InFurNation Rotating Header Image

Comedy

Oh, That’s Absurd

Once again, discoveries from the Long Beach Comic Con: A new weekly on-line comic. “Tales of Absurdity is the product of the strange and absurd thoughts of cartoonist Alex Hoffman.  Topics range from pop culture parody to the bizarre limits of the human imagination.  Sometimes they are funny.” And quite often they involve animals, funny and otherwise. Recently, Mr. Hoffman has released the first collection of Absurdity comics in a new trade paperback, The Dawn of Absurdity. “Watch the absurdity evolve over 100 strips with all the twists and turns, parodies and puns.” All of this and more can be found (and purchased) at Mr. Hoffman’s official Tales of Absurdity web site.

image c. 2016 by Rob Hoffman

image c. 2016 by Alex Hoffman

Save

Fighting Like… Machines!

RoboCatz vs. ThunderDogs. That’s an almost self-explanatory title, isn’t it? Certainly gets the furry fan’s attention! It’s a new independent full-color comic book series created by Justin Cermak, Donovan Goertzen, and Fabian Cobos. The premise is simple: Cats and dogs have been fighting for millennia, in front of humans and behind their backs. What humans don’t know is that both sides have employed war technology in their battles for some time — and in the not too distant future, both cats and dogs will have developed large anime-style robot fighters to carry out their planned destruction of the other side. Hmm… this maybe makes the whole comic sound a lot more serious than it is. Check out the much more detailed preview at Indie Comics Review.

image c. 2016 Data Red Comics

image c. 2016 Data Red Comics

Save

A Mongoose Avoids Weasel Words

Allen Carter is a writer and comic artist from Hawaii, currently living in Southern California. Among his creations: After finding inspiration from Chuck Jones’ 1975 animated version of Rikki Tikki Tavi, Allen brought us the Figure of Speech Mongoose, who illustrates various well-known sayings (and awful puns) in particularly silly ways. (“Catching a bus” — with a fishing line…) After experimenting with animation, Allen turned the FOS Mongoose into an on-line single-panel comic. Later he collected those works in a series of one-shot comic books, which he sells from his web site along with prints and other works. Allen is another artist making the circuit of Southern California comic cons. Look for him.

image c. 2016 by Allen Carter

image c. 2016 by Allen Carter

Yet Another Foul-Mouthed Bear

Sheesh, where have we been? We missed Brickleberry! It’s a series of short comedy cartoons that Comedy Central had available as an app for download. Created by Roger Black and Waco O’Guin (and produced by Comedy Central’s Daniel Tosh), it followed the adventures of a bumbling crew of park rangers at Brickleberry National Park. It was decidedly adult-oriented in its content! Along with the human characters there was Malloy, a talking bear cub (voiced by Daniel Tosh) with a foul mouth and a mean attitude. (Many episodes are still available on YouTube. Warning: NSFW, without a doubt!) The series premiered in 2012, and ran for three seasons, only to be canceled in 2015 — when most of the cast were killed by an invading army of alien cows. But fear not! Now Dynamite Entertainment have brought us Brickleberry: Armoogeddon, a new full-color 4-issue comic miniseries (written by Black and O’Guin, and illustrated by Timothy Hopkins) that continues the story with a new science-fiction twist. Find out more over at ComicBook.com. It’s also on the shelves now.

image c. 2016 Comedy Central

image c. 2016 Comedy Central

Save

Save

Mouse and Spouse in the House Yo

By now you have likely heard about the Mickey Mouse Shorts TV series — truly mad little animated cartoons brought to us by Paul Rudish and his crazy crew. Well now IDW Comics have been tasked with bringing us comic book adaptations of several of the Shorts, which they have done with the new Mickey Mouse Shorts: Season One full-color miniseries. “Join Mickey, Minnie, and all their pals in a comic adaptation of the celebrated, multi-Emmy and Annie Award-winning shorts from Disney Television Animation! In this issue, Mickey battles his way through a Tokyo bullet train during rush hour, an unlikely character competes in a dog show, and Donald suffers from….Flipperboobootosis?! And that’s just the start!” Adapted by Scott Tipton and featuring a variety of artists, the series is available now — and you can read all about it over at IDW’s web site.

image c. 2016 IDW Comics

image c. 2016 IDW Comics

I Gotta Get Me Another Hat

The Harry & Bunny Show is a series of slapstick comedy short cartoons running on The Disney Channel (and several on-line video channels for young viewers). It’s produced by Animasia in Malaysia. “Introducing Harry the magician, Bunny the stage rabbit and Madam Penny, a Gypsy fortune teller. Harry and Bunny have a very close relationship, but yet they dislike each other sometimes. Every episode features the conflict between Harry and Bunny in their daily life, where Harry always construct a new plan trying to get his magic wand back, while Bunny sabotages Harry with the magic wand.” Seems straightforward enough. Watch the showreel over on YouTube and you’ll get the idea.

image c. 2016 Animasia

image c. 2016 Animasia

Cooking for the Stars — Literally

On the shelves now from Oni Press you’ll find a new full-color comic book series called Space Battle Lunchtime, written and illustrated by Natalie Riess. The idea is simple: When a famous interplanetary chef has to drop out of a famous interplanetary cooking reality show, a young woman from Earth (with dreams of being a pastry chef) is given the opportunity of a lifetime… if she can survive the experience! As with many interplanetary science fiction comics, there are boat-loads of non-human characters… and more than a few of them look rather like Earth animals you probably know! Ms. Riess is also well-known for another funny animal comic: A web series called Snarlbear. Comic Book Resources has a review of Space Battle Lunchtime that includes a lot of sample pages.

image c. 2016 Oni Press

image c. 2016 Oni Press

Update on: Nelbert

A little while ago we made mention of Nelbert the Introvert, the first children’s book written and illustrated by Disney Animation lead character designer Shiyoon Kim (Zootopia, Big Hero 6). A recent article on Cartoon Brew said that the book is now available at Mr. Kim’s web site. In fact Mr. Kim actually went so far as to direct an animated ” teaser trailer” for the book. Inspired by the likes of Disney animator/illustrator Bill Peet, Nelbert tells the story of a shy dragon who likes to play chess. Mr. Kim created a set of custom “brushes” in Photoshop to use in the creation of his book. They’re also available for sale on his web site.

image c. 2016 by Shiyoon Kim

image c. 2016 by Shiyoon Kim

What Bears Do in the Woods

According to the Human Comics web site, “Gabriel Smith is a screenwriter from Venice Beach, California.  He is the founder of Human Comics, an independent comic book publisher, which was created as a platform for Smith to exhibit his writings for a cyberpunk sci-fi series entitled Human (aka Anthropocene: The Human Saga).” More recently though, Gabriel created a “children’s comedy comic” called Bacon & Sausage, illustrated in full color by Sara Varon. Well he describes it as a children’s comic — but it does seem to have a lotta harsh language and even, um, “body humor” for kids! Oh well, modern kids, it looks like!

Image c. 2016 Sara Varon

Image c. 2016 Sara Varon

Save