Must Love Frogs
patreon
Rotting Bristle Board: FIREHEART
🕑 Added 2025-03-20 21:40:25 +0000 UTCToday I went through the oldest of my old art, the stuff that's been moving house with me since my childhood in another state. As the originals were literally falling apart, I accepted that today it was time to say goodbye to the ghosts of my teenage attempts at high fantasy. This is the abridged story of FIREHEART.
Like most closeted furry kids in the 90s, I loved the REDWALL series by Brian Jacques. It would take pretty much a decade of reading before my innocent ass really accepted the fact that all those books were basically the same, and at least one of them teetered on creepily racist (OUTCAST OF REDWALL, I'm looking at you), but the point was anthro animals and blood and war and really great descriptions of food and feasting. I wanted in.
Of course, if mice and rats are squirrels are cool, lions and tigers and bears are cooler, and my creation FIREHEART had the whole anthropomorphic zoo. It really was the grandparent of When We Fly, with no species (at least when it came to mammals and herps) off limits. Said mammals and herps (here called Coldbloods) are at war, you see, and while we're looking at the world through the eyes of a tiger, altruistic baby Kae refused to blame either race: corrupt leaders set the masses at each other's throats, and the only cure for a broken world was to come together in mutual understanding. Actually, that's really not bad at all. Well done, baby Kae.
So anyway, our hero, Fallonn Wildcat (a tiger, not a wildcat) has amnesia, because of course she does. Her frenemy Tae Warhorse (a zebra, not a horse), is trying to help her recover her memories whilst rescuing their mammal friends from the Coldbloods who kidnapped them. Hijinks ensue. I drew this series from ages 14-18 and then, like, went to college and had bigger /fish/ to fry.
Baby Kae was SUPER disciplined with learning the art of deep ink, because we all read early TMNT comics and all wanted to ink like those guys, who in turn were emulating Jack Kirby and HIS inkers. Baby Kae's understanding of human facial proportions was creaky at best; I was convinced I wasn't being influenced by anime, but I probably was. Also, I was very much under the impression at the time that you either wrote a funny ha-ha comic, or you wrote a morose and bloody upward trudge towards dignity. FIREHEART was the latter. It could have used a sweet and tasty spoonful of levity on top of all that battery acid. Such as it is, the comic is a fond memory and also the unapologetic murderer of about a thousand Microns and Sharpies.
Damn, son, look at the yellowing on that early page. It looks like someone threw up on it. Threw up earnestly and with all the pathos a sheltered Clintonian-optimist teenager in the 90s can muster.
Also, I insisted on calling myself a "comic novelist". SO cute.
Comments
Must Love Frogs
I honestly have an entire steamer trunk filled with sketchbooks from my youth. I got rid of a lot of the high school and earlier stuff, mostly because it was physically crumbling. College and beyond...haven't been able to part with those yet. So yeah, I'll almost certainly be posting more blasts from the past!
Jasmine Smith
Very much another Redwall baby here who learned later on just how things were off that I missed first time round, but, it lead to me meeting friends in AOL RP chatrooms who were totally cool with me playing a fox who wasn't out to kill them and we made our own stories together and I suppose was one of my earliest forays into the furry world. Jacques' books may be a product of times gone, but, I can be thankful for that, same way I can be thankful it means getting to see these! Honestly you were working on some very key techniques on them inks and although I can FEEL the angst mixed into that ink in there, I feel I could eat this up easy, along with half the kids out there who still enjoy their YA fiction. Is there any chance we may find more of your old works pop up here like this if you come across more?
PebbleLion
It's made a hell of a creative and storyteller out of you. Your stuff's rock solid. When WwF finally launches to the mainstream, the lorefans will be feasting for ages with the foundation that you and your wife have laid.
Must Love Frogs
I get dissed 90% of the time in pretty much every arena, lol. Clawing for that 10% is my whole life.
PebbleLion
FA is Furry Twitter. Whatever issues with how it was/is ran, it is the cornerstone of furry culture and where new and old go to. Thankfully as bad as sometimes it gets, it never approaches Elon levels of bad. I'm honestly surprised you got the cold shoulder considering a lot of the 'mainstream' furry comics didn't last but a handful of issues and almost all of the main furry imprints are but memories today for various reasons, save for Usgai (Which made it's bones long before most of us found furry and was under a publisher that knew what it was doing) and maybe one or two that I've missed.
Must Love Frogs
Thanks Jon! Unfortunately I rarely ink like that anymore because it takes forever!
Jonathan
These are gorgeous. My god. I don't read a lot of comics... but I'd probably buy these!
Badguy101
Neat!
Must Love Frogs
I tried hard to break into the "mainstream" (such as it was) furry scene in the late 90s. Nobody wanted to deal with dumb Baby Kae (especially not the Curtises, though she at least tried to be nice to me). Granted, I was extremely green and had a lot of learning to do. I didn't start to see any luck until the mid 00s, and that had more to do with the increasing popularity of FA.
Must Love Frogs
Great question! I actually didn't know about Elf Quest until I was well into Fireheart. I think this style (especially the inking) was just popular at the time, and great minds thought alike.
Must Love Frogs
Giant bugs are in my blood! That sounded a lot scarier than I anticipated...
Nutjob
And yet we did circle back to noble warrior newts riding giant hornets, so there you go...
PebbleLion
This could have easily fit in with Albedo and the 'underground' upsurge of funny animal comics that were being dug up and thrown against the wall due to TMNT hitting it big and thus, publishers madly trying to find something to soak up the extra profit from those of us who were kind of tired of the slapstick turtles on TV, yet weren't really looking for Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters as a fill in. Little did we know that Radio Comix and other furry books being published would take root in the end of the 90's, with the 1st/2nd wave creatives entering/finishing college and the first cons starting to be planned. You were also dead on about all of the Redwall books being the same. Or how the badgers, male or female were effectively killing machines that ether died, or had something else terrible happen to them without fail, like a light switch being flipped. It was also very old, racist British too. Foxes, Wildcats, Stoats, all seen as vermin, reptiles and their kin painted as uncivilized savages who sometimes helped the 'gentlebeasts' and thus had -some- redeeming parts about them and how no matter what, a sword wielding mouse will save the day.
Badguy101
This is very cool to see! Did you enjoy Elf Quest growing up? Your style seems a little inspired by it at the time.
