz’s tag for the rest. Roz is a community access guest and contents are hers.

Marney the Fox 

Story by Scott Goodall
Art by John Stokes

I discovered this by accident in the local comics shop. Other than the fact it’s about a fox, it probably wouldn’t appeal to the average furry fan. All the characters are ‘regular’ animals (although the fox does have thoughts and can talk to other foxes), the traditional pen and ink art is in black and white, and I’m sure it all looks terribly dated to people used to slick digital work. It was originally done as a magazine serial in the UK during the early 1970’s, so it plays fast and loose (to put it mildly) with real animal behavior, and some story elements may grate on modern politically correct sensibilities. 

Still… considering the success of the modern French “Love” graphic novels about realistic animals, there may be a place for Marney the Fox.  The book reads very much like one of those endlessly ongoing manga comics—short story arcs that end with weekly cliffhangers, but with no particular goal until the writer simply decides to end it. 

Poor Marney is subjected to just about every injury and indignity a fox could experience during the course of the book. His mother and siblings are killed by hunters in the first few pages, and that’s just the beginning. A partial list of things he endures includes: nearly drowning (several times), being attacked by dogs, otters, birds of prey, ferrets and weasels, bitten by a poisonous snake, being buried alive, snared, trapped, shot at, blinded by chemicals, captured by evil gypsies and nearly blown up by the military. 

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March 4, 2019

Vote for the 2018 Ursa Major Awards to support the best works of furry fandom.

by Patch O'Furr

Go here to vote for the 2018 Ursa Major Awards. The deadline is March 31.

Before nominees were chosen, the 2018 Recommended Anthropomorphics List made a much longer collection of suggested works. It’s useful as a guide for those looking for new furry stuff (and those interested in the recently added fursuit category may want to see the special requirements there.)

Please share this announcement, and help raise attention for the furry fandom equivalent of the Hugo awards for science fiction. They’re chosen by fans, not committee. Volunteers do the hard work of publicizing, organizing, counting votes, and mailing out engraved awards. These volunteers are the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association (ALAA), a membership organization dedicated to promoting works that furries love. They welcome suggestions for how to expand this effort.

The ALAA is supported by donations via PayPal (paypal@ursamajorawards.org) with 100% of the money going towards cost of the awards. Please consider donating.

The ALAA has done this for many years with only very modest help, and previously had stories here about lacking resources. One of the founders, Fred Patten, has recently passed away. In March 2018, member Bernard Doove commented:

The ALAA has needed volunteers for years, but we have lost members rather than gained, and we are all doing as much as possible to keep the Ursa Major Awards running. I’ll be donating money from my personal funds once again for the 2017 Award trophies, and I will be flying up to Queensland where the awards ceremony will be held at FurDU this year in order to run the event. The cost of that comes out of my own pocket too. I’m willing to do my bit for the cause, but we desperately need more people with the skills required to improve it.

Check out the UMA tag to learn more about them. Here’s the nominees for 13 categories. Winners will be announced on May 23–26 at AnthrOhio 2019.

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March 1, 2019

Sonic the Hedgehog artist injured by hate crime; life can be prickly for struggling artists

by Patch O'Furr

Milton Knight has a hand in works of animation and cartoon art seen by millions. For the 1993 Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog TV series, he did storyboards and animation and is credited with design for the villain Robotnik. In nearly 40 years as a pro, he’s made countless fans happy. But on February 25, he was hospitalized with “cuts, a broken nose, and more” at the hands of a racist stranger. Knight described enduring 15 minutes of provocative hate speech before it exploded with “endless punches to the head”. The attacker injured his fist and was jailed for battery.

Knight’s creative drive is inspired by retro style from the Golden Age of animation, and traditional ink and paint. As a pro since 1980, he got into animation on Ralph Bakshi‘s Cool World and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. In comics, he worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Mouse. Like his inspiration from untamed 1930’s cartoons, he also did mature work like Heavy Metal and his own indie comic Midnite the Rebel Skunk. A fact that readers here may like is that he experimented with “extremely adult furry” work in the independent spirit of 1980’s fandom. In the network where pros, fans, and art curators meet, he has done archiving for the International Animated Film Association (whose president Jerry Beck was very close to “fandom founder” Fred Patten.)

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February 28, 2019

Angelic book 1: Heirs and Graces – review by Roz Gibson

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Welcome to Roz Gibson, furry artist and animator in Southern California. Roz was guest of honor at Confurence and created the Jack Salem comic character that first appeared in Rowrbrazzle in 1987. This is Roz’s furry graphic novel review part 2 of 6 on the way. Read in order as they post: 1) Myre 2) Angelic Book 1  3) Marney the Fox 4) Shanda the Panda  5) Cinderfrost 6) Tim’rous Beastie. See Roz’s tag for the rest. Roz is a community access guest and contents are hers.

Angelic book 1: Heirs and Graces 

Story by Simon Spurrier
Art by Caspar Wijngaard

Comics giant Image has been dabbling in the furry genre. First with the excellent Autumnlands series, and now with Angelic.  The first story arc was collected in a graphic novel last year, which I finally got around to picking up. The basic premise is a familiar one — uplifted animals in the ruins of a human civilization trying to discover what their purpose is. But just because something’s been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done again if it’s done well, which this is. 

The protagonist is Qora, an adolescent winged monkey (yes, just like from Wizard of Oz) living with her tribe in a ruined city by the seashore. They fight occasional skirmishes with mechanized dolphins under the control of equally mechanized manatees. Qora chafes under all the rules and rituals of her tribe, including the suppression of any dissent or questioning of why things are done a certain way. While all the monkeys are born with wings, the females lose their wings when they become adult and mate, something that (obviously) Qora is not looking forward to. 

With that unpleasant fate looming over her, Qora is talked into a dangerous journey into the toxic city by the manatees, with one of them accompanying her. The majority of the book is the duo going deep down the proverbial rabbit hole, as Qora slowly discovers the history of her people and what happened to ‘the makers.’ They are followed by a dangerously unbalanced ‘Fazecat,’ whose motives and designs towards Qora are unknown. 

Other creatures encountered are giant squid augmented into fighter planes, and cormorants that work as fishers for the monkeys. There’s lots of action as the war between the monkeys, dolphins and manatees heats up after Qora leaves, and the plot contains a number of twists to keep things interesting. 

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February 25, 2019

Interview with LyricWulf, a top furry Youtuber who shares the positive power of music.

by Patch O'Furr

“If you’re someone who’s got something to share with the world, there’s no better time than now”

See more at LyricWulf.com

LyricWulf is one of the top furry Youtubers with over 100K subscribers. What’s special about his music?

Art, fiction and costuming are full of furriness. Music isn’t always recognized as a fandom thing, but a lot of other stuff depends on it. Dance and music videos are a big gateway for newcomers. Con dances are a crossroads for goers and might get the lion’s share of production budgets. Live events are glue that makes fandom stronger than just internet relationships, and furry dance parties are some of the biggest local meets where they happen.

Unlike other things in fandom, a lot of the music comes from outside (although that’s changing). But back in the 1970’s and 80’s, nerdy conventions featured “filk” music – folk songs with fandom inspired lyrics. That’s rare now, and dances are more like a hybrid with separate subcultures (like rave and DJ party culture), which makes “furry music” hard to define.

A recent series at Dogpatch Press asked 10 furry musicians “what is furry music?” It’s hard to say more than “it’s made by or for us”, but think about how it can evoke feeling by using visual aesthetic, being a soundtrack, or even representing animal sounds like Peter and the Wolf does.

A great response came from indie-pop artist ABSRDST.  His cartoon aesthetic (gay ducks with romance lyrics) wasn’t made for fandom, it was just welcomed after he got started (and that was mutual). He put it on a shirt that was especially popular. One of the team for a certain cartoon duck show even wore it to work. That seems like pure furriness, coming from inside rather than intentionally made for a certain target.

Some of the biggest mainstream names who have associated with furries are in music. Many pro musicians use fursuiters in music videos. Jello Biafra (ex Dead Kennedys) and Margaret Cho (from The Masked Singer) did the biggest interviews on Dogpatch Press. For unusual genre crossover, Ronan Harris of cult band VNV Nation gives special appreciation to furry fans, and metal band Periphery let a fursuiter fan sing for them. The biggest names who have used fursonas may be Violent J of ICP and Andrew WK (a wolf). Heavy metal can go well with wolves.

Today’s guest isn’t a metal wolf, he’s the cute and cuddly kind! Let’s look into why music matters with him.

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February 13, 2019

Contraindications by Pen Darke – Book Review by Summercat

by Summercat

Contraindications by Pen Darke. Illustrations by Ash Finley. Published by Furplanet

TLDR: Erotic gay muscle growth. If that interests you at all, I 100% recommend this.

Matt Stafford is a perfectly normal looking otter, lithe, slightly toned, and adorable. He hates it. Several years at the gym have been for naught, and even his libido is weak. His boyfriend Stetson, a more muscular rabbit, sticks with him, but both wish that Matt’s sex drive was bigger.

One accident at a nutrition supplement store, Matt’s question of when will he start growing quickly changes to “Will I stop?”

Contraindications, by Pen Darke, is a story of muscle growth, some character development, wish fulfillment, and just about everything I love in a story. Originally published on Sofurry, the story got an editorial revamp and illustrations from artist Ash Finley. Illustrations that are wonderful, incredible, and mesh well with the author’s lovely use of descriptive language for Matt’s growth and larger form.

As a writer of muscle growth erotica myself, Contraindications has been one of the gold standards I wish to someday equal. Each chapter drives both the plot and the growth further, without a single wasted scene or moment.

I may be a bit biased because like Matt, I too am a small twig of an otter who wishes to be big, but this story has been one of my favorite stories for years, and I am glad to see it in print.

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February 12, 2019

“Furries make the internets go”: a Behind The Meme story with Durango Dingo and Summercat.

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Thanks to Summercat for starting this story about a long-lived and frequently-shared meme. He chatted with Durango Dingo, who is pictured in a suit from Fursuits By Lacy and Nick (Fursuiting.com.) This meme continues to spread from the heyday of Myspace to now, like when it was shared in 2018 by “Swift On Security”, a 263K follower mainstream Twitter account. (- Patch)

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February 6, 2019

A furry’s guide to encounters with fleshies

by Patch O'Furr

Fleshies are everywhere. They’re sneaky yet prolific primates who trim their fur, mask their scents, and cover their body parts to hide the weird things they do when you’re not looking.

They come in various shapes and sizes, but often compete to see which kind is superior. They have elaborate rules that keep changing. It may be about the color of their disturbingly smooth hides, or what territory they inhabit. It often involves collecting piles of green stuff.

They’re an invasive species and parasites. Fleshies infest the shiny armored organisms that run on paths between their hives and loudly honk at each other. When their hosts stop at feeding-stations and sleeping-lots, you can see them swarm out.

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