Jam masters, sketch faster: Secret Identities' San Diego Comic-Con '09 jam piece

At Comic-Con, Secret Identities fans were asked to go on a con floor scavenger hunt to collect 10 signatures of contributors from the book and then enter their names into a drawing. The winner of the drawing would receive a jam piece of Asian American superheroes drawn by artists who participated in the book, or in the case of Larry Hama, almost participated (but has given the book his blessing and even lent his mug to a cartoonized version of himself).


Either Parry Shen or Keith Chow invited me to jam. I practiced my jam piece contribution on a separate piece of paper before getting to work on the actual jam piece. Keith was kind enough to help shoot footage of me with my tiny Aiptek HD camcorder while I sketched (this pic is actually a capture from the footage). The camcorder, which doubles as a still camera, particularly fascinated Ming Doyle and Keiko Agena's husband, who told me he'd now like to have a similar camera.


At first, I tried to sketch out an Asian American version of Batman, but it looked terrible (I stuck a yin-yang symbol on his cowl), so I opted to draw "Sampler" character June Park instead.

Drawing June is something I rarely do--I prefer to leave that task to the professionals--so I had to pause for a few minutes and brainstorm how June would look on the jam piece. While I'm brainstorming during the camcorder footage, Keith can be heard joking, "This is riveting television."

The final result, a collage of drawings by Hama, Ming, Bernard Chang, Benton Jew, Tiffanie Hwang, Jerry Ma, Gene Yang, Sonny Liew and myself, looks dope and was inked by Walden Wong.


Top row: Asian (and most likely lactose-intolerant) Hulk by Bernard and June Park of "Sampler" by yours truly.

Center row: Jimson Po from Jeff Yang's "Driving Steel" by Benton, a Ninja Turtle by Tiffanie, a character whose name escapes me by Jerry and X-Men member Jubilee by Ming.

Bottom row: Snake Eyes by Hama, the Monkey King by Gene and a trademark Sonny Liew pairing of a kid and a robot.

Congrats, Orange, California resident Cecil DeClaro, the proud owner of our jam piece, which is already a collector's item because of the debut of Asian Hulk ("Mr. McGee, don't make me hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry.").

[Via Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Blog]

Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology is hummin', comin' at ya

The New Press graphic novel Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology finally drops today. It features my print comics writing debut, "Sampler."

Other stories in the collection include "Justified" by artists Tiffanie Hwang and Ken Wong, the creator of self-published comics like Pandora's Box, who, like me, is making his graphic novel scriptwriting debut in this anthology; "The Blue Scorpion" by celebrated American Born Chinese author/illustrator Gene Yang; "The Citizen" by industry heavyweights Greg Pak and Bernard Chang; "You Are What You Eat" by Saving Face star Lynn Chen and Maxwell Wong creator Paul Wei; and "James," an amusing jab at American pop culture's constant emasculation of Asian guys that was written by Michael Kang, the director of the underappreciated indie movie The Motel. Erwin Haya illustrated both "James" and "Sampler."

Secret Identities: TAASA also includes stories penned by editor-in-chief Jeff Yang, managing editor Parry Shen (from Better Luck Tomorrow and the 2006 FX miniseries Thief) and Gilmore Girls alumna Keiko Agena.

The blogroll on the Secret Identities editors' blog has a complete list of the writers and artists who participated in the novel, which, to borrow the words of reviewer and Secret Identities champion Anne Ishii, "sets out to find or create more Asian-American superheroes; to balance a status quo of 'white' super men who are disproportionately depicted, inked, given voice and color (ahem) by Asian-American artists."

June Park, the power-absorbing protagonist of "Sampler," got bored one day while business was rather slow at her family's dry cleaning store, so she surfed the Web and played around with the Hero Factory superhero generator, which dubbed her "Sergeant Avenger."


Now go buy Secret Identities, so that there can be more Sergeant Avengers who look like June, alright?