Walk Like A Man

David Goodman specialises in drawing anthropomorphic animals, but has skirted the edges of the related fandom. Ninth Art sent him to meet with a group of Furries to find out more about their relationship to the comic industry as a whole.
13 October 2003

I've had a lifelong fascination with animals. My brother and I grew up watching the BBC wildlife documentaries and we had a set of zoological encyclopaedias that I used to read avidly. So when I rediscovered comics shortly after starting university, perhaps it's not surprising that I developed a fascination with comics featuring anthropomorphic animals. What's more, I also discovered that there were a lot of people who also liked anthropomorphic animals, and that they had a name for themselves: Furry Fandom.

Furry Fandom is a fairly young subculture, dating from when the blossoming of the Internet enabled disparate fans to consolidate themselves into a network of contacts, but it's undeniable that humanity has long been fascinated with anthropomorphic animals. They are a staple of many myths and folktales; they occur in both juvenile literature and satirical art, and of course in countless animated films, not to mention as corporate and sports mascots.

Funny animals were a common element of children's comics and books for many years, but during the heyday of the Underground Comix of the 1960s, cartoonists started co-opting the iconography for more adult purposes - Robert Crumb's FRITZ THE CAT being perhaps the best-known example.

During the mid-'80s black and white boom, funny animal comics such as Fantagraphic's CRITTERS were being produced for a broader audience than just children. By the early '90s, there were several publishers producing Furry comics for the small but growing fandom - comics that covered dramatic as well as humorous stories.

Of course, anthropomorphic animals by themselves do not instantly count as Furry. Comics such as Sakai's USAGI YOJIMBO and Jason's HEY WAIT enjoy a broader market than many Furry comics, and are not marketed as 'Furry' comics. They do not offer new readers a way of finding out about the fandom. At the same time, not all Furries read comics - they are just one part of a rather broad church, one that also includes animation, art, prose, and role-playing games - but the few Furry comics publishers that exist seem to get by with a small but very dedicated customer base.

Furry Fandom seems to be divided into two camps (although the divisions aren't always clear cut) - those who are interested in anthropomorphic animals in comics, animation, and literature, and the so-called Lifestylers, who seek to explore the more animal side of their own personalities. Furries, like many obscure and unusual subcultures, have had a bad experience with the mainstream media. More often than not, the documentaries and magazine articles focus on the more lurid and sensationalist aspects of the fandom.

For a long time I'd lurked on the edges of Furry Fandom. Apart from the rare find at marts or in the back issue boxes of local comic shops (and I pretty soon exhausted everything that was available there), Furry comics were hard to get hold of. Most of my information came from the Internet, where I regularly read discussion forums and newsgroups to get an idea of what was available. None of this involved much actual human contact, and it wasn't until recently that I had a chance to talk to some actual Furries, most of whom were part of the Lifestyler set.

A few months ago, I discovered a website dedicated to the Furry community in the North West of England, and I found out that there would be a meeting where I live. In order to discover a little more about the state of Furry comics in the UK, I grabbed a selection of comics and went along to meet them. After finding a pub where we could sit and chat, I started taking notes, finding out what they thought of comics and how much they knew about them. Only a few of the Furries I talked to regularly bought comic books, but most were familiar with some Furry web-comics, and nearly all were eager to take a look at the samples I'd brought with me.

What I found is that Furries are no different to any other group of geeks, and that the problems facing Furry comics are similar to those of the general comics industry, but on a much smaller scale. As a result, the problems can seem much more acute.

For a start, it's hard to get in to Furry. It's a small and obscure fandom, so Furry comics are often hard to find. The Internet offers a greater field for initial discovery, as there are many furry web-comics and dedicated art sites, but a substantial proportion of them focus on sex or include sexual content. Indeed, more often than not, they feature some kind of fetishist sex. So the idea that 'Furry' is about sexual fetishism is one that tends to get spread about in the media. While such things are a part of the fandom, they don't represent the entire fandom in the same way that not all STAR TREK fans dress up as Klingons and sing Klingon opera. Yet sexual material undeniably forms a large proportion of the available material, and that can alienate the causal reader.

With so few people entering the fandom, those that do tend to share the same ideas as the existing majority, producing a narrower focus for material and a pronounced lack of visible diversity. This is not to say that there are no new ideas in Furry Fandom. Furries tend to be very open-minded and accepting of other sub-cultures and regularly absorb new concepts from them, but such things happen in broad trends. Since Furry has some ties to anime and manga (thanks in part to the ever-popular Anime Cat-Girl archetype), the current trend is for many examples of Furry art and comics to show a distinctly anime/manga influence. Anyone new to the fandom that doesn't like anime or manga may very well be put off by this.

Much of the material produced comes from within the fandom - for the fans and by the fans. With no external checks and influences, creators are free to indulge themselves in any way they can. Sex sells, and Furry is no exception to this rule. Some Furries would say that they are no more or less sex-obsessed than anyone else - it's just that they're a lot more open about it. It can be very liberating for some creators to experience the degree of openness and acceptance present in Furry Fandom. However, some people, including a few Furries, would say that they are too open and accepting. The purely imaginary nature of anthropomorphic animals has combined with a few of the more unusual fetishes to produce some truly startling and outrageous images.

As a result, some people end up rejecting anthropomorphic animals regardless of content. There are anthropomorphic animal comics that aren't about sex, but they seem to be in the minority. It can be hard for those outside the fandom to understand or be aware of this, and stereotyping and prejudice is common. One of my own comic strips was once passed over in a review, simply for including funny animals, while all the other strips in the anthology were commented on.

The parallels with the comics industry in general are obvious. Since very few comics are sold outside of specialist shops and mail order, it's difficult for anyone with a casual interest to find them, and Furry comics are rarer than most alt-indie titles. Nearly all of the Furries I asked said they would definitely consider buying or reading more Furry comics if they were more accessible and easier to get hold of. Most regularly read web-comics for that reason, and avoided mail-order due to a reluctance to buy sight unseen.

Not only that, the comic industry in the UK and US is still very much dominated by the narrow genre of superheroes, which many outsiders would consider to be simple-minded, adolescent wish-fulfilment power fantasies. Both comics in general and anthropomorphic animals in particular suffer from a perception of being solely for children, making it hard for creators to explore more mature or adult ideas without risking the accusation of corrupting minors. In those rare instances when the media remembers that comics exist, it's often for the wrong reasons. More often than not, they pick up on the fringe elements that, while making for a good show, don't accurately represent the majority of fans.

While the comics industry as a whole is gradually moving towards a better promotion of diversity, in terms of a wider range of themes and genres, and markets outside of the specialist retailer, I was alarmed to find that some of the Furries I talked to showed a lack of enthusiasm for countering the bad press and were reluctant to promote a more general view of the Fandom. While some acknowledged that the narrow focus of many publications was harmful to the long-term prospects of the fandom, others seemed glad that Furry Fandom was under no threat of becoming 'mainstream'.

I suspect that issues of social acceptance lie at the heart of many of the Lifestylers' fascination with Furry. There is a certain cachet in being part of an exclusive club. However, it is this desire to keep everything within the fandom, coupled with the narrow focus of work produced by the fans for the fans, that is probably keeping the fandom from diversifying and fulfilling its potential. With the amount of bad press that Furries seem to attract, it is not surprising that lots of anthropomorphic animal artists don't or won't associate themselves with Furry Fandom.

While some comic industry observers seem to believe that the best hope for comics is to burn everything down and start all over again, there are those who hold up the current trends towards diversity as a positive sign for the future. Furry Fandom seems to be in a similar position. Some of its worst detractors are disillusioned former fans who don't like the way the fandom is going and would rather see it fail. On the other hand, decrying the bad press and bitching about negative stereotypes only tends to draw attention to them.

Personally, I feel that the way forward is to concentrate on producing and promoting the wider potential of anthropomorphic animals to the general audience, even if it means having to distance the work from the core of the Fandom. Offering an alternative to the more outrageous material and the fannish, self-referential work out there may be the first step towards acquainting anthropomorphic animals with a much wider potential audience.

David Goodman is an 'anthropomorphic animal artist' whose work has appeared in FURRLOUGH, PULP KITCHEN, and his own small press series BAHALA NA.

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