British comedy puppet series Mongrels has been axed by its television station, BBC3.

The series, described as "Avenue Q meets Family Guy", centred on a troupe of five anthropomorphic animals who hung around the back of a pub on the Isle of Dogs in London.

It appears Earth Eternal is not so, as it was shut down for the second time on November 21^st, 2011 at 9:00PM EST. No reason was cited, but the game's website (and that of its Japanese version, Ikimonogatari), were withdrawn, with an announcement on the project's Facebook page the sole notice — much to the outrage of fans in the comments.

All-ages furry art community ArtSpots is to close January 2, as efforts to create a new site could not be reconciled with the existing one. The move was announced by the official staff persona of Seurat:

These last few weeks planning the future of ArtSpots has been full of great ideas. However, we have wrestled with many roadblocks as well. This site has been around for over five years now, and with that has come a lot of expectations. We have come to the conclusion, sad as it may be, that given ArtSpots original goals and its history, it would be impossible to move forward with these new ideas.

The Yerf historical archive, currently hosted at ArtSpots, is to move to a new site built by WikiFur custodian GreenReaper and hosted by Timduru.

The closure will leave a vacuum in the market for all-ages furry art hosting. Many artists are expected to move to deviantART, where a group has been created for trading-post art.

The RBW boat party on the River Thames will not be happening in 2011, according to an unofficial announcement by Miyabi on the UKfur forums (registration required).

Reasons cited for the cancellation include prior staff commitments and a lack of boat availability on the desired dates.

RBW, once the UK's largest furry convention, was cancelled early this year due to declining attendance. The boat party was originally intended to continue, and Miyabi has confirmed that staff still hope to put it on in 2012.

Arizona furry convention ZonieCon, intended to relaunch in Tucson this September after a decade-long hiatus, has been cancelled.

Chair Scott Malcomson listed various promotion and communication issues – compounded by his Phoenix address, 100 miles away:

As one of the millions of long-term unemployed in this country, [I can't] pay for significant advertising out of pocket. […] Nor have the flyers been moving in any significant numbers. […] There has even been active hostility against the idea of having an Arizona furry convention from other Arizona-based furries. In furry-frequented places where our flyers have been provided, they have subsequently been trashed, and artwork has been posted indicating hostility towards myself.

We were supposed to have an active website up by the end of February […] I was told by one of our core convention staff that they had a qualified volunteer for the website […] March rolled past without any sign of such a website or even any confirmation of who exactly was supposedly working on it. […] Weeks would pass […] We currently have exactly two pre-registrations, and NO hotel room block reservations.

I do not see a future for an Arizona convention which does not have a stronger and more active commitment towards building attendance, or which has a chairman, like myself, unable to provide for its needs. […] ZonieCon is simply not to be.

Thousands of speechless furs stared in shock at their blog feeds early this morning as their favorite annual events bit the dust. All furry conventions worldwide are canceled.

"We are very sorry for the inconvenience and disappointment this will undoubtedly cause to our attendees," reads the parting message from Furry Weekend Atlanta chairman/CEO Tiger Paw, who cited a declining economy as the cause of the convention going under – despite apparent success and relatively favourable media coverage of this year's event just two weeks ago.

All other events are reporting that operations will cease immediately for one reason or another.

The furry community erupted with noise and excitement in response to the news. One long-term fan expressed his frustration: "What shocks the hell out of me," tweets SilverLemur, of Detroit, "is that all conventions threw in the towel at EXACTLY the same time."

Ursula Vernon's 'Digger of Unnecessarily Complex Tunnels' has completed her 759-page journey. [tip: chelImQo']

For the last six months or so, I have been very focused on finally finishing Digger’s unexpectedly epic journey (some of you undoubtedly remember those first five pages, and my constant refrain that I was just doodling and not to get attached!) but I didn’t actually spend much time thinking about what to say once I did.

I guess the only thing to say is “Thank you!”

Digger won the 2005 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards for 'Outstanding Black and White Art', and was nominated for 'Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic' in 2005 and 2007.

Recent strips will be collected and published by Sofawolf Press as vol. 6 in the series.

Read more: Past reviews of Digger from The Webcomic Overlook and Terrouge

Second-year Wisconsin convention NakamaCon has been cancelled less than three months before launch, according to convention chair Chessie Sutherland. [tip: pmart and SkippyFox]

The replacement website outlines a tale of woe - misprinted flyers, car acccidents, illness, financial shortages and other real life complications:

I realize it is three months from the convention. I know we could make it happen but we'd sacrifice a lot of our own lives to make it work. If any one of these things hadn't happened we might still have a Nakamacon. Collectively, they've led to us being so far behind that recovery is unlikely.

However, the cancellation was followed by allegations by webmaster and payment system maintainer S-Config that Chessie had unilaterally announced her opinion, while local artist Jim Groat claimed the chair "never showed up to any of the meetings."

Portal of Evil (PoE) closed down last week after over a decade of "atrocity tourism".

The site – founded in late 1999 by Cleveland, Ohio-based duo K. Thor Jensen and Chet Faliszek – was a directory of "weird, unusual and evil" websites, each discussed and mocked in turn by PoE forum members. Numerous furry sites were featured, including the website of 2 the Ranting Gryphon (who devoted a rant to PoE), Cub Central, and webcomics such as Sabrina Online.

British furry convention RBW will not be held in 2011, according to an announcement on its Twitter feed. [Markos/FNN]

The group cite a lukewarm response to a three-day residential event in London, and competition from LondonFurs, who host tri-weekly meets.

[...] for the last three years we've been left worrying right up until the last month or two whether we'll have enough attendees to cover the cost of the event. We'd hoped that the successes of previous years would fix that problem, but the number of attendees hasn't changed significantly.

Organizers still intend to run the popular boat party on the Thames, and perhaps other events.

Long-time furry community Furtopia plans to close its hosting service. [Sonious/furryne.ws]
Site owner WhiteShepherd cited cost and loss of support staff as contributing factors.

The closure, effective February, affects hundreds of personal sites hosted on furtopia.org, impacting a number of artists and a mirror of long-running webcomic Fuzzy Things.

Furtopia's forums (attacked two years ago) will not be closing, nor will its IRC server.

British furry news site FurteanTimes.com has closed after almost four years online.

Former editor-in-chief Alexander Grey (stories) explained:

With falling readership and contributions since the middle of the year, followed on by an exploit in early September bringing the site offline, I have decided to close the website for good.

It was my initial intention to rebuild the website from scratch to make it easier for users to contribute multimedia content [...], however this process was difficult and time consuming to complete while working alone. Having started university in September, I now have little time on my hands for such an in-depth and involved project.

Like WikiFur News, the site's previously published content is being preserved at Flayrah.

Ning-based social network Furry United has closed after the termination of free hosting.

Founder Zenon Tigerpaw recommended users move to Furry 4 Life or the MyFur Network.

Update: Furspace also appears to be offline, while MyFursona is closing down this Christmas.

Shanda The Panda #12, showing Shanda, Terri, and Double R.
Art by Terrie Smith

Fans of Shanda The Panda face a bittersweet celebration next year, as its creators plan the 50^th – and last – issue.

Mike Curtis has announced the end of the series, and a conclusion to Shanda Fantasy Arts, which he has run with his wife and Katmandu creator Carole since 1996.

Still to be published by Anthrocon 2011 or MFM 15 are Katmandu #37, a new issue of Tales of the Morphing Period, adult title Shanda's Bedtime Blowout (possibly in 100-page squarebound format), and Shanda #49 and #50.

Shanda first appeared in A Very MU Christmas, published in 1992 by MU Press. The last issue will feature her marriage, with cover art by Michele Light, a story by Benjamin 'BAR-1' Rodriguez, and a second story illustrated by original Shanda artist Mike Sagara.

Immelmann has announced the imminent end of Ursa Major Award-winning comic Concession:

I will be curt: I’m tired of Concession.

I’m tired of the mess I’ve made of its plot. It’s very convoluted and, in the long-run, almost entirely nonsensical. I’m tired of the archives being as they are – not the art, I can get over that, but the plots involving pedophilia, rape… I now see them as tasteless and ultimately unwise. I’m tired of the complicated “plan” Joel has constructed. I’m tired of pretending that I’ve had all this as planned as it may look.

The author is planning a new comic featuring an all-furry, mostly-female cast. Concession characters may visit his unscripted comic Ballerina Mafia, as they did in At the Heart of it All.