BlackTeagan (real name Teagan Gavet) is one of five nominees for the Russ Manning Award, to be presented at Comic-Con International on 22 July. BlackTeagan has been nominated for the pencilling of Nordguard: Across Thin Ice, which she produced with Blotch co-collaborator Kenket (Tess Garman).

The Russ Manning Award, presented annually since 1982, is for the most promising newcomer in the comic book world. It's also a huge opportunity for positive exposure of the furry fandom's artwork, as Comic-Con 2011 attracted over 126?000 attendees and has been active since the '70s.

Isiah reviews The Silver Circle by Kyell Gold, after his recent interview.

Wired has a gallery of twenty works in a Seattle art exhibition open June 16–July 22, “Rayguns and Robots!” (with an exhibition poster partially inspired by Planet of the Apes), at James Monosmith’s Ltd. Art Gallery.

The exhibit, curated by Chris Jackson, consists of over seventy pieces by forty-one artists, “dedicated to art influenced by the sci-fi stylings of the 1940s and 1950s.”

Most of the paintings, sculptures, and vinyl toys are not anthropomorphic, but check out Mikeatron!’s painting of a Godzilla-like monster skipping rope in the radioactive ruins of Tokyo, Chet Phillips’ “MST3k Attacks”, “They Came From Beyond Space” by Ken Keirns, “Back to the River, Back to the Forest” by Patrick Maxcy, and “Captain Qwendolth Blazar and the Thing From Beyond” by Tyler Parker.

Here's almost twenty minutes worth of video with 1044 fursuits from Anthrocon 2012.

Watched the whole thing? Pick out a couple of neat moments or original and cool suits and post them in the comments. — See more: Another view from the other side and :20 earlier.

Flight of the Godkin Griffin is an example of anthropomorphic literature at its best. It is told in the form of the diary of Mistress Commander Angharad Godkin, 48 years old, from the eve of her long-awaited retirement after thirty-four years in the army of the Godkindred Kingdom; at once obviously an inhuman army on another world.

Angharad has been recuperating at Fort Endgame after being wounded at the battle for Glendallia; a Pyrrhic victory in which she lost most of her cavalry unit and half of her command staff. She is just packing to leave when she is summoned to the office of the Fort’s commander:

The Mistress General hovers behind a desk, overlooking several maps and emitting a palpable air of tension. She has never elucidated her bloodlines to me, though to be named Godkin she must be the product of the interbreeding of at least ten species, as I am. In appearance, she is mostly mammalian, leaning toward genet or marten with rounded ears and a striped tail.

‘Mistress General, you wanted to see me?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she says curtly. ‘Angharad Godkin, you are hereby assigned to replace the provincial governor of the newly pacified province of Shraeven, on orders of the Godson.’
My beak drops open in shock. Any soldier in the Godson’s army can retire … unless they’re on active duty.
Casandre sighs. ‘Sit, Angharad.’
I refuse. ‘I’m retiring tomorrow.’
‘Not anymore,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, Angharad, truly, but the Godson himself sent the orders. It’s time for Governor Chordwain to step down.’ (p. 3)

Sofawolf Press, June 2012, trade paperback $17.95 ([iii] + 243 pages). Illustrations, map by the author.

A fish in a refrigerator sings Caruso. The stop-motion short-short – a trailer for his Annecy International Animation Film Festival award-winning Una Furtiva Lagrima – is less funny than animator Carlo Vogele (Pixar’s Brave, etc.) as he explains how he animated the dead fish.

After purchase of the bass at the fishmarket, I’d stick it in the freezer until I was ready for a full night of animating (stop-motion 101: if you want consistent lighting, daylight is not your friend ;-D). […] So I’d animate as fast as I could, until the fish thawed completely and its jaw went slack…

From where else but the Cartoon Brew.

A giant rabbit commits murder and gets a tough guy, a clown, and an astronaut to help him get rid of the body — maybe — in this 9 ½-minute, NSFW Dutch animated cartoon by Paco Vink and Albert ‘t Hooft of Anikey Studios. You will never look at Bronies the same way again.

From Cartoon Brew, natch.

After thirty years, it turns out, yes, dingoes really did eat that baby. At least that was the finding of Australian coroner Elizabeth Morris today, as quoted by the New York Times: "The cause of her death was a result of being taken by a dingo."

The bizarre disappearance from Ayer’s Rock of infant Azaria Chamberlain in 1980 led to her mother, Lindy, being convicted of murder in 1982, despite Lindy’s claims that dingoes had killed the baby. When Azaria’s jacket was found four years later near dingo dens, however, Lindy was released. Finally, this year, a fourth inquest was taken.

I was in a bad mood all day when I went to see this movie. A real bad mood.

I was looking forward to seeing it, however, because I decided it would cheer me up. I wasn't expecting it to be great and cheer me up; I expected it to be bad, and then I would get to take out all my frustrations on it in my review.

Essentially, if this movie was not the second coming of Furry Jesus, I was going to rip it a new orifice which I would then proceed to assuage my rage.

Can I even write that?

Anyway, you read the headline; this movie cheered me right up in the way I did not expect it to. By not sucking. Also, by not only not sucking, but by really not sucking a lot.

Eric Risher has posted a trailer for his documentary film, Through Fox's Eyes.

Eric's team raised $2,501 at IndieGoGo last September (though the last $336 came from "anonymous"), and will be in Pittsburgh this weekend to gather footage at Anthrocon 2012.

Read more: Fellow furry filmographer Curt Pehrson interviews Eric Risher about his project

On Friday, the Jim Henson Company announced the development of an animated feature film based on the Frog and Toad children's books.

Published between 1970 and 1979, the four books in the Frog and Toad series are Frog and Toad are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, Frog and Toad All Year, and Days with Frog and Toad. Written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel (1933-1987), they chronicle the exploits of the amiable Frog and his curmudgeonly friend Toad.

The Henson screenplay is being written by Craig Bartlett (Rugrats, Hey Arnold!), and Cory Edwards (Hoodwinked, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil) will direct.

Did you ever hear of Louie Schmitt and Stan Spohn? Amid Amidi reveals on Cartoon Brew that they were the cartoonists who drew & painted the ultra-cute anthropomorphic animal greeting cards for Hallmark Cards from around 1948 for the next few decades.

Isiah reviews Ten-Thousand Miles Up, Rick Griffin's space pirate opera.

There are two articles of Indian anthropomorphic animation interest in Friday's Animation Xpress (#305). One reports on the Hindi-language CGI animated feature, Delhi Safari, previewed at the Annecy Film Festival. Delhi Safari will be released in India later this year; an English dub with celebrity-actor voices will be released in the USA in 2013.

The other covers an Indian Jungle Book CGI television series picked up by Disney XD for U.S. distribution, which debuts 11 June.

I already reviewed this in Yarf! #56, January 1999. But The Blood Jaguar is a good enough novel that I am glad for an excuse to read it again, especially when this edition has eight new full-page illustrations by Louvelex (Lauren Henderson).

Michael H. Payne has been writing his “Around About Ottersgate” tales since at least May 1989, when the short story version of “Rat’s Reputation” appeared in FurVersion #16 (reprinted in my Best in Show: Fifteen Years of Outstanding Furry Fiction anthology in 2003).

After several more “Ottersgate” short stories appeared in s-f magazines and anthologies during the ‘90s, Tor Books published The Blood Jaguar as Payne’s first novel, in hardcover in December 1998. Tor reprinted it in paperback in September 1999 (with a better cover by Julie Bell), but apparently it did not sell well enough for Tor to buy Payne’s sequel.

Now Sofawolf Press has reprinted The Blood Jaguar as an attractive trade paperback with a third cover and interior artwork, and will soon publish the original sequel, a fixup novel of Payne’s “Ottersgate” short stories, also titled Rat’s Reputation.

Sofawolf Press, June 2012, trade paperback $15.95 (vii + 217 pages). Illustrated by Louvelex.