Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Opinion

October 9, 2015

French Comic review by Fred Patten – Ocelot: Le Chat Qui N’en Etait Pas Un.

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Ocelot coverOcelot: Le Chat Qui N’en Était Pas Un, by Jean David Morvan & Séverine Tréfouël [writers] and Agnès Fouquart [art].
Paris, Delcourt, August 2015, hardcover €12,50 (48 pages), Kindle free.

Thanks once again to Lex Nakashima for this fine example of the French bande dessinée.

If you think that this story is familiar, it should be. The publisher itself says in its catalogue that Ocelot: The Cat Who Was Not One is “in the fashion of Lady and the Tramp”. Amazon.fr compares it to The Aristocats. (Les Aristochats.) You are advised “To read it with an empty mind and enjoy it”. (A lire pour se vider l’esprit et passer un bon moment.) In other words, just read it for fun. Tour modern Paris, the City of Lights, with a quartet of free-living cats.

Ocelot opens with the titular ocelot looking at the Eiffel Tower, all lit up at night. He hears another cat fighting with dogs and races across the rooftops to watch. He saves her, a fluffy white cat (“Une ragdoll!!”) with brown ears and tail, more by accident than design. The cat, obviously a sophisticated lady, is more amused than grateful. “You’re rather bizarre…” “I’m UNIQUE. That’s different.” She’s Olympe. He’s “Doudou de la Gür Gandine!” (Gür Gandine’s Cutie). She laughs in his face. (More specifically, a doudou is a young child’s favorite toy or plush doll, usually well-worn.) Read the rest of this entry »

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October 8, 2015

The Stone God Awakens, by Philip Jose Farmer – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Josh KirbyThe Stone God Awakens, by Philip José Farmer.
NYC, Ace Books, November 1970, paperback #78650, 75¢ (190 pages).

“He awoke and did not know where he was.

Flames were crackling fifty feet away. Woodsmoke stung his nose and brought tears. Somewhere, men were shouting and screaming. […]

He was in one end of a large building of gigantic logs, wooden pillars, and large overhead beams. Flames leaped along the wall toward him. The roof at the other end had just caved in, and the smoke was carried away by a vagary of the wind. He could see the sky outside. It was black, and then, far off, lightning flashed. About fifty yards away, lit by the flames, was a hill. On top of the hill were the silhouettes of trees. Fully leaved trees.

A moment ago, it had been winter. The deep snows had been piled around the buildings of the research center outside Syracuse, New York.” (p. 5)

The protagonist is Ulysses Singing Bear, a young scientist of native American descent in 1985 (fifteen years in the future when this book was published). He discovers that the fighting going on around him does not involve humans.

“The flames from the burning hall and from other buildings combined to illuminate the scene. Furry legs and tails, white and black and brown, danced around. The legs were human and yet not human. They bent queerly; they looked like the hind legs of four-footed animals that had decided to stand upright, like men, and so had evolved half-human, half-beast legs.

The owner of a pair of legs fell flat on his back, a spear stuck in his belly. The man became even more confused and shocked. The creature looked like a cross between a human being and a sealpoint Siamese cat. The body fur was white; the face below the forehead was black; the lower part of the arms, legs and the tail were black. The face was as flat as any human’s, but the nose was round and black, like a cat’s, and the ears were black and pointed. The mouth, open in death, revealed sharp feline teeth.” (p. 6) Read the rest of this entry »

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October 6, 2015

The Suspended Castle – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Suspended Castle, by Fred. [Translated by Richard Kutner.]
NYC, Candlewick Press/TOON Books, October 2015, hardcover $16.95 (53 [+ 1] pages).

7655555The Suspended Castle (Le Château Suspendu) is Book 3 in the Philémon series by Fred (Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès, 1931-2013), serialized in the classic French comics magazine Pilote. The weekly strip was collected into 15 books between 1972 and 1987. Fred retired leaving Philémon’s adventures uncompleted, until he wrote/drew a 16th volume to finish the series just before his death.

Book 1, Cast Away on the Letter A, was reviewed here in January, and book 2, The Wild Piano, in June. Fred’s Philémon was/is a surrealistic cartoon strip in the tradition of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Philémon is a teenage farmboy in the French countryside of the 1960s-‘70s who falls down a well and has psychedelic adventures on the literal letters ATLANTIC of the Atlantic Ocean of a parallel world. The series is only marginally anthro-animal, but it contains many imaginative fantastic animals in bizarre settings that lovers of top-quality newspaper comic-strip art, and furry fans, will want to see. Philémon, and Fred’s other works, have been hits in France for almost fifty years, almost constantly in print.

In the first two albums, teenager Philémon falls down an abandoned old well on his father’s farm in the French countryside and has fantastic adventures on the two A’s of the ATLANTIC ocean of a parallel world. He meets Mister Bartholomew (Barthélémy), an old Robinson Crusoe-like hermit from our world who was cast away onto the first A forty years ago. Philémon returns to his skeptical father Hector’s farm at the end of Cast Away on the Letter A, but he accidentally leaves Mr. Barthlomew behind. In The Wild Piano, Phil’s Uncle Felix (Félicien) turns out to be an amateur magician who knows how to return to the parallel world. (The “portal” is a different fantastic method each time.) He sends Phil back to rescue Mr. Bartholomew, which he does after more adventures on the letter N.

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October 5, 2015

Patreon hack blamed on furries, news from Culturally F’ed – NEWSDUMP (10/8/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Patreon Hacked, Furries blamed, journalist downloads porn for “work”.

Patreon user info was compromised by a security breach.  A Twitter user claiming responsibility offered an online-politics grudge motive, and shared claims that Patreon account data was being misused by the “Yiff.party” website.  The prankish claim seems really far fetched to me up front, and the site itself denies any responsibility.  But the prank was successful enough to convince the journalist (for a big digital media brand) to download from the site, and seriously report finding nothing but sexy animals.  

UT club encourages students to find ‘fursonas’

Whines, from FurAffinity.

Whines, from FA.

A standard introduction article from the University of Texas at Austin student newspaper. It adds nothing unexpected, but reads nicely.  Congrats to the Longhorn Furs social club.

They have involvement with Whines.  It led me to learn the info below, and request a submission for The Furclub Survey of Furry dance parties. Expect more about it soon.

Starting in 2013 and inspired by descriptions of the Frolic in California, Whines started organizing small furry dance events and has held them once every 2-3 months since them. They tend to have an attendance in the 20-40 range with a handful of fursuiters. Most recently the dance was held on UT campus in partership with the University of Texas ‘Longhorn Furs‘ group.

New from Culturally F’ed

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October 2, 2015

Into Expermia, by M. R. Anglin – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Into Expermia, by M. R. Anglin
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, July 2015, trade paperback $9.99 (299 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $2.99.

51VFIQ7b7LLM. R. Anglin’s Silver Foxes series is up to four novels now. She began writing it with Silver Foxes, published in April 2008. You can probably skip that one, but if you are unfamiliar with this series, you should read Winds of Change (June 2009) and Prelude to War (October 2013) for their background before you read Into Expermia.

In the funny-animal world of Clorth, the Age of the Silver Foxes lasted a little over 2,000 years and abruptly ended with their extermination about 1,500 years ago. The Silver Foxes were a mutant anthropomorphic species whose metallic-like fur gave them their distinct silver coloring, and strong bioelectrical powers that they used to make themselves an arrogant ruling class in the semi-mythical past. They were hated, and Clorth finally united to invade their country, Expermia, and slaughter all the Silver Foxes in 3045-’46. In Clorth’s present, 4587, all the Silver Foxes are believed long dead. The previous novels establish the current political tensions between the rest of Clorth, led by the Kingdom of Drymairad, and police-state Expermia which is ending centuries of isolation and about to launch a new campaign for world conquest. One of several protagonists is mid-teen Xena Dunsworth, an orphan gray fox adopted with her younger sister Kathra by J. R. Dunsworth (wolf), a notorious criminal but kindly to them. Xena is aware that she is growing up to become a Silver Fox. She darkens her fur, but she can’t do anything about the bursts of electricity she inadvertently gives off. Simultaneously the charismatic villain Maximilian Descarté (red fox), a powerful industrialist, is maneuvering to replace the king of Drymairad and take charge of the league against Expermia. Max believes that the Silver Foxes were once real (many Clorthians think they were mythical), and he has secretly tried to recreate them in the laboratory. When he learned that one had been re-bred by accident, he captured Xena and Kathra as experimental guinea-pigs. They were rescued by their foster father, who located their long-lost mother. That’s the background.

Into Expermia begins a short time later, after Xena has returned to her home town and Max has consolidated his takeover of Drymairad’s throne. The scene is very mundane, considering its cast. Xena has a quiet 15th birthday party at home in the small rural town of Justin’s Ridge with her sister, her refound mother and her foster father, her teen boyfriend Hunter, and her pet, Charuse. If you’ve read the earlier novels, you know that Xena isn’t a normal gray fox, her Daddy is a high-profile criminal, her boyfriend was originally the Expermian red fox bounty hunter hired to re-enslave her, and Charuse is …well, read it. Read the rest of this entry »

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October 1, 2015

French comic: Une Aventure de Chlorophylle – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Belgian, to be accurate. Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Une Aventure de Chlorophylle. T.1, Embrouilles a Coquefredouille, by Godi & Zidrou.
Brussels, Belgium, Le Lombard, September 2014, hardcover €10,60 (48 pages).

My thanks to Lex Nakashima again for this French-language bande dessinée.1507-1

So they’ve started another Chlorophylle series. Whoop-de-do. Raymond Macherot (1924-2008) began Chloro the dormouse’s adventures in the weekly Tintin comic-book magazine (1946-1993) in 1954, continued it through 11 or 12 adventures (depending on how you count), and wrote/drew his last Chloro story in 1966. Since then, his Chloro stories have been reprinted umpteen times, alone and in collections. Lombard has tried to continue the Chloro series, in Tintin serializations and in albums after the magazine’s demise, with new stories by a variety of cartoonists: Hubuc & Guilmard, Greg & Dupa, Dupa & Bob De Groot, Bom & Walli. Nothing really caught on. Now here is another attempt, by Belgian comics artist Godi (Bernard Godisiabois) and writer Zidrou (Benoît Drousie). Is this one any different?

Oh, yeah…

The other post-Macherot stories continued Chlorophylle’s adventures in the Belgian Tranquil Vale woodland. The supporting characters were Minimum the mouse, Mironton the dormouse and his wife Mirontaine, Torpedo the otter, Serpolet the rabbit, Clacky the crow, and the usual gang of Chloro’s friends and neighbors. The stories varied in quality, but they were all more of the same.

Complications in Coquefredouille, the first album in the new series, returns to the funny-animal island-kingdom where Chloro had his (arguably) most popular adventures. It’s the 33rd annual International Coquefredouille Film Festival; it’s opening with a new movie about when the kingdom was almost taken over by Anthracite the black rat and his two cannibalistic ferrets, and was saved by Chloro and Minimum (Les Croquillards); and King Mitron XIII of Coquefredouille sends invitations to Chloro and Minimum in the Tranquil Vale to attend. It’s a glitzy film festival; Chloro and Minimum get to meet the movie stars; the real Anthracite died in prison years ago so they don’t have anything more to worry about; so why not? But they arrive to find that there is a new terrorist movement that King Mitron’s government is trying to downplay. The FLF is trying to split Coquefredouille into two nations, the Kingdom of Coque in the west with its traditional capital at Le Fourbi, and the new (kingdom? republic?) of Fredouille in the east with its capital at La Turbine, the island’s second largest city and industrial center. The supposed revolutionists claim they want to stop the royalist government’s exploitation of the east, but nobody in the east seems to feel exploited or want to secede. King Mitron and his advisors suspect that the real reason for the FLF is that all of Couqefredouille’s mineral wealth is located in the east, and that independence for Fredouille would allow the “revolutionists” to set up a corrupt government to milk the eastern resources for themselves. Chloro tries to uncover the truth behind the terrorists, while at the same time dealing with the social complications at the film festival centering around the actors playing himself (Luigi Starletti, a mega-handsome small gray rat) and Anthracite (Antonio Caméo, a tall squirrel who specializes in playing villains).

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September 30, 2015

Fursuiters on Food Network, and Cosplay celebrity wants a suit – NEWSDUMP (9/30/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Food Network’s The Great Food Truck Race features Fursuiters.

I’m told that a minute of air time was recorded during a “furry scurry” in Chicago.  (I’m pretty sure I have heard of such an event, but can’t find it at Lake Area Furry Friends.) I hope one day that term replaces “furmeet” for meets that get you out of the house, and maybe involve Street Fursuiting (my favorite thing.)

Cosplay celebrity Jessica Nigri wants to join the Furry side.

Nigri is known as a model/promoter for video games, and interviewer/correspondent at cons.  It’s amazing when a subculture grows large enough to have it’s own hired sub-services… when is it no longer “sub” culture?  (Imagine if “popufur” actually meant anything to anyone besides furries?)  Popularity-wise, I suspect she’s famous-for-being-famous, but I don’t know enough to judge. I just hope this involves interest in what furries actually do.  It’s a new item for the next “Celebrifurry” list:

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September 29, 2015

Fred Patten Presents – his articles about Furry publishing, animation, and history.

by Patch O'Furr

Discussion of the history of furry fandom with Fred Patten, at ConFURence 9.

Fred Patten is the most valued contributor at Dogpatch Press.  He came here during editor down time at Flayrah, seeking a stable place for his reviews and history articles.  (For those who aren’t acquainted with Fred’s impressive resume as a fan historian and curator, he has spent a lot of the recent decade in a convalescent hospital.  Writing is a major benefit to his life and a good cause to support.)

The “Fred Patten” tag has everything he has contributed here.  

Without Fred’s guest posts, there would be no five day a week schedule here.  Assisting and formatting his articles takes a lot of work, and five days a week makes a very demanding pace.  But I think the promise of regular content should inspire anyone who contributes.  It makes this the most active “Furry News” source.  It’s all non-profit, so thank Fred for doing what few people can do without being paid – and volunteer helper Poppa Bookworm – and (ahem) anyone else who helps, reads, shares or comments to make this a community thing.

Fred recently shared a bibliography listing an incredible abundance of his book reviews.  It covers years of writing and hundreds of posts.  At the very least, it’s worth browsing to get an idea about the variety of Furry published work.

“What the Well Read Furry Should Read”: All of Fred’s book reviews at Dogpatch Press, Flayrah, and Anthro magazine.

The list doesn’t include Fred’s other amazing articles that aren’t book reviews.  Here’s everything else.  You don’t want to miss these, if you’re interested in learning about anthropomorphic art, how furries came to be, and what they do and like.

FURRY PUBLISHING, ANIMATION, AND HISTORY:

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September 28, 2015

Oklacon is canceled, and you might want to call Oklahoma’s Tourism Department.

by Patch O'Furr

Oklahoma Department of Recreation and Tourism: 405-230-8303
Direct line to Dick Dutton – Executive Director:  405-230-8414

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Oklacon sounded like a fantastic event. (Here’s interesting coverage from an independent Oklahoma City news blog.)

Now comes sad news that Oklacon is canceled permanently.  The reason appears to involve a tangle of prejudice and bad faith, coinciding with a misbehavior incident.  It came to my attention via Reddit.  More info went out in a final statement that replaces the front page of the con’s official website. I have heard statements from attendees that lead me to share the story, and report their anger and frustration about it.  (Editorial comments here don’t speak for the con.)

Here are points and open questions that stood out to me.

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September 24, 2015

The Three Jaguars: A Comic About Business, Art, and Life, by M.C.A. Hogarth – Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Three Jaguars: A Comic About Business, Art, and Life, by M. C. A. Hogarth. Foreword by Ursula Vernon.
Tampa, FL, mcahogarth.org, August 2015, trade paperback $15.99 (vi + 136 [+ 1] pages).

51wGE4NLrmL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_M.C. A. Hogarth was one of the first creators in furry fandom. She had art as a young teenager in Yarf! #1, January 1990, as Maggie de Alarcon. Her first novel, a fixup of furry short stories, was Alysha’s Fall (Cornwuff Press, September 2000). Since then she has had over twenty books published, as trade paperbacks and electronic books, by furry specialty publishers and through CreateSpace, often under her own imprint as Studio MCAH. She has won an Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction of the year, and been nominated for a Gaylactic Spectrum Award for a fantasy novel with a LGBT theme. In May 2015 Hogarth was elected Vice President of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

She has also had an active online presence since the 1990s, often raising funds for publishing her books through Kickstarter and similar campaigns. She has regularly answered questions about how to become a successful creative artist or writer. In January 2013 she began presenting this advice/her experiences in the form of a Monday-Wednesday and sometimes Friday web comic strip, The Three Jaguars, which ran through that August. It took the form of conversations, and sometimes arguments, between three facets of her creativity personified as three anthropomorphic jaguars; Business Manager, Marketer, and Artist. Business Manager is the most practical of the three, trying to limit the creativity to what will sell. Artist is the most imaginative, wanting to create what she wants to create when she wants to create it. And Marketer tries to figure out how to make what Artist wants to create saleable.

The Three Jaguars: A Comic About Business, Art, and Life presents the totality of that comic, plus a four-page epilogue drawn for this edition. In an Afterword, Hogarth analyzes why The Three Jaguars did not work as a comic strip. Readers don’t read a comic strip for objective business advice, and the format of three separate characters kept segueing into dramatic storylines, which was fine for evolving the comic into an adventure serial but was not its original purpose. Read the rest of this entry »

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