Marty Chen

   Marty Chen is the son of first generation immigrants, his parents coming from China in pursuit of a better life. His parents saw Back to The Future shortly after immigrating, and wanting an American sounding name for their son, decided to name him after Marty Mcfly, the main character of the movie. Marty is a big movie nerd and enjoyed all types of media ranging from comic books to movies to anime. Marty is bilingual and knows English and Mandarin Chinese. He is also learning Japanese and has many original Japanese manga in his room. While far from fluent he knows Japanese better than most of the other students and does his best to translate for his fellow anime fans. 

  At Warner-Grossman high school, Marty helps with the "Morning Buzz," morning announcement program. He also works on the school newspaper, "The Hive", taking photos and drawing pictures for the pages. He's heavily involved in the school's art clubs and loves talking about comics with his clubmates. He gets decent grades, but far from straight As. (Except for Home Ec. where the teacher said he was the best student she ever had) Most of the jocks consider him a dork but he shrugs off any teasing with stride.  

   His parents own a Chinese restaurant, and as such Marty is a big fan of Asian food. He knows how to cook and often makes his own box lunches. He also works at his family's restaurant over the weekends, and has become popular by handing out discounts (and free food) to fellow students. He enjoys it, but doesn't want to make it his career, much to his parent's chagrin. They wanted him to take over the restaurant eventually, but Marty wants to be a comic book artist and spends his free time drawing in his sketchbook. This puts him at odds with his parents, who see it as a waste of time. He still loves them and knows they mean well. But they fought over the issue frequently.

   Of course, all of this changes when the zombie apocalypse happens.  

      He was giving the Morning Buzz when the zombie outbreak hit the school, which saved him.  With the help of Cody he was able to barricade himself in the PDA room until he was able to escape the school via the connected air vent. After escaping, he rode his bike back to the restaurant and begged his parents to get out of town, but they dismissed it as "another one of his fantasies" and demanded he go back to school. Failing to convince them, he pretended to agree but instead biked out of the city, managing to get out before things fell apart completely. Over the course of several days he biked/ hitchhiked to a relative's house in a different city, barely staying ahead of the advancing zombie hordes. Fortunately for Marty, his relatives lived in a city with a major military base nearby, and by that point the military was able to rally and fend off the zombie attacks. Marty lived with his relatives in that city throughout the duration of the epidemic. As of now his parents are still missing, and he has yet to learn what happened to them.  Given the lack of comic book jobs in the post-apocalyptic world, Marty has decided to become a chef after all, opening up a new restaurant in his new city. 

 Personality: 

- artistic 

- outgoing

- nerdy 

Physical Characteristics:  

Species:  Red Panda  

Age: 15   

Height: short-ish 

Traits:  

- All his clothes are oversized (even his shoes) 

- Wears anime or comic book T-shirts and loose jeans/ shorts (I can't draw those :(  ) 

- May or may not have a backpack