Some of the leading Asian American comic book authors shared their story at a panel entitled Asian American Comics and Creators at New York Comic Con this month.
Greg Pak (Totally Awesome Hulk, Kingsway West) was joined by Ethan Young (Nanjing: The Burning City), Wendy Xu (Mooncakes), Marjorie Liu (X-23, Dark Wolverine, Monstress), Janice Chiang (The Shadow Hero), Amy Chu (Poison Ivy, The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain), and Larry Hama (G.I. Joe, Wolverine).
Bleeding Cool reports that many of the panelists dig deep into their past and channel that feeling of “otherness” in their work.
“As a child, if I would say, ‘I’m Chinese American’, they would give me really funny looks and they would say, ‘well, no you’re not,’” said the bi-racial Liu. She says her characters reflect that feeling of being an outsider.
Others on the panel picked up on that theme.
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“I feel like I should be sitting at the kids table at Thanksgiving,” said Hama, the veteran on the panel.
Chu grew up in the diverse state of New York and thinks her comics reflect that.
“To the extent that I can, and I don’t think I have to, but I do feel this obligation to put in people of color in all my comics: Asians, Latino, Black, everything. I spent many years in New York and this is what I see.”
Young acknowledged “It would be nice to see characters that look like me.”
Xu’s Mooncakes has two Chinese American characters which she describes as a “queer paranormal romance.”
Chiang announced that she would be working on a “secret project” targeting younger girls.
Pak, who moderated the panel, asked if the others avoid certain story lines . Pak himself avoids turning his characters into martial artists.
“There’s always the Chinatown episode. There’s always the Yakuza episode. There’s always the ‘abused, beaten Chinese woman terrorized by the Chinese man’ episode,” said Liu.
You can read about their experiences working as an Asian American in a largely White industry in Bleeding Cool.
