Coral Amber

Oh how I wish I were in California. This weekend is the annual San Diego Comic-Con and since I can't be at the geek mecca, here are some internet goodies and a glance at some of my favorite comics.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Hopefully the long awaited Buffy season 8 comic is being worked on as I type. Joss will of course be attending the comic-con and the first issue (with art by Georges Jeanty) will be unveiled. The story line is set to run around 20 issues and will be using some old Buffy writers. Finally some canonical goodness over all the speculations and fanfic abound. I can only hope Buffy feels some honest fallout about the death of Spike that she carries with her for a few issues at least.

Tokyopop.com re-launch: The biggest name in Original English Language (OEL) manga is redesigning its site with a lot more content. Yours truly has a weekly column in the Lifestyle section and will be contributing articles from time to time (even with the extra workload, I'm going to try to keep updating here around once a week, although I'm sporadic at the best of times). The new tokyopop.com site will cover more than just manga, like movies, videogames, j-pop, and cosplay, but still appeal to core fans.

NBC Heroes: One of my most anticipated shows coming this fall is Heroes, about a very small group of people all over the world who wake up and have super powers. Hyped to be the next Lost, it promises to be interesting and twisted in the way of plot. Knowing that, we should probably start a pool about which character is going to get killed off first. How come it's never the most annoying one? Preview it at NBC's first look.

Sci-Fi Superheroes: From the clone of the Empire Carpet Guy, Stan Lee, comes a campy, bound to be bad search for the next big superhero. Geeks all over the county have made their own costumes and pretended to have superpowers in Who Wants to be a Superhero?. I'm honestly hoping this falls into the so bad it's good camp, but I'm very apprehensive. There is a reason the live action X-men movies ditched the brightly colored spandex.

Jewel cartoon: We've all wanted to make our own super hero at some point, and if we were already famous it would probably get on the air. Jewel has created a new show for Nickelodeon, 'Punk Rock Angel Girl', about a young girl with powerful lungs that get people to stop being complacent. Jewel, that creative curmudgeon, drew the character concept and wrote the first episode, and she does the voice too.

Here's a quick rundown of some of my favorite comics.

Runaways: Brian K. Vaughan has really breathed new life into a tired genre. A group of teens don't have much in common until they discover that their parents are super-powered villains. What's an angsty kid to do? Runaway, of course! Together they vow to use what limited resources they have to bring down the big bad. They don't all have powers, but they each have something special to offer (the ability to drive and stolen weaponry for example).

My absolute favorite thing about this book is how realistic Vaughan creates the teen characters. They really act like teenagers, with all the whining, drama, and annoyance. Too many books have a young character who acts just like an idealistic adult, how lame and boring. My only caution is that after the third book (issues 13-18) the characters shoot off into the wider Marvel world, filled with tons of mutants, which was too much for me.

Bonus points if you can figure out which character has homosexual tendencies.

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things: Remember how crappy Junior High was? Now try dealing with that and goblins, doppelgangers, and babysitting a changeling at the same time. Courtney Crumrin is pretty jaded for a kid and has bad attitude to spare. Luckily she's pretty smart too. Watch out if you manage to piss her off because there's no telling what her devious mind will come up with as payback.

The way Ted Naifeh plays with light and shadow is extraordinary. There is a genuine creepy feeling while looking at the stark black and white colors. The first book is still my favorite, but the girl really comes into her own in the next two books which feature scarier monsters and evil adults. I love her dry humor, honest emotions, and the funny chalkboard messages her teachers write like: Creative Writing, just because it happened to you doesn't make it interesting!

Bonus points if you want to check out the additional one-shot Courtney Crumrin Tales, which center around her uncle as a young man.

Genshiken: Genshiken is a manga centering on a college club full of otaku guys. What? No angsty teens or supernatural happenings? That's right, Saki is a complex girl who wants to turn her cutie boyfriend, anime fanboy and video game champion Makoto, into a normal guy. When he signs up for Genshiken, she follows him to meetings trying to sabotage the club. The book also stars shy guy Kanji who is coming to terms with liking anime babes and "adult" video games.

This manga is so fun, exploring awkward relationships between characters and a variety of geeky hobbies. Definitely stick with this one for Ohno, the first girl member of the club who is into cosplay and yaoi. She makes it her mission to get Saki into a cosplay outfit. I've enjoyed every issue out so far and love laughing at all the geek stereotypes explored.

Bonus points for every geeky thing mentioned in the manga that you have done yourself and if you want to check out the Anime DVDs which follow the manga pretty closely through the first few books.

Rising Stars of Manga: These books are dreams made tangible. Every year Tokyopop holds a contest for anyone who wants to draw a twenty page manga. The winners (and one audience favorite) are published in The Rising Stars of Manga. The artwork and stories keep getting better and better and I love the guaranteed variety in every issue.

There's usually a fair amount of controversy over the artistic style (is it manga enough?) and originality. Last year someone redrew the exact panels from a popular manga and claimed it as their own work. Can we say plagiarism?

Bonus points for every time you say "I can't believe that won!" or "I had that same idea!" while reading an issue.

Everafter: This is quite possible the most quality work-in-progress out there. The story revolves around storybook characters locked up in (and trying to escape from) the Everafter Asylum. Red Riding Hood has never been so crazy and deadly. Shaun was a Rising Stars of Manga runner up and his artwork and ideas have really developed well.

I'm constantly in awe of his artwork and originality. I'm equally impressed with how well paced everything is. So many webcomics get bogged down with pages and pages of talking. Shaun is a master of action sequences and revealing back-story like so many breadcrumbs along the way. The only downside is that it is truly a work in progress so waiting for the next issue is killer, but I know it's always worth it. Everafter is currently being posted a bit at a time, but start the entire prologue Here and follow the links.

Bonus points for entering any of Shaun's numerous contests at deviant art. Currently you can enter background characters and concepts that might get drawn into the story.

My Comic: I recently came up with my own idea for a comic. Even though I'm not the best artist I thought I would give it a try. It's mostly a spoof of Buffy where an unlucky girl gets thrown into the same sorts of monster ridden situations, but she's not the chosen one and has zip in the way of superpowers. It starts on her birthday, Friday the 13th.

Bonus points if you make your own comic, regardless of artistic ability. The longer the better and if I get enough, maybe I can have my own homemade anthology.