I Read a Bunch of Furry Webcomics, Part 1

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while should know about the hate I've gotten for my TwoKinds review, and I've trashed every furry webcomic I've come across aside from an old webcomic I reviewed back in 2007. It might seem like I have some sort of bias against furries, but I really don't, and it's not like I prefer to spend my time reading terrible webcomics instead of ones that are actually entertaining. But a problem I keep seeing in a lot of these furry comics is that the anthropomorphic stuff just seems like a gimmick that's tossed in to try to make the webcomics more appealing. As I explained in my "Pandering" article, there's a huge audience of furries on the Internet, and drawing your characters as animals is one of the easiest ways to get attention. This time I'll be covering five furry webcomics to see if any of them try to be a little more creative than usual.

Webcomic: Crossing-Over
URL: www.co-comic.com
Creators: Paradox-F, Vincy223, Uzuki, an uncredited colorist
Run: 3/12-current
Sections: Ch. 3, "Bound Inheritance," and Ch. 4, "Rookie Hour"

This comic's a perfect example of abusing gimmicks since it combines furries with gender-swapping. The first thing readers see at the top of the website is a drawing of a furry chick that emphasizes her huge tits, and it's clear the creator's going for sex appeal since the actual character in the comic isn't nearly as well-endowed or realistically drawn. You see this as well in Chapter Four's cover, which also has her boobs larger than normal and has an angle, composition, and pose that focuses on them. The creator mentions on his site for some reason that he has an MBA, and the comic has such a generic and uninspired superhero story that it seems like it doesn't really have much of a point other than to pander to readers who are into gender-swapped furries. I mean, this blog's gotten enough referrals from people searching for porn of a similar character from TwoKinds for me to know that there's definitely an audience out there for this kind of thing.

The other reason the comic's so boring is that it's taking forever for anything to happen. I started reading it at Chapter Three, and the protagonist didn't have superpowers yet even though the comic had been updating for more than two years. It's almost four years in now, and he just went on a meaningless training mission in a chapter called "Rookie Hour" so that he can try to become an actual superhero. It seems like a prologue or something that comes before the real story, and this stuff should've been out of the way by the end of the first chapter. In the FAQ, the creator says that the webcomic "mainly invokes superhero-ish cliches but I plan on adding a LOT MORE twists from other materials just to keep things fresh"; however, there's really no excuse for the comic to not just be good from the beginning. And if the gender change is considered to be one of these "twists," it's not even presented as a big deal in the story. The protagonist basically just puts on a pink nightgown and acts like nothing weird happened, even though, realistically, I'd have to imagine that anyone would be completely freaking out in that situation.

Webcomic: Eunice
URL: www.daffadillies.co.uk/eunice
Creator: Brett Barnett
Run: 1/13-11/15
Section: 2015

There's a sense that furry characters are wackier and more unrealistic than humans because a lot of the cartoons people grew up with are like that. Eunice relies on goofy-looking ducks to try to make its situations seem sillier than they really are, but it doesn't work since the writing's just terrible. Like Richard in Looking For Group and Zintiel in Flaky Pastry, Eunice is supposed to be an evil protagonist who's there for comic relief, but there isn't any humor or plot, so it comes off as more awkward than anything. I mean, what's the point of this webcomic other than to show that Eunice is a mean person with no morals who should be locked up in an insane aslyum? I suspect the creator would say it's just a joke and that you're not supposed to take a comic about cartoon animals seriously, but after reading about forty of these repetitive, unfunny strips, I can't help but see Eunice's mental health issues as being the focus of the webcomic. If you want to compare Eunice to cartoons, consider that the villains in those usually end up getting hurt and humiliated, which is something that never happens here.

The art would kind of have a minimalistic charm to it if this was a one-time gag, but the comic's even more repetitive than the Conspiracy Friends! strip I reviewed in my previous post. Sometimes Eunice will have a special outfit on or be holding a prop, but most panels are extremely similar, and her facial expression rarely changes. Featuring a depressed cartoon duck with a nose ring isn't as novel an idea as the stuff in quirky webcomics like Dinosaur Comics and White Ninja, and Eunice would really benefit from having an interesting supporting cast so that the creator has some material to work with.

Webcomic: Karmadillo
URL: karmadillo.it/en (NSFW)
Creator: Alessandro Bruno
Run: 3/14-1/15
Section: 8/14-1/15

This one's another bad humor webcomic that tries to play off of the innocence of cartoon animals, but this time the angle's to use crude adult humor. Some of the strips use furries to make dirty jokes out of unusual animal characteristics, but the main gag throughout the comic is just the contrast between the colorful, Disney-esque characters and the perverse subject matter. Like I just complained about with Eunice, it might be okay to do this for a couple strips, but recycling the same joke every time kills any entertainment value this webcomic could've had. And plus, the humor's incredibly juvenile, sometimes even being just a drawing of a furry showing his dick or doing something sexual. It's not porn, and it's not clever or edgy, so I don't know how this webcomic is supposed to actually appeal to adults.

Webcomic: Cloudscratcher
URL: www.cloudscratcher.com
Creator: Cody Baier
Run: 2012-current
Section: Ep. 3, "Birthday Bash"

The creator claims it's not a furry comic because it's just "a stylistic choice" and he "[doesn't] have anything to do with the furry fandom," but anyone who reads Cloudscratcher is still going to see it as a furry comic. I guess he's trying to distance himself from the furry community, but it just doesn't work that way. Anyways, this is a pretty decent webcomic in the sense that the art's not bad and there's a coherent story, but the creator screws it up by focusing too much on the cute child protagonists and their dopey subplot. There are tons of pages about these two furry kids and how one's trying to get a birthday present for the other and how they're kind of going on a date but not really, and it's clear the creator cares way more about what these kids are up to in their free time than I do. There's interesting stuff going on in the comic about an evil empire and a group of sky pirates, but it all just seems quickly crammed in so that readers can get back to seeing how cute these little kids are. I mean, I don't know exactly how old these characters are supposed to be, but a "romance" between two children shouldn't be treated like it's a big deal. It seems like the comic's trying too hard to be adorable and cute, and the pacing and story's suffering for it.

Probably the best thing about the webcomic is how varied and well-designed the cast is, as there are a bunch of unique-looking mammals and reptiles, and even one amphibian character. Also, each dog is instantly recognizable as being a certain breed, and it helps make this comic more visually interesting than your typical furry comic. However, with the kids' "romance" subplot getting so many pages, the twenty-plus characters on the cast page don't really have much of a role, and their appearances mainly seem like cameos so that readers remember they're still around. I would've liked to learn more about the different factions' leaders and other important adult characters, so hopefully they'll be in the webcomic more now that the kids' kinda-date's winding down.

Webcomic: Dinnersaurus Rex
URL: tapastic.com/series/Dinnersaurus-Rex
Creator: Emily So
Run: 7/14-10/15

Speaking of cute characters, this webcomic has no point other than to show the most adorable baby furries the creator could draw. I like the general idea of omitting text in order to tell a story purely through visuals, but there's no story here to make the technique relevant. It really just seems like the creator was too lazy to come up with a concept, so we're stuck with these pseudo-plots, like "the babies are hungry, and then their mom feeds them." I'm sure some people will still like it because there are furries in it, though, and the creator deserves some credit because the art looks great, especially the coloring.

I'm also still wondering why there's a lengthy scene where one of the babies stops the other from eating a rabbit. I'm guessing the baby's a vegetarian since he's only shown eating berries, bread, eggs, and vegetables, but that's just really stupid considering that being a carnivore is a t-rex's defining characteristic. And while the protagonists are clearly furries, the lack of dialogue makes it too difficult to tell if the other dinosaurs and animals are supposed to be furry-animals or just animals. The baby's fine with his sibling eating fish, ham, and turkey, so does he just like rabbits in particular, or is the rabbit his friend or pet, or something? For such an important part of the comic, it's really inexcusable to not bother providing any context for the readers.

Overall: These gimmicky furry webcomics are nothing more than just desperate attempts to pander to the furry community as much as possible. I mean, it's kinda freaky how all five of these comics rely so much on showing cute animals that there's barely any substance beyond that. I've occasionally seen this done before in comics like Bittersweet Candy Bowl and Neko the Kitty, but reading all these webcomics together makes it seem like everyone's obsession with cat videos on YouTube has spread into the webcomics world. The Cloudscratcher creator's kinda right when he says that furries are just an art style, and it's wrong for furry creators to feel that drawing characters this way means they shouldn't bother trying as hard as everybody else. I mean, most webcomics are pretty derivative, but at least they're trying to imitate something better.

Scores (out of 5)
Crossing-Over	Writing: Art: Overall:
Eunice	Writing: Art: Overall:
Karmadillo	Writing: Art: Overall:
Cloudscratcher	Writing: Art: Overall:
Dinnersaurus Rex	Writing: Art: Overall: