Stuff White People Like But This Brown Man Can't Stand #4: Unfunny jokes about former enemies of the U.S. when they experience national tragedies

Joan Rivers defended Gilbert Gottfried's controversial Twitter jokes about the disaster-stricken Japanese by saying comedians cope with tragedy through humor and then using her plastic-and-adamantium-coated face as a shield to protect Gottfried from the bullets from his angriest critics. I'm all for using humor to cope with tragedy, but when someone uses it to slam the victims of a terrible situation like Gottfried, Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin, several conservatards and countless others on Twitter did, it's not funny at all.

I appreciate how The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and my favorite new podcast Sklarbro Country handled the disaster in Japan and managed to find humor in the situation without veering into anti-Asian racism. Stephen Colbert came up with the funniest bit of disaster-related humor when he described the earthquake/tsunami/radiation crisis as a "disaster-ducken."

Meanwhile, the Sklar Brothers, whose hilarious podcast pokes fun at the often odd and insane behavior of sports celebrities, elbowed New York Liberty guard Cappie Poindexter in the face for her moronic tweets about the disaster being God's payback for Pearl Harbor and the way Japan treats their own people in "there" country.

"That's who we want commenting on this disaster. A guard from the WNBA. Yeah, we don't wanna hear from the head of the Red Cross or anybody from the State Department. We wanna hear from a women's professional basketball player," joked Randy and Jason, who were so appalled by Poindexter's tweets that they resurrected their discontinued "Douchebag of the Week" segment and picked "the Alexandra Wallace of the WNBA" as the segment's first-ever female douchebag, or "Douchebaguette of the Week."

"Now is not the time to blame Japan for anything, even Sudoku," said the twin brothers. "Leave them alone!"

Now is the time to help Japan, so I've taken part in the SIUniverse for Japan online auction to support GlobalGiving's Japan relief fund. For the next few weeks, fans of the 2009 graphic novel Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology can bid on artwork and other items donated by Secret Identities artists and writers like myself.

I've donated a couple of pieces of artwork that will be up for bid. One of the items is a poster of an illustration of Hideaki Akaiwa, an ordinary office worker in Miyagi prefecture who was named "Badass of the Week" for refusing to wait around for rescue workers and venturing out on his own with scuba gear and duct-taped-together plastic wrapped around his legs to rescue tsunami survivors like his wife.

When I first heard about this badass, I kept thinking, "Damn, this is like a real-life Sea Hunt," as in that old TV show I've never watched but I'm familiar with from the "By this time, my lungs were aching for air" running gag during Mystery Science Theater 3000's Lloyd Bridges/Rocketship X-M episode and Bridges' own spoof of his old show during Hot Shots! Part Deux. I Googled Sea Hunt, stumbled into old covers from the comic book version of Sea Hunt and drew for the auction a sketch of Akaiwa that I modeled after those covers.

Like Akaiwa has done for his family members and neighbors, go lend a hand to the disaster victims now.

APRIL 9, 2011 UPDATE: Here's my illustration of Akaiwa, entitled "Hideaki Akaiwa: A Real Life Superhero," which is now up for bid. It's a 20" x 24" poster that's printed on heavyweight coated paper.

APRIL 17, 2011 UPDATE: Sold! To Gary in Arlington, VA!

APRIL 21, 2011 UPDATE: The other item I donated to the auction is an illustration of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle that I did for my upcoming self-published print compilation of the most responded-to posts from this blog. The title of the book--and this is the first time I've posted the title here--is I Suck at Math: A Trio of 10 Articles About Pop Culture.

My Harold & Kumar drawing is a 14" x 23" poster that's printed on heavyweight coated paper. It's now up for bid.

MAY 10, 2011 UPDATE: Sold! To Quentin in Concord, NH!

Dwayne McDuffie (1962-2011)

Dead at 49, Dwayne McDuffie was an incredibly prolific comics and TV animation writer who, as a story editor and frequent scriptwriter for Justice League Unlimited, helped make that cartoon the most satisfyingly written DC Animated Universe show since Batman: The Animated Series. But McDuffie's greatest contribution remains Milestone Media, the indie comics company he co-founded in the '90s to make the way-too-white superhero genre more diverse and to give comics writers and artists of color more opportunities behind the scenes.

"It showed that there could be actual black people in comics," wrote comics reviewer David Brothers in a Black History Month tribute to McDuffie and Milestone that he posted a couple of weeks before McDuffie's death yesterday. "The company was full of people who looked, acted, and talked like people I knew. This is a big deal, believe it or not."

It was also a big deal for Asian American readers like myself who grew up in a multiracial world that wasn't being reflected enough in superhero comics (sadly, it still isn't) and were looking for comics that featured Asian characters who were raised in America like we were and weren't foreigners in corny dragon-themed or martial arts-themed costumes that were the Asian equivalent of the "headband and yellow disco shirt" that The Boondocks once joked about in regards to Luke Cage's costume. Milestone responded to the lack of Asian American characters in superhero comics by creating the immortal hero Xombi and Third Rail, a Korean member of the Blood Syndicate, a superhero team comprised of gangbangers who were mutated by radioactive tear gas during a police crackdown on gangs. Latino and gay characters also inhabited the Milestone universe.

The most popular and enduring Milestone creation is McDuffie's Static character, a.k.a. Virgil Hawkins, a constantly bullied inner-city high-schooler who gains the ability to manipulate electricity after being exposed to the aforementioned radioactive tear gas. When the original Static comic debuted in 1993, I was glad to finally come across a comic about teens where the high school setting was hardly as clean-cut as Riverdale High or whatever campus subjected Peter Parker's Spider-Can to frequent wedgies. In other words, Ernest Hemingway High resembled the school I went to. Virgil's campus was beset by gang violence and racial conflict, elements that were watered down but still addressed in Static Shock, a more kid-friendly animated version that McDuffie was also involved in.

There had been previous attempts by other publishers to target readers of color, but the characters of color in those titles weren't as fully realized or three-dimensional as Virgil and the other Milestone characters were.

I got to meet McDuffie at a 2009 San Diego Comic-Con panel about diversity in comics where one of the projects that were discussed was Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, a graphic novel that followed in Milestone's footsteps and featured a short story I created, "Sampler." As a teen, I enjoyed Static, Blood Syndicate and Icon, so I was thrilled to meet McDuffie, who praised our GN and called it long-overdue.


I also enjoyed McDuffie's work on Justice League Unlimited. He came up with the premise for "The Great Brain Robbery," an amusing episode in which The Flash and Lex Luthor switched bodies and Michael Rosenbaum, who played Lex on Smallville when he wasn't providing the voice of The Flash on JLU, got to voice both his live-action and animated alter egos. McDuffie also crafted the show's Cadmus arc, which gave ample screen time to characters who were not so well-known to viewers who were unfamiliar with most of the DC books--like The Question, Green Arrow and The Huntress--and followed those heroes as they uncovered a government conspiracy to dismantle the Justice League due to fears that the team would become as corrupt as its parallel universe counterpart, the fascist Justice Lords. A high point of the series, the Cadmus arc dared to question (no pun intended) and critique the superhero genre's right-wing tendencies.

Although McDuffie's working relationship with DC, which distributed the Milestone books, had soured in recent years (some have viewed DC's mistreatment of McDuffie as racist), he continued to work on the company's animated projects. He scripted the feature-length adaptation of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's excellent All-Star Superman comic, which dropped on Blu-ray and DVD the same day he died.

McDuffie may be gone, but his fight to bring more diversity to comics rages on, whether it's in the form of Secret Identities or David Brothers' writing.

"You don't even see that these days," said Brothers in a tweet referring to how the diversity in the Milestone titles ventured to include not just black characters. "They weren't black comics. They were comics."

TV math

That line about all Asians enjoying math is bullshit because not all of us enjoy it. I hate math because I've always sucked at it. I barely remember how to do algebra anymore--that's how much I adore math. I took my own difficulties with math and made that trait a part of the backstory of the heroine I created for Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. If us Filipinos were great at math, we wouldn't be making so many damn boneheaded decisions when it comes to money, business or real estate.

I may suck at math, but I'm good at TV math, as you can see from these December 3, 2010 tweets I'm reposting. I got bored on Twitter one morning and started talking in nothing but TV math equations.

Evangeline Lilly

+ @MeganSCDP =

that hot chick in the T-Mobile myTouch 4G commercials
11:07 AM Dec 3rd

Robotech

+ the '90s MTV animated series Downtown

+ (the Clerks franchise minus the bestiality) =

the much-missed Megas XLR
11:15 AM Dec 3rd

Voltron

+ Bring It On

+ (The Powers of Matthew Star minus the sight of Louis Gossett Jr. slumming it) =

Sym-Bionic Titan
11:18 AM Dec 3rd

(28 Days Later minus fast zombies) + slow zombies + all the bickering scenes from Lost = AMC's adaptation of The Walking Dead
11:08 AM Dec 3rd

Early '90s-era Usher + the baritone of a teenage Wayne Newton + awful songwriting + Linda Evangelista's hair = Justin Bieber
11:09 AM Dec 3rd

Kelly Brook boobage + MTV Spring Break coverage reimagined by a Gorezone reader + (Jerry O'Connell minus his dick) = Piranha 3D #FilmMath
11:11 AM Dec 3rd

(The live-action Scooby-Doo minus the Scooby cast) + the Yogi cast + Hanna or Barbera spinning in his grave = that Yogi Bear movie #FilmMath
11:13 AM Dec 3rd

(Northern Exposure minus almost all the Indians) + the intellect of a bag of hammers + a train wreck = Sarah Palin's Alaska on TLC
11:20 AM Dec 3rd

"Sampler" went through several different titles before I finally settled on "Sampler"

Here's something I recently found in an old laptop I temporarily used in 2007, back when Secret Identities was searching for writers and artists. It's a list of title ideas I came up with for the Secret Identities treatment that became "Sampler":

"The Dry Cleaner's Daughter"
"Thanks Would Be Nice"
"If Only They Knew"
"Uncredited"
"Unappreciated"
"Cleaner"
"Stain Removal"
"Toucher"
"One Power at a Time"
"Not Just Another"

I'm glad I didn't go with the craptastic "Toucher" or "Cleaner." People would have confused my story with The Cleaner, the recently cancelled Benjamin Bratt/Grace Park show about rehab. "One Power at a Time" sounds like it involves Valerie Bertinelli, Mackenzie Phillips and a way-too-shouty Bonnie Franklin.

APE city

Indie cartoonist Javier Hernandez is a fan of the Fistful of Soundtracks channel (I'm glad to have introduced him to the comedy of Paul Mooney) and is always great to chat with about 007 music, so I dropped by the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco on Sunday to say hello to Jav, as well as grab some comics by Rafael Navarro, Debbie Huey and Rina Ayuyang, whose new Whirlwind Wonderland collection I've been looking forward to picking up. I also introduced myself to Hellen Jo and Martin Hsu, two Secret Identities contributors whose work was brought to my attention by the project while I wrote my Secret Identities story.

Also at APE 2009, I had Brandon Bird sign a copy of his brilliant Law & Order coloring book that I bought from him at APE two years ago (he ought to be a script doctor after explaining to me why he thought Harvey Dent was unconvincingly written as a "white knight" in The Dark Knight), and I chatted about '70s movies with Michael Aushenker (I was surprised he hasn't seen The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which Criterion finally released on DVD this summer, so I recommended it to him).

Because of the lack of booth babes and cosplayers, APE isn't as photogenic to me as its sister cons WonderCon and San Diego Comic-Con. (The even smaller Asian American ComiCon, where I was given my very first con table, was a lot like APE, in terms of low-keyness. Speaking of my first table, what was funny about that experience was that outside of Secret Identities, I had nothing else to promote at my table because everything I've written and drawn has been published only online. That's what I get for being a webcomic blogger.)

Despite the minimal photogenicity, I enjoy the smaller and much less crowded APE way more than the other two Comic-Con International cons. I prefer being able to walk around without getting poked in the eye by someone's Hasbro lightsaber.

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]

One day of San Diego Comic-Con '09 is all I can take

Like angry asian man blogger and Secret Identities booster Phil Yu (more on him later), I picked only one day to attend San Diego Comic-Con '09, and one day is really all I can tolerate of the overwhelming, overcrowded and smelly Nerd Prom.

My favorite aspect of Comic-Con is not the panels--I wasn't able to go inside any of the ones I wanted to see--but unexpectedly meeting writers and bloggers whose work I've enjoyed for several years, such as Phil. Here's my recap of Comic-Con Friday in pictures.


Hey Optimus, why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?


I didn't know Bumperboy creator Debbie Huey and I worked for the same university newspaper 12 years ago until my older brother pointed it out to me recently. We never met each other because her department of City on a Hill Press never really interacted with my department. I also didn't know Secret Identities approached Debbie to contribute a story, but she had to decline. I'm glad to see another alum from the paper doing well as an author (Azadeh Moaveni is another alum from my period at the paper who's had quite a career as an author).


From left to right: a group of cosplayers suited up as Wonder Woman, Poison Ivy, the Golden Age Flash, Harley Quinn and Green Lantern.


Here I am with Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who looks like he's pointing at me and saying, "Who the hell is this guy?," but actually, he's looking at another camera. The underrated Middleman TV series--one of my favorite shows that debuted last summer--may be cancelled, but it's having one hell of an afterlife at Comic-Con (Javier and the cast reunited to promote both the debut of a "series finale" in graphic novel form and a fully loaded DVD box set). It was also cool to unexpectedly run into one of the series' biggest boosters, blogger and Newark Star-Ledger TV critic Alan Sepinwall, at Javier's booth. Javier's next TV series will be the post-apocalyptic NBC drama Day One.


These Clone Stormtroopers are so lazy they don't even notice the guy's flashing a peace sign and outing himself as a Galactic Republic sympathizer. Quit falling asleep on the job, you goosestepping test-tube babies!



At the booth shared by Secret Identities and the Epic Proportions studio, I signed a few copies of Secret Identities for fans and then decided to challenge myself by doing something I rarely do, which is draw the character I scripted, "Sampler" heroine June Park (I prefer to have artists who are way more skilled than I am--like Erwin Haya--visually interpret June). I did a pencil drawing of June for a jam piece, the grand prize in a Secret Identities scavenger hunt.


I had to sketch out June first before doing the final drawing on the jam piece. Here's the rough sketch I made before redrawing it on the jam piece. JLA and Justice League Unlimited comics inker Walden Wong did a nice job inking the final drawing.


Erwin and I finally meet face-to-face. He said he didn't do the final lettering on "Sampler," which contained a few typos, and if he had gotten to do it, the typos wouldn't have appeared. I'm glad to see Erwin's artwork in "Sampler" has been getting positive feedback. He told me people have said to him that they want to see more adventures with June.


The recession's been so tough for Transformers' token female bot Arcee that she's had to moonlight as a bodyguard for the constantly pawed-at Olivia Munn.


Former Gilmore Girls co-star Keiko Agena and the talented--and lovely--Ming Doyle worked on the clever Secret Identities story "Learn to Share," about a blind Thai girl whose powers make Daredevil look like Don Knotts.


Avengers member Mockingbird prepares to use her battle stave on nerds who don't shower.


I could use a utility belt like Captain America's. I'd rather rock that than a camera murse.


It's Firestorm, back when he was white and into Seinfeld puffy shirts.



The Spy vs. Spy feud started when Black Spy dissed White Spy during "Pull Your Skirt Up."


Psylocke ought to use her psychic knife to shut down fake psychics like Dr. Girlfriend soundalike Sylvia Browne. Does Sylvia Browne smoke cigarettes or does she just eat them?


The Joker (with a bikini-clad Harley Quinn) refuses to join the spray tan bandwagon.


"Jayna, did you tell Gleek to take a shit in the bucket again? That shit's not funny!"



A G4 booth babe promotes the network's new reality show Focus Group, in which people are locked in a room where they're forced to watch nothing but G4's reruns of Cheaters.



Paramount Pictures booth babes take it to the bridge.


Only Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot and Fluid Man from Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles can pull off the scuba flipper look.


From left to right: Eternal Smile author Gene Yang, Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone and Secret Identities editor-in-chief Jeff Yang discuss the growing numbers of non-white or female comic book buyers at the SDCC panel Jeff moderated, "Four Color Reality: Making Comics Relevant to Readers Across Cultures."


During the "Four Color Reality" panel, Milestone Media founder and Justice League Unlimited writer Dwayne McDuffie recalled being the second African American to ever write a Marvel comic, as well as Milestone's efforts to tap into an underutilized talent pool of writers of color (Dwayne noted that Valiant was the only other comics company at the time that had an equally diverse staff). Yes, I know I look like I represent the Lollipop Guild, Daly City Chapter.


Dwayne stands with the four Secret Identities editors who followed his example (from left to right: Jerry Ma, Jeff, Keith Chow and Parry Shen).


Dwayne briefly reunites with letterer Janice Chiang, who worked on his issues of Iron Man and Hardware. Thanks, Janice, for introducing me to Dwayne, as well as past Spider-Man letterer and current Tales from the Crypt artist Rick Parker, former Marvel editor and current Papercutz editor-in-chief Jim Salicrup and '90s X-Men writer Scott Lobdell.


The highlight of the day was hanging out late at night with the likes of Jeff (who took this picture for me), Keith (not pictured), Amulet creator Kazu Kibuishi (not pictured), who contributed the "Go" pinup to Secret Identities, Eternal Smile artist Derek Kirk Kim (left) and Phil of angry asian man (right), whose shirt says "My Ninja!" and whose blog I've been following for several years.

I wasn't aware Phil and I both hailed from the South Bay. The first and last time I talked to him was via e-mail during the early years of his blog (I don't remember what we talked about in our exchange--I bet it was about Asian American movies). I was jazzed to learn from Phil that he's been checking out my blog, but I had to admit to him--and another guy in the room admitted this to Phil too--that I can't read his blog on some days because the hate crimes or moments of verbal Asian-bashing that he reports really make my blood boil.

I told Phil I'd like to be part of his blog's Angry Reader of the Week section someday (hey, my new friend Kate Agathon is the Angry Reader this week!), though one question might make me nervous: "What makes you angry?" I'd be nervous trying to answer it because the list of things that make me angry would turn the Angry Reader of the Week post into a three-parter.

Now added to that ever-expanding list: the long lines and claustrophobic Exhibit Hall at Comic-Con.

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Added on July 27, 2009: The Facebook version of this gallery contains some different photos. Also, almost all the captions for the pics on the Facebook version are completely different from the captions I wrote on this post. Check out my alternate silly captions.