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The Beat sat down with cartoonist Sonny Liew to chat about The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye – hisvnew graphic novel recently published in the US discussing Singapore’s tumultuous history after WWII through the work of prolific Singaporean cartoonist Charlie Chan Hock Chye.

I'm flying out to cover Image Expo and Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, but if I was sticking around San Francisco you'd be certain to see me at Sonny Liew's book release tour stop at The Isotope. Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye has already been declared "2016's first superalitve graphic novel" by our own Kyle Pinion, great review from NPR's Fresh Air, and it's already part of the discussion for what is 2016's first comics masterpiece. What's happening and where else can you see him?

Controversy! The title of "First Great Comic of 2016" is hotly contested this year!

The story goes that legendary Uncanny X-Men scribe Chris Claremont discovered Malaysian-born artist Sonny Liew at a comics convention and got him his first big break into comics, landing Liew a gig illustrating Iron Man for Marvel. It was a small gig, just one illustration, but it set the stage for Liew’s bright future in comics! In 2004, Sonny Liew won the Xeric Award(an award for excellence in self-published comics) in 2004 for Malinky Robot. Later, he would go on to illustrate such titles as Slave Labor & Disney’s Wonderland series, Marvel’s Sense and Sensibility adaptation, and collaborate with artist/inker Mark Hempel on DC/Vertigo’s My Faith in Frankie.

Before studying illustration at Rhode Island School of Design, Liew attended college in Singapore(where he currently resides) and in the UK. His work has been featured in the critically acclaimed anthology Flight and he’s served as editor of the Southeast Asian comics anthology Liquid City.

Liew has been a celebrated artist at home, winning Singapore’s Young Artist Award in 2010, but recently he’s found himself in a bit of controversy over his latest book, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. The grant that supported the making of that book was withdrawn by the National Arts Council for containing sensitive topics. You can hear more about this story from the man himself at this book sharing session.

Right now is a great time to become a Sonny Liew fan, because he’s making some of the best comics art of his career on the newly relaunched Doctor Fate series with famed DC writer/editor/former-president Paul Levitz! I see that more people are catching onto this series, now that it’s up to issue 5, so hopefully that will continue to happen and we’ll get a nice, long Doctor Fate run out of Liew!

If you’d like to see more art and learn more about Sonny Liew, check out his blog here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

The finalists for the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity Award have just been announced (disclosure: I am honored to have been one of the judges) and they are:

Hex11 by Lisa K. Weber and Kelly Sue Milano (HexComics)

M.F.K. by Nilah Magruder

Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona (Marvel)

The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew (First Second Books)

Shaft by writer David F. Walker and artist Bilquis Evely (Dynamite).

The winner will be announced on Saturday February 28 at 2 PM PT at the Long Beach Comic Expo. Reggie Hudlin will deliver the keynote address.

It was a tough choice in picking these but all the nominees are not only wonderful comics, but they push comics in the direction that they need to go; a direction that McDuffie was aware of the worked for both quietly and loudly before his very tragic death.

The LA times has a bit more on the awards from awards director Matt Wayne:

“Who gets to be the hero, and how readers get to see themselves reflected in the hero are complex matters that Dwayne thought about often. As editor in chief of Milestone Media’s original run of comics, he used terms like ‘multi-experiential’ to describe what we were doing,” said Matt Wayne, the director of the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity. “Independent publishing by its nature is more inclusive, so it’s no surprise that a number of the nominees are indies or even self-published. We hope that the DMAD will help these comics find new readers. The major comics publishers need no help from us, but whoa, ‘Ms. Marvel’ deserves every plaudit the world can work up!”

“I am so proud that my husband’s personal mission to include a more diverse array of voices–both in content and creators–is able to continue now through this Award in his name, by encouraging others who share his vision of comics, characters, and the industry itself better mirroring society,” said Charlotte McDuffie, Dwayne’s widow in a statement.

“The Long Beach shows are committed to diversity,” said Martha Donato, Executive Director of Long Beach Comic Expo. “It’s our great pleasure to host the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity Award ceremony and to celebrate the legacy of a wonderful man and writer who inspired so many people with his words, his action and his creations.”

Here’s the entire judging committee:

• Neo Edmund – Novelist, animation and comics writer;
• Joan Hilty – Nickelodeon Comics Editor; Creator of Bitter Girl;
• Joseph Illidge – Former Editor, Milestone and DC Comics; Columnist, Comic Book Resources; Writer, First Second Books;
• Heidi MacDonald – Editor in Chief, The Beat;
• Glen Murakami – Producer/Supervising Director, DC animated properties and Ben 10: Alien Force/Ultimate Alien;
• Eugene Son – Comics writer/Story Editor, Ultimate Spider-Man Animated;
• William J. Watkins – Writer; Former owner, Chicago’s first Black-owned comics store;
• Len Wein – Co-creator Swamp Thing, Wolverine, New X-Men; Former Editor-in-Chief- of Marvel Comics and Senior Editor, DC Comics.

And just because,here’s more info on the nominees and Dwayne:

ABOUT THE CREATORS OF HEX11:
Kelly Sue Milano was introduced to comics the way most five-year-old girls are: by getting taken to the Fullerton AMC Theaters to see Batman with her Dad in the summer of 1989. Though she wasn’t stoked at first, what followed was total and complete love. Not just with superheroes and comics – but with stories. She has been published in the Orange County Register, has written award-winning short stories, monologues, and comedy sketches, and has contributed to the development of several film projects for Periscope Entertainment. She also curates the blog for A.WAKE; a movement dedicated to celebrating female artists. Kelly Sue is a sucker for Nabakov and fancy coffee and currently lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Louie.

Lisa K. Weber makes art for comics, kid’s books, and cartoons. She also enjoys satire, white wine, and classic rock hits. She has created artwork for comic adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Hop-Frog, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and Saki’s Tobermory, all featured in Graphic Classics. Her illustrations have appeared in publications from Penguin Books, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt, Scholastic Inc, and Capstone Press. She has also contributed character designs and storyboards for Nickelodeon, Curious Pictures, and PBS Kids. Lisa currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

ABOUT THE CREATORS OF M.F.K.:
Nilah Magruder is a storyboard and concept artist artist in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Maryland, from a young age she developed an eternal love for three things: nature, books, and animation. Naturally, all of her school notebooks were full of doodles of animals and cartoon characters.

Nilah received a B.A. in communication arts from Hood College and B.F.A. in computer animation from Ringling College of Art and Design. She has illustrated for comics, children’s books, film and commercial television. Interested in exploring diversity in storytelling, she launched the action-adventure webcomic M.F.K. She believes that everyone should have characters with whom they can relate in their chosen entertainment, be it comic book, novel, film, TV, or video game.

ABOUT THE WRITER & ARTIST OF MS. MARVEL:
G. Willow Wilson is a novelist and comic book writer based in Seattle. Her works include the novel Alif the Unseen, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the 2013 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. She is the creator, with artist Adrian Alphona, of the bestselling All-New Ms. Marvel series from Marvel Comics. Her series Air (DC/Vertigo) and Mystic: The Tenth Apprentice (Marvel) were both nominated for Eisner Awards. In what spare time she has, Willow enjoys playing MMOs, watching British television, cooking, and maintaining the proud tradition of the Oxford comma. She lives with her husband and their two children.

Adrian Alphona is the artist of MS. MARVEL. He illustrated an acclaimed run of RUNAWAYS written by Brian K Vaughan for Marvel Entertainment.

ABOUT THE CREATORS OF THE SHADOW HERO
Gene Luen Yang’s 2006 book American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award. His 2013 two-volume graphic novel Boxers & Saints was also nominated for a National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Prize.  Gene currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and children.

Sonny Liew is a comic artist, painter and illustrator whose work includes titles for DC Vertigo, Marvel Comics and First Second Books. He has received Eisner nominations for his art on Wonderland (Disney), as well as for spearheading Liquid City (Image Comics), a multi-volume comics anthology featuring creators from Southeast  Asia. His Malinky Robot series was a Xeric grant recipient and winner of the Best Science Fiction Comic Album Award at the Utopiales SF Festival in Nantes (2009).

His latest work is The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, which will be published by Pantheon Books in 2016.

ABOUT THE WRITER & ARTIST OF SHAFT:
David F. Walker is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and author of the YA series The Adventures of Darius Logan. His publication BadAzz MoFo became internationally known as the indispensable resource guide to black films of the 1970s. His work in comics includes the series Shaft (Dynamite Entertainment), Doc Savage (Dynamite Entertainment), Number 13 (Dark Horse Comics), The Army of Dr. Moreau (IDW/Monkeybrain Comics), and The Supernals Experiment (Canon Comics).

Bilquis Evely is a 24-year-old Brazilian comic book artist. She started her professional life in 2010 as the penceiller of the Brazilian comic book, Luluzinha Teen e Sua Turma” Her recent work includes The Shadow and Doc Savage for Dynamite. She is currently working on Shaft, which is written by David F. Walker.

ABOUT DWAYNE MCDUFFIE:
Dwayne McDuffie is best known as the co-founder and creator of Milestone Media. He was a Story Editor on the KIDS WB’s Emmy Award-winning animated series STATIC SHOCK, which he co-created. He was also a Producer and Story Editor on Cartoon Network’s JUSTICE LEAGUE. He was Editor-In-Chief of Milestone Media’s award-winning line of comic books, managing an editorial operation which boasted the best on-time delivery record in the industry for nearly four years running and has also worked as an editor for Marvel Comics and Harvey Entertainment. As a writer, Dwayne created or co-created more than a dozen series, including DAMAGE CONTROL, DEATHLOK II, ICON, STATIC, XOMBI, THE ROAD TO HELL and HARDWARE. He wrote stories for dozens of other comics, including, SPIDER-MAN, BATMAN: LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, THE TICK, CAPTAIN MARVEL, AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT, BACK TO THE FUTURE, HELLRAISER, ULTRAMAN, (The Artist Formerly Known As) PRINCE and X-O MANOWAR.

Dwayne won the 2003 HUMANITAS PRIZE for “Jimmy,” a STATIC SHOCK script about gun violence in schools. He was nominated for two EMMY AWARDS for the TV series STATIC SHOCK, a WRITERS GUILD AWARD for the TV series JUSTICE LEAGUE and three EISNER AWARDS for his work in comic books. His comic book work won eleven PARENTS’ CHOICE AWARDS, six “Best Editor” awards, and a GOLDEN APPLE AWARD for his “use of popular art to promote and enhance human dignity.”

Dwayne was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended The Roeper School. Before entering comics, he studied in undergraduate and graduate programs at The University of Michigan, then attended film school at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He also co-hosted a radio comedy program, while moonlighting pseudonymously as a freelance writer for stand-up comedians and late-night television comedy programs. He wrote scripts for an animated feature, episodes of BEN 10: ALIEN FORCE, STATIC SHOCK!, JUSTICE LEAGUE, WHAT’S NEW, SCOOBY-DOO? and TEEN TITANS.

By Kyle Pinion

Gene Luen Yang is the writer/artist of critically acclaimed graphic novels like American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints, as well as the writer of Level Up, The Eternal Smile, and adaptations of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yang’s work has been awarded with multiple Eisners including “Best New Graphic Album” for American Born Chinese (which was also the first ever graphic novel finalist for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature) and for “Best Short Story” for The Eternal Smile. This year, Yang was nominated for another Eisner, this time under “Best Publication for Teens (aged 13-17)” for the historical epic Boxers & Saints.

Additionally, 2014 saw the debut of his latest graphic novel, The Shadow Hero, a collaboration with artist Sonny Liew on a resurrection of the sadly forgotten Golden Age super-hero: The Green Turtle; a character who comics fans consider the first Asian American superhero.

I was fortunate enough to be able to spend time with Yang to discuss the origins of this new work, his collaborative process with Liew, as well as delving into some of the intricacies of Boxers & Saints and some of the connective tissue between his two most recent projects.

You’ve spent your career working on affairs of an educational nature, or towards a young adult audience, what was the impetus to delve into Superhero comics now?

I love superheroes. I grew up reading superhero comics, and starting collecting superhero comics in the fifth grade. I was a Marvel guy all the way through my childhood. I’m not totally sure why it took me so long to get to superheroes. There were a couple of opportunities that showed up maybe a few years ago, but the timing was just never right. This felt like a door opening. All of this pent up superhero energy that I had as a kid was finally released.

These other opportunities, were they mainstream superheroes?

Yeah, there were a couple of mainstream superhero opportunities where the timing was just never right, and in some ways, the Dark Horse book that I do: Avatar: The Last Airbender is about super powered young people, so there’s a lot of overlap between Avatar and traditional superheroes. But as for The Shadow Hero, this is really solidly in the genre and something that I just really wanted to do for a long time. I’m not totally sure why it took so long.

When did you first discover the work of Chu Hing?

It was online. Like how most of discover a lot of stuff on the internet and several years ago a good friend of mine, Derek Kirk Kim pointed me to this blog post on a site called “Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine”. It was a feature about this obscure character from the 1940’s called “The Green Turtle”. The Green Turtle was created by Chu Hing and the rumor was that Chu wanted him to be a Chinese American superhero but his publishers wouldn’t let him do it. So, he draws this comic in this really funky looking way, where he’s constantly hiding his face from us. The rumor was he did this so that he and his audience could imagine The Green Turtle as a Chinese American. When I read that blog post, I was just fascinated. I was fascinated by the character himself, and I thought his character design was so “Golden Age” with his bare chest and the cape and everything. There’s something endearingly goofy about it. And the rumor surrounding his creation I found fascinating as well.

What were some of the challenges you found in crafting an origin story for a character that had none, as I think Chu Hing crafted only a few stories at most?

Yeah, he did five, but they were only 8 pages long each. And each issue, he has this sidekick named “Burma Boy” and every time Burma Boy asks the Green Turtle for his origin story something interrupts him. So yet, there’s another thing that’s being hidden from you. It felt like it was very rich, the original material that is. There are all these weird little pieces that I wanted to try and puzzle together. There’s this other bit, he has this turtle shaped shadow that follows him around. In the original comic, there’s no explanation given for this thing at all, it was almost like a design artifact. I thought there was something there that I wanted to explore.

What were some of the influences that helped form this tale? You mentioned that you were a superhero fan growing up…

I think a lifetime of reading superhero comics was really the influence and in The Shadow Hero we wanted to play with a lot of the tropes and a lot of the conventions of the genre but aiming to present them in a new way.

Hank’s (the Green Turtle) family was one of the highlights of the book for me, and they were so well fleshed-out. I know you sometimes pull from your own life experiences, for example in American Born Chinese. Is that the case with Hank’s supporting cast?

Yeah, absolutely, I don’t know how to write outside of my own life. Even if the story is very fantastical or set in a fantasy world, I still feel like the origin of it has to start from my own life. For Hank’s family, his mom is this very opinionated person who comes from a really good place. But she has all these ideas about how he should live his life. She’s actually based on these women that I knew in a church that I grew up in, these Chinese and Chinese American women. Who were all very well intentioned, but had very strong opinions about your life.

Were they equally as hilarious as Hank’s mother?

As a kid, I found them simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. (laughter)

Where did Sonny Liew come into the picture?

Sonny and I had collaborated together. We did a short story for an anthology called Secret Identities. It was a collection of stories about Asian American superheroes by Asian American creators and I enjoyed that process of working with him so much that I wanted to do it again here. After I started writing the outline for The Shadow Hero, after I started talking to First Second about it, they asked who I wanted to collaborate with. Sonny was at the top of my list. I just thought he had the perfect combination of the comedic and dramatic, and I thought he would be perfect for the story.

Was there ever any consideration for you taking on art duties yourself?

I thought about it for like two seconds, but I just don’t think I could pull of what Sonny can pull off. He’s amazing!

Between the two roles, when you are the writer/artist on a piece of work vs. when you’re writing the story with someone else taking on the other half of the duties, does it differ your approach at all? Was it a matter of giving up some control so Sonny could craft his own vision of your words?

Absolutely, when you work with someone else, you expect the final voice that comes out to be a mixture of the two people that are working together. And then, for something like Boxers & Saints, where I did all of the writing and the drawing, I had a really personal vision that I wanted to throw out. I did work with someone on that as well, as even Boxers & Saints was a collaboration with a colorist named Lark Pien, who is amazingly talented. The Shadow Hero, we’re hoping, is more of an expression of our friendship, of something that’s between the two of us.

Do you have an approach that you prefer?

No, I think it depends on the story. Like with The Shadow Hero, I just don’t think I could have pulled that off on my own. I really think having both Sonny and I together was the right way to go?

Do you work from a script when you collaborate with another artist like Sonny?

I gave it to him as thumb-nails, but the thumb-nail sketches that I sent to him were pretty basic. Everything was laid out on a six-panel grid and he was the one that sort of innovated on top of that.

Will there be more of The Shadow Hero in the future? A possible sequel?

I’m not sure yet, I hope so. I really love working in that world and that character, but a lot of that depends on Sonny and his schedule. He has a lot of deadlines that he’s trying to make right now. It also depends on how this first book does and what First Second thinks.

Sonny teased me on Twitter about it and got my hopes up for a Part Two or an on-going series of some kind.

I would love to keep working with him.

Just to circle to the other half of the reason you’re here is because of your Eisner Nomination for Boxers & Saints, which I’m a massive fan of as well, and from a personal side of things it was an area of history I didn’t know much about…

Well, thank you, I didn’t know much about the Boxer Rebellion either when I started that project. I vaguely remember hearing about it from high school history. The reason I got interested is, I grew up in a Chinese Catholic community and in the year 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized a group of Chinese Catholic Saints. It was the very first time that Chinese citizens had become canonized, which my home church kind of freaked out about. When I then looked into the lives of these Saints, I discovered that a lot of them had been martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. They were specifically martyred because they were Easterners that had embraced Western faith. I felt like that whole incident kind of embodied this clash of Eastern/Western thinking that I personally have struggled with as an Asian American, for someone that has a foot in each culture.

It’s also a beautifully even-handed approach though between both sides. You display the heroism of those “Boxers” in the Boxers book, but in the Saints volume you see the aftermath of their actions and the people they are slaughtering. Was it your aim to display both sides in this fashion?

That came out of my own ambivalence. When I was reading about the history of it, I was so ambivalent, I was trying to find a hero and I couldn’t figure out who that hero was or what side that hero was on. That ultimately caused me to decide that I had to do two books.

The second book, Saints, is a little more monochromatic looking in its coloring, was that all Lark or a decision you made together?

That was a decision we made together. I really wanted the first book to feel almost like a comics version of a Chinese War Epic. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one, but they’re always really long, really colorful and really sad at the end. That’s how I wanted that first book to be. The second book I wanted to be much more personal. I wanted it to be humble in every sense of the word; smaller, lessened scope than the first book, and I really wanted it to feel like an American Independent Comic. I feel like a lot of that type of comic has a limited use of color that establishes a sense of intimacy between the reader and the creator, that’s what we were going for.

The books also take a similar approach to faith and religion, I was particularly struck by the panel of Jesus Christ with the eyes on his hands, which hearkens back to the fable that was brought up in the Boxers book. How much of your own religious belief was brought into this work?

Faith is an important part of my life, its one of the major pieces on which I build my own identity. When I was in college, I really struggled with this, with how to write about faith in an authentic way. Anytime I would try to do it, it would come out really stale and preachy. I had a writing professor who was a Buddhist, she basically gave me the advice: “You should live your faith, and you should write your life”, and that’s what I’ve tried to do ever since. For the piece that you’re referring to, that was inspired by an actual piece of artwork I saw at an Asian art museum years and years ago. Guanyin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy was surrounded by this halo of hands with eyes in the palm. When I saw that I thought that looked so much like a crucified hand, that looks so much like the imagery I was surrounded with in a Western church. I wanted to explore that connection. That image with a hand with some kind of hole or an eye, it’s independent of faith. It’s found in all sorts of world faith traditions and it’s a very interesting thing.

As a sort of common denominator between the two works (Boxers & Saints and The Shadow Hero), you delve into magical realism a bit. When I read the first chapter of The Shadow Hero, I found some point of comparison between yourself and Gilbert Hernandez’s Palomar stories.

Oh, I love Gilbert Hernandez, love him!

Me too! Is the choice to aim towards magical realism in these tales a conscious choice or is it a natural off-spring from what might start off as a more grounded idea?

It has to come out naturally. I think it comes about growing up having read superhero comics and being really big into fables and stories that I inherited from my parents. I think it just kind of comes out and it feels natural to me to aim for Magical Realism in the comics.

Are there other influences that you draw from other than Los Bros Hernandez?

I could give you a list of cartoonists as long as my arm: Osamu Tezuka, Jeff Smith, and a bunch of my own friends like Jason Sheehan, they all have influenced me in some way. Scott McCloud is a big influence too. As for stuff outside of comics, for that project in particular (Boxers & Saints), I kept thinking back to this novel by a Japanese Catholic Author named Shusaku Endo who wrote a novel called Silence. He deals with a lot of these same issues, including tension between East and West, what faith is, and what role it should play in an individual’s life and society. It’s a beautiful book.

Since we brought up the Gilbert Hernandez comparison, their work is often praised for its look into Latin American culture, and a lot of your work is focused on the Asian American experience be it the immigrant’s tale seen in The Shadow Hero, the historical background of Boxers & Saints, and the personal nature of American Born Chinese. Do you feel a sense of responsibility as a sort of vanguard of Chinese American focused writing in comics?

I think with all my books, I just really want to tell a story that will carry my reader from the first page to the last. And the way I know how to do that is to sort of write the things that are important to me. Culture and the intersection between culture is something that has always fascinated me and I think that’s where its always come out.

You’ve had a long relationship with First Second, why that particular publisher?

They’re amazing, you know we talk about this intersection between cultures, I really feel like First Second is like that in so many different ways. But one way is that they’ve published Asian comics, European comics and American comics. Their aesthetic is sort of a combination of all three of those different cultures. I feel like I fit here.

Any future projects you’re working on beyond The Shadow Hero?

I’m working on a middle grade comic book, it’s a series, and we’ve signed on for three books so far. I’m doing it with another cartoonist named Mike Holmes and it’s all about coding and programming.

That’s a whole area of your background we didn’t even get a chance to talk about, your Computer Science background. I hope that’ll be something we can circle back to next year!

That’ll be great!

I’ve been following the progress of Sonny Liew’s (Malinky Robot, My Faith in Frankie) upcoming biography of Singaporean comics pioneer, Charlie Chan Hock Chye for a while now, which he’s been producing for publishers Epigram Books:

‘With a career spanning more than five decades, from pre-independent Singapore through its three Prime Ministers, Chan’s work reflects the changing political and economic environment in Singapore. Containing Chan’s original illustrations, painting and sketches, this is a groundbreaking work and labour of love aimed at recapturing the portrait of an artist.’

Liew began work on the the Charlie Chan biography when Singaporean publishers, Epigram Books, introduced their new comics line with the simultaneous release of 4 titles: Ten Sticks and One Rice, Scengapore, Monsters, Miracles and Mayonnaise and The Girl Under the Bed. The venture has been pretty successful, with the books critically well-received in addition to Drewscape’s Monsters gaining an Eisner nomination, and Ten Sticks winning the bronze International Manga award.

Yesterday in the shop (I work at a comics store), we got the new biography of Vincent Van Gogh in (which focuses on his stay in Provence, and looks utterly gorgeous, by the way), written and illustrated by Barbara Stok, and published by Self Made Hero. It got me thinking how the comics biography has gone from strength to strength in recent years, from books on Richard Feynman, 2 books on the Beatles (Baby’s in Black andThe Fifth Beatle) Box Brown’s upcoming Andre the Giant, Primates- a joint recollection of the work of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas, and a lot more. I’m of the belief that the reason for this popularity is that non-fiction and biography in particular, is more easily salable to non-comics readers, and even booksellers, in that the point of interest is very easily defined.

Due for publication later in the year, the more I see of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, the more it looks like it’s going to be Liew’s magnum opus (to date). He’s taken a multi-layered approach to the text, rather like The Photographer, not only telling Hock Chye’s life story in comic form, but incorporating pages of the comics he produced into the narrative, along with photographs, as well as switching between a mixture of art styles. Liew’s posted another updated, extensive preview at his blog, which you should really go check out, although I couldn’t resist posting some of the pages here- they look so good.

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Over at his blog, Sonny Liew’s been posting some lettered pages from his as yet untitled upcoming book with Gene Yang for First Second, and it looks pretty great, particularly that 50′s inspired pulpy cover. As a fan of Liew’s work, I’ve been keeping up with this project for a while, (although aware of Yang  -as the author of American Born Chinese and Level Up- I’ve yet to get round to reading any of his books), so I knew it was a retro superhero book, but that’ s about it. Here’s an exclusive, and intriguing, little synopsis from Liew:

‘It’s basically a origins story of a character created back in the 40s – his distinction being that he was meant to be Asian American. Gene has been exploring identity issues with his comics, of course, so this is another angle.

One of the interesting things about the comic was that the artist and creator (Chu Hing) has to go out of his way never to show his face in the comic – which apparently was due to his publishers or editors not wanting to reveal too  clearly that he was, in fact, Asian! We did try to incorporate those elements into the book.’

Chu Hing is credited for working on 29 issues in the 40′s and 50′s, 4 of which were on a title called Blazing Comics (the book Liew’s homaged in the cover above). These books featured the character Yang and Liew are reviving: Green Turtle- ‘the first Asian superhero’, a ‘mysterious individual who almost never let anyone see his face (the reader included). Armed only with his wits, combats skills, a remarkable light aircraft (the Turtle Plane,) and a mystic jade dagger, he and Burma Boy, a youngster he saved from the Japanese, flew across Asia battling the Imperial Japanese Army. While having no obvious powers granted by his jade dagger, he did seem to cast a shadow that had a bright pair of eyes and face.’ (via Comic Vine)

No projected release date for this yet, but another title to add to your list of ‘books to keep an eye on.’