By Ada Tseng
After an award-winning year in 2006, American Born Chinese creator Gene Yang continues to build an audience for graphic novels, one lecture at a time.
The original golden age of comics refers to a period around the 1940s, when the comic book was a popular mainstream art form in America. It was a time when the special effects technology of film and television was still in its developmental stages, and therefore skilled comic book artists could create graphics for science fiction stories that were more visually-convincing (not to mention less expensive) than any other storytelling medium.
Over the years, the graphic novel has taken a backseat to film and literature, but some comic book artists and critics -- including Douglas Wolk, author of Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean -- are arguing that there is a new golden age of comics currently in full swing.
"American comics had a golden age where it was really popular, but it was mostly kids reading it, and the kinds of stories that were being told were pretty juvenile," says Gene Yang, the author of American Born Chinese. "There were inklings of maturity, but not really. Now, comics is becoming a mass medium once again and getting critical attention, but the difference between now and the first golden age is that the stories that are being produced now are very mature. They're some of the best stories that have been produced in the medium."
Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth are a examples of graphic novels that have raised the profile of the medium, both critically and commercially. With the recent success of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis -- the graphic novel was an international best-seller, and the subsequent film adaptation garnered Satrapi and partner Vincent Paronnaud an Academy Award nomination -- the mainstream public is opening its hearts to comics that aren't necessarily about superheroes.
In 2006, Yang's American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award, and it was the first to take home the American Library Association's Printz Award. American Born Chinese weaves three separate stories together and retells The Monkey King in a way that comments on the identity struggles of growing up Chinese American.
Yang, a computer science high school teacher by day, comic-book artist by night, has recently been making his rounds at Bay Area public libraries, speaking not only about American Born Chinese but also about the art of the comic book -- how long it takes to draw each page, how he outlines his stories, and how comic books get (or don't get) published.
The comic, he argues, is the most intimate medium of storytelling. Unlike film or animation, the comic is created by the individual, as opposed to a team. Unlike art or literature, the comic artist has to pay attention to both the literal and the visual; every choice of word, font, movement, ink, and texture plays a role in the reader's experience.
"I think my style is pretty heavily influenced by animation," says Yang. "Particularly Disney animation because that's what I wanted to do when I was young."
He jokes that his drawings, characterized by clean lines with little shading or cross-hatching, may be more an indication of his effort to draw quickly, as opposed to an actual stylistic choice. But he explains that different comics have different sensibilities. Within alternative comics, people can generally be divided into two different camps: comics as art (gorgeous, elaborate visuals; books that are often hand silk-screened or hand-painted) vs. comics as story. Yang considers himself in the latter camp, a cartoonist who just wants the art to be inviting enough for the person to engage in the narrative.
Yang also cites the crew of cartoonists that he hangs out with in the Bay Area as heavy influences on his personal style. "There's a whole bunch of us who all started around the same time and hooked up with each other at these comic book conventions: Derek Kirk Kim, Lark Pien (who colored American Born Chinese), Jason Shiga, and Jesse Hamm."
Derek Kirk Kim won what they call "the trifecta of the comics world" -- the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz -- for Same Difference and Other Stories in 2003. Yang credits his friend with getting American Born Chinese published as a book. American Born Chinese started out as a mini-comic that Yang was publishing online at a subscription web-comics site called ModernTales: Professional Web Comics (http: //www.moderntales.com/). After Kim signed with First Second Books, he took Yang's American Born Chinese pages, paid for the binding, sent it to his publishers, and called the editor for a week until he read it. Yang says that whenever he’s asked for advice on getting into the comic book industry, he jokes: "Be friends with Derek Kirk Kim."
Lark Pien (http: //www.larkpien.com/), who recently won a Harvey Award for Best Colorist for her work on American Born Chinese, is a cartoonist in her own right with Stories From the Ward and Long Tail Kitty. According to Yang, she has recently signed three different book deals. Jason Shiga (http: //www.shigabooks.com/), who won the Eisner and Ignatz award in 2003 for Fleep, published Bookhunter in 2007 through Sparkplug Comics. Jesse Hamm (http: //www.jessehamm.com/) recently did a book with Derek Kirk Kim for DC Comics called Good as Lily.
Gene Yang is also collaborating with Derek Kirk Kim on a book tentatively titled Second Lives, with Yang as writer and Kim doing the illustrations. "Derek's art is so amazing and gorgeous," says Yang. "The best part is watching him draw." The two first worked together to create 1999's Duncan's Kingdom, a fantasy published by Image Comics. Yang and Kim have added two more stories to Duncan’s Kingdom, and all three stories will have the tension between fantasy and reality as its underlying theme.
These friends make up just a fraction of what Yang calls the Bay Area comics community. While the Asian American comics community is more amorphous, Yang is quick to point out the numerous up-and-coming Asian American creators, both in alternative and mainstream comics, these days.
"It's weird that there's so many," says Yang. "Percentage-wise, there are more successful, recognizable Asian Americans in comics than in any other art medium."
The Museum of Chinese in the Americas hosted a recent fall 2007 event devoted to "Asian Americans in the Comic Book and Graphic Novel World," attracting industry talents such as Larry Hama (G.I. Joe, Wolverine), Christine Norrie (Breaking Up), Jann Jones (coordinating editor for DC Comics), Jae Lee (Inhumans, Hellshock), and Gene Yang as panelists. Adrian Tomine, an illustrator for the New Yorker and the creator of the Optic Nerve series, recently published Shortcomings, a story about a sardonic Asian American male and his confusion over racial attractions. Lela Lee is making a name for herself with her Angry Little Girls (http: //www.angrylittlegirls.com/) comics and paraphernalia. Tak Toyoshima’s Secret Asian Man (http: //www.secretasianman.com/) is the first nationally-syndicated comic trip that features an Asian American leading character. And Greg Pak, who film enthusiasts know for Robot Stories, is a long-time writer for Marvel Comics. Responsible for the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines as well as the X-Men: Phoenix -- Endsong miniseries, Pak, along with Takeshi Miyazama, recently created the Marvel Comics character Amadeus Cho, a teenage supergenius who was a major character in World War Hulk and the Incredible Hulk.
Currently, Gene Yang is writing and illustrating a comic book about the Boxer Rebellion, a Chinese uprising at the turn of the century in 1900. "There was a paragraph in your World History textbook when you were in ninth grade, and that's probably all many people know about it," says Yang," but it's a big, big thing. It was the first war of the 20th century, even though it's not officially called a war. It's officially called a rebellion."
In year 1900, when China was weak and their last dynasty was about to fall, the European Unions came in and occupied parts of China. Germany took the Jiao Zhou region; the British seized Weihai city. "They were just a lot more powerful, so they bullied the Chinese around," explains Yang. "In the summer of 1900, a group of poor peasant boys from the rural areas just south of Beijing rose together and started throwing off the missionaries and European soldiers. And it gradually became this movement of thousands of thousands of boys. They stormed into the capital and almost succeeded in killing off all the Europeans there. In the end, these 16, 17, 18 year-old boys were so successful that the Chinese military actually joined them in attacking the Europeans."
The Boxers killed 230 foreigners, and the uprising that took place mostly in the Shandong and Shanxi provinces resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. And Yang is turning this moment of history into a graphic novel.
For Gene Yang's website, click here (http: //www.humblecomics.com/). For the official site of American Born Chinese, click here (http: //www.firstsecondbooks.com/abc.html).
Published: Friday, February 22, 2008
