Slept-In Comics: Dignity and Animality

Four Funny Animal-drawers Talk About Funny Animal Cartoons

[This panel was funded through Patreon under Slept-In Comics, an imprint of the ZEAL project. ZEAL aims to provide high quality criticism of rarely discussed games and comics, and showcase the talents of exciting new writers and artists. For details and information on how to donate, please check out patreon.com/mammonmachine!]

Jen Lee makes Thunderpaw, a sad dog boys webcomic with limited animation. She lives in Idaho. Her illustrations and other work can be seen here.

Michael Jewell makes Go Ye Dogs!, a homoerotic fantasy comic. He lives in Colarado. He speaks his mind and posts his artwork here.

Geneva Hodgson is an animator living and working in Los Angeles. She makes Teenage Spaceship, which is just charming. Her other work can be seen here.

Rory Frances [moderator] is a forest imp who lives in Washington. He makes Big Teeth and it’s coming back in the Spring, whoo! He’s over here.

Rory: We’ll start with Jen — Thunderpaw does something pretty neat in that you’re using animal trauma to explore and parallel human trauma — Your characters have this really unhealthy codependent relationship, you had mentioned you’re really into Plague Dogs.

Jen: Hey yeah, Plague Dogs is really great because Richard Adams is real keen on animal behavior. Which is something I wanted to go into myself, mainly with doggies, because I’m really into dog training… Everything dogs react to is based, really, on fear and safety. so when something is spooky it’s REALLY spooky. this is something I always keep in mind when training, and is interesting to try and represent in my story.

Rory: Your little dudes are definitely given more human traits than Adams’ tho, with their cute little track suits…

Jen: Haha! I’m trying to think if I have a real reasoning for that other than I just like to draw clothes, Ollie is in a hoodie-onsie and has a hat- he has like two safety blankets, Bruno’s bandana is very All American Hero Dog/Boy Scout and his bag helps him keep things organized and structured. I think it’s cool because, well, I get to draw what I like to draw (fashion animals) and people can relate easier but I definitely want to be a little clearer that they’re actual dogs ha, I try putting in a lot of dog jokes, like Bruno rolling in the grass, so I dunno!

Geneva: I’ve always been under the impression that they’re dog-dogs, for what it’s worth.

Jen: Whew! This is good to hear! It sometimes makes me nervous because Ollie obviously has some anxiety, but I’m writing it as a dog with anxiety… I don’t want to overstep any boundaries with people who struggle with that stuff, I think.

Michael: Starting out with them in the back seat was a very elegant communication that they are dog-dogs, I think.

Geneva: yeah! that was exactly what I was thinking of., and nah Jen— I think that’s why it’s so effective. His trauma feels real but in a broad, relatable way, like a dog’s emotions in real life, haha.

Rory: You make it work, I think — being forced into a situation where the world feels unfamiliar and your environment has changed too quickly can be really traumatic, when I moved to a new state last year I had kind of a freak-out about it! I felt like your lil critters. But now I feel like my lil critters, for better or worse!!

Jen: Oh nooo Rory! Yeah, I grew up in Florida, when I first went to NY I was freaking out because apparently there was snow and how do I drive through snow? Nevermind I wouldn’t ever be driving there but the What If’s are scary!!

Rory: Your stuff definitely has a streak of anxiety that’s different from our stuff — that kind of thing feels really compelling though, like, I always liked Bluth movies better than Disney movies as a depressed gay child and wasn’t sure why — that felt real though, the worlds were always SUPER unpleasantly alienating and confusing, you aren’t just warmly invited into them like in Disney movies where the worlds are lovingly art-directed to look livable or whatever.

Jen: Oh GOD, BLUTH. Yeah! And the characters always found comfort in others who were usually really bad for them — All Dogs is obviously a biggy for me.

Rory: THE ONE WHERE THE BAD BOY DOGS EXPLOIT AN ORPHAN FOR MONEY, like holy crap Bluth.

Jen: I always cried when the little girl overheard Charlie talking shit about her.

Rory: I feel like the anthropomorphization makes it even more fucked up, like, befriending talking dogs would be the dream when you’re like 5, but these are creepy grown men dogs who will fuck you over!

Jen: Right?? And she’s like scared and alone and talks to animals, it’s so sad.

Rory: Wasn’t that all of us, haha, all of us here right now, hands up y’all! Paws up!

Jen: Totally. I was bullied by peers, for some reason didn’t ever think my friends really were my friends, and adults? Fuck em!

Geneva: Yes very same, I didn’t even identify with the kid in All Dogs, I don’t think I understood the story when I loved it the most, I just wanted to hang out with Charlie and Itchy hahaha. I thought Itchy was so comforting but actually I think I just liked that he was small and wore clothes.

Jen: I thought for an embarrassingly long time that Charlie’s and Itchy’s friendship was OK! It’s really not.

Rory: It seems like Bruno and Ollie’s friendship is kinda tenuous too.

Jen: Yeeeahh their foundation is pretty unstable, it wasn’t really something I was planning, but since I wing it it seems like it was gonna happen. just working with the characters you eventually get to “oh well, if A acts like this and B wants this then C will eventually happen.”

Rory: There are so many people who kind of put themselves in unsolicited caretaker positions.

Jen: Totally- it’s something I’ve definitely done in the past and it’s just creepy and very unfair. Taking care of another person to make yourself feel important gets into very selfish territory, even thought that person may think they’re being selfless.

Geneva: Yeah, same. it’s terrible for both you and the person you’re trying to solve everything for.

Rory: It seems like a lot of talking animal stuff kinda works with the idea of a fractured ecosystem and puts it in a more human social context, so in your case their fractured ecosystem has given them an unhealthy relationship.

Michael: We could move laterally along bluth territory and talk about Mrs. Frisby.

Jen: Oh my god Michael, I live on farmland and when they harvest I do not do well seeing rodents running out of the fields.

Rory: I haven’t watched NIMH in a while. I remember crushing on the evil rat who bullies everyone. That is my contribution to this discussion.

Geneva: NIMH in conjunction with An American Tale had probably the biggest impact on me out of the Bluths. The idea of small mouse societies got me big time.

Michael: BIG TIME.

Rory: Small mouse socieities RULE.

Jen: Small mouse societies are perfect! Everything is HUGE but a wonder, also I love when they use a sewing needle as a sword or whatever.

Geneva: Something about it being miniature and faithfully parallel but also completely hidden from and nothing to do with people. A tiny banal mystery.

Rory: Little do people know how silly their own world is.

Geneva: Hahaha yeah. We don’t know we’re all small and cute.

“Rory: I’ve had a lot of conversations about this but talking animals are projectable in weird ways, you don’t get hung up about bodies when it’s just an alligator or something — and by that I don’t mean that they’re like, an acceptable substitute for writing about very specific human problems and DEFINITELY not an okay way to avoid writing marginalized characters, not at all, they are a cop out when used in that context — but what I mean is like, I got hella freaked out by human bodies as a kid — which isn’t a problem -now- obviously, oops — so it was a thing that I could watch without body image issues?”

Geneva: Definitely, it’s a succinct way to abstract a physical presence and broaden them for relatability.

Rory: I think that because it has that kind of broad appeal a lot of people mistake it for being simple to pull off, if it were simple you wouldn’t have real stinkers like all those Blacksad short stories.

Michael: I’ve written before about how funny animals can be a really clumsy and stupid way to frame a message about human race relations, and all that.

Jen: YES, I remember you wrote about that on Blacksad!

Geneva: Yeah, I’m not into species as a vector for race.

Michael: It’s such a beautiful comic but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Jen: The Siamese cats in every cartoon every always fucked me up as a kid, like all the kids are laughing but they are definitely laughing at me too.

Geneva: Aaahhh nnoooo.

Jen: Cartooooons.

Rory: Cartoons are bad.

Rory: I was always really into the scenes in older talking animal movies where the gentleness of the world is disrupted by something more abstract — I loved that part in Bambi with the buck fight, I would rewind it constantly, it’s really loud and violent and exciting haha.

Jen: That part was great, the music plays a big part of it though so I reckon you have to push the visual language when you can’t have things like that in a comic.

Geneva: I think a lot of Bambi’s central thesis is acclimating to a fucked up event, getting comfortable, but then life throws another wild curveball and you acclimate to that. Forever. It never ends, starting with your dad abandoning you and ending with you doing the exact same shit, haha. I love Bambi, it’s the most devastating but subtle text about the indifference of nature and life.

Rory: The scene where the pheasant has a panic attack and gets killed fucked with me so bad. I watched that a lot too though. The scenes of peril were always the parts I fixated on the most so I guess I just want to make a comic where I get to do that a lot, I’m indulgent and predictable, moving on. Wind in the Willows. It’s really gay and I love it and I wanted to make something like it but with northwest critters. And also with more wolf peril. I’m the most indefensible one here and we should move on to Michael I think.

Michael: Wind in the Willows is. My. Shit. I could go on about it.

Rory: I KNOW it is, I will not stop you.

Michael: There’s a lovely, brief aside that’s very much about connecting to the natural environment, when they enter a dream sequence and pass under the care of a pagan god — the ‘piper at the gates of dawn’ sequence, but for the most part they are animals going about human being affairs — and it’s funny because they ARE humans, they live in a big people world and aren’t quite as hidden.

Jen: Hmmmm!

Michael: Toad steals a human’s car and gets tried in human court and goes to human jail.

Rory: Toad is such a fuckup.

Rory: Anyway uh Big Teeth. I like the idea of a world where the animals eat each other and are just now figuring out that that’s kind of fucked up.

Jen: HAHA I love how you’re writing that so far. They mention it casually in conversations, but its not jarring at all, I think.

Rory: Gail protects Felix despite any instinct they’d have otherwise and it’s totally gross, I love them, cry and die my babies. I want their animal qualities to make them unreal to eachother, I guess, which’ll become more apparent as I have more space to actually develop them.. I need to hustle! In particular with Paula, foxes are cast as tricksters but also they’re hunted for being so fashionable — she is unreal to everyone else and being cast as having to always be strong and unflappable hurts her more than anything, if that makes sense..

Rory: Actually. Michael! Something you said a while ago really stuck with me, which is like, how cartoon animals are themselves a statement of unreality, and how they can never be fully depicted as human beings or express the fullness of their inner lives.

Michael: Something like that, yeah! I was thinking about like, The Great Catsby by Do Ha, and how the main cast are animal people, but there are humans interspersed, kind of as extras — and how each of the characters is incomplete or missing something, all their interactions with each other is “you’ll do, I suppose” — maybe they’d be drawn as human once they’re more complete, but we don’t get to see that. But it’s a reminder to me, if I think of it that way, that I can never truly make my characters whole, they’re always going to be a filter for like… me expressing myself.

Rory: Oh no I totally do that. Or at least did for a while, it’s easy to oversimplify people and I’m an arrogant dumbass!

Jen: Me too. “Oops, I guess I’m Asuka and you’re Harry Potter, we can’t get along BYE.”

Geneva: Ahahahah.

Michael: Comics that are just directly communicating an idea to the audience with pictures don’t appeal to me.

Rory: “We’re going to place this central character in a world that agrees with their actions and moves towards a really straightforward goal, that goal is letting you know Batman owns and if you commit crimes it’s because you’re fucked up.”

Geneva: I’m not really into stories with one central protagonist anymore really.

Rory: Everyone I know always related to secondary characters more, it’s been discussed to death why that is exactly but I guess it’s not making much of an impression.

Geneva: People keep thinking Avrit is my protagonist and I’m like… calm down.

Rory: Haaaa I totally wanted to play that up, like because Felix is the first character you see and also a man you think he’s the protagonist and then NOPE.

Geneva: I liked sidekicks most, but always boy characters. Simba was like the only main protagonist I liked. I think because he was…. hot.

Rory: It’s ok Geneva I had a crush on the stupid Kevin Bacon wolf in Balto. I don’t anymore, though, my taste is more refined. He can go to hell. I would swipe left on him.

Jen: You all seem pretty good at organizing things! How do you go about it exactly.

Rory: Oh god I’m anything but, I just have a loose skeleton I work from and kinda ad-lib everything else, I make messy thumbnails and ink directly over them.

Michael: I have a very specific ending, everything working up to it is kind of a soft pudding.

Rory: but ANYway, speaking of saucy gay animals, Go Ye Dogs! I love it. Talk to me about it. Yours is definitely the most unambiguously human-looking society out of any of ours.

Michael: They’re definitely people-animal people. I don’t think I could really do a comic without abstracting toward animals in some form or another.

Rory: The animal part is still important! Though, I like that you don’t really typecast any of them.

Michael: I’m a huge Star Trek fan but it’s emblematic of everything I’m pushing against as a fantasy writer, monocultures, all that stuff. Almost every interaction has a leak in it, saying “things are more complex” — because that’s what the real world is like! So my coyote character is part of a specific group and religious tradition, and in his community it’s mostly coyotes, but that’s not a generalization or a limitation to the setting — I’m generally against the concept of “worldbuilding” — you write your characters first, the world will form around them in the form of the circumstances that shaped that character.

Jen: I just sighed a breath of relief, I thought that was the ‘wrong’ way to do things, ha!

Michael: I created the comic at a time in my life when… hm. I had just come out but still very lonely and didn’t know my place, so it’s very much a meditation on that, or maybe wish fulfillment.

Rory: We’ve talked a lot about m/m comics, boys love is a lot more generous in its characterizations but again you still run into these gross relationship dynamics I’m tired of seeing.

Jen: Writing stories can definitely be a great way to cope, it’s like a therapy session sometimes haha.

Michael: I’ve changed the tone so much since I started, it wasn’t originally supposed to be nearly as erotic as it is. This may get some -giggles- but I consider Omaha the Cat Dancer a primary inspiration. I think it’s a terrible shame it’s had such problems keeping in circulation, and it’s somewhat become a footnote. If you’re interested in the CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) you come across it, but it’s easy for the lay reader to just dismiss it as a “furry” thing, because “furry” is this separate thing now.

Rory: Dude Omaha is amazing.

Michael: It’s worth mentioning that I’m a capital “F” furry. There used to be more of a blur. Some furry cartoonists back in the day were working cartoonists, maybe categorized as funny animal cartoonists. Kim Thompson, bless him, worked hard to publish a lot of this stuff, Critters, the Adventures of Captain Jack, Omaha… Omaha is really important to comics, historically, legally, but it’s seen as cheesy now. Blah! When I was an interning at Fantagraphics, I read their first printing Zap!s and was just like… “this is ghastly, I hate this!” but Zap! has legs, it has longevity and an unshakable place in our history. I read all of Omaha almost right after and thought it was just so lovely and humane and honest and sexy… AND really cheesy. I loved it. But we don’t talk about it. Maybe because it’s erotic people will look for any excuse to footnote it, or sweep it under the rug. Or the wrong kind of erotic, because gritty exploitative sex gets celebrated as honest and daring and adult in comics all the time. But Omaha, not Zap! just emboldened me to push the erotic element in GYD! because that can be a component of making your comic vital. Even pulpy stories can be a little personal.

Rory: They can be! I started Big Teeth after I was starting to get stressed out acclimating to a new environment, aah.

Jen: I started Tpaw after I realized I had some personality flaws, aah.

Rory: All y’alls comics are very you, I love Teenage Spaceship, it’s very Geneva!!!!! Very exclamation points!!!!!!! It makes me so happy.

Geneva: Aaww shucks y’all.

Michael: How many cartoonists have told you “Avrit is me?”

Geneva: Surprisingly few! But Avrit is me, Avrit is everyone. Just maybe the most embarrassing parts of them.

Rory: I want Avrit and Gail to be horrible, ill-fitted bunrab friends. Let’s do a crossover. Pimb and Paula can start a tire fire. Felix is being made to butt chug by your rowdy wrestler boys. It works out a little too well.

Michael: Avrit and Gail and Cricket in the corner at a party waiting for the other to say something first.

Geneva: Haha oh my god Gail and Avrit spiraling out together.

Rory: This is what you came for, Slept In readers: Our fucking crossover fanfics.

Geneva: Everyone is in love with and fighting everyone.

Rory: (In posh intellectual affectation) Truly, that is the microcosm of the talking animal. Everyone is fighting and fucking.

Rory: ANYWAY. Everything in Teenage Spaceship is super round and pleasant and I love it.

Geneva: Thank you. And yes, that’s definitely something I wanted to conjure on purpose. I wanted the environment to feel kinda dirty and mysterious in its plainness, like an early 30s Fleischer cartoon.

Geneva: I’ve somehow managed to cultivate a life where my furry tendencies are perfectly integrated into my public life and it’s totally okay somehow. It’s weird to have no secrets or cognitive dissonance involved. People like my stupid twitter account more than ever when i’m talking about sonic OCs so I guess the world is ready for us.

Rory: I have no idea how that happened to me, either — I tried making a dozen different Thematically Acceptable online comics and then the one I made about gay furries is the one people end up liking the most.

Jen: Geneva same, like I get my “”””professional”””” jobs from them seeing furry commissions and wha?

Rory: Same here??? How did that HAPPEN. I think I found a format that works for me, also — My friend Cate Wurtz, who does the Lamezone comics, and I would always find doing traditionally page-by-page comics kind of counterintuitive for how I read things, but the way she does comics is like, a single vertical scrolling thing that is paced a lot like a tv show, and she has this like huge cult fanbase of people who normally don’t even engage with comics at all — We want to do a piece on her at some point. But yeah, not to knock page-by-page comics!

Rory: SO, two final food for thoughts: What would you say is your personal goal in writing a funny animal story, and second of all, what was your first fursona. Spill the beans people.

Geneva: I want to provide an easy access point to people, and invite younger readers into my story. Also, I want everyone to know deep inside their hearts that they, too, are a furry. Hha.

Michael: Go Ye Dogs! is a fantasy comic, and the fantasy is a world when people can just have crushes and have sex without the interference of the world at large weighing on them, and the pressures on their relationships come from within, how selfish or generous they are with their partners

Jen: Thunderpaw deals mostly with how different dogs (people) react and cope to scary change

Rory: Gail is Daffy and I am the omniscient hand of Bugs. I will put them in a variety of slutty tank tops against their best wishes.

Geneva: Avrit is kind of like that for me, too. I love torturing Avrit. Cry and die!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rory: Cry and die!!!! Cry AND die!!!!!! I am your creator and I do not give a fuck about you.

Geneva: I am the lord, and I want you to cry.

Geneva: Anyway. My fursona was a blue fox-cat name Scribbles. She was initially created as a love interest for Tails but as I grew titty she also grew titty. I think that’s how a lot of fursonas were born.

Rory: Mine were all goth dog girls until I figured out that was wrong and drew goth dog boys instead.

Jen: Mine was that omnipresent “is it a dog or is it a wolf” thing you used to see all the time on Deviantart.

Michael: I’ve always been a mouse with a shawl and glasses.

Rory: Beautiful.

Rory: This was great. Comics are great. I hope the Thunderpaw boys are safe and go to Rally Burger at the end. I hope everyone in Go Ye Dogs and kisses everyone. I hope everyone in Teenage Spaceship ends with a Randy Newman friendship song. See you all later!