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A Story Unfinished for Seventy Years: “The Shadow Hero” by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew

This post was originally published in “The Elkhart Truth” in October 2014. 

What makes Gene Luen Yang stand out as a comic book creator is his background in education: until fairly recently, he was a high school computer science teacher, who created comics as a hobby. Then “American Born Chinese,” which he both wrote and illustrated, became the first comic to be a finalist for the National Book Award in 2006.

Yang’s works always aim to educate, whether about immigrant stereotypes in “American Born Chinese” or the complicated history of the Boxer Rebellion in his more recent “Boxers & Saints.” (You can read my review of “Boxers & Saints” in the Commons Comics archives.) His newest work, “The Shadow Hero,” a collaboration with Malaysian-born illustrator Sonny Liew, is a prequel to the short-lived “Green Turtle” series from the 1940s, and closes with an essay about the original series, as well as a complete reproduction of the first issue.

But since some readers, especially of comics, tend to associate “educate” with “zzzzzzz” or “too many words,” let me assure you: “Shadow Hero” is not just smart and instructive, but also visually striking, action-packed, and often surprising.

Since my last post was about comics for very young kids, I should note that “Shadow Hero” is written for teens and older. As with a lot of superheroes, a violent family tragedy catapults Green Turtle into maturity and responsibility—as well as into a vaguely silly costume that needs a few revisions before it settles into a final form.

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The Weight of Memory: “Clyde Fans,” by Seth

“Clyde Fans,” by Seth. Drawn and Quarterly, May 2019. 488 pp. Hardcover, $54.95. Adult.

Drawn and Quarterly sent me a free review copy of this book.

Canadian comics artist Seth cultivates an antique persona, complete with tie, overcoat, fedora, and what look like horn-rimmed glasses. With a given name like Gregory Gallant, you wouldn’t think he’d need a pseudonym.

But Seth likes to push boundaries: between people and their public and narrative personas, as well as between history and fiction. Seth’s first major book, “It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken,” published in 1996, was supposedly autobiographical, about his search for a “New Yorker” cartoonist who had disappeared from public view. As the book gained popularity, Seth eventually let on that he had manufactured the whole scenario, although much of the detail from the narrator’s life in the story was autobiographical. In an odd twist, despite the book’s fictional core, it’s often cited as the catalyst for an explosion of autobiographical comics that began in the 1990s and has fueled the genre since.

Seth’s just-released “Clyde Fans” is also fictional, although as he explains in an author’s note in the back of the book, it began with a real-life Ontario storefront of the same name, which he used to walk past. The office was closed, gathering dust, but he could see two framed portraits on a back wall, and wondered about the story behind those two men and their defunct business. He began writing a serial comic about Clyde Fans and the two brothers who ran it, whom he named Abe and Simon. Abe narrates in the image below, and you can see the two portraits hanging on the wall behind him before the frames zoom in for close ups:

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Local Comix: Goshen Graphix II

Here’s a re-post from 2014 about “Goshen Graphix II,” a book that Goshen College students from my Graphic Novel class released on PinchPenny Press, a project of the English Department at GC.

Drawings from some of those students, as well as students in subsequent classes, are included in an essay of mine about teaching comics that just came out in “Lessons Drawn,” a collection of scholarly essays edited by David Seelow.

Also keep an eye out for my co-edited book, with Hussein Rashid, “Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal,” which just went into production, and should be out on University Press of Mississippi later this year.

If you want to play around with drawing your own comics, there are lots of how-to books around now, but I especially recommend the books of Lynda Barry, one of the masters of demystifying and democratizing comics.

Stay tuned toward the end of May for a review of a new “picture novel,” “Clyde Fans,” from comics master Seth,  just out on the Canadian press Drawn and Quarterly.

Originally published on GoshenCommons.org on April 1, 2014

April has turned out to be a great month for comics in Michiana. First of all, Gene Luen Yang, the creator of “Boxers and Saints,” which I reviewed back in December, will be speaking on Thursday, April 10, at noon at the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids.

Yang is not only a master of his craft—his book “American Born Chinese” was a finalist for the National Book Award—but also a rare combination of super smart, super successful and super approachable. In other words, this is a presentation not to miss.

If the drive to Grand Rapids is too far, however, you can meet some local comics artists at the release party for “Goshen Graphix II” this Friday at Better World Books at 6 p.m.

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