This week a user on gamer website MMO-Champion noticed that Blizzard Entertainment (creator of popular MMORPG World of Warcraft) had, on July 28, applied to register the phrase "Mists of Pandaria" as a trademark.

This lead to speculation that the next WoW expansion will centre around Pandaria, the home of the Pandaren, a race of anthropomorphic beer-loving pandas who first appeared as an April Fool's joke in the leadup to Warcraft 3.

At this point it is not clear if the application is a genuine clue to Blizzard's future plans, or a piece of misdirection. Nor can anyone, at this point, say if WoW players might get "a chance to play furry alcoholic martial arts masters".

The past few days have been very active with animal-related stories from around the world:

• An animal rights activist from Ukraine is protesting poor living conditions for zoo animals, living in the lions' den for five weeks to raise money for them.
• A pair of cougars have been shot after they began attacking humans in Alberta.
• Ukraine's government has vowed to end a sickening local tradition of animal abuse.
• An Idaho man is in hot water after prancing around in a bunny suit.
• A truck carrying bees has flipped and closed a major highway near Edmonton, Alberta.

Anthrocon announced Friday night that next year's convention had been moved up a week to accommodate a mystery event, at the request of the City of Pittsburgh.

The new dates are June 14–17, 2012. Anthrocon was duly rewarded for its flexibility:

Pittsburgh has been given a very rare opportunity to host an event that they have been wanting to host for many years. The only trouble was that the proposed event (and we won't say what it is until it is officially announced) would lie in part over Anthrocon's planned weekend. [...] As much as we love our adopted home city and would do anything in our power to support them, we were hesitant to change the date of our convention after having announced it.

Pittsburgh replied with, "What if we got you another hundred hotel rooms within walking distance of the Convention Center?" — We said, "Where do we sign?"

While the event has not been announced, it has been rumoured that the NHL Entry Draft, convened annually in late June, might be coming to Pittsburgh for the first time since 1997.

The Saga of Rex, by Michel Gagné
Illustrated by the author
Berkeley, CA, Image Comics, Nov. 2010
Trade paperback $17.99 (200 pages)

Michel Gagné is probably better known in animation fandom than in furry fandom. His major credits include animation on the feature films An American Tail and All Dogs Go to Heaven for Don Bluth Studios in the 1980s; on Quest for Camelot, The Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones for Warner Bros. in the 1990s and early 2000s; and on The Incredibles and Ratatouille for Pixar in the 2000s.

Gagné has worked on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and other TV and video game animation projects. His personal animated short films such as the 1995 Prelude to Eden (video) have often been nominated for the animation industry’s Annie Awards.

In comic books, DC Comics has asked Gagné to write and draw a Batman serial. In 1997, he began self-publishing picture and comic books with his first Rex book, A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. His books earned Ursa Major Award nominations in 2002, 2005, and 2006, for the colored edition of his first Rex book and for two issues of his comic, ZED.

In 2004 Gagné was invited to create a story for annual comic-book anthology Flight, edited by Kazu Kuibishi and (then) published by Image Comics. Gagné wrote and drew a second story with his fox cub Rex, The Saga of Rex, serialized in Flight #2–7. Now Image Comics has collected the story into a 200-page full-color trade paperback, printed on high-quality paper.

Do you enjoy Homestuck, but find one therianthropic feline troll and a fan of anthropomorphic fauna insufficient to sate your furry desires? Consider Prequel, an interactive comic using characters, species and settings from the Elder Scrolls video games Morrowind and Oblivion.

Although the popularity of the comic caused it to be moved to its own site after two threads, suggested actions and fan-art for the comic's protagonist are still taken on the MSPA forums (which also feature the topic 'shit. let's be furries', now on its second thread).