CM: The World of Vicki Fox

Last week, we had a comic all about shooting, killing, drinking, and jazzy cats in 1920’s garb. So, in the great tradition of Monty Python’s Flying Circus: “And now for something completely different”

This week’s comic is one of my oldest favorite webcomics, and one that pretty much introduced the genre to me: The World of Vicki Fox.

See? There are many advantages to be little and cute!

The World of Vicki Fox is an anthropomorphic webcomic created by Michael Russell and Laura Howell. It’s best described as a “slice of life” comedy comic strip about the lives of the titular Vicki Fox and her friends and family in the city of Apopka, Georgia. Almost the entire cast is made up of anthropomorphic animals of varying species.

Where many other comics delve into deep stories, crazy action, or fierce drama. The World of Vicki Fox is more like an episode of "Happy Days" or "Mary Tyler Moore". The meat of the comic comes from learning about the characters and seeing the hijinks their various personality traits, jobs, and relationships get them caught up in. In one of the comics, one of the characters even compares Vicki and her roommate Ceri Bobcat to Mary and Rhoda (I now feel really old in enjoying that reference)! It prides itself on being a wholesome, family-friendly experience that can be read and enjoyed by anybody and usually has subtle a lesson to be learned in the midst of all the jokes. What it does best is, without question, creating a full world for the readers to enjoy and immerse themselves in.

Story

The World of Vicki Fox is another comic where it’s difficult to have actual ‘spoilers’ when talking about the story. The reason for this, as I said above, is because the comic isn’t really concerned with telling deep narratives. The deepest the stories have ever gotten in terms of continuity is a storyline that shows how Vicki and Ceri first met and became roommates. While that might seem like a downfall of the comic, it is actually quite the opposite!

Reading and enjoying the stories of The World of Vicki Fox is like enjoying an episode of your favorite sitcom. They’re warm, familiar, and largely self-contained. You can hop in nearly anywhere and still enjoy the characters and the jokes, picking up on the relations between characters as you go along. Speaking of relations, the majority of the stories are focused on romance and family, which makes for great humor, but also plenty of ‘aww’ moments where you’re rooting for the protagonist or feeling sorry for their losses. It’s not all played for laughs, either! A number of comics don’t end in gags, but in thoughtful phrases as the characters come to one realization or another, learning (or, in the case of Zephy Fox, ignoring) lessons along the way.

Another aspect of the comic that might surprise some readers is that The World of Vicki Fox is largely a female-focused comic. Three out of the four primary characters are female and most of the stories are largely from their perspectives or directly involve them in some way. Vicki Fox herself is very concerned with building a life for herself and enjoying every aspect of it that she can. There’s shopping trips, pecan festivals, playful romance, and enjoying family and church functions. In some ways, it might be seen as a little stereotypically girly, but Vicki and her friends are crazy enough that, even if you’re not into ‘girly stuff’, you’ll find something to enjoy. Personally, I had a lot of fun with Aussie, Vicki’s best friend who pretends to be Australian for no good reason aside from thinking that it’s cool.

Presentation

One of the most striking elements of The World of Vicki Fox is its art style. More specifically, the sheer number of art styles on display is pretty incredible.

The comic started out with only Laura Howell doing the art, whose style is quite iconic and fits the cartoony world of Vicki and her friends wonderfully. It has something of a “Looney Tunes” vibe to it, which is really endearing. By the third storyline, the art changed over to Shelly Pleger, another fantastic artist but with a noticeably different style. Her art is more reminiscent of Disney cartoons and 90’s era Warner Bros. cartoons.  It was during her second storyline that things started to change rather dramatically.

Starting with a comic called “Minding the Gap”, all sorts of artists started sending in guest comics and illustrations to fill the space between major storyline updates. It was a remarkable display of talent and style, and really helped to expand The World of Vicki Fox as a comic for the furry comic community at large. It not only showed that Vicki and her friends could appear in different styles and still be absolutely recognizable due to their personalities, but also showed that the comic had an incredible community behind it. As the storyline continued, the art for the main comics changed to Jennifer Morton, another experienced comic artist, with Shelley Pleger coming back every now and again.

Sadly, as the comic went on, this created a bit of a problem where the artistic identity of the comic started to feel inconsistent, both in quality and in pacing. Along with update problems, this might have created the situation that led to the comic’s current hiatus.

The ‘Anthro’ Element

The anthropomorphic element to The World of Vicki Fox is probably one of its strongest traits! Not only are almost all of the characters animals with a wide variety of species and appearances to them, but there are rules set in the world and frequent pokes at common tropes, or habits, of anthropomorphic cartoons.

When I talk about ‘rules’, I mean that it’s clearly outlined how relationships and interactions between species work, and the comic largely sticks to them. Michael Russell himself explains it best in the FAQ on the site, talking about how there are three levels in Vicki’s world: Humans, human-animals, and regular animals. He goes even further to talk about how romantic relationships only exist between members of the same animal family (i.e. canine, feline, etc.), and even how religions work with all the various species in play! There’s clearly a ton of thought put into the world and how the species all interact with it and with each other, and learning about these little wrinkles of the world design isn’t completely necessary, but only makes the stories better.

On the comical side of things, The World of Vicki Fox has its fair share of jokes about cutting holes in clothing for their tails, human-sized cars being horribly cumbersome for most of the smaller animal races, and the girls going crazy about buying shoes, despite usually being barefoot like most typical cartoon animals in the genre. It’s really ‘anthropomorphic’ in the most fun of ways, never taking itself too seriously, but sticking to its rules for the world when they come up. There’s never a problem of Vicki and her friends being merely ‘humans in animal suits’, and that really helps to create its identity.

I won’t lie: I pretty much adore the way The World of Vicki Fox handles anthropomorphism and I dearly wish more comics took the same approach.

My Thoughts

I’ve slipped in a lot of personal thoughts in talking about this comic already, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I really enjoy the whole production. I absolutely recommend this comic to everyone reading here.

However, there are some problems about the comic that I absolutely must talk about and can’t leave out in good conscience. As previously mentioned, the art style for the comic changed dramatically over the years, and the change in quality is very noticeable. Now, this is not to say that the later artists were bad, but more that the difference was just so jarring that it greatly hampered my enjoyment. Personally, my favorite era of the comic’s style is before the ‘Minding the Gap’ comics and I hope we get more of a focused art style when the comic relaunches.

Speaking of which, that brings up the second problem I had with The World of Vicki Fox: the lack of consistent updates. While lulls are not unheard of in webcomics, the massive gaps between comics became so long that the author himself brought attention to it and made a comic out of the gaps! Ironically, even the “Minding the Gap” comics didn’t keep up with much consistency, and that ultimately led to the comic ending prematurely in 2013. The storyline at the time, called “Summer Work”, was left hanging essentially in the middle and looks like it most likely will not have a conclusion. There’s an announcement about the website relaunching and being retitled “Dixie Wildlife” on the Comics page, and we received an update recently about the expected relaunch to be taking place in Spring 2015. Only time will tell if they’ll stick to the launch date, but it is my sincere hope that they do!

Despite these problems, I still love this comic and read back through it frequently. I’m eager to see more of it in the future and consider it a great shame that no print version of The World of Vicki Fox exists! I would love to be able to have something to hold onto if the website ever goes offline, as well as something to show off to my friends and family on my bookshelf.

As it stands, the future of The World of Vicki Fox is nebulous at best, but everything that made the comic and the website great is still available to us online! Be sure to give it a read and experience one of the most wholesome and fun experiences to be had with online anthropomorphic comics!

The World of Vicki Fox

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Comic Month! Lackadaisy

Hello all, and welcome to Comic Month here at the Raccoon Reader Review! More specifically, I should say ‘web comic’ month, as all of the comics that I’m about to show to you this month are fully available online for your reading pleasure. Most of them, though, are also available in book format, so don’t hesitate to pick up a hard copy of the comics if you want to support these wonderful artists and writers!

The goal of this month is to show off some anthropomorphic comics that I enjoy and spread word of them to folks who may not necessarily have seen them before. That means I’ll mainly be going over the great points of these comics, but I’ll also point out problems where it’s due.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into this week’s anthro comic: Lackadaisy

 

I may not be a cat, but I think I'll fit right in!

What is it?

Lackadaisy is a comic written and drawn by Tracy J. Butler.

(from the artist):

            “It's about a gang of tenacious (if not shady) characters running a St. Louis speakeasy in the era of Prohibition. I suppose it falls somewhere in the realm of historical fiction, parody, dark comedy, and abject nonsense.”

In truth, Lackadaisy is a comic about many things, but it’s mainly about people who do illegal things. Characters lie, cheat, steal, and kill in the name of their respective establishments and personal interests. In fact, it might almost be considered a theme of the comic that none of the cast are completely unfamiliar with violence and bloodshed. In a way, it’s a sort of tearing down of ‘the good old days’, and yet it still fully celebrates them. Lackadaisy is a comic filled with music, poetry, history, comedy, love, murder, and a bit of alcohol.

Story

I would say that I want to avoid spoilers here, but Lackadaisy’s story is not one that lends itself much to spoiling.

The story primarily concerns itself with the adventures of the Cheshire Cat-like Rocky Rickaby, who is currently employed by the mysterious Mitzi May at the Little Daisy Café. He’s a gin-runner for the Lackadaisy Speakeasy that’s set up beneath the storefront, meaning it’s his job to go out and secure shipments of liquor to keep them in business. From the very beginning, we learn that Rocky is… not the greatest at this job. He tends to get pushed around and his head is very much always in the clouds and dreaming of grand things. Yet he loves the job anyways and puts his life on the line to do it for Mitzi.

The story isn’t just about Rocky, though. After being introduced to his problems, we soon meet an increasingly colorful cast of characters, such as Viktor, the feral-looking one-eyed Slovak with knees that don’t bend, Ivy Pepper, who works at the actual café part of Little Daisy Café, and Freckle, Rocky’s quiet and somewhat shy little cousin who continually gets wrapped up in the craziness of Rocky’s adventures. This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the cast of characters, and our perspective changes frequently as the story demands it. See for yourself all of the characters that Lackadaisy offers to us here!

Luckily, all these different characters don’t muddy the story in the least. See, when I say that the story primarily concerns itself with Rocky, that’s both a truth and a bit of a lie. So far, Rocky most definitely gets the most face time in the comic, but the comic is less about him and more about the characters involved with his place of employment. Lackadaisy is, above all else, a comic about characters and the lives that they lead. That’s why I say that it doesn’t quite lend itself to spoilers too well, because the magic of the story is in seeing all of these characters come to life and deal with their various histories and relations. The only way to truly ‘spoil’ Lackadaisy would be to write out a full-disclosure biography on every character in the story, and you’d be better off just watching these characters explain themselves anyways.

Presentation

Lackadaisy is more than just a collection of comic pages and fun characters. The full experience of Lackadaisy is the site itself and the wonderful level of immersion into the world. Not only does the story of the comic take place in the 1920s, but the website itself is steeped in information and colloquialisms from that era. There’s even a glossary on the site to help folks out if they want to know more about words of the era, though the artist never overuses these words in the comics to the point of the glossary being necessary reading.

Lackadaisy has a lot of themes going on, especially if one were to break down all of the different aspects of the era that it slips in. One of its more recurring themes, however, is the theme of photographs. Throughout the entire design of the website, the characters are shown in period-centric styles, and this frequently takes the form of old photography. Not only being in the backdrop of the site, the comic itself tends to use quite a number of photos, showing characters caught in the middle of moments or giving us glimpses of their histories. In fact, the comic itself could be said to be drawn in the style of a photograph, being presented entirely in sepia tones. Of course, comic panels do lend themselves well to being compared to photographs, but Butler definitely runs with the idea.

Speaking of the comic’s art, though, I must say that it’s absolutely fantastic! I can’t emphasize that enough. Tracy Butler brings out expressions and emotions with every panel and does so with great detail. Characters are never as simple as they might seem in design, and most every one of them will give an expression that you don’t quite expect that will suddenly reveal more about their character to you than any mere words could do. The characters’ outfits and the setting are also all drawn expertly, with more details than most will probably ever notice. Butler often gives us fun notes about her design process too, including historical facts and errors about what she’s drawn, as well as tutorials and thoughts about character design and putting images together.

It’s some of the most professional art that I’ve ever seen in an web-based anthropomorphic comic.

The ‘Anthro’ Element

If it’s not obvious from the images I’ve shown you so far (Or if you can’t see the images for one reason or another), Lackadaisy is anthropomorphic at its most basic level. The entire cast of characters is made up of cats of different breeds, as is the world surrounding them. Rather than referencing this in any dialogue, the art pretty much speaks for itself. Characters infrequently do ‘catty’ things, like sleeping in odd positions or having their tails frizz out when they’re concerned. On the whole, though, the world being filled with cats really doesn’t play much of a part in the story of the comic.

Butler herself says that the cats are ‘just stand-ins for humans in the comic’. While I might have a problem with that in works of literature, showing a lack of inventiveness, I’m a little more apt to forgive it in the world of a graphic novel. The reason for this is pretty obvious: everything that we need to know about the characters in terms of their species is shown to us in the art of the comic itself. Nobody is going to look at a comic panel of Lackadaisy and mistake the felines in zoot suits for human beings. Even their hands and feet have pads and claws on them, so it's difficult to even think of them as people in furry suits. In a way, it’s a very ‘Disney’ approach. These cats that can talk are just that.

This does beg the question, though… Why are we more willing to accept this? Why is reading about a talking mouse going to the store to buy bread and jam and driving a car more of a logical stretch for some than watching a quadrupedal lion actively using a torch in his teeth to light a field on fire in Disney’s The Lion King 2? Really, I think it has to do with how our minds tend to work. In general, we are more receptive to being shown something than being told to think something. When the visual is entirely our own idea, it’s oddly more difficult to bend it than if somebody else presents the visuals for us. You can easily experience this for yourself if you ever watch a movie based on a book and then read that book. Suddenly, without even trying, you’ll tend to see the main character as the actor that portrayed him or her in the film. Publishers are even completely aware of this, which is why they tend to reprint books with covers matching the posters of their films. Pre-determined visuals are comfortable for our eyes and our minds, even if imagination is arguably better exercise for our brains.

So, in the end, Lackadaisy’s anthro element is a basic one, but the great art carries it forward and brings out all that we need to know about these characters as cats and as people. Its story is certainly more of an exploration of the human element than the animal one, which makes it good anthropomorphism, but there’s less of an animal mask to it when compared to other works. This may or may not turn off some folks.

My Thoughts

I’ll not mince words. I love this comic and everything about it! The art, the characters, the presentation… it’s all a beautiful visual symphony in my eyes. The world absolutely comes alive in the pages presented to us, and there’s so much personality in the website and the various images and comics spread across it. It’s just astounding to me every time that I look through it and it’s my hope that I can spread this comic even further and make more people aware of it. I highly recommend it and hope that you all give it a read for yourselves!

If there were one thing that I had to point out as a disappointment about the comic, it’s the fact that the wait between updates can be excruciating. As Butler’s art gets more and more impressive and extravagant, it takes her, understandably, more time to make each page. This works somewhat to the comic’s detriment, as the art wows us with every new piece, but the gaps can be so large that you tend to forget where you were in the story unless you read back a few pages first.

For that reason, I think one of the best ways to experience Lackadaisy is in its book form. The first volume has long been available, and the second seems to be well underway. With the books, you get to experience the entire story at your own pace. Regrettably, all of Tracy Butler’s notes couldn’t be transferred to the pages of the book, nor could the side comics on the website, but that also makes the book experience and the website experience complementary rather than competing, and checking out both can really enhance your reading!

Well, I hope you all enjoyed a look at one of my favorite anthro comics out there today! There’s more to come, so please stick around for the month! If you have any anthro comics that you want me to check out or hear my opinions on, or any topics in general that you want me to cover, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

Animas – Legacy of the Claw by C. R. Grey

BOOK TALK: The True Meaning of Smekday

I always like jumping in to a new book that has a lot of fun ideas and excellent execution of them. When I really start enjoying such books, time seems to fly and I blaze through them at a voracious rate (at least for me). When doing the reverse, reading a book that I do not enjoy, I tend to move through them at a pace not unlike a sloth, growing moss in between my turning of every page.

The former is definitely the case here with The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex!

For those who want to get a rough ‘feel’ for the kind of book this is, here is the synopsis from Amazon:

“It all starts with a school essay.

When twelve-year-old Gratuity ("Tip") Tucci is assigned to write five pages on "The True Meaning of Smekday" for the National Time Capsule contest, she's not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens-called Boov-abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it "Smekland" (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod?

In any case, Gratuity's story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo.; a futile journey south to find Gratuity's mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion.”

This book was not only fun to read, it was also filled with interesting concepts and different ways of telling a story. One of the more endearing traits of the book is the selection of photographs (drawings) given throughout of all the sights and strange people that Gratuity meets, showing just how much the planet has changed and NOT changed. It was also truly funny, with many laugh-out-loud moments that feel absolutely natural for the world that we’re presented with. There are just so many fun quotes that could be pulled out of the text, many of them from the alien character, J.Lo, but I don’t want to spoil the discovery of them.

The fantastic thing about the whole journey of this book, however, is that none of the content feels ‘forced’.

Everything is presented through the eyes of the main character and we’re given her insight on many things in the world, but we’re not force-fed what we’re supposed to take away from the story. Gratuity herself even talks to the audience about how she isn’t sure of the moral of the story that she’s telling, but only that she has to tell it.

I want to end this discussion right here to tell folks to give this book a read, but I would be remiss if I didn’t give a little more in-depth discussion on some of the things presented in this book. For those who don’t want some aspects of the story inevitably spoiled, don’t look any further!

Of COURSE my first ever 'selfie' is with an alien. Wasn't yours?

The Anthro Element

Before anybody asks, no, there are no talking animals in this book. However, there ARE talking, sentient, non-human lifeforms, and that makes them no less anthropomorphic than Mickey Mouse. In fact, the aliens in this book, known as the Boov, are perfect examples of many of the concepts we’ve talked about with anthropomorphic characters and ideas.

The Boov spend the majority of the book trying to understand human beings, or at least try to figure out how they can build a society around them. There are a lot of parallels to the conquest and discovery of America, right down to the Boov renaming earth and its people after the captain who ‘discovered’ the world. The story draws even clearer lines by moving all of the people in America to a single state, greatly reducing the amount of land that they used to own. It sort of reaches its peak when Gratuity finds a large number of well-off Americans living in casinos, but I think it’s almost a joke for the observant reader by that point, as the plot was focusing more on threats to the world rather than America being ‘occupied.’

The Boov are most definitely fascinating to look at from an anthro perspective, though. Not only do they look radically different from human beings, but their diets and the values they consider to be important are completely different as well. As the story goes on, we learn more and more about the Boov values, eventually even getting an entire origin story for the species and how they started space-faring. This is all presented to Gratuity, who is young enough that her view of the world is a very open one, and so we get a lot of her asking questions and trying to present the values of humans in comparison to the Boov. It ends up being not only funny, but also a great period of character building for both her and her new friend J.Lo. J.Lo starts to take on and understand human values like the connection between a mother and a daughter (his people are born from eggs and relatively abandoned by their biological mothers), and Gratuity starts to see through some of the initial fears and prejudices they all had about the Boov.

As this book concerns itself so much with how the different species on Smekland/Earthland interact and communicate, I think it’s an absolutely ideal piece of anthropomorphic fiction.

Quibbles

Of course, The True Meaning of Smekland is not a perfect book. As I mentioned above, some might find the parallels between the conquest of the Boov and the conquest of the Americas to be a little too heavy-handed. While I feel they are well-handled in general, there is most definitely a bit of bias towards Native Americans, as the only Native American in the entire book is also the only adult that isn’t absolutely loony and useless to most of Gratuity’s needs.

Speaking of adults, the way adults are handled in this book is also a little grating at times. While the tone IS consistent, it does get a little frustrating to frequently see an adult appear in Gratuity’s path and discover that they are yet another childishly-minded and selfish individual. To be fair, though, most of the kids she encounters are just as bad, so it’s more of a case of the world going mad and probably less of a direct bias against adults.

Despite these nitpicks, the story is still fantastic and has a brisk, lively pace that feels good and satisfying to read. The pictures are all well-done and the world-building is amazing, considering that the story is on a world that one would assume to already know fairly well.

Seriously, the art in this book is incredible! There's tons of it!

And, like many good Middle-Grade novels, The True Meaning of Smekday is already slated for a film adaptation! I didn’t know this until about halfway through the book, so I’m filled with both anxiety and excitement. If you’ve ever read and enjoyed a book before seeing the movie announcement, you’ll probably know what I mean.

The movie is going to be called “Home” and you can find teaser trailers for it online as of this posting. Go ahead and check it out, and see if you can finish the book before the movie comes out and creates a blockbuster rush for copies!

For next month, we’re going to be trying a bit of a topic that I’ve been wanting to present on this blog for quite a while: Anthropomorphic Graphic Novels and Comics. If you love good art and stories together, be sure to keep a look out! I’ll be pointing out my favorites and looking to discover new ones.

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

The Clothes Make the ma... er... Animal-Man?

A few friends have brought up a fun subject to me recently that I’m surprised doesn’t get talked about more often in anthropomorphic animal media: Clothing.

More specifically, they ask how clothing should work in a world of animal people.

Some may think that it’s an easy answer, because we’ve seen it a million times in sci-fi anthro video game designs and many anthro animal comics. Typically, these animals are just put into normal clothes with tail holes and sometimes shoes fitted for their specific feet or helmets fitted for their ears. Basically, the artists give minor adjustments to human clothing to suit their needs. In many cases with cartoon animals, the artists even forgo articles of clothing entirely, giving the anthro animal nothing more than a pair of gloves or a shirt.

*gasp* Scandalous!

On the surface, this is fine! After all, the focus in such stories should be on the characters and not what they wear, right?

But why don’t we think about this with more depth? What sorts of things could be done if one were to truly think about clothing designed entirely for a different race like, say, anthropomorphic felines or dogs? Human clothing is designed for human needs, so shouldn’t anthro animal clothing be designed with the same thought behind it?

I recently saw some comments relating to one of the most common anthro clothing designs, the tail hole. You know, that hole that just exists on the pants of fully clothed anthro characters that their tails just so perfectly fit through and operate without obstruction? The first was a suggestion for something called a ‘tail sleeve’, which sounded and looked a lot more comfortable than a simple hole. The sleeve design was pretty much what it sounded like, being a sleeve for tails much like our shirt sleeves are for arms. It allowed for comfort, a fair amount of maneuverability, and, best of all, no massive hole showing your underwear to the world. The idea was fair, as we wouldn’t very well publically wear a speedo for everyday clothing that only ends where our legs begin, would we? Well… most of us wouldn’t, at least. Thinking of the tail as an extra leg kind of helps to think about how clothing designed for it might actually work.

The second discussion that I saw was actually one given by a game character in the Namco RPG Tales of Rebirth. One of the main characters, an anthro panther named Eugene Gallardo, is asked by his new human friends about his unique covering for his tail, which looks like a long ornate sock. He goes on to describe how it’s a common mark of a gentleman in his culture, and that such coverings were very popular, not unlike the ties that humans so often wear. It’s a short discussion, but a unique one that you don’t often see in RPGs with such animal characters. We get a brief glimpse at this panther’s home culture and the culture of beastmen at large as it relates to our own.

It's tough to find a good picture of Eugene's 'tail sock',
but you can still see it behind him here.
Plus, he gets to look awesome as a bonus.

Topics like these are what make my mind swirl with excitement for the possibilities in good anthropomorphic literature. It would be so very interesting to get a look at something that’s, frankly, so alien to us, seeing stores with a ‘tail sock’ section and seeing clothing and jewelry with cultural significance that makes sense for these animal races. For instance, what about a store that sells fragrances to dogs, since scent is such a large part of their everyday lives, or how headphones would be logically designed for a race of rabbits? It takes real creativity to play around in that realm and make it sound perfectly natural at the same time. It really surprises me to not see this topic come up more in anthropomorphic literature.

Of course, I can understand why more authors don’t go into such details with their animal races. Unless those characters are central to the story as a race, those kinds of descriptions can bog down a story and lose readers who just want to focus on the characters’ interactions and their adventures in the world.

Still, it’s that potential for creativity that really should make the genre stand out and make these animal characters feel less like fictional creations and more like living, breathing people with their own lives.

I’d be very interested in seeing any stories that have such detail in them. I recall one sci-fi story that involved a quadruped, feline alien race that had a ship and spacesuits built entirely for their unique movements and body shapes, but I don’t recall the title, as it was many years ago.

If any of you readers know of any stories that explore this or have your own opinions or experiences with this subject, feel free to share them!

I dunno... I don't think this look is really 'me'.

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

BOOK TALK: The Last Wild

Awesome Cover, by the way. I do love the art style.

The Last Wild, by Piers Torday, is a story about a boy by the name of Kester Jaynes. The world that Kester lives in no longer has any animals, as they have all been wiped out by a disease known as the red-eye. With the animals disappearing, and most farmable crops following shortly after, the planet itself starts to descend into shambles, and the world that Kester knows now is one of metal, dirt, and grey. A miraculous thing awakens in Kester, however, and he learns that he can communicate with cockroaches, among other such creatures that clung on to life. They lead him to a mysterious grove where the last of all the animals on earth are hiding, and these animals ask Kester to find a cure and to save the Wild, as he’s the only one who understands them, and the only one who can accomplish this grand goal. So begins Kester’s journey.

It’s difficult for me to give a proper look at The Last Wild. My views are a little skewed because this book was recommended to me by a good friend and I went in with high expectations. The quotes on the back of the book don’t help either, as they compare moments in this book to James and the Giant Peach, which is a classic piece of children’s literature. Of course, one should never, ever read a book with the mindset of the praise printed on the cover. It is what’s inside the book that truly counts.

And, inside this book, I do not believe we have a classic piece of children’s literature.

It pains me to say it, but The Last Wild felt less than stellar and ended up making me more frustrated with it than absorbed in it. However, to be fair and to make sure you don’t entirely get the wrong idea from me, here a few things that I really loved about the book:

The Roach was my favorite character, by the way.
"I have secured the perimeter, soldier! Now, let's scout the refrigerator!"

The Premise – The premise of this book was absolutely engrossing. Aside from the great backdrop of humanity pretty much being doomed through a single, uncontrollable disease that kills not them, but everything around them, the hero is also excellently set up. Kester is a kid that is easily related to, being something of an outcast and having a strong desire for his family while also being prone to his own faults. To make him even better, though, Kester is also pretty much a mute. He can’t talk to a single human being, adult or otherwise, and the only creatures that can understand him and communicate with him are animals, who happen to want Kester to be their spokesperson to the world. The entire thing is a great design of creating problems and learning how to overcome them to achieve greater goals.

The Animal Element- Care really felt like it was taken in this book to show how the animals deal with the same kind of problems that humans deal with, but in different ways. There was a lot of neat stuff about how the animals would communicate with one another or have their own hierarchy and traditions that were alien to Kester in their execution, but emotionally relatable. This is what good anthropomorphic fiction can really bring to light and play with, and I’m very glad The Last Wild did just that. All of the animal characters in this book were very cool in this regard.

The Action- Oddly enough, I wasn’t expecting this book to have a lot of high-octane scenes to it, but it really did. From fighting against river rapids to out-running a crazy one-legged German man who shot bullets from his crutches, there was a ton of excitement in this book, and even a few fight scenes. They were all done quite well and really were a lot of fun. Near the climax, where the evil one-legged German is facing off against Kester’s entire animal party, it definitely held my attention!

Even with all that, though, The Last Wild left something of a bad taste in my mouth. The thing about the points I liked best in the book is that they were often countered by things that would go exactly against them. The best example I can explain is how the animals were treated during the book. For much of the novel, they’re shown as having their own society and rules and ways of doing things, and they are very opposed to being told to do something contrary to their beliefs. By about the halfway point in the book, however, Kester nearly practices mind-control on the animals, calling them to his aid like Aquaman would call a school of fish, and they would mostly go along without question. This is somewhat explained early on by Kester being proclaimed to have appeared in this great vision that every animal is made aware of, but it’s not dealt with consistently. Animals that want nothing to do with Kester at first eventually decide to follow and obey him without conflict, and he does so very little to earn that kind of respect. It’s upsetting when the animals stop feeling like thinking characters and just become tools for Kester to use.

And before anyone asks, yes, I think Aquaman has cool powers,
but he's still the last guy you call when you're going to fight on the moon.

What really tore me out of the book, aside from that issue, was a section of the book where the author seemed to throw common sense out the window in favor of making a statement. I ended up calling this part simply ‘The Farm Scene’. I’ll set it up for you:

Kester and his newfound human friend, Polly, are picked up by a seemingly friendly lady who goes by the name of ‘Ma’. She sees that Polly is injured and that Kester is travelling with a herd of animals and she offers to help the both of them out. We get a little bit of insight about Ma’s character, but we do learn that she has a lot of experience with animals and farming in the past. As we’re learning this, she drives the kids to her home city, which Polly describes as ‘the biggest farm in the world’. When they arrive, everybody is extremely happy to see them and very friendly, communicating well with the animals and being amazed at the sight of them as well. Of course, in typical fairy tale fashion, the people are not as kindly as they seem. The kids are barely out of Ma’s truck for ten minutes before they’re captured by the townspeople and thrown into a cell. The animals are likewise captured and put into pens, jars, cages, etc.

I’ve no problem with this part, as it’s quite intense and shows just how horrible and untrustworthy the world has become. The tension leading up to all of this is great. It’s what comes next that made my view of the book plummet.

After the kids are locked up in their cell and left alone, they soon make up their minds to break out of there and rescue the animals. That’s a great start! How do they go about doing this, though? Do they try to trick the guards of the cell into letting them out? Do they find a weak spot in the walls and bust through? Do they use Kester’s power to call upon some underground force of ants or worms or other creatures to help them out, as they’ve recently shown he can do?

Nah! They just pick up a shovel that was luckily left laying against the wall inside their cell and smash down the door. Then they walk out of their prison, which of course has nobody guarding them, and make a big show of sneaking around and avoiding detection while trying to find out where the leader of the animals, the Stag, is being kept. They don’t find him immediately, but what they do find is a massive bonfire where everybody is dancing and playing music and preparing for a grand event. Ma comes forward once Kester and Polly get close and she shares with the entire village their plans for the captured animals.

So now we get to see what this has all been leading up to. Why Ma lied and (poorly) imprisoned our heroes and showed such glee over the animals! Now, I would like you to keep a few things in mind here. First, it has been established that this entire village, which has been described as the biggest farm in the world, has a population made up almost entirely of farmers or children raised by farmers. Second, it has been said by Ma many times by this point that the people of this village are very good with animals, and she even makes a point in her speech of talking about how they lost livestock and pets to the red-eye disease. Third, the entire world has been considered essentially barren of natural resources for over six years by now. The only things that seem to grow are grass, weeds, and some barely edible plantlife. Finally, Kester came into town with a stag, a wolf, a cockroach, a mouse, and a flock of pigeons.

Knowing all of this, what comes out of Ma’s mouth next made my brain stop: They want to eat all of Kester’s animals.

That’s it. That’s the entire reason for all of this. These people who used to tend to the land for a living and have somehow been managing out in the wastelands for years find a resource that they thought was extinct, and their first thought is a massive hog-roast? These farmers have no interest in learning where these animals came from, how to get more of them, or to try and breed and raise the ones that they have? The pigeons alone could be bred for food, if that was their entire aim. Heck, the amount of meat available from the animals present wouldn’t even have fed the entire village anyways! What were they planning on doing after they finished all the meat? Just starve and wallow until the next miracle herd of animals appears? What farmers, whose entire livelihood is built around managing and cultivating resources, would act like this?

And if that logical quandary weren’t enough on its own, it starts to get even weirder. Ma starts to lead the people in a talk about the glories and wonder of meat and how much they miss it, talking about the eating of meat like its some sort of religion. Even when Kester makes himself known, Ma, after telling him that she put that shovel in their cell in the first place just so they could break out (why did they even bother with the cell, then?), invites Kester to join their ceremony and to ‘take the first cut’ like a priest telling a child to take a sip of holy wine. They bring out the Stag, who is bound up in ropes held by many men, and place a giant knife in Kester’s hand so that he can choose what part of his friend he wants to eat first. Oh, and the crowd starts chanting like a religious cult by this point too, just to make it clear how insane this is.

And what does Kester do? He cuts the ropes of course! The kid basically was riding on top of the Stag when they found him, and they put him in front of it with a knife in his hand? What did they expect him to do? And why did nobody in the entire village raise an objection to giving their previous prisoner the perfect means of escaping and helping his animals? The entire village was watching this! But there was no room for logic, of course. We needed a lecture about meat… Argh.

I don’t know if there was a vegetarian agenda here or not. It did occur to me at this point that none of the main characters (even the wolf) are shown eating any kind of meat. The wolf talks about attacking Kester a few times, but he never so much as attempts to eat one of the dozens of pigeons they have frolicking about them.

But even if there is an agenda of sort, that’s not what bothers me. Authors can share whatever message they like, I think, so long as it’s done well. This is not done well. It’s an awful, poorly thought out scene that seems to sacrifice character and story to make some kind of possible social point. And even if the author was not making a social point, the scene still is out of place and filled to the brim with plotholes. It’s scenes like these that make me honestly get angry at people who say to not take children’s literature ‘too seriously’. This is not a case of childish imagination or silly happenstances or adventures. It’s not a case of suspension of disbelief or even thinking like a child. This is a section of the book that tears away from its better parts and taints how everything else is perceived. This was the author stepping in and not the characters growing or learning.

I don’t believe that to be good writing for a novel, and it really is a shame that it effected how I read the book from there on out. There were really good ideas in this book and some very good scenes, but there were also very many shallow points and characters that were billboards rather than characters, and I mean that about characters beyond ‘the farm scene’ too. That one-legged German is a lot less interesting to read about when you realize he’s the only German in the entire book and his motivation for being unredeemably evil is basically just ‘because I hate animals’ and because he was ordered to hunt them.

There is a sequel for this book out now called The Dark Wild, and I won’t write it off solely because of my feelings about this book. In fact, it might end up being pretty awesome if Piers Torday simply builds off of the good things of the first book and goes even further now that the characters and world are established. I might honestly check it out sometime later and try to give it a fair read!

I will not tell folks to NOT read this book or pick it up. It has good stuff in it, and not everybody is going to feel the same way as me about it. You may very well enjoy yourself with it, and I dearly hope that you do! I just also hope I was able to share a bit of an opinion on the novel and get people thinking about these issues in this book and others out there.

Until next time, happy reading, all!

-Chammy

If You Give a Mouse a Big Mac

Some animals have diets that are extremely strict, to the point where eating something outside of that diet could cause illness or death outright.

Some animals’ diets are a little looser, and they can essentially eat nearly anything that fits into their mouth and be just fine for it in the long run.

Disregarding moral objections, I think we can generally agree on a few natural dietary habits of animals in the wild. They are either Carnivores (meat eaters), Herbivores (plant eaters), or Omnivores (those who get pizzas with everything on it).  This is one of those long-standing rules of nature that we’ve been taught ever since our first biology class.

Sadly, pandas as a species never got the memo about bamboo
being a poor energy source for them...

There is one question, however, that our biology classes failed to answer:

What does an omnivore do when he has to write for a carnivore or an herbivore?

The answer varies quite a bit, in truth, but some of the results might surprise you. I’ve read stories where rabbits go with their lion friends to restaurants and get chicken fingers just like anybody else. I’ve also read stories where rabbits would get sick after eating red meat by accident, or about tigers who had to resist the urge to eat their smaller, fluffy, meat-filled friends.

To be honest, it can be rather hard sometimes to create believable diets for anthropomorphic animals. For one, these creatures don’t even exist in the real world, so all we have to go off of for their dietary constraints are the animals they’re based on.  If a species evolved enough to walk on two legs, talk, and drive a car, then who’s to say their diets didn’t evolve along with them? Aside from that, writing a character who can only eat one type of food can sometimes, frankly, be a bit boring and strange to think about.  Here in America, it’s almost a national iconic scene to picture farmers hard at work in the fields all day and coming inside at sundown for a hearty meal of meat and potatoes.  It would probably boggle the mind of some people to switch out ‘meat and potatoes’ for ‘lettuce and cucumbers’.

In the end, because humans tend to be the creatures writing our fiction, the protagonists in our fiction tend to think like humans do, and that includes eating like them as well.

I don’t have any answers for which way of writing is best. In my own writing, I’ve written animals that are against dietary type and animals that stick to it like a religion. However, for those who think that writing meals for carnivores and especially herbivores is boring and requires very sterile descriptions of salads, I would like to direct you to Mr. Brian Jacques, the writer of the Redwall series.

I loved Redwall when I first started reading it, and I fell out of love with it as the series went on and I started liking some of the ideas and plots less and less. No matter how I felt about the stories themselves, though, there always remained one constant:

Brian Jacques is a master of writing feasts.

I can’t recall a single meal of his that did not make me hungrier after reading it. His descriptions of all-berry pastries and wines and beautiful dishes of fruits and vegetables defy expectations. They are filled with so much flavor, scents, and colors, and the characters, usually mice and shrews, are enjoying themselves so much that it’s like a Thanksgiving dinner being experienced for the very first time.

Just read this excerpt about the spread laid out for a feast at Redwall Abbey from Mattimeo:

“Salads of twelve different types, ranging from beetroot to radish, right through many varieties of lettuce and including fennel, dandelion, tomato, young onion, carrot, leek, corn – every sort of vegetable imaginable, cut shredded, diced or whole. These were backed up with the cheeses, arranged in wedge patterns of red, yellow and white, studded with nuts, herbs and apple. Loaves were everywhere, small brown cobs with seeds on top, long white batons with glazed crusts, early harvest loaves shaped like cornstocks, teabread, nutbread, spicebread and soft flowerbread for infants. The drinks were set out in pitchers and ewers, some in open bowls with floating mint leaves, October ale, fresh milk, blackcurrant wine, strawberry cordial, nutbrown beer, raspberry fizz, elderberry wine, damson juice, herb tea and cold cider.”

It continues to go on to describe the cakes and desserts to follow, but I had to stop myself there as my very eyes were watering with desire for this food.

The feasts of Redwall sometimes include fish, shrimp, or other seafood (there are often a variety of animals present in Redwall), but they’re just as often like this, listing line after line of food that would please the pallet of any herbivore. It’s really a great show of what can be done when a writer treats the diets of his characters with respect and joy.

Of course, not every story needs to spend a crazy amount of time talking about the food the characters eat. Still, having some level of consistency and respect to the idea that these are very different creatures that we are following is always appreciated and helps to make the world feel more real and complete.

What do you readers think? Do you prefer anthropomorphic animal characters who eat strictly like their real life counterparts, or is having a bit more open of a diet more fun to read about?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go look up what ‘white batons with glazed crusts’ are and how I can get my hands on one…

Happy reading, all!

-Chammy

Currently Reading:

The Last Wild by Piers Torday

Yep. There's a List for That.

Of the few websites that I visit in my daily life, there is one that I make a habit of visiting at least once or twice every few months. That may not sound much, but I only visit this site in order to keep up on my obvious interest in anthropomorphic literature.

You see, finding good books centered around anthropomorphic animals is not nearly as easy as it might sound. What was once nearly everywhere one could look is now surprisingly niche. Redwall and the Warriors series are the only recent anthropomorphic books of large public note that I can easily recall. We’re far removed from the days of the Wind in the Willows, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and The Jungle Book, where such books were just titles that everybody knew as they grew up. These days, we have far more choices for literature than we’ve ever had before, and it’s led to a sort of dilution of content. With so many books out there and so many ways to access and find them, it’s surprisingly more difficult to discover those treasures like the stories that made up our elementary school library days.  Also, with the rise of self-publishing, especially in the e-book realm, finding books that are not only good stories, but also well-edited and written is harder than it ever has been.

What is a seeker of literature to do?

If you said: “Suck it up, pick a book, and get reading.” You would be right!

Raccoons don't hibernate. We just get kinda sleepy!

However, another handy option is to look online for recommendations and reading lists, and one of my favorite public reading lists is one known as the “Recommended Anthropomorphics List”, held and curated by the Ursa Major Awards.

The Ursa Major Awards is an awesome website that collects various examples of new anthropomorphic media and arranges them by year for easy browsing. Every year, they hold a world-wide vote for the best anthropomorphic works of that year. The works are categorized by Film, Dramatic Work, Novel, Short Story, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Video Game.

Of course, it may not be considered as prestigious as an Oscar or Newberry Award, but seeing such works recognized in fields where they would otherwise be ignored by the majority of folks is quite wonderful.

The Anthropomorphics List that they produce each year is what I really go there for. Specifically the Novel category. Every year, I find some true gems in places where I never would have looked previously. In fact, the Gamma World novel that I mentioned in my last post was a novel that I discovered through these lists. I would strongly suggest that you take a look through the list as well if you have any interest in anthropomorphic characters in the media!

I should, however, put a disclaimer about this list. While it’s a wonderful website that has a wide net of content listed, not all of that content is for readers of all ages. With a smaller pool of new media to choose from, offensive content does come up. It’s not unlike any library, however. The purpose of this list, like libraries themselves, is not to censor or bar content from readers, but to give an open and free place for authors and creators to be seen or heard. Thankfully, for those of us that don’t want to have to dive in to a book or author website just to learn about its content rating, the UMA website gives a handy Mature Audiences tag at the end of any entry that qualifies.

In the future, once the nominations for the Ursa Major Novel Awards of 2014 are made public (Nominations open on January 15), I would really like to list them here on the website and read as many of them as possible. That way, when voting begins in March, all of us here can give some educated votes and maybe even discussion over which novels are most deserving.

Considering my reading pace is normally rather slow, this might end up being quite the challenge, but hopefully a lot of fun at the same time. I do hope you all join me for it!

Until next time, happy reading!

Currently Reading:

The Last Wild by Piers Torday