Shanda The Panda
From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.
Shanda The Panda is an furry comic book created by Mike Curtis.
Much like its predecessor, Omaha the Cat Dancer, the series is set in a world largely like the real world except for the fact that the inhabitants are humanoid versions of various animals, birds, reptile and insect species with some traits of their more primitive relatives. It is the longest running anthropomorphic slice of life comic book series.
The title character is Shanda Bruin, a Chinese-American panda who is the manager of a movie theater in a small city named Cedar Rabbits. The series involves in part the personal and professional lives of Shanda, her family and friends as well as her staff.
An important story arc is her romantic relationships with a cajun raccoon nicknamed Double R and her lesbian cricket bartender lover, Terri. Another storyline are their clashes with the villainous Wing and the emotionally abusive and bigoted ex spouse of Double R, Trixie. The comic boasts a cast of almost 50 characters of ages from infants to senior citizens. In addition several cast members and storylines are based on real people and events in Mike's theater career, such as an armed robbery and a riot.
[edit] Publishing history
The comic was originally published by Mu Press, where Shanda first appeared as part of the comic anthology A Very MU Christmas in 1992. The regular series continued with Antarctic Press, then moved to Vision Press before becoming the flagship title of Shanda Fantasy Arts in 1999 at issue #22. At last count it was up to issue #48, with ten annuals and nine adult digests. It has also spawned an adult comic, Shanda's Bedtime Tails.
Several artists have drawn the adventures of Shanda, in short stories and backup features. The main story of each issue is usually drawn by alternating illustrators, including original artist Mike Sagara, Michele Light, Carla Speed McNeil, and Heather Maranda, among others. Since the beginning, the covers have set a trend of being parodies of popular feature films. In fact, author Mike Curtis says that is the hardest part of each issue, finding a movie poster that relates to the story.
In issue 48, JUMP START, the cast is jumped ahead in time three years, which is where the series will take place as of issue 51 (after Shanda's weddning in #50)
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Shanda the Panda homepage at Shanda Fantasy Arts (.org and .net appear to be the same)
- Shandaverse mailing list on Yahoo! Groups
- Shanda the Panda's previous FurNation page at Archive.org
| Some of this page is derived from Wikipedia. The original article was at Shanda The Panda. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WikiFur, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
