Vietnam vet Travis Bickle is 26, a loner in the mean streets of New York City, slipping slowly into isolation and violent misanthropy. In solving his insomnia by driving a yellow cab on the night shift, he grows increasingly disgusted by the low-lifes that hang out at night: “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.” His touching attempts to woo Betsy, a Senator’s campaign worker, turn sour when he takes her to a porn movie on their first date. He even fails in his attempt to persuade child prostitute Iris to desert her pimp and return to her parents and school. Driven to the edge by powerlessness, he buys four handguns and sets out to assassinate the Senator, heading for the infamy of a ‘lone crazed gunman’… Written by Tim Jones {jonestd@vax.sbu.ac.uk}

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His world in complete disorder after his break-up with a famous actress, Carter, a young soft-core porn writer, goes to suburban Detroit to care for his sickly Grandmother and heal his broken heart. Along the way he forms a special bond with the family that lives across from his Grandma, and changes the life of each woman. In the course of this, as is required in every film–and thus the world, he changes his own life as well. Written by reader

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An average everyman discovers he’s the unwitting target of an ultra secret domestic black-op centering on mind control.

In 1535, an alchemist builds an extraordinary mechanism encapsulated into a small golden device. The invention, designed to convey eternal life to its owner, survives its maker until 1997 when it shows up to an antiquarian. Fascinated with the strange device, Gris (Luppi) doesn’t note that there’s more than one person looking for it. The promise of eternal life has become an obsession to old and sick Mr. De la Guardia (Brook). He and his nephew (Perlman) will do anything to get the “Chronos Invention”. Written by Maximiliano Maza {mmaza@campus.mty.itesm.mx}

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L.A. in the early 1930’s: racism, poverty, and disease color the Bunker Hill neighborhood where Arturo Bandini, a lover of men and beasts alike, has arrived from Colorado to write the great Los Angeles novel. After six months and down to his last nickel, he orders a cup of coffee, served by Camilla Lopez, beautiful, self-possessed, and Mexican. Arturo gets advice, encouragement, and an occasional check from H.L. Mencken, so he keeps writing and he keeps seeing Camilla. But, he’s mean to her for no apparent reason, so the relationship sputters. A housekeeper from back East suggests a way out of his jealously and fears. “Camilla Bandini”: is it in the cards? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland’s thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey’s true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey’s cult celebrity stature. Written by Sujit R. Varma