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Graphic Novel Review: PIES, by Ian King
PIES is Ian King’s first graphic novel, although he contributed a small comic—a small and meditative exploration on sleep—to the first edition of RRUFFURR. His RRUFFURR comic features the same hero and acts as an inessential mini-prequel to the richer and deeper PIES.
PIES is long at 114 pages, and completely wordless save for ‘PIES’, which is spelt out on the protagonist’s hoodie. It is available to read online for free and also in a high-quality print version, printed on heavy paper and bound in a textured cover. It’s well worth the $20 for a physical version.
For a debut, PIES is incredibly assured and nuanced. It’s clear that King has invested much time and thought into the editing and presentation, as well as the detailed illustrations. It joins the increasingly mature output from artists in the furry community, quality work that can stand alongside the very best of today’s independent graphic novels.
PIES follows our hero—I’m going to call him Pies—on an allegorical journey, that starts when he hops into an inner tube on a beach. He drifts away, and for the remainder of the book he has little or no control over his destination. Like the ageing process, where we all get older one day at a time regardless of our actions, Pies floats along towards his unknown but certain destination.
I showed PIES to a furry friend of mine recently, who remarked that he didn’t realise he’d need his ‘2001: A Space Odyssey brain’ to follow the story. It was a comment made in jest but it gives you a good idea of what to expect. PIES is abstract and wilfully obscure at times, but like the final third of 2001 it’s clear enough that our hero’s journey is a metaphor for his own life.
The torus of Pies’ inner tube is a recurring motif in PIES. Each torus represents a moment where his journey will forever change, a point of no return. This reflects the entropy of life, where we exist in an unchanging world until suddenly we don’t: when we turn 18 and become a legal adult; when we get married; when we hurt someone; when we have children; when we are diagnosed with a terminal disease. Pies’ world changes irreversibly when he reaches these waypoints, and while memory can conjure up images of the past, we must move on and exist in the world as it is now.
This is well-trodden ground, but PIES stands out by exploring this journey in an unusual way. Pies is alone, but PIES is not about loneliness. His journey is that of his life, but PIES is not about ageing or the transience of youth. PIES is, instead, about the greatest experience that life has to offer: love.
Pies carries a love note through his journey. In an early, sublime sequence, Pies drifts off to sleep while gently floating down a waterway. The sun has set, and the points of light reflected in the water become confused with the stars in the sky. As he falls asleep, the points slowly grow and morph until they crystallize into an endless sea of faces. For a moment, in his dream, Pies becomes one of those points of light: part of a community, a group of people (well, animal people) who are all experiencing their own journey, together alone.
There is peace and fellowship in the shared experience. Pies and everyone else are each drifting along in their own way.
In the next panel we see Pies’ lover, clutching the same love note, drifting along a different waterway in a different vessel but looking up at the same sky. It’s clear that the two of them share a close bond, and in Pies’ dream, the connection they share seems real and tangible. Their love is something Pies carries with him in his heart, as represented by the note itself.
Love is so close to a palpable presence, you sense it must be physically real. It can be expressed through a lover’s touch, but that’s just a fraction of the full feeling. The touch of someone you love is merely the sweet cherry on the substantial cake.
Think now, reader, of a loved one: a partner, a relative, a friend. Notice the physical sensation, not of their body, but of their essence. You may feel bereft, as if there were something nearby that you need. Yet the sensation is simultaneously tantalizing and fulfilling.
We lose our loved ones as we go through our journey. People die. We move. We break up. We drift apart. Yet the feeling of love is still there, ready to be conjured again and again, tinged with the bitterness of grief for what we have lost. But grief is not sadness. Grief is a close neighbour of joy, the joy that we would feel if we could see someone we’ve lost just one more time, the joy that we feel when a loved one walks into the room. Grief is the knowledge that we will never again feel the love without also feeling the loss.
But we will lose them all, eventually.
Pies will not see his lover throughout his journey, outside of his dream. But Pies carries his love everywhere. His last act, as he eventually is pulled down under the waves, is a defiant, celebratory fist in the air. A fist containing his lover’s note.
As well as the story of Pies’ journey, PIES is a formidable technical work of art. Geometric shapes and mesmerizing organic patterns appear and reappear, collapsing and coalescing through the story. It’s a book that deserves to be experienced on paper.
You can buy PIES for $20 if you are in the United States here, or here for everyone else.
You can also read PIES online for free at fieldghost.com.
The relative anonymity of Ian King and PIES within furry is a bit of a puzzle. It is a major, meaty, immensely enjoyable animal-person graphic novel.
The high-profile artists who produce well-regarded works of art within furry tend to be technically accomplished. However their works, while pretty, are often artless beyond the illustration skills. That’s not to say that popularity isn’t deserved, just that more intellectually complex works like PIES (or, say, Paper Bag) rarely seem to attract much attention.
Furry graphic artists are taking advantage of an old trope, the use of anthropomorphic characters as a frame for exploration of the human condition. Animal-people give the artist freedom from the constraints of the real world, which means they can engage in flights of fancy without any implied requirement to adhere to the laws of physics and nature. In many ways, this is what we furries are doing in our lives: by adopting an animal-person identity, we are freeing ourselves from mundane social mores, making it easier to explore our own path with less pressure to conform to the mainstream. (As in: “hey I’m going to roleplay as gender x while being attracted to gender y, because let’s face it, it’s not that weird if you consider that I’m already an animal person”.)
The furry community is spoiled for riches when it comes to graphic novels and comics exploring these ideas—be they intellectual like PIES, or whimsical like Clair C’s works. These graphic novels and comic strips are rare examples of furry artists producing world-class works.
On release of the physical PIES book, King compared it to Werewolves of Montpellier, an acclaimed graphic novel by Norwegian artist Jason. The two books are very different in many ways—PIES is joyful and abstract; Werewolves is maudlin and direct—but the comparison feels apt. They are both complex works of art that rely on a world populated by animal-people to tell a story with an undercurrent of emotion and with minimal dialogue. The animal-people are essential because they prime the reader to trust the artist to maintain the internal logic of each story, without worrying about the ways it deviates from reality. Both books deserve a wide audience, an audience that PIES has not (yet) found.
The group of furries producing high-quality and serious graphic art is growing. RRUFFURR collects short pieces from several artists and accordingly feels like a great introduction. But I don’t really know where to go from there. Is there a hub for publications from our promising artists, collecting amateurs like Redacteur and professionals like Artdecade? Does someone have a carefully curated Tumblr follow list?
In the meantime, take a look at PIES. It deserves to be shared and read and cherished. And Christmas is just around the corner.
So I commissioned my very first fursuit 3 months ago. He is so close to being done and will be shipped in time for MFF!
Rabbit And Dear
A love story between a Rabbit and a Deer involving higher mathematics.
TAILWHIPPED dance party invites furries on 12/6/14. Cosmo Coyote talks event producing.
Guild News: December
Welcome to our new members T. S. McNally, Ajax Baback Coriander, Dronon, and our newest associate member Weasel, of Weasel Press!
Member NewsIn media-related news, M. C. A. Hogarth was interviewed for Publishers Weekly, and Tempe “Tempo” O’Kun was interviewed on Prairie Public radio.
Book birthdays! Vixyy Fox’s Reach for the Sky is now available in print format from Weasel Press, Jay has released his latest novel Impossible Magic (sequel to Axinstone), available from Jaffa Books, and Michael H. Payne has released Neighbors.
In anthology news, Abandoned Places is now available, edited by Tarl “Voice” Hoch and featuring stories from Rechan, Bill “Hafoc” Rogers, T. D. Coltraine, John Lynne, Adam “Nicodemus” Riggs, Ianus J. Wolf, Roland Jovaik, David Ramirez, Patrick “Bahumat” Rochefort, Taylor Stark, Kandrel, Tarl “Voice” Hoch, Ryan Campbell, Ben Goodridge, James L. Steele, and Tonin. (If any of you non-linked guys are actually members under a different name, my apologies — the various pen names can be kind of tough to keep up with sometimes.) You can see all of FurPlanet’s new and upcoming releases here.
(Members: Want your news here? Start a thread in our Member News forum!)
Market NewsUpcoming deadlines: The Rabbit Valley anthology Fur to Skin: Straight Up closes to submissions on December 30, and the erotic lesbian shapeshifter anthology Song of the Wilds closes on December 31 (details on both can be found on our Paying Markets page).
Just opened: Applications are open for Sean Rivercritic’s “Furry Novel in 20 Voices” project. Full details here. Spaces in that project are reportedly filling up fast, so get yours in soon if you’re interested.
Guidelines for the Rainfurrest 2015 anthology are now available here.
(As always, remember to keep an eye on our Calls for Submissions thread and our Publishing and Marketing forum for the latest openings and news!)
Just added: You can find Weasel Press listed on our Novels and Other Works page of the Furry Writers’ Market.
Guild NewsThe ebook version of Tales From the Guild: Music to Your Ears is now available from Rabbit Valley! (The ZIP file includes PDF, mobi, and ePub formats, without DRM.)
Want to hang out and talk shop with other furry writers? Come join us for the Coffeehouse Chats, Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. Eastern, Thursdays at noon Eastern (starting this week), and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern – all held right in our newly upgraded forum shoutbox. More info here. (Remember, our forums are open to everyone, not just FWG members. If you haven’t stopped by yet, come register and join the conversation!)
Members — want to write a guest blog post for us? See our guidelines.
That’s all for this month! As always, email furwritersguild (at) gmail.com with news or suggestions, or just comment here.
He Needs to Get Out of This Codependent Relationship
Cringe fur?
Been looking at the front page of FA a lot recently and I've run across a lot of cringey stuff. I don't want to put it in /r/furry because I don't want witch hunts or people harassing others. That said, I was wondering if there is a smaller area that this could be dumped and people can just point fingers, scratch our heads and facepalm together without going after the content creators?
submitted by Ralanost[link] [10 comments]
Me around 6 years ago
Figured I'd post this. Go easy on me as this is a first post here.
but this was the first design for my fursona. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5023478/
combining Jasmine's harem outfit with Ariel's long red hair. 2 of my favorite feminine icons
submitted by arisufox[link] [comment]
My friend drew one of my characters, then deleted it... Tell her she is good at art plz (Artist in desc on DA)
![[link]](http://i.imgur.com/9Q5hv04.jpg){kind=link}
![[link]](http://i.imgur.com/YzjuU11.jpg){kind=link}
![[link]](http://i.imgur.com/WMXNBXY.jpg){kind=link}
He Needs to Get Out of This Codependent Relationship
I am in a relationship with a codependent, and I am miserable. I'm a rather conflict-avoidant type person, and so when I have tried to do it in the past, I have been emotionally manipulated to stay in the relationship. Crying and anger are the two things I have the least ability to deal with.... I even moved to a different city in the hope that the distance would make him loose interest and move on.... That has not worked. I have been reading a lot of articles about breaking up with a codependent, and some of them say that doing it by letter or email might be the only effective way to do it for a conflict avoidant person.... I guess I just needed advice ... and maybe someone to assure me that I’m going the right direction.
Jack the Rabbit (age 24)
* * *
Dear Jack,
Codependent people, as you have experienced, are extremely clingy and emotionally manipulative. If moving to a different city didn’t work, trying to break things off with a letter or email is unlikely to work, too.
There are two people making this relationship continue as it is. You are just as guilty of continuing the suffering as he is, and you acknowledge this by writing that you can’t deal with his crying and being angry at you. Therefore, the first person you have to work on is you. You have to develop, well, a stronger backbone. Realizing that his hissy fits are actually not genuine but are his weapons for getting what he wants will help you a lot.
Have you seen The Matrix? In that film, objects were not real and could therefore be avoided or moved mentally by those who realized they were just shadows generated by a sophisticated computer. A bullet is not a bullet and, therefore, can be plucked out of the air with your fingers or made to drop harmlessly on the ground. It’s the same with your codependent’s tears and yelling. They are not real. Yes, his extreme desire to cling to you like a leech is real, but he uses these other things as tools only. Treat them as the shadows they are, and they will cease to have power over you.
Next, you need to tell him, in person, that you no longer wish to be his mate. Do this without blaming anyone, but do it firmly, without equivocation, without hesitation. Be kind, but be clear that you are breaking up.
Finally, you need to follow through by never ever backing out of what you said. My sense is that you’ve backed down before, and this always encourages the codependent because they decide that your announcements that the relationship is off hold no weight. So! Once you tell him it’s over, you need to mean it and not let him get his foot back in the door, capisce?
Codependent relationships are unhealthy, so you are making the right decision to break it off. But you need to do so from a position of strength or else it won’t work.
Good luck!
Papabear
/r/Furry Sm4sh Bros
For anyone that would like to play with other people in the community.
Post your Nintendo ID(Maybe Steam too.), what characters you play, how you feel about your skill, when you are usually available to play, and anything else you want to mention. :)
submitted by Chaos_Kitten[link] [5 comments]
InkedFur.com launched. CyberMonday sale on all prints. BOGO
I am proud to announce I've launched InkedFur on Friday, where you can buy general and adult prints at a variety sizes from 19 artists! Artists include Tsai Wolf, Jijix, Morticus, Rezzy, Masahikoko, Ulos12, and Zhivago (just to name a few).
Currently for Monday, if you buy four prints, you get one for free! Make sure to check us out and let us know what you think.
Visit us at https://inkedfur.com.
submitted by SangieRedwolf[link] [comment]