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Science Fiction

Wolves After The Fall

Creative Mind Energy (CME) describe themselves as “a creative consortium of artists, designers, inventors, story-tellers and writers who pool their educations, talents and creative abilities to bring outstanding new products to all media markets and industries”. To that end they have several comic book series in various stages of development — and several of them are Furry in nature. First up is The Gifted, a largely black & white comic book with water-color style illustrations. According to the CME blog, “The Gifted is set in a dystopian future, in which humans have devastated the earth. What animals remain endure a barren, dangerous existence, constantly being hunted and exterminated by man. But some of the animals find themselves gifted with sophisticated intelligence and the power of speech, and rise up against man to protect their earth.” The first issue will be available at their on-line store soon. Visit their web site to find out more about this and other upcoming titles.

image c. 2013 by CME

Fantastic Cats — Literally

Jenny Parks is a traditional artist working in the realms of natural history and animal art. Lately though, she’s come to specialize in fantasy-anthropomorphic illustrations of cat characters.  Cats like Doctor Mew, Hairy Pawter, and Purrlock Holmes.  Of course she sells prints of her cat-work, and you can see examples of that and other illustrations at her web site, www.jennyparks.com.

image c. 2013 Jenny Parks

Monsters in Love

Here’s the first set of new discoveries we’ve made this year at WonderCon in Anaheim, California.

Christopher Lee (no, not that one) is a graduate from the California State University at Sacramento who majored in graphic design. After working for graphic magazines, toy companies, and special effects studios, he made the bold choice to go solo as a graphic-designer-for-hire. To that end he has created a series of prints, t-shirts, and other items which he sells on his web site, www.thebeastisback.com. Among the items he’s created is Kaiju Romance, “Twenty two of your favorite giant monsters from the Gamera and Godzilla franchises falling in love in unexpected ways.” Each of these 5 x 5″ cards was hand-finished, making each one unique, and they’re available now as a set.

image c. 2013 Christopher Lee

The Elephant Men are Back

Image Comics have announced that the popular first hardcover volume of Richard Starkings’ popular Elephantmen comic book collection will soon be back in print — now in a new Revised and Expanded edition called Wounded Animals. It includes the original “Issue Zero” (with art by Ladronn), a sketch section, a new introduction, and more. Extreme noir science fiction with uplifted animals fighting against and alongside humans for world domination. Hey, the creators insist that it’s not Furry. Check it out and decide for yourself. The new edition (collecting issues 0 – 7) comes back to shelves on May 1st.

image c. 2013 Image Comics

Return of the Street Sharks

One of the admittedly stranger TV series of the 1990’s was DIC’s Street Sharks, which ran from 1994 to 1995. Created by David Siegel and Joe Galliani of Mr. Joe’s Really Big Productions, the series followed the adventures of four teenage brothers who were transformed into human-shark mutants by an evil scientist’s genetic manipulations. Yes, yes, the show was riding on the coat-tails of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — in fact, it directly spoofed Turtles on more than one occasion. Previously, only a handful of Street Sharks episodes have been available on tape or DVD. But now Mill Creek Entertainment have announced that they are releasing all 40 episodes of the original series in a 4-DVD set at a reduced price. The set is available now at Amazon and other dealers.

image c. 2013 Mill Creek Entertainment

The Air We Breathe

Breather is a new full-color graphic novel, coming soon. It’s conceived by Graeme Base (creator of Animalia), written by Sean Patrick O’Reilly, and illustrated by Asta Gunn. “On the distant planet of Otarius, invaders from the Birshh Dynasty have captured and enslaved the native Otarans. Pushed on by the ruthless Governor, timid Dr. Bjrork conducts horrific experiments to create a superior breed of slave. Years later, Birshh-Otaran hybrids are raised in captivity, dependent on ‘breathers’ – life-saving gas-masks that filter the Otarian air they, as hybrids, cannot tolerate. Two siblings, Dhrmmn and Lilli, strive to prove worthy of the Dynasty, to earn privileges for their half-breed kind.” No political allegory here, nope nope. Breather is coming in softcover from Arcana Studio this April, and you can check out a preview over at Graphic Policy.

image c. 2013 Arcana Studio

Coming from the 24th-and-a-Half CEN-tury…!

The Duck Dodgers TV series — based, as if you didn’t know, on the Chuck Jones-directed cartoon Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century — ran on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005. [My, was it really that long ago?  Sheesh… Ye ed-otter] Besides the obvious cast of Daffy Duck as Duck Dodgers, Porky Pig as The Eager Young Space Cadet, and Marvin the Martian as the terrible Commander X-2, the show featured a host of Warner Brothers characters in bit roles — not to mention new characters like the dreaded Martian Queen. The regular voice cast included well-known voice actors like Joe Alaskey, Bob Bergen, Richard McGonagle, and John O’Hurley, as well as Michael Dorn (from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Tia Carrere (as the Martian Queen). Now Warner Brothers Home Video have (finally!) released the first 13 episodes on DVD in a collection entitled Duck Dodgers – Season 1: Dark Side of the Duck. It’s available now in stores and on-line everywhere.

image c. 2013 Warner Brothers Animation

A War for the Earth

Endtown is an Ursa Major Award-nominated black & white web-comic by Aaron Neathery. “A mutagenic plague followed by a global war fought with disintegration weaponry has left much of the Earth a desert of fine powder, and what remains of humanity fragmented into humans, animal-like mutants and bloodthirsty monstrosities with lots of teeth. The surface, still teeming with the mutagenic virus, has become the domain of the dreaded Topsiders: Well-organized, technologically advanced, and heavily armed un-mutated humans sworn to exterminate mutations of any kind in order to clear the way for the eventual resurgence of a new, genetically clean humanity. Faced with annihilation, mutants and ‘impure’ humans have retreated into the depths of the planet to form communities and hope to win, or at least survive, what may prove to be mankind’s final war.” The strip continues weekly on Gocomics, and now Jarlidium Press have announced that the first two years of the comic will soon be released in two paperback volumes. Pre-orders have already closed, but the books will be available for general sale this June.

image c. 2013 Jarlidium Press

Pizza Cats on DVD

In 1990 Tatsunoko Studios of Japan released the “science-fiction historical gag battle anime” known as Kyattou Ninden Teyandee. It was fan-subbed in the U.S. as Ninja Pizza Cats, and eventually Saban Entertainment released it to television in a dubbed version called Samurai Pizza Cats. For many years, the rights to the show have been up in the air, but now Discotek Media have announced they will soon be releasing the entire series to DVD. According the review at Anime News Network, the series “revolves arouund Nyankii, a secret ninja team that protects the robotic animal inhabitants of Edoropolis (Little Tokyo) from the evil ninja organization Karakara.” That hardly begins to describe just how crazy this thing is. Discotek will be releasing two different DVD box sets: A 52-episode dubbed version and a 54-episode subtitled version.

image c. 2013 Discotek Media