Thinking Inside the Box

Thinking Inside the Box, originally uploaded by spookoo. Marc Siegel, Christine Norrie, Gene Yang, and Robert Wu

I'm pretty terrible about doing post-event posts, but I had two nice photos emailed to me and I thought I'd share them, as well as a couple thoughts from this great panel I participated in--

A couple weeks ago, The Museum of Chinese Americans hosted an event centered around the growing industry and success of Asian-Americans in comics and graphic novels. Moderated by Pornsak Pichetshote, I spoke alongside Gene Yang, Jann Jones, Jae Lee, Larry Hama, and Jeff Yang. The audience filled every seat with a standing crowd jam-packed in back and spilling out into the hallway. The discussion was very lively with memorable topics such as:

-- Despite no young boy in the 80s claiming they wanted to play with GI Joe "girl dolls", every boy seemed to own The Baroness, Lady Jane, and Scarlet figs. This point stemmed from Larry speaking about his time writing GI JOE and how it related to the show.

-- Jae Lee and Gene Yang talked about their projects and why they chose to follow their own creative paths, rather than conform to a publisher's expectation of style. Later, Larry would speak about his experiences working with a lot of the greats (Wally Wood and Al Williamson!) and the idea of "not settling". His belief is that an artist should push themselves, to not settle with work that's just easy and gets the job done... but to try and do your best work, even when it's rough-going. (A difficult task to be sure, but a philosophy that spurred me to applause.)

-- I was asked if I minded revealing costumes on super-hero women and I replied that I don't mind skimpy. I actually very much like sexy. I'm just often offended by female super-heroes because of what the creative team and publisher is suggesting in the characters' gesture and attitude. The rude INTENT behind the drawing. I like sexy, I don't like skanky.

After the event, I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner where I discovered the most brilliant food of all time: the soup dumpling. Then, I was even more fortunate to find myself hanging with Pornsak, Larry, Gene, Gina, and Nancy for drinks and great conversation. Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person alive...

PHOTO by Robert Wu
Disclaimer: I look terrible in this photo. I was suffering from a sudden allergy that makes me look like I've been crying for hours, I was late to the event because a water pipe broke in our building, plus I was held up in traffic due to the San Genarro Festival. Oh, and I paid $14 to go eight blocks, and I live in walking distance to the Museum!!

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