I’ve been reading Fur Will Fly for several years now. I don’t think I was there when Brian Daniel was doing his own artwork, but I’ve been there for each consecutive artist… and was in firm disbelief that Brian was going to end the comic during his little “joke” which started with Tammy dragging Page with her to chase down the vixen who delivered pizza and supposedly had a car crash. And it’s an amusing enough comic. It doesn’t try too hard, and it keeps a sense of whimsy even when doing something intense like the werewolf storyline.

So I’m left scratching my head over this sudden storyline with “Jacob” (Violet’s biological dad) suing for joint custody of Violet. We’ve not seen Jacob in the comic. He’s been mentioned from time to time, but I don’t recall him having regular visiting times. I also don’t remember Violet ever getting upset because “daddy” couldn’t have her visit or anything. Basically, he’s been a background story, and this sudden plot point just came out of the blue, really. (If I were truly dedicated I’d go through the archives and see if I could find instances of Jacob being mentioned before. Afraid I’ve not the time to do that, though, and am relying on my memory of the comic. So… I’m not sure how often he’s been mentioned.)

The thing is… I’m all for father’s rights. Often the court system seems to consider men to be evil vile bastards who deserve to be screwed out of visitation and finances. I’ve witnessed one guy get screwed over when his wife (let’s call her Wilma) filed for divorce and filed her taxes as Married but Separate – meaning he got hosed for $1,600 owed back taxes, and she (who is collecting a third of his paycheck for child support) got Earned Income Credit and tax credit to around $4,600.

He’s a decent enough chap, loves his children dearly, and just realized one day that not only did his wife not treat him with respect and love (or even as a human being), that he just didn’t love her anymore. And while this woman has been verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive to him, this is not a factor in the courts eyes. In all likelihood she will be granted custody of the children unless she starts abusing them, and even then it still has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

From my statement above, you can see that I normally consider guys to be given the short end of the stick when it comes to custody terms. But for the life of me, I cannot see any reason why this “Jacob” deserves joint custody. Have we seen him show up and playing with his daughter? Have we seen him taking her away for weekend visitation? Have we even heard Violet talking about her “daddy”?

In fact, in the cast page, Jacob is described as having abandoned Tammy when she was pregnant and leaving her to raise Violet alone. Stewart (who recently married Tammy, and who also was described as being there for Tammy after Jacob abandoned her) is much more of a father for Violet than Jacob has been (to my memory).

Of course, he’s not supposed to be. Let’s face it, Jacob is just another of those faceless ciphers that we hear about in the news, who refuses to pay child support and finds ways to weasel out of being a dutiful father. And this is actually rather sad. Why is it the worse parts of humanity (ironic, considering this comic is about furries, but still) is represented in media, instead of the more decent sorts who actually are loving fathers and who end up divorced because their wives cheated on them or because they just woke up and realized that they didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives with this person they married?

It would have been nice to see Jacob possibly introduced as a new character who realized that he’s been missing his daughter’s life and wanted to become a part of this. Perhaps if this had built more slowly, then we could have had an actually meaningful storyline, rather than just a shock value that came out of nowhere. Still, whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll be interesting and probably amusing once the initial angst is gotten over with.