Veron-Chan: The Double X Android
The sweet love story of a boy and his robot. My main accomplishment in this was to "prove" to myself that I could do a vaguely shoujo, Ah! My Goddess-type manga with no explosions or anything (except for the one on the second page.) The first time around it was actually tough enough that I only got three pages done of perhaps a planned seven or so, which is why it ends in the middle of a scene. Still, I was pleased with the results -- enough so that I'm planning a shoujo story for my next big comic.
I got another chance at this story recently during an impromptu effort towards getting some moribund Impromangas running again. Veron-chan was, sadly, one of them -- it got broken somewhere along the way, and then lots of people bailed without even trying to fix it up. I'd like to point out to these people the other advantage of taking on an overlooked, oft-skipped story like this: you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT.
Veron-Chan at Impromanga - 37 38 39 - 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100
There's a few gags on page 39: "Susan B. Calvin High School" is named after Isaac Asimov's character Susan Calvin, a scientist who related much better to her robots than to other people. And that's MST3K's Tom Servo in the back behind the three tech geeks.
The second chapter isn't big on references but has lots of future-y iconography in it. Note, for example, the solar panels on top of all buildings, the man with the robot dog, and so forth. The shuttle Chad's father steals is based on the Lockheed/Martin Venturestar next-generation design, and the car driven by Rhinehart and his flunkies is an outsized Moller M400 Skycar. Finally, the sawdust dummy gag is an homage to Don Simpson's Megaton Man I've been waiting almost seven years to do. The current stuff is not so great, but the original graphic novel... pure genius. More than anything else, its wonderful lunacy is what got me drawing comics in the first place.