The Teenage Girls Guide to Her Ever Changing Body

Author notes

In Media Res (Book 1), Canto II, "Air's Siren Song," Page 1

Bubbles

on Oct. 11, 2006

I think I might have been a little too Northeast-centric hear by making it a Chinatown bus.

Not because that's unrealistic for the comic; the whole "young women transforming into costumes and having powers" thing is not new to the world of the Teenage Girl's Guide, and so history is slightly different as a result. You'll see that we draw the maps a little differently, put different people in political office than you'd expect, and there are small things, like the Chinatown bus goes anywhere I want it to.

Anyway, if you've never ever seen a Chinatown bus, a bunch of tiny Chinese (and some Orthodox Jewish) companies, especially in the Northeast US, charter buses from Chinatown to Chinatown, charging ridiculously low fares. I go from DC to NYC for $20 all the time.

Of course, the last time I went, the driver must have been going 100 mph, because we made DC-Manhattan in four hours, including a detour across Staten Island and Queens. I made the mistake of sitting in the front of one of these buses once, and I watched in horror as the driver was eating snack foods, chatting on the phone to Hong Kong (I know a little Cantonese), and driving so fast the needle was off of the markings on the odometer. We almost clipped a U-Haul.

Why are our second set of protagonists taking the Chinese bus? You'll see.

Also, I notice that the artist has added his car into the background, minus the antenna fob we got at Otakon 2005.