On Jun 3, 2009, at 10:26 AM, Nate wrote:
> Does anyone remember when it was just clean art, plain old adult
> artwork, a little bondage and some lycanthropy? I still search on
> VCL every day hoping to find a gem of something good or original,
> but it's mostly just garbage.
Heh, yeah. I do. The good ol' days, when the hot selling comics were
titles like FUSION, ALBEDO, and XANADU. The glory days of the black
and white glut. Furry comics galore, with actual stories in them -
not just "character X bangs character Y."
I mean, I like adult art. I draw adult art. But it does seem we've
passed a tipping point, where the focus of furry fandom has moved
away from the core concept. Furry fandom seems to have (if you'll
pardon the term) jumped the shark.
I think what's happened to the furry fandom is similar to what
happened to Punk.
Punk started when a bunch of musicians, who grew up listening to the
rock n' roll of the 50's and 60's found themselves in the 70's,
surrounded by overproduced mega-hyped corporate product. The radio
was full of sanitized pablum, and live stage shows were full of
twenty minute guitar solos in forty minute long "songs."
So they started their own bands, and started making the own music,
similar to the stuff they liked. Short, loud, aggressive songs that
harkened back to those early days, when having a good song was more
important than having a good wardrobe.
...and then Malcom Mclaren latched onto it, and manufactured The Sex
Pistols as a marketing tool for his clothing line - and then the
media started paying attention, because The Sex Pistols were doing
things like harassing the queen.
And the media did the same thing to Punk that it's done to Furries.
The freak of the week stories. Look at the freaks, look how horrible
they are. Angry, violent, covered in swastikas. Always fighting.
Always getting arrested. Always taking drugs. Rioting.
And before you knew it, Punk was flooded with jerks who really didn't
give a rat's ass about rock n' roll. They just wanted an excuse to go
out and hit people.
> It's been a while since I came forward and said anything worth
> saying. Are there any other gray muzzles (meaning someone who's
> been kicking around the fandom since 1994 or earlier) out there who
> feel this way? Anyone out there who is a fairly conservative furry,
> where Jim's work might have been the most extreme stuff we cared to
> look at? And we watched the weirdness creep in slowly until we were
> knee deep in it. We almost left but we keep peeking in hoping to
> see something worthwhile in there again?
If we want something worthwhile, we need to make something worthwhile.
I've made the tough decision to cancel my current comic project,
COBALT. It sells really well, and has a lot of fans, but it's
pornography, and that's really starting to drag on me. I put a lot of
work into an issue, and I can't even put it in my work portfolio
because it's porn. Plus, I've had my own run-in with the "dregs" out
there in the fandom, who not only flipped out in a rage that I would
dare ask them "please remove this" when someone posted an issue of it
to a forum, but also turned to personal attacks, and harassment when
I pointed out on my FA page how that really didn't make me feel like
continuing to draw it.
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as an exorcist for assholes.
So, I've switched to producing something non-pornographic, and which
therefore is unlikely to get pirated along with every other sex comic
on the planet. I keep thinking back to those early black and white
comics, and about how much better they were than the stuff that's
currently for sale. That's the kind of thing I want to do.
As for the fandom in general, unless things tip back in the other
direction, things are only likely to get worse. We've been packaged
and sold as a catch-all for every fetish freak in the world, and porn
is the easiest type of story to tell.
I don't have high hopes.
-c*
Received on Wed Jun 03 2009 - 16:24:38 CDT