DC Comics announced a brand new series Duo featuring an Asian American superhero to celebrate AAPI heritage month.
The series is written by Greg Pak, known for his work in Hulk and X-tream: X-Men, and is illustrated by artists Khoi Pham and Scott Hanna. As a six-issue limited series, Duo will make its first appearance in the Earth-M line as part of the Milestone universe relaunch, according to Screenrant.
Duo will explore two nanotechnology engineer lovers, Dr. Kelly Vu and Dr. David Kim, who has been combined into one body from an experiment. The story will depict various Asian American backgrounds, as the characters David Kim is Korean American and Kelly Vu is Vietnamese American.
Pak shared his excitement in representing and telling stories of multiple Asian American backgrounds and experiences in this comic.
“I’m thrilled about the project because so many Asian Americans live in Pan-Asian families, where you have people of multiple backgrounds in the same family,” Pak said in a DC Comics blogpost. “Those kinds of relationships are everywhere, but they’re seldom represented, you know? And so, there’s something nice about normalizing that kind of experience.”
Pham, one of the artists for the comic, said he was “proud” to be able to depict darker-skinned Asian Americans in Duo, according to Verve Times.
“One of the things I really wanted to do, and Greg was completely on board with it, was depicting a dark-skinned Asian,” Pham said to DC Comics. “That’s not very frequent, unfortunately, it’s kind of an issue in Asian culture. So, we made Kelly darker.”
In addition to this series, DC Comics will release seven AAPI-themed variant covers in May, according to CBR. Some will include a Batgirls #6 cover by Audrey Mok or a Marcus To cover for the Monkey Prince #4.
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