Zoophobia is a comic series created by Vivienne Medrano first published on July 3, 2012. On November 14, 2016, the comic was put on indefinite hiatus. The Zoophobia comic website is still up and running to this day for anyone who wants to view it.
On April 7, 2017, Vivziepop announced that she would be rebooting the series in the future.[1] In 2019, it was announced that a series of shorts would be produced.
On August 11th 2023, unexpectedly the webpage/Tumblr blog went down, by was initially believed to be an outage. That was until October 22nd 2023 when it was labeled deleted under Archive Binge. It was unknown what had caused this at the time, but at first was rumored to be the doing of a hacker. Then after the resurfacing of a tweet from Viv herself, it can now be believed that the page was deleted in response to toxic fans,[2] along with a Twitter thread of supposed accusations towards Viv for tracing, homophobia, amongst other things.
Premise[]
Zoophobia follows a young woman named Cameron Walden.
When desperate for a job, winds up being unexpectedly thrust into Safe Haven, a fantastic world full of incredible beasts, unimaginable beings and many characters. She receives a job as a guidance counselor at the Zoo-Phoenix Academy, with a colorful cast of talking animals and strange creatures for her to treat. Unfortunately, Cameron has quite the terrible case of zoophobia and is ultimately terrified by the very students and staff she must work with.
Books[]
In the original development, roughly ten books were planned to be released for the series. However, they were never made following the comic's discontinuation. The following are synopses for what these books would have entailed.
Book 1[]
Book one has five chapters and is the only book that was released for Zoophobia. It is, in essence, one very long introduction; Vivziepop states that it is much like a fantasy school story. It establishes the status quo for characters of the main cast, including the "Main Five" or "Original Five". Said five include characters Zill, Spam, Kayla, Vanexa, and Jack (on occasion, Addison is added to the group).
Book 2[]
In the second book, the genre shifts to a more musical and film noir type, dealing with oppression and violent leadership. It is drafted that the story would follow mostly Kayla, and will be subtitled "Showtime".
Book 3[]
In book three, heavy storylines finally come into play.
Book 4 []
Book four is one of the shortest books and leans into a more supernatural, sci-fi genre.
Book 5[]
Entering darker topics, this book is when Xirxine's true nature is developed and the narration starts with Addison's story, back when he lived there.
Book 6-10 []
These books were mostly about mythology and other related topics.
Trivia[]
- In the very early days of Zoophobia, the Main Five (Zill, Kayla, Jack, Vanexa, and Spam) were originally gonna be the main focuses and the art style was very similar to Invader Zim and Neopets.