James Cartwright is a comic creator and writer who has recently started releasing his material on the Internet. Hamsters (illustrated in full-color by Mike Ratliff) is described simply as “Two hamsters venture outside their cage to escape from the clutches of their evil owner, a nine-year-old girl.” Gotcha! Then there’s Rocky Mountain Fire Lizard (also in full color by Pellegri), which goes like this: “As railway tracks are laid across Colorado’s rocky terrain, a dragon awakes from its slumber. A farm boy and privileged girl chase after the monster to be the first to collect the bounty on the creature’s head.” You can find out more about Cartwright Comics, including links to buy them, at the Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society (whew!).

image c. 2014 by Cartwright Comics

The Kia hamsters, rodent stars of several commercials for the Kia Motors Corporation, are back in an advertisement to promote the 2014 Soul.

The ad, set to Lady Gaga's "Applause", features the three hamsters jogging, swimming, and working out on various pieces of gym equipment. At the end, emphasising the message that the Soul has been "totally transformed" with a "sleeker, sexier and more sophisticated" look, the hamsters are seen radically slimmed down, wowing the public at a red-carpet event.

The campaign was produced by Kia's long-time ad agency David & Goliath, and directed by its Executive Creative Director, Colin Jeffery. The MTV Video Music Awards (Sunday, August 25) will feature the commercial; it hits 18,000 movie screens across the U.S. on August 30.

I went looking on the “BD Selection” website to see if a new Blacksad album is out in France. No; but this sounds interesting. Here is my translation of the French summary/review of Sale Bête, T. 1: Hamster drame (Filthy Beast, vol. 1: the hamster catastrophe) by “Boris”.

First off, Happy Mother’s Day to you and yours!

Suddenly there is much ado about Hero Petz, written by Dale Mettam and illustrated by Juan Fleites. First off, a quick recap from the original series: “Even as the evil Itachi Clan of ninja weasels tightens its grasp on Peludo City, six heroes — okay, five heroes and a crazy Monkey — stand ready to defend the innocent and fight for justice. El Conejito the Rabbit; Wonder Squirrel; Steel Shell the Turtle; Sensei Penguin-San; Kapitan Brüllaffe the Monkey; and Golden Hamster are the Hero Petz! Together, they take it upon themselves to keep watch over the city and protect the innocent!” First off, this June Stan Lee’s Kids Universe is re-releasing the original 80-page graphic novel (from 1821 Comics) in trade paperback. Also, there’s a video trailer for a new Hero Petz video game — as well as several fan reviews — up on YouTube.

image c. 2012 by Juan Fleites

Kia's anthropomorphic hamsters, which began advertising the Kia Soul compact vehicle in 2009, have returned.

In a 60-second commercial, the hamsters perform a 'shuffle dance' in the blackened ruins of a video-game world where robots and armoured humanoids battle. The advert's first TV airing is to come during Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards.

In what may be an inspiration to fursuiters, Facebook, Kia.com, and YouTube will be involved in a shuffle dance video submission contest in mid-September.

If you've ever wanted to match wits with your pet hamster, Mice Arena could be the game for you.

As in a traditional video game, players navigate a virtual world in a bid to stay alive. The twist? Computerized movements in Mice Arena are mapped to and from the real world, where an actual predator (your hamster) gives chase to a digital avatar (you) by pursuing a real piece of bait.

"We want to enable pets to play games in a way very similar to the way human players' play," said RASTER's Vladimir Todoroviæ, a collaborator working on the Metazoa Ludens project. "To play a computer game with your hamster would definitely make us think about where we have come with digital tradition now."

Read the whole WIRED article here

Caught tooling along a British street, a hamster driving a tiny modified sports car is in custody pending further investigation. Police are hoping that the hamster's owner will come forward to claim the animal, who is currently being held in an animal shelter.