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]

Hello San Francisco: Snapshots of Secret Identities at Giant Robot SF

Giant Robot SF and Secret Identities editor-in-chief Jeff Yang assembled some of the novel's Bay Area-based contributors--"Just Ordinary" artist Alexander Shen, "Justified" artist Tiffanie Hwang, "Gaze" inker Walden Wong and I--for a spirited two-hour July 16 signing session at the Shrader Street store that flew by faster than a morning jog with the Flash.

"S.O.S." writer Tanuj Chopra and "The Blue Scorpion & Chung" writer Gene Yang didn't make it to the signing. Gene, whose collabo with Derek Kirk Kim, The Eternal Smile, recently hit stores, couldn't be with us because he was busy with his day job (teaching computer science at a Catholic school).


From left to right: myself, Walden (who has his own recap of the signing here), Tiffanie, Jeff and Giant Robot SF manager Luke Martinez stand in front of Jeff's Secret Identities slide presentation. (Not in the picture: Alexander.)


Instead of signing each copy of Secret Identities with the same message, I wanted to challenge myself by writing a different message in each copy ("Thanks for supporting Asian American/Pacific Islander superhero comics," "I don't know you, but I love you for being a Secret Identities fan," "Stay cool. It's so damn hot out there," "Everybody in the store gettin' tipsy").


Here I am with one of my older brother's former roommates, Dan Genova, and his son Martin. Dan's known me since the days when I visited my brother at his university and I tried to write the Great Asian American Novel, which I never completed (elements of this unfinished story live on in my webcomic The Palace). The Genovas' visit was a wonderful surprise.

Added on July 23, 2009: The next several photos were taken by Giant Robot. The magazine/boutique store franchise posted their complete gallery of the event here.








Many of the readers at this signing--my second signing--hadn't read Secret Identities yet but were genuinely interested in our novel. While they left Giant Robot with signed copies of our book, I left the store with a copy of Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings, which has nothing to do with superheroics. If I knew how to draw better, I'd sketch a Batman/Shortcomings mash-up in which I'd turn Ben Tanaka and Alice Kim into the Frank Quitely version of Batman and Robin. Benman would come to the rescue of a white chick, of course, while Miko Hayashi would look on disapprovingly, and Robin would be busy spitting game at another lesbian.

Thanks, Giant Robot and the Bay Area fans who came to our signing!

I'll be at another Secret Identities book signing: Giant Robot Sucka Free on July 16

Coming soon to this blog is a recap of my first book signing at last Saturday's Asian American ComiCon. (Secret Identities artists Jerry Ma and Jeremy Arambulo have recapped the event in photos on their respective blogs.) The AACC will be immediately followed by my second book signing.

Secret Identities editor-in-chief Jeff Yang and Bay Area-based Secret Identities contributors such as myself, Alexander Shen, Tanuj Chopra, Tiffanie Hwang and Walden Wong will sign copies of the novel at a special book-release party at Giant Robot SF, 618 Shrader St., San Francisco, this Thursday, July 16 at 6pm.

Alexander drew "Just Ordinary" and an interview with "Trinity" writer/illustrator and Flash artist Greg LaRocque.

Tanuj wrote the SNL commercial parody-style "S.O.S."

Tiffanie drew "Justified."


Walden inked the one-page pinup "Gaze," which features a character created by Sung Kang (who's best known as Han the badass mentor in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift but whose real career highlight is his performance as a not-so-slick mentor in the terrific coming-of-age indie flick The Motel).

Secret Identities Bay Area chapter, represent!

[Via Alexander]