Oh my, I don't know how much I should say here even. Well, point blank I GOTS ME HEEBAS! Heeeebas. n.n The second issue is even more intriguing and eye catching than the first, and now I'm wondering if it's going to stay medieval for the duration. I am planning to draw it out as if the comic book were a weekly serial (don't I WISH!) and so not until next Thursday do I get to read issue #3.
But I never realized this old comic would break down an old wall in the fandom, one of those that you don't really see because the light's not on it. When I came into the furry fandom, and the Internet in general, back in 1999 I noticed a lot of strange echoes of strife and conflict. I assumed it was just the ebb and flow of normal societal tides, with the old complaining of how things have changed, and the new trying to find their place in the scheme of things. What I didn't consider is, well, things change inevitably, but there's always a reason.
What I realized today is that the people I interacted with, the things they spoke of in whispers, it was like being in the aftermath of a conflict, a post-war zone so to speak. I had the vague idea that some bad things had happened, and some good artists I found had apparantly disappeared without a trace. The Burned Furs had had their heyday, and the newsgroups had flamed entirely out of control. You could see some people reacting extremely to seemingly innocent things, like roleplaying on a.l.f., or the ever forbidding subject of erotica. I have been in the fandom a few years now, and I guess I have to say it really was different back then; not in a good way. Something had dampened the community terribly, and much of the art was low key and underemphasized. Artists today on deviantart and VCL are much less restricted, or well, traumatized I guess. And the MUCKs continue to be strangely empty, with people in them but something missing... some things built that nobody claims anymore, some great stories left unfinished.
So maybe I just found the less dampened part of the community. I haven't had a working filtering news reader to visit a.l.f. in just years to tell the truth. But whatever it was, I didn't expect to learn anything new by purchasing Heebas in all its Heebastic goodness. But I mentioned that I'd gotten the comic today to a new friend of mine, and we got to talking.
And talking...
Turns out ... and here's the part I shouldn't say. Turns out my friend was there back in 1995, when Whisky and Frommer, and Scotty, and Blumrich, and Rosales, Simpson, were all really active. That was supposedly the golden age of the MUCK, and after that...? Did something happen? What the holy hoobaloo happened to DC Simpson? I almost thought he was going to stop drawing Ozy and Millie for a while there! My friend I met last month... on a MUCK. She'd just started playing again after a long professional absence, and we got to talking about what happened around the genesis of Heebas, and what the consequences were afterward.
I'm almost afraid to press her for details. I care dearly about some of this art, and some of these great people who've since gone astray. I saw Frommer's art for the first time today. Just recently Eric Blumrich came out of seclusion with a fantastic comic on Kafka's "The Bucket Rider," and well, I've been on Scotty's tail like a hawk ever since I stumbled across www.heebas.com. I'm not stalking him, really! n.n() But at the same time, none of this is really my business, and I'm afraid of offending people by learning of what was going on at the time.
I'm such a Renaissance fool, jill of all trades, master of none. I guess I must add History to the list, with the recent class I took in Western Civ., and my fervent interest in social activism, its roots, and the workings of society. And now with the furry fandom, I find myself asking finally, "Hey, what did happen right before I came around? Did I miss something?" I'm interminably curious, and I think whatever did happen might illuminate what's going on with both myself and my community today. And also hopefully will lead to a plan for the future, to avoid social chills like that somewhere in 1996-8 or so. Maybe give us an idea of why people are so damn paranoid of certain things, but aren't exactly comfortable naming names.