BakaBreakers Strip 008

New Rant: 16 Dec 2001

It's about flipping time I got into Sunport in this comic, did I? Now we can go ahead with the story, or to be more correctly, I can. :) But before I continue I'll let you in on some quirks I'm putting in the storytelling;

First and foremost, I need to define 'Reality Mode'. I wanted to have the feel of Reality Television in this comic strip, where the filming is done 'on the cheap,' with limited camera angles, as well as the additional camera used for the 'sidebars' where the characters talk into the camera giving their on-the-fly color commentary, and of course the Tara-cam as well as the infamous Killer Cam. I also intend to borrow a page from FOX's next hit, '24' and put a time stamp on each strip telling where the strip is chronologically. All events will be recorded as it happens and, if two or more events are active at the same time, I'll provide a split scene to show the progress.

And the second point will be that this strip will have two stories going on at once. One Story will be the 'BakaBreakers' story itself, which will follow the murder case that is focused around the Anime-Themed coffee shop and is behind hailed as the sequel to the "Sunport Killer", The other story will be the behind the scenes misadventures in a more peaceful Sunport where you'll have a deeper look within the cast of characters that end up on the show. There are two ways you can find out which strip falls in which story. One is where I clearly marked the chapter telling you where the strip falls. The other is to follow the time stamp on the strip: The BakaBreakers case occurs in Late March through April, shortly after the town's birthday, while the backstage tomfoolery starts from May of the same year.

Now, to all you MiSTX fans, I'm sure that you can easily make out which character is which even though I've by now completely tweaked the names, so just dig up your casebooks so you can follow along in the chara design and see where I differ. It shouldn't take you long to find your favorite surviving Townspeople.

Also, there is talk about Fan Tapes of the series. I have already offered my ability to store these Fan-made episodes for others to use. As most of us who regularly watch Anime know--and you're not a real anime fan until your first Fansub--while fan-made tapes of their favorite episodes are questionable according to the letter of Copyright Law, these are perfectly kosher in the spirit of these mentioned rules as long as you don't earn money from them. This is why they put down "FAN COPY: Not for Sale or Rent" on the Fansubs. In short, I treat the MiSTX Episodes in a similar and somewhat venomless vein as toward the record industry and the MP3 format: If FOX is too stuck up their butts to make tapes of this series available, I'll do it without their help, thank you so much. And once FOX actually puts them out like what they should be doing, I'll gladly pull my copies out of my site and start directing to where one can buy FOX's Tapes.

New Rant: 16 Dec 2001

There are times where some of you hit the nail on the head. It's latest instance of this statement comes from the PoE message board post where one states that I've succeeded, albeit in an unintended form, to Americanize Manga. At times I pride myself on this, despite the fact that there are a lot of previous examples of this, several of them being Ninja High School, Warren's incarnation of the Lovely Angels (I'll refrain from the Dee Pee words in case Kei and Yuri are reading), and the occasional comic from the Big Three [Marvel, DC, and Image; the three most popular companies in comic books.]

There is one subtle item that I quickly found out about Manga-ka [Made in the USA Manga] while I've been incorporating Manga in my style; although it's fairly easy to blend in the artstyle of Manga into your outputs, doing it story-wise is another matter entirely. Not only are Classic Manga storytelling are more drawn out (An example: You take X-Men #1--either series--and retell the 32-page comic into a Manga title, this US issue alone will take up one whole volume of Classic Manga. That's right, 32 pages becoming about 256, and no, I'm not going to discuss how long the entire X-Men continuity would take) but the values and focus in classic Manga stories, being from Japan, are culturally different from their American version. (Case in point, Spiderman. Do you know that the Manga version of Spidey is totally retooled with only a few baddies and that irradiated spider used that came from the USA version. Even Peter Parker is replaced by a Japanese Student named Yu. This is because of the cultural differences. Would Yu Korimori [the real name of the title character in the Manga Spidey] let a mugger pass so he can kill off Uncle Ben? I think not)

While Japanese-styled art in an American-styled story may be snubbed in most Manga and Anime circles--so tell me what else is new--it has it's place in the grand scheme of comics, now more than ever in these post-nine-eleven times. The global public needs more feel-good action flicks where you can enjoy it with their favorite snacks and soda. It's a guilty pleasure that comes in three items in the to-do list: 1) Kick Ass 2) Save World 3) Get Girl, and guzzle 2-liter bottles while we're at it. While this may have become a staple in my early stories, I do intend to work something more into the usual Toll House Cookie recipe which is my usual storytelling. In this strip, I intend to be more mental in the action, where the goal is more toward solving the crime than taking out the criminal. And my other title, Night Soldiers will have a stronger focus in the relationship between the main characters as well as the philosophical meandering that would come when a superhero-style situation occurs in real life. Even though this means that former Marine Brat turned super powered walking can of whoop-@$$ who has a perfect civilian identity with that limp will occasionally mull over what the bad guys are doing to his planet in between showing said bad guys the Values he picked up while watching Recruits in Basic at the Island.

When I say that "The fanficts were only a beginning, and the best are yet to come," despite at least one groan I hear, I have this strip as well as Night Soldiers and future titles in mind. I hope I prove myself up to the task, if not in spite of my notoriety, then maybe with it as a cornerstone.