Anthro (magazine)

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Anthro

Anthro is a bimonthly furry online fanzine which started with its September/October 2005 issue. Its editor/webmaster/Lord High Everything Else is Quentin 'Cubist' Long, who performed pretty much the same suite of duties for his other (now dead) fanzine TSAT. After Anthro #6, Michael W. Bard -- Long's partner-in-crime -- elected to step down from the associate-editorial duties he'd been fulfilling for Anthro (as he'd previously fulfilled for TSAT).

Curiously, neither Long nor Bard considered themselves to be furries when they started Anthro; Bard has since come out of the closet, but Long is still in denial. Long's primary goal for Anthro is to make it a known source of high-quality furry material, including (but not limited to) stories, art, columns, fact articles, poetry, webcomics, reviews, and whatever else furdom-at-large can come up with. Long hopes that the zine's readers will enjoy it enough that they choose to support it in a concrete manner (by, among other things, buying posters/t-shirts/books/etc; donating money; or by purchasing a subscription), thereby providing enough revenue that Long can actually afford to pay his contributors. Since a Google search for 'anthro' puts the zine in the top five results (and often in the top three results), it would appear that the zine is indeed enjoyed by many.

The inspiration for Anthro was a conversation between Quentin and Phil Geusz at the 2005 TSA-Bash about the lack of online furry publications focussing on quality written work.[1]

Anthro carries a number of regular features, over and above its complement of stories, poems, interviews, and fact articles.

Contents

[edit] Columns

Through the Looking-Glass. Michael Bard's column (formerly editorial) about how furdom looks to one who is new to it.
Down the Rabbit Hole, by Phil Geusz, which focuses on the relationship and interactions between furdom and mundane society.
Reality Soundbites, by Keith Morrison; this column, whose first installments appeared in TSAT, addresses the question of how to make stories believable.
The Red King's Dream, by Wanderer Werewolf, which touches on (among other things) the more-furry aspects of roleplaying games.

[edit] Comics

Zebra Girl, Joe England's excellent webcomic about a woman transformed (by random magickal mishap) into a horned, hooved, three-eyed demon. Anthro presents the comic with England's permission, at a rate of about 8 strips per issue, starting from the very beginning.
Castle Horsetooth, Oren Otter's and Eala Dubh's comic strip (currently on hiatus) about the fairy-tale adventures of valiant Sir Fluren and his noble steed Briarwood in the kingdom of Jaywardia. The events of the first storyline, The Case of the Six-Cent Song, bore a curious resemblance to Sing a Song of Sixpence; the second storyline is entitled Plague and the Pilfered Posies.
Sandusky, John Pergaman Jr.'s webcomic about the misadventures of a boy and his cougar. As with Zebra Girl, this comic is presented in multiple-strip packages, with its creator's permission, starting from its first strip.

[edit] Editorial

From the Editor's Maw, in which Long explores whatever topic strikes his fancy.

[edit] Subscriptions

Anthro offers four levels of subscriptions, with increasingly great benefits to the subscriber

  • Bronze (USD $12/year): A Bronze subscription helps ensure that Long can pay his contributors as they deserve.
  • Silver (USD $24/year): Silver subscribers support Anthro's creators; they also get an exclusive mini-CD of Brothers Under the Skin (excerpt available here), an original song commissioned from noted filker Tom Smith.
  • Gold (USD $48/year): Gold subscribers support furry creators; they get the Brothers Under the Skin mini-CD; and every year, they receive a complimentary copy of that year's ANTHROlogy paperback, autographed by Long.
  • Platinum (USD $96/year): Platinum subscribers get all the benefits of Gold, and then some; supporting furry artists and writers, the Brothers Under the Skin mini-CD, and each year, they get three complementary ANTHRO Press books -- an autographed copy of that year's ANTHROlogy, and any two other ANTHRO Press titles of their choice.

[edit] Publications

In addition to the zine's online presence, Anthro is also a source of actual ink-on-paper books. Long produces an annual collection, ANTHROlogy, whose raison d'etre is to be an 'analog' version of the zine; he also works on other volumes of interest to the furry community. As of this writing (29 June 2009), the ANTHRO Press catalog consists of:

ANTHROlogy ONE: 602-page collection of virtually everything that appeared in Anthro's first year, issues 1 through 6. Cover by Lucius Appaloosius
ANTHROlogy TWO: 638-page collection of the lion's share of everything from issues 7 through 12, Anthro's second year.
The Human Memoirs, G. Howell's Anthro-serialized novel of a man who finds himself trapped in a parallel world where humans never evolved sentience... but felines did.
The First Book of Lapism, an omnibus edition of four of Phil Geusz' Lapist stories, with introductions by Kirs Schnee.

Select examples of Anthro's art are available as posters, T-shirts, and a variety of other forms. These include Leomorphic Da Vinci, by Cubist (cover of #1); Straightaway, by Lucius Appaloosius (cover of #2); Wanted: Dead and Alive, the cover of Anthro #7 and Zoomin', by Ian Williams (illustration for the Michael W. Bard story Zoo'm'in Along in Anthro #10).

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