Brian Lee Cook’s Allasso Furry book series/magazine was started in 2011, announcing two volumes per year. (He and I had argued over whether this meant semi-yearly or bi-yearly. He says bi-yearly and I say semi-yearly.) Vol. 1 was published in November 2011 as a 116-page trade paperback with 14 stories and poems [review], and vol. 2 in May 2012 as a 134-page trade paperback with 11 stories and poems [review]. Frequent contributors include Mary E. Lowd, Renee Carter Hall, and Tristan Black Wolf.

Vol. 3 was promised for December 2012, but never appeared, and e-mails to Cook were not answered. It was assumed that this was another “little magazine” that had ceased publication almost as soon as it had started. But vol. 3 has finally appeared without fanfare, dated by Amazon.com as May 13, 2014, in a 140-page trade paperback edition for $8.00 (Amazon.com’s discounted price is $7.20) with 12 stories and poems, all Furry.

In a sudden move, Bad Karma Networks has closed the Ychan image board, furry art community and forum Yiffy International, and stoner fur community site 420furs.org.

When we're young the day stands still, but as we age time begins to speed us by until it seems there is never enough. We're proud of how far the community has come in the 11 years since we opened our doors, but sadly we no longer have the time to make this the site that you deserve. We'll miss you and the fun we've had together deeply - but remember that in every ending is a new beginning. We wish you the best in all your new beginnings to come!

Parts of Yiffy International - formed by a three-way merger in August 2008 - had been up since 2002, while Ychan launched March 2008. 420furs.org opened in 2007 as Bakedfurs.org.

On May 2, Rocket City FurMeet CEO KO announced that RCFM 2014 was likely to be cancelled for a second year running. This follows last year's cancellation due to full-face masks not being allowed at the intended hotel.

KO reported that the replacement venue, the Amberley Suites Hotel in Decatur, Alabama, had had a water pipe freeze and break in January, flooding a large part of the building and leaving damage severe enough to render it unusable. RCFM staff were not informed of this development until early April. The hotel did shut down its room reservation system, but RCFM were not told about this either.

RCFM staff have spent the past month discussing other possibilities, such as holding the event at a campground or renting an unconventional arena space, but have been unable to come up with a realistic plan for hosting RCFM this year. They have also had discussions on whether they should simply end RCFM for good, closing the corporate entity and cancelling their 501(c)7 filing. KO stated, "I don't like the idea of never bringing the whole Family back together again, but two years of constant struggle simply to find a hotel we can afford has been very tiring on all of the Staff involved."

Furry artist FilthyRotten Jackalope (Tangela Parten, née Harris) has been reported dead following complications from emergency surgery at the age of 35.

A long-time resident of Atlanta, Georgia, and a long-time participant in the local furry community, FilthyRotten served as Volunteer Coordinator at Furry Weekend Atlanta from 2008 to 2013. She moved in June 2013 to Vancouver, Washington, with her husband DarkPatu (Paul Parten) and their three children.

On April 1, 2014, FilthyRotten posted pictures to her Twitter account from her stay at the Peace Health Services Hospital for a blood transfusion (due to a history of chronic internal bleeding), but by April 4, she posted that she would be heading to emergency surgery the next day. According to DarkPatu, "Complications after an emergency hysterectomy led to an infection in her brain and cranial bleeding."

Funny Animals and More: From Anime to Zoomorphics, based on Fred Patten’s weekly columns from Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research animation website, was published March 26 by Theme Park Press. It is available in paperback and digital formats, and on Amazon.com.

The book is about animation and comic books rather than specifically anthropomorphic animals, but cartoon and CGI funny animals are a major theme. Topics include anime cat girls; Pokémon and Monster Rancher; Astro Boy and Atomcat; how a popular 1970s anime TV series led to the import of thousands of baby North American raccoons into Japan as pets, whose descendants are ruining thousand-year-old Buddhist and Shinto shrines today; animated Summer Olympics mascots like Misha the bear cub, Sam the eagle, Hodori the tiger, and Cobi the sheepdog, from 1972 to 2012; Patten’s favorite childhood comic-book funny animals like Amster the Hamster, Doodles Duck and his nephew Lemuel, Nutsy Squirrel, Dunbar Dodo, and SuperKatt, and how he would still like to see them animated; Crusader Rabbit; rats in animation; Reynard the Fox in animation; and Disney’s forthcoming 2016 Zootopia.

Contributors this month include crossaffliction, Dahan, dronon, earthfurst, Fred, GreenReaper, Higgs Raccoon, InkyCrow, Kakurady, Patch Packrat, RingtailedFox and Sonious.

Peanuts, the much-loved comic strip by the late Charles M. Schulz, is set to become a 3D animated movie.

The movie, scheduled for release on November 6, 2015, is being made by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. The writer is Brian Schulz (the grandson of Charles), and the producer is Charles Schulz's son Craig. Craig Schulz is keeping details a secret, saying only "it's about a round-headed kid and his dog, and that's about as far as I'm willing to go".

Here’s another movie with furry aspects for 2014 to add to the addendum to the addendum to the addendum; The Voices, a movie that Wikipedia helpfully describes as a “comedy crime horror thriller film”. It features Ryan Reynolds hearing voices from his pets, notably a dog who acts as his conscience, and a cat who would prefer he just kill people.

Roz Gibson reviews fiction of furry interest she read in 2013; her favorites included:

• The Tails from the Upper Kingdom series, by H. Leighton Dickson
• Sunset of Lantonne by Jim Galford
• Kavishar: Reflections In A Wolf's Eyes by Laura Kyle
• Rise of the Penguins by Steven Hammond
• Pandemonium by Warren Fahy
• I Was An Alien Cat Toy by Ann Somerville
• Nezumi's Children by T.L. Bodine
• Skyfire by Jess E. Owen
• Dragon Stones by James V. Viscosi
• Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson

Korean animation looks enough like Japanese animation that it is usually lumped together as anime. But I don’t think that even the Japanese have made an animated feature like The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow, directed by Jang Hyung-yun and released in February in Seoul.

Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop announces this South Korean release about a pianist (male), transformed into a cow (female) by Merlin the Magician in the form of an anthropomorphic roll of toilet paper, and pursued by a villainous incinerator that wants to incinerate him/her; while a communication satellite falls from space, becomes an Astro Boy-like robot girl, and saves the cow from the incinerator and its secret agents. It falls into the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it category -- and Jerry has the trailer, so you can see 1'22" of it.

Read more: Review at TwitchFilm.com

If you thought the Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series from Marvel sounded interesting, but were disappointed at the gun-toting-raccoon-to-green-skinned-alien ratio, July will see that situation rectified. Rocket Raccoon is getting his own ongoing series.

The book will be drawn and written by Skottie Young, best known for his work on Marvel’s comic adaptations of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, along with cover work for many Marvel titles. He is known for his cartoony style, an obvious fit with Rocket Raccoon’s funny animal roots. Like Rocket, this will be Young’s first ongoing title as a writer. You can see uncolored inside art for the first issue at MTV News.

The comic’s title was originally Rocket Raccoon and Groot, but Rocket’s “personal houseplant/muscle” was demoted, though he’ll still feature prominently. The rest of the Guardians will mostly stay in their own book, though Rocket and Groot will remain a part of that book’s cast.

In case you somehow missed it, Rocket Raccoon will also, completely uncoincidentally, appear in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie hitting theaters August 1, directed by James Gunn, featuring Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket.

A 7’21” movie? Well, they don’t say “feature”. And it is produced by Ridley Scott, directed by John Stevenson (Kung Fu Panda), and CGI animated by Animal Logic, the Sydney studio that produced the two Happy Feet movies and Legend of the Guardians: The Guardians of Ga’Hoole. This is supposed to reinvigorate the Coca-Cola Polar Bears, but at least it’s free of the commercial message.

IMDb and YouTube say that this was released on December 31, 2012. ADWEEK says that it was commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company through the Creative Artists Agency (adv’t agency) of Los Angeles for an online commercial. So this has been out for over a year, but I haven’t seen it mentioned on Flayrah yet. Let’s rectify the omission.

The last time I met Osamu Tezuka was at Daicon V, the 25th Japan National Science Fiction Convention, in Osaka on August 24-25, 1986. He was in a good mood, and told me through a helpful fan interpreter that he had just started a new manga that I was sure to like, considering my fondness for funny animals. It was a new version of Astro Boy – turned into a cat! “WHY?”, I asked. He chuckled and said something like, “Why not? It’s important to not take yourself too seriously.”

Tezuka had created Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) in 1952 and drawn his adventures until 1968, including the five intense years of the TV series (1963-1966, with production starting in 1962). After that, Tezuka was “Astro Boyed out”, and turned down numerous requests to create new adventures of the robot little boy. He had other stories that he wanted to develop in manga and anime. So, when he got a request from the children’s Smile Comics in 1986 to produce a new manga for young readers, why did he return to Astro Boy, but as a kitten; besides “Why not?”

Well, Atomcat never pretended to be more than a humorous trifle. It was a self-parody, and also a parody of all the talking animal comics where a human little boy or girl has an animal companion to help him or her out. In Atomcat, young Tsugio is the only human who knows that Atom the kitten is not an ordinary kitten, and Atom protects Tsugio from being bullied. Yet Tsugio is such a coward and crybaby that Atom, exasperated, has to take the lead most of the time. Tezuka was very proud of having worked out the English pun Atomcat = A Tomcat, since he claimed not to speak English. He probably also delighted in naming the school bully who always picks on Tsugio, “Gaddafi”. Atomcat was published in the monthly Smile Comics for seven months, seven self-contained stories, from July 1986 to February 1987. The last couple of stories lacked the freshness of the first stories. I suspect that Tezuka had lost interest in Atomcat and was just hacking out the last few stories; he was probably glad to end the series.

I “read” Atomcat in Kodansha’s 400-volume Japanese Osamu Tezuka Complete Manga Works around 1997; that is to say, I looked at the artwork. This current Atomcat edition from Digital Manga’s Platinum Manga has enabled me to read it in English for the first time.

Gardena, CA, Digital Manga Publishing, April 2013, trade paperback $12.95 (194 [+ 9] pages).

They're making these sequels fast; I think they've been working on them the past three years, ever since the first movie came out. Check out the trailer. [TheChriZ1995] The movie is in stores March 25; the Blu-ray & DVD edition is exclusive to Walmart and is currently offered for $18.96; it'll also be on iTunes for $14.99/$9.99 HD/SD.

While Alpha and Omega 2 had a very low quality, with a lack of shading and choppy animation, at least they tried to work on the issues for this one. It's a huge graphics upgrade from the second movie. Sadly the animation still needs work to be smooth like the first Alpha and Omega movie. Yet while the quality may not match up to the original, at least they are trying - I think it looks reasonable for what is essentially an extended TV show. For a company that isn't Pixar, they're doing a fairly good job at the moment.

I have a feeling some people on here may not like it, but this is for those who might want it, even if they never heard of it. It's great to have the fandom for this, though.

Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop has a first look at SEGA’s and OuiDO! Productions’ Sonic Boom CGI TV series, coming to the Cartoon Network (also French TV) later this year.

Sonic the Hedgehog is best-known as a SEGA computer game series, but this announcement – with a 2’50” trailer – shows what Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Eggman look like as fully animated CG characters.