There’s something so perfectly fannish about a comic book series called Unicorn Vampire Hunter. It’s written by Caleb Palmquist and illustrated by Daryl Toh. “A young woman named Jezebel moves to a magical marsh to live with her uncle, Seamus the Wizard and his puppies that never grow old. One day, Jezebel wanders into the dark forest and almost falls victim to a vampire. Luckily, her life is saved by a unicorn, who gores the vampire with his horn, killing it. Jezebel and her uncle welcome the unicorn into their family, but things are about to get dicey…” Find out how in this new series from Scout Comics.

image c. 2024 Scout Comics

In the days before mobile phones and the Internet, people would have to have conversations with their pets to keep themselves from going insane. That's how it is with the Monroes, a nuclear family with two young children, two careers, and two pets: a cat (Chester) and a dog (Harold).

And every day, when the family members head out of the house, they leave their pets unsupervised to indulge in their vices. Chester reads horror stories; Harold daydreams about food. Life is perfect.

Until the day the Monroes go to a Dracula film, and come home with a little fluffy bundle of a rabbit in a shoebox full of dirt.

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Anthropomorphics means anthropomorphic anything. To that end, witness this… Monster Motors. “The once-quiet town of Transylvania, Kentucky is under attack from Cadillacula, an evil vampire-car that sucks the gas out of other vehicles! The more victims he claims, the more powerful he gets. Genius mechanic Vic Frankenstein has a solution: Build a monster to fight a monster. Vic and his android assistant iGOR (interactive Garage Operations Robot) assemble a giant truck from the pieces of the town’s fallen vehicles. Frankenride is born, and the battle between good and evil hits the road!” You heard it here, folks. The Monster Motors full-color one-shot from IDW (written by Brian Lynch and illustrated by Nick Roche) comes to comic shops later this month. Check it out at Previews World.

image c. 2014 IDW Publishing

And now for something… pretty darn different. Part of the Vamplets line of “cute horror” comics from Action Lab Entertainment, this time with a funny animal twist in Vamplets: Undead Pet Society. “The Legend of the Ghost Pony begins here in this terrifyingly sweet installment from Hasbro designer/illustrator of My Little Pony, Gayle Middleton! Ghost Ponies have been the harbingers of the weird for years. Whenever they appear, creatures near have disappeared, never to return. Where do they come from? What is their terrible secret? And what is the Ghost Pony’s connection to a vampyre baby named Lily Rose Shadowlyn?” You can head out to your local comic book shop right now and find out.

image c. 2014 Action Lab

It’s the far future, and one of the most popular viewing experiences out there is a deadly reality show called The Last Res0rt, where criminals from various worlds and species try to kill each other. Into this mix comes Jigsaw, a furry, who’s also a violinist — and a vampire. Or so she just discovered. She honestly wishes that she’d known that before she volunteered to be on the show! All of this comes from the mind of graphic artist Rachel Keslensky, and it’s all available for viewing at the Last Res0rt comic strip web-site. As well as in several paperback book collections Rachel has put together from previous material — books which also include extra new art work, of course. The web site also includes a handy new reader’s guide for those who need to catch up with the story and the characters.

image c. 2014 by Rachel Keslensky

Fred Patten, the editor of Best in Show: Fifteen Years of Outstanding Furry Fiction (Sofawolf Press, July 2003; republished as Furry!); Already Among Us: An Anthropomorphic Anthology (Legion Printing, June 2012); and The Ursa Major Awards Anthology: A Tenth Anniversary Celebration (FurPlanet Productions, June 2012), will have a new anthology published by FurPlanet go on sale at Anthrocon 2013.

What Happens Next: An Anthology of Sequels presents eleven new stories by fan-favorite Furry authors featuring their popular characters:

• M. C. A. Hogarth and her Alysha Forrest
• Brock Hoagland and his Perissa and Maelith
• Kevin Frane (Rikoshi) and his Iolite League
• Kristin Fontaine and the crew of the interstellar freighter Tai-Pan
• Michael Payne and Cluny, the sorceress squirrel with Crocker, her human familiar
• Jenner and Dr. Benjamin Rat, M.B., B.S. D.R.A.N.Z.C.O.G. F.R.A.C.G.P.
• Kyell Gold and a new tale of Argaea
• Elizabeth McCoy and her feline centauroid Kintarans
• Chas. P. A. Melville and his Felicia, the Vixen Sorceress
• Ken Pick and his Brigit Bunny on the planet of the foxlike Thalendri
• and Roz Gibson and her Jack Salem

Even if it was not anthropomorphic, how could we ignore an animated TV commercial for Oreos from Studio Animal (Barcelona), to a lively tune by Owl City?

Fortunately, the 1’30” Wonderfilled Anthem, directed by Martin Allais, is very anthropomorphic, with the Big Bad (Blue) Wolf, the three pigs, vampires, sharks, baby seals, squids, and more. Cartoon Brew’s Michael Ruocco has the story.

The paranormal romance genre has exploded since 2005. During the past three years practically every mass-market publisher has started one or more annual series with titles like Undead and Unwed; Tall, Dark & Dead; Bitten & Smitten; Love Bites; Sex and the Single Vampire; and How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire.

However, as you may guess from these titles, 90% of the paranormal romance series feature sexy vampire chicks. Others are about young witches or hunters of (handsome) demons. One of the few about werewolves and other shapeshifters is Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series. This is also one of the earliest, going back to Vaughn’s first short story, “Dr. Kitty Solves All Your Love Problems”, in Weird Tales #324, Summer 2001 (integrated into Chapter 5 of Kitty and The Midnight Hour).

Kitty Norville starts out as a mid-twenties, blonde late-night DJ at radio station KNOB in Denver. (Vaughn lives in Boulder.) One night she starts chatting about a tabloid’s improbable stories about Bat Boy, and invites her listeners to call in if they have ever seen him. For the next few hours she gets callers who talk about vampires and werewolves; enough callers that the station manager reassigns her as a talk show hostess of a new weekly program, “The Midnight Hour”, offering frank advice to those who have problems because of their hidden vampire or werewolf lifestyles.

“Kitty and The Midnight Hour”, November 2005, paperback $7.99 (ix + 272 pages); Kindle $7.99.
“Kitty Goes to Washington”, July 2006, paperback $6.99 (x + 342 pages); Kindle $6.99.
“Kitty Takes a Holiday”, April 2007, paperback $6.99 (318 pages); Kindle $6.99.
“Kitty and the Silver Bullet”, January 2008, paperback $6.99 (approx. 352 pages); Kindle $6.99.
All by Carrie Vaughn, published by Warner Books of NYC.

I watched Hotel Transylvania because I have a weakness for Gothic archetypes, not because I was expecting it to be any good. It is a movie not only starring Adam Sandler, but even produced by him. Well, I can say this is the best thing Adam Sandler has done in years, but that still does not matter much on the good to bad scale.

I did not watch this movie because I intended to review it for Flayrah; about halfway through the climax, in which the movie’s protagonist takes the form of a talking bat and sticks that way until the denouement, I realized furries might want to know that. I mean, yeah, werewolf in the trailers and TV spots and all, but if you decide to see this movie, see it for the cute talking vampire bats.

Not much else reason.

A werebat. A werewolf. Anthropomorphic monsters galore. Sony Animation's Hotel Transvlvania, due out in the U.S. on September 28 (a considerably different trailer was released in Russia in March), seems like a feature that Flayrah's readers should enjoy.

New from Image Comics this July: “Man of Action Studios — creators of the international hit Ben 10 — return with an all-new big book for little readers! Livingston is a peaceful fruit bat whose life changes when he is bitten by a vampire and transformed into a vampire bat!  As Batula — an avenging creature of the night — Livingston develops a taste for adventure and a need to prove that no matter what he looks like on the outside, he’s still the same bat on the inside. A full-color story book by Frankie Stein creators Steven Seagle [writing] and Marco Cinello [art]!” Visit Image Comics’ preview page to find out more about Batula (and see some interior art).

image c. 2012 Image Comics