If you don’t know what a furry is...well, there are only about ten million articles on the Internet about the fandom. Some good, some bad, some utterly confusing. While meetups for furries were occuring at various conventions during the 70’s and 80’s, the first dedicated furry convention didn’t happen until 1989. At this convention, there was one lone person dressed up in what would now be called a “fursuit,” though certainly more primitive than what can be seen now. Heck, the term “fursuit” wasn’t even coined until 1993.
A fursuit, at its most basic, is a “mascot costume” similar to what you might find at an amusement park. In the 90’s, as the furry conventions grew along with the fandom, the homemade fursuit was still in its early days. It was possible to go to a convention and not see anyone dressed from head to toe, attendees instead content with wearing a headband with animal ears, if they bothered to dress in anything at all. The idea of dedicated fursuit makers who would charge for their services was still years away, it being merely one hobby that a dedicated fan would indulge in during their free time.
In late 1997, David Gonterman was more than aware of the fursuit culture. Though he did not have one of his own, he was fascinated by the concept. While there were many furry webcomics out there already, he did not know of any that involved fursuits. On the 23rd of December, he made a post on alt.fan.furry stating his intention, and asked if anyone had ideas they could e-mail him.
By February 3rd, the comic had gone live. A friend of Gonterman’s, Drew Rhine, was the first to tell the newsgroup. Starting on a now-lost Geocities page, the strip did not make much of a splash at first. However, the comic would continue to get updated over the next year and a half. As it reached its final months, Gonterman went back and redid a handful of early strips, easily identifiable by the copyright date on the top.
When updating his site in 2001, Gonterman made it clear that Foxfire was now on hiatus, leaving the 240 completed chapters online for those who wanted to reread his most popular work of fiction to date. He did promise he would return to the world of Scarlet Foxfire, but that would not happen until 2004, where instead of continuing the original, he rebooted the entire project, renaming it Scarlet, P.I.
