Radio Comix, long-standing publisher of furry comics like Furrlough and Ebin & May, is running an Indiegogo campaign to raise cash to remain in business after discovering a massive tax shortfall:

Due to a horrible oversight on the part of our (now former) accountant, we now owe a staggering amount of back taxes. The total is truly shocking, and when I first discovered it, I was ill for days. I've been working for three months with a new accountant to get everything that wasn't filed taken care of, but filing does not equal paying and now not only do these freshly filed taxes have to be paid, but there are penalties due to the late filing. I'm a firm believer in filing and paying all my taxes, and finding out I was behind was my worst nightmare come true.

I have been working with the IRS to come up with a payment plan, but if we could get a large lump sum together to pay in at one time, it would be an enormous help!

Contributor perks available include wallpapers, comics, graphic novels, and lifetime subscriptions to future Radio Comix comic book releases.

Update: Four hours in, $1500 had been pledged; by the end of the evening it was $5364.

Update 2 (March 26): The lifetime subscriptions sold out this morning. Commissions by Stan Sakai were added; within hours, six of the five on offer were somehow claimed.

It starts light-heartedly enough. Take your basic haunted house story, only do it with dogs investigating a haunted doghouse. And slowly, gradually, the stories get darker.

Burden Hill would appear to be your everyday, quiet suburb, except... things... are starting to happen, and while the local humans haven't noticed anything yet, the local dogs certainly have.

Beasts of Burden is basically a series of comic books about canine paranormal investigation. (Plus a couple of cats.) The writing by Evan Dorkin manages to be fun and ominous at the same time, and he gives the dogs distinct personalities in a way that feels very believable. The artwork by Jill Thompson is rendered in excellent watercolors, and generates just the right atmosphere.

Furry auction site FurBuy has added a classified listings service, among other updates, positioning it as a "furry Craigslist". Listings so far include furry identification badges, a skunk suit for sale, and a request for a sewing partner. However, ongoing competition from social art sites has lead to a threat of closure later this year, reminiscent of those made over a decade ago.

Summerhill, probably a dog, is introduced at a dinner gathering as the others try to guess what he is:

‘I tell you,’ the ankylosauromorphic cyborg said in its fluid, polished, robotic voice, ‘he’s got to be some sort of wolf. Just on two legs, is all.’
Summerhill kept his ears perked and his mouth shut. He lifted his own glass of golden, bubbling something-or-other to his lips and took a sip, his eyes meeting the little girl’s for a moment of grateful acknowledgment.
‘Oh, please. Have you ever SEEN a wolf?’ asked the Crown Prince of the Akashic Realm, lines of disapproval appearing on his otherwise smooth, pale blue face. He and Summerhill had met earlier in the evening; the two shared a taste for fizzy beverages. ‘He’s far too small, and the colors are all wrong.’
The girl quietly begged pardon and broke away from the group. As she left, she offered Summerhill a tiny wave with her slender fingers, along with one final smile of sympathy and encouragement.
A being that looked like a pinkish cloud of gas with a self-contained thunderstorm rumbling all through itself chimed in. ‘No, I saw a wolf here aboard the ship just this morning.’ Blue tendrils of electricity crackled over its wispy form as it somehow created the sounds of speech. ‘He didn’t look anything like this.’ (p. 2)

Dallas, TX, Argyll Productions, January 2013, trade paperback $17.95 (285 pages).

The story has long been told of how the production of the 1969 TV special “The Pogo Special Birthday Special”, a collaboration between Pogo creator Walt Kelly and animator Chuck Jones, turned into a “Hollywood ain’t big enough for the both of us!” feud, that ended up with the two not talking to each other. Jones dismissed Kelly as “he thinks that he’s an animator just because he did about 20 seconds of the easiest animation in Dumbo twenty-five years ago.” (Kelly animated the silhouettes of the clowns carousing inside the circus tent.)

Now Amid Amidi reveals that Kelly was so displeased that he decided to create his own animated Pogo half-hour TV special, “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us”. But due to the difficulties of producing a half-hour of animation personally while in declining health, Kelly only completed a rough cut of thirteen minutes before he died in 1973.

Amidi has found that thirteen minutes, and presents it on the Cartoon Brew website. It may be unfinished, but it’s pure Kelly, from the drawings of the cartoon funny animals of the Okefenokee Swamp, to their animation, to Kelly performing all of the voices.

The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki (trailer 1 - 2) is a 2012 anime film directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Unlike his 2009 Summer Wars, this movie is very slow, introspective, and somewhat tragic. It might appeal to a small subset of furries, but its furry elements are underplayed and it may not have enough animal content to hook us as viewers.

Talking about this movie without spoiling it impossible because the story has no complexity. Basically, a single mom moves to the country and struggles to raise two werewolf kids; one embraces their wolf heritage, the other rejects it, and the family moves apart. That's it. (See Wikipedia for a more complete summary.)

The Furry Drama Show (FDS) completed its first season 2012-13, visiting six conventions: Wild Nights, RCFM, Oklacon, Fangcon, F3 and Furry Fiesta. As we start our new season, we continue to look for new performers to join us at these cons. If you cannot, we are also accepting videos of skits and music videos.

Despicable Me 2's yellow minions stretch the definition, but here's its new trailer anyway.

It looks like the new Bad Guys are the Good Guys. Screenrant thinks that the minions can be overdone. How does Gru kiss the girls without stabbing them with his nose?

Treesong used to complain about zombie comic books a lot; he’d not be happy to see The Walking Dead #100 take the #1 spot on the December sales list. I guess Image was all like, “My Little Pony beat us as the number one non-Marvel-or-DC book last month? And they don’t even have a book out this month? Well, I guess we’ll just have to beat everybody instead!”

Cartoon Brew reports that, “Now that Disney’s Oz The Great and Powerful is a box office hit, let the Wizard of Oz remakes commence.” CB goes on to report via Variety that, “Clarius Entertainment will theatrically release the 3-D CGI pic Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return in the first quarter of 2014. We posted the film’s trailer last fall, back when the film was called Dorothy of Oz, and the reaction was tepid.”

Flayrah announced Dorothy of Oz too last September, and it did get 13 comments. The link to the trailer still works. See Tugg the talking tree, Wiser the owl, the marshmellow soldier, and the new anthropomorphic characters in addition to the familiar Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the flying monkeys, and all of the beloved others.

… takes them to the dungeon, and does bad, bad things to them. If you thought VancouFur had an offensive theme, watch out! This one is truly NSFW, and best for those who appreciate wanton displays of licentious content.

The queer furry rapper's video, "Why the Boys All Love Me", follows an announcement for the making of a "nightmarish gay goth animal S&M" video at Halloween in San Francisco. It flaunts his mission to "put Satan back into hip-hop", and makes a sequel to a previous video featuring fursuiters. This time, Furry content is minimal, and indirectly limited to a few cameos and participation by dedicated furries who cross over between that group and others (such as the S&M fetish scene). Please consider it labeled that way up front, and view accordingly.

Gophers VS. Dinosaurs... erhm, excuse me, Go Home Dinosaurs is a tower defense game; yes, another one. These things seem to continually pop out of the landscape, each presenting their own spin on the game type. With the simplicity of design, tower defense is definitely a good place for a smaller or more independent company to start. Gamers also seem to enjoy tower defense games - but I’m not really one of them. I’ve played a few of them, and they all start to seem like the same game with a different coat of paint.

When this title was added to Steam [there's also a beta on Chrome], I was hesitant to buy. However, seeing as it was anthropomorphic I figured, "well if it's terrible, I’ll at least be able to make a nice scathing review on Flayrah. Or it may also be very good; then I’ll get my money’s worth and post a review as well."

The problem is that it was neither, leaving me in the precarious position of reviewing a game in that muddled area of "just okay", which is the hardest kind to write about.

Watts Martin introduced his mixed human and anthropomorphic animal world of Ranea in the serial “A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood” in Yarf! #5-#8, July-November 1990. Several other stories followed, and Ranea became one of the most popular fictional worlds in Furry fandom. But Ranea seldom appeared outside of Yarf!, and that magazine has been gone for ten years now.

Fortunately, Martin has recently resumed writing stories set in Ranea. Indigo Rain, a 97-page novella (the sixth of FurPlanet’s novella-length “Cupcakes”), is a fine example and one that expands the reader’s picture of Ranea a little more.

Indigo Rain is a work of anthropomorphic fiction for adult readers only. (publisher’s advisory)

FurPlanet Publications, Jan. 2013, trade paperback $9.95 (97 pgs.). Illustrated by Sabretoothed Ermine.

Indigo Rain preview: Part 1 - Part 2

Voting for the Ursa Major Awards for the Best Anthropomorphic Literature and Art of 2012 is now open, and will continue until May 15. The winners will be announced at a presentation ceremony at Anthrocon 2013 in Pittsburgh, July 4-7.

Anyone may vote, and you are encouraged to ask your friends to vote also — please help to spread the word!

There are five nominees in each of eleven categories, except where there was a tie for fifth place. To be eligible, a work must have been released during the calendar year 2012; must include a non-human being given human attributes, which can be mental and/or physical; and must receive more than one nomination.

Read on for the nominees...

Canadian convention VancouFur has a theme for 2014: "Gateway to the Pacific", described by staff as a "celebration of Pacific Rim multiculturalism in Vancouver."

An announcement on VancouFur's official Twitter account stated: "We will be celebrating a country on the Pacific Rim and its cultural influence on our city each month leading up to #VF2014!" On March 7, when a member asked about wearing a kimono, VancouFur replied: "You most definitely can! :D Themed costumes are always such fun! :D"

On March 8, the VancouFur website was updated with a splash screen for 2014, shown as of March 10 with a "chop suey"-style font. (Wall Street Journal blogger Jeff Yang called a similar font "a cliche fake-brushstroke “oriental” typeface" when used in a grocer's flyer last year.)
By March 12, the VancouFur website had been quietly updated to use a different font.