Jen and Tyler Bartel’s Magical Girls Pack a Punch in “Crystal Fighters”

You’ve never seen magical girls like this! Co-writers Jen Bartel (Blackbird, America, Jem and the Holograms) and Tyler Bartel step into the ring for Crystal Fighters, a unique story described as Sailor Moon meets Street Fighter! Originally offered on the digital platform Stela, Dark Horse will publish the complete Chaos Arena: Crystal Fighters web comic series to trade paperback for the first time ever!

Crystal Fighters follows a bored teen named Stella who has grown up in a world fully immersed in virtual reality games. But like many teens, her parents restrict her gaming to safe “age-appropriate” games. Enter “Crystal Fighters,” a magical girl game filled with bright colors and nauseating positivity. But for Stella, things take a turn for the interesting when she discovers an underground magical girl fight club within the game that adds a whole new level of thrills and danger to her once mundane gaming experience. But the phrase “be careful what you wish for” soon takes on a whole new meaning as she discovers a dark side to the magical girls as she is pulled into a series of tournaments in the virtual reality game that could have real-world consequences.

Crystal Fighters TPB goes on sale August 29, 2018 and is available for pre-order on Amazon and your local comic shop.

Praise for Crystal Fighters:

“Crystal Fighters is an extremely fun series.” —The A.V. Club

“Sailor Moon meets Street Fighter.”  —The Mary Sue

“One thing that was sorely missing from the most popular Magical Girl anime to hit American shores? Fighting . . . Flash forward to today. Jen Bartel and Tyler Bartel have teamed up . . . to fix this previous oversight with CRYSTAL FIGHTERS.” —UPROXX