Possible serials:

1. Glendale High Manga Club
[School comedy, slice of life, parody]

    In a California high school somewhere, Maggie, an overachieving snob needs to be the president of a second club to for her college application. "A Manga Club!" Kevin, her boy-toy flunky, a budding artist shouts.

They get the only teacher they can, Hagan (Mr. Lee) a bitter serious artist stuck working at the his old high school back in his old town he vowed never to come back again. Sharing the Art Room is Jo (Ms. Trout) a happy-go-lucky Christian and wet hen, who's only vice is secretly drilling small crosses on the school premises.

Joining the club are:
Willie - Maggie's jealous off and on boyfriend, more interested in keeping an eye on her then art.
"Crackers" - Wille's pal, actual name is "Harrison Potter," gets a lot of mileage out of the name and the resemblance to the character from the ladies.
Alice - Sullen blonde, problems at home, and future "Art School dyke" written all over her...
Sage - Wannabe ninja with a possibly criminal single mother who keeps moving them from town to town.
Siriam - A very tall, stooped, totally withdrawn girl who hardly talks and when she does, speaks in tiny pictures, inside the word balloons where the text should be.
And "Maranwe" - a pale mysteriously girl with huge outstretched Elf years, assumed to be fake, also assumed to be on large quantity of both legal & illegal drugs.
Some more, some less. We follow their progress over the months on their goal to print a year end group manga... most of them quit before, it is high school after all.

(Think "Genshiken" meets "Great Teacher Onizuka" with some "Heathers," that Winona Ryder movie, mixed in.
Structured around those "How to Draw Manga" guides, each chapter thematically corresponds to a particular drawing lesson and to a particular character's story. Like, if the "lesson" is on perspective or shading, the content of the story and the drawing will reflect the theme with lots of different unual angles for perspective or take place at night with plecty of deep shdows for shading, etc...
Humor emphasizing on the casual cruelty of teenagers and well intending adults, not just nostalgia or manga cliches)

2. Kung Fool!
[Ensemble comedy, Martial Arts, Parody]

     Chen, an illiterate illegal construction worker, is cynically hired to front a local Kung Fu school franchise (McDojos) by recommendation of its student instructor, Jimmy, whom Chen use to teach some basic drills at the park.
Taught martial arts in the old fashioned beating-the-crap-out-of-you method, he is unsure how to approach the eclectic mix of children, women, the fat & lazy, and the overenthusiastic few who've watched one too many Kung Fu movies.

If that wasn't enough, the Tae Kwon Do school (Grand Master "Fee") across the mini-mall challenges his legitimacy and of the school. The senior TKD guys, with their monomaniacal emphasize on drills stand out like storm-troopers compare to laid back day-care center that is the Kung Fu school.
Can he avoid broken bones and fractured wrists of an actual fight, keep the peace and woo the frisky librarian May, who, as well as being an excellent "angry Kung Fu chick" is also teaching him English?

(Think Jacky Chen meets "Karate Kid" with a hint of "Last Dragon," that early 80's "blacksploitation" movie with the main character named "Bruce LeRoy.")

Shorter stories (one, two books at the most):

3. Knock Off!
[Romantic comedy]

    Ezekial "Zeke" DeGroussi, perpetual grad student and anime otaku takes a trip to Korea, the cheap, "knock off" of Japan. At the airport he crashes into Miriam Hollingsworth, an earnest student activist who, though born in Korea, was adopted out of the country to Virginia when she was but 7. She's back to her homeland she hardly remembers, barely speaking the language, seeking her birth mother.

In the scuffle, she loses her money purse, accuses Zeke of theft. He finds the purse later, but stung by the accusation, yet still intrigued by her, doesn't tell her, but uses the money from her purse to "treat" a fellow traveller down on her luck. She reluctantly accepts and the two wander out of the Seoul megapolis and into the countryside through the back-roads to the small fishing village her birth mother returned to.

Can he win her over despite the his political, cultural apathy?
What does she expect, hope to find after all these years?
How much bootleg DVDs can he stuff into his bag and what will happen when her empty purse falls out of it in front of her?

(Think "Megatokyo" meets "Before Sunrise," that Ethan Hawk movie, but... like, without the Lame.)

4. Zombie Love
[Horror, Black Humor]

     Seemingly affable and geeky transfer student Norman Appleby, who is in fact a serial killer, meets mysterious uber goth chick Bella Hankiewicz just on the night when the dead start to rise in their small mountain town.
They hack their way through the undead, formulate a plan to escape the town and their mundane lives, discuss school, life and get to know one another. Norman likes her and she seems to like him.

Will their budding relationship survive the zombies, peer pressure, disapproving parents and his desire to strangle her and do interesting things to her remains in the back shed?

(Think "Napoleon Dynamite" meets "Shuan of the Dead"... and all those serial killer movies. Visually, the whole story takes place at night, hight contrast, dark shadows, smudgy fingers, only pure white space will be the word balloons... kinda like that manga "Blame.")


5. Apache Catgirls
[Crime, teen angst, sort of Yaoi]

     In rural Pennsylvania, awkward teen Michael Heisenbach shoots his abusive guardian and runs off in his dead father's only legacy: A 1967 Chevy Apache pick up. He accidentally rescues "Lori," young prostitute at a truck stop on I-99, who turns out to be boy "turned out" by his mother.

Unnerved and homophobic as any teenage boy, he none the less lets her stay, and together head West, at her suggestion, from the band Everclear's song of the same name, to warm and sunny Santa Monica:
"We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die "

Road trip across America as Autumn leaves fall and Winter chases nipping away at the rusty chrome bumper, mostly bloodless crime spree funds their road trip to the Pacific.
The title, Apache Catgirls, refer to a couple of catgirl toy figures Lori hangs on the rearview mirror.

(Think "True Romance" or a hundred other road movies meets "Sarah : A Novel" by JT LeRoy (fictionalized story of his actual childhood spent as truck stop whore) mixed with some Yaoi thingabobbins.)


6. Life Raft
[Sci-Fi, Romantic comedy]

    The great deep space battleship Dominion II's engines explode in silent fury.
Amid the panic, the last escape pod on level 56 is held open by Harzed T'ngal, easygoing civilian contractor and conscientious objector. Next to the hatch is the commanding presence of Lieutenant Vinale Sh'nkloss.
It's a one man unit, meant for a one way hyper-space escape to the homeworld, useless for two. They can't even fit within with their balky pressure suits on. One final explosive rumbling makes for great persuasion, and amid the smoke they strip and squeeze in together.

As the tiny pod shoot out of the silently disintegrating hulk, Harzed notices Lieutenant Sh'nkloss is a lot softer, squishier then a man usually ought to be... The Lieutenant is in fact a she, certainly a lot more haughty and distant then a normal woman, as one would expect of a member of one the Empire's prestigious military families. Downright contemptuous of a coward like Harzed who wouldn't fight to defend his homeworld!

Though the pod's engine, with enough material for life support will last 500 years, hyperpace requires the body to be incased in a personal suit, an inner pod within the shell. Unless one of them dies or is killed, they have no choice but to wait via the homing beacon. It's going to be a looooong wait.

They have sex, clearing that out within the first week, so they can devote the next ten years adrift in deep space screaming, arguing, haranguing, and giving each other the silent treatment— it's a normal relationship, after all.

The last line:
"Wanna get married?"
"Emm... how 'bout we date first?"

(Think "Swept Away," that old Italian flic or any "deserted island " stories meets early pulp sci-fi stories.)

And finally:

7. Anarchy in the USA: Life and Times of Emma Goldman
[Historical, Biography]

     Story of Emma Goldman, from her childhood in the immigrant ghettos of 19th century New York, thorough her awakening to the injustice, the plight of the working poor and her torrid affairs with several men (okay, they were intellectuals, but the books assure me they were torrid) to become the premier social activist, anarchist, and speaker for human rights of late 19 and early 20th century.

(Hey, you'll need something to sell to the Libraries, right? It's educational! Good movie option, it's the next Erin Brockovich! Well...)