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Monsters

Offerings from Arcana

Arcana Studio has several paperback graphic novels of interest to Furry Fandom coming up soon. Dragons vs. Dinosaurs by Chris Eric Peterson is a fantasy adventure (of course!) featuring, well, dragons battling dinosaurs! With a title like that, who needs to be worried about the plot? It’s coming in early January. Lethal Instinct (by Soares, Thompson, Jadson, and Borges) tells the story of a werewolf police detective — who discovers that he’s not the only shape-shifter in town — and his new competition is attacking politicians. The moon also rises next January. Finally, in a completely different and less violent vein, there’s A Cat Named Haiku by Mark Poulton and Dexter Weeks. It follows the adventures of a mischievous cat told completely in, you guessed it, haiku poetry. It’s available now. You can read more about these titles on Amazon here, here, and here respectively.

image c. 2011 Arcana Studio

Bigfoot: Private Eye

Okay here’s a different take on things: Mr. Foot, aka Bigfoot, is a sasquatch private eye. Having received a letter from his long-lost brother Yeti, Mr. Foot enlists the aid of his friend The Jersey Devil to fly him to the arctic — only to find that Yeti has been beheaded. Now the reluctant Mr. Foot must bring together his old gang of cryptozoological friends — including Nessie and the Megaladon (or giant shark) and others — to find the killer and bring them to justice. It’s all there in Footprints, a new black & white comic book series from 215 Ink. It’s written by Joey Esposito (the comic book editor for IGN Publishing) and illustrated by Jonathan Moore (FUBAR). Alternative Magazine On Line has an extended preview of the comic up on their web site.

image c. 2011 Jonathan Moore

Godzilla’s Friends and Foes

Are you a fan of Kaiju — giant monsters from Japan? Are you a fan of monster match-ups in glorious city-wrecking battles? You might want to check out Godzilla Legends, a new full-color 5-issue mini-series from IDW, starting this November. Each issue will feature a self-contained stories of various monsters from the Godzilla universe taking on one another to the explosive end. In issue #1 (by Matt Frank and Jeff Prezenkowski), Anguirus — the spiny four-legged “perpetual underdog” of kaiju-dom — takes on one of the deadliest monsters of all, Destoroyah! The first issue also features special variant covers by fantasy artist Bob Eggelton and comic book legend Art Adams.

image c. 2011 Bob Eggelton

More Art Instruction

There never seems to be enough of these, and frankly that’s just fine with us! The Explorer’s Guide to Drawing Fantasy Creatures is a new hardcover art instruction book, written and illustrated by Emily Fiegenschuh. She holds a degree from Ringling College of Art & Design, and in the past she’s illustrated numerous Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks for Wizards of the Coast. Now her new book (published by F + W Media) guides the would-be fantasy artist through not only rendering fantastic creatures of myth, legend, and nightmare, but also breathing life into the finished pictures. According to the publisher’s notes, the book includes: “25 step-by-step demonstrations for creating a bevy of beasts that roam air, land and sea; important basics of drawing, proportion and perspective to help you bring believability to your creatures; instruction for adding living, breating color to finished sketches; and expert tips on finding inspiration, developing personalities, designing costumes and more”. It’s on the shelves now.

image c. 2011 Emily Fiegenschuh

The Art of Dragons

We don’t need to tell folks around here that dragons — talking, magical, and otherwise — have held a fascination that is unique for centuries. Now editors Pamela Wissman and Sarah Laichas have gathered together 43 international artists to give their interpretations of these fantastic creatures, and put the results together in a full-color book called Dragon World. It’s available now in hardcover from Impact Books. It features more than 120 illustrations, from whimsical to magical to scarey, as well as interviews with the artists discussing their take on dragon legends. Check out the reviews at SF Book.com and Amazon.

image c. 2011 Impact Books

Beasts of Yore

The Beasts of Yore portfolio is a new collection of 12 illustrations, featuring mythical creatures as envisioned by 12 different artists. Each illustration is accompanied by a short story created by fantasy author Nate Newlon. The artists taking part include Abigail Scott, Bernice “Tarheki” Gordon, Char Reed, Erin “Narumi” Prince, Katie Hofgard, Katrine Hagmann, Kristine “Moonykins” Myrvold, Megara “DimeSpin” Gordon, S. M. “Synnabar” Hahn, T. “Melanippos” Cunningham, Eva “Thaily Brimstone” Palli, and Tiffany Xenia “Swandog” Eliassen. You can visit the Beasts of Yore web site to see samples of the artwork and order your own copy of the book.

Beware the Feeding Ground

Now here’s something different: A werewolf comic book with decidedly political overtones, taking on the current hot-button topic of illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States in a very unusual manner. Here’s Fangoria.com’s description of the first Feeding Ground hardcover graphic novel: “Pretending to be asleep, Flaca Busqueda watches her father leave just before going back to work. Dad, tired and poor, promises her that this will be his ‘one last cross’. Flaca sneakily gets up from her bed and spontaneously decides to follow him. She never expects to be cruelly kidnapped at the Mexican/American border, known to locals as ‘The Devil’s Highway’. In a race against time, Flaca’s parents, her brother and uncle are on a desperate search to find their missing girl before anything horrible happens to her. When the family finally locates their lost daughter, Flaca has become different and strangely odd. They find her scarred with bloody scratches and claw marks on her back, as if she were attacked by a wolf. Flaca’s body is changing at such a tender adolescent age. Her coming-of-age tale represents the werewolf’s ever-present transformation. In the backdrop of this horror story, there are political and social commentaries about the timely issue of illegal immigration. Creators Swifty Lang, Michael Lapinski, and Chris Mangun provide different perspectives on the subject, but never actually give a definite opinion on the topic, as if they are giving the readers a chance to discuss and choose for themselves. ” Feeding Ground is coming our way in full color, this August from Archaia Entertainment. Fittingly, it’s available in English and Spanish.

Retired Werewolf for Hire

There’s no way on earth we can top the publisher’s description of the second story arc of Screamland. So here it is: “‘Death Of The Party,’ Part One — In a world where movie monsters are real, most of them are just looking for work in an industry dominated by 3D, CGI and other scary acronyms. Forced to hustle their past glory on the convention circuit, Wolfman Carl London and Space Path star Travis Walters put their scheduled appearances aside to stop the screening of a legendary monster porn film that threatens to ruin the careers of feature creatures everywhere.” Got that? This new full-color comic book series is written by Harold Sipe and Christopher Sebela, and illustrated by Lee Leslie and Hector Casanova. It’s coming this June from Image Comics.

 

image c. 2011 by Image Comics

The Gruffalo

Another in the “how’d we miss this?” category… The Gruffalo is an award-winning children’s book from the U.K., written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It was first published in 1999 by Macmillan Children’s Books. It tells the tale (via a mother squirrel giving her children a bedtime story) of a mouse walking through the woods.  When he is threatened in turn by a predatory fox, snake, and owl, he scares each of them off by telling them he is on his way to meet his friend the “Gruffalo” — a monstrous creature who is much more dangerous than any of them. He’s making it all up, of course, and he thinks he’s so clever… until he runs into the real Gruffalo. After the book became enormously popular in the U.K. and elsewhere, Magic Light Pictures and Studio Soi made The Gruffalo into a 30-minute CGI film, which was broadcast on U.K. television for Christmas 2009. It featured (among others) the voices of Helena Bonham Carter (as the mother squirrel), John Hurt, and Robbie Coltrane (as the Gruffalo). The BBC has a trailer for the show on-line, and there’s also a making-of video from Magic Light.

image c. 2011 Axel Scheffler