#Gene Luen Yang

[thischristianguy]

Superman runs to Smallville in Gene Luen Yang’s “Superman Smashes the Klan”

He passes by the Lutheran church that has a verse on the sign

The verse Leviticus 19:34

What does that say?

“You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.”

‭‭Leviticus‬ ‭19‬:‭34‬ ‭HCSB‬‬

Nice work there

Remember Superman is the tale of the immigrant and the child raised between two worlds. How is that impossible a tale to tell?

[allgremlinart]

The Most Underrated Line In All Of ATLA/TLOK And Its Many Worldbuilding Implications - A Ramble

In S2E7 of TLOK we get this dialogue from Wan and The Aye-Aye Spirit: "There are other Lion Turtles?" "Of course there are - dozens of them!" [timestamp 3:38 in this video]

It's such a quick line it's easy to miss, but there's one thing about it that made a LOT of things click into place for me about the Avatar universe's worldbuilding; the fact that there are (or were) dozens of Lion Turtles. NOT four, with one for each element, like you would assume. Dozens.

What does this mean in terms of the Four Nations? What connections might this have with other previously established lore? Well uhm follow me on this journey. I guess.

Pre-Unifications - A Global Warring States Era?

A warring states era on a wouldn't be nearly as compelling if there were only four Lion Turtles. If this were the case, everything would be perfectly balanced; why would there be disarray, violence, cultural disparity and struggles for power within each elemental group if the world was already perfectly divided into four solid groups? Why would a national identity be in question at all?

But the fact that there are more than one Lion Turtle per element... that means different groups of people being isolated from one another for long periods of time. This means different bodies of identity, regardless of element. Different city states, regional Kings, Queens, fiefdoms, dynastic power struggle, etc etc, before any sort of inherent loyalty the ones element as a national and cultural identity was established.

We know the Avatar world was not always divided into Four Nations. In Chapter 21 of The Rise Of Kyoshi we learn that Guru Laghima - a name you'll recognize from TLOK S3 - was from an era when the Four Nations had not yet been formed. We also know from Zaheer that he lived about 4,000 years before the events of TLOK (for context, thats about 6,000 years after Wan became the first Avatar).

There's further confirmation of this in Smoke And Shadow, where we learn about the first Firelord and the Fire Nation's unification wars.

However there's implications of this even in the original series; it's not some sloppy ret-con from the books and comics, it fits. Think Omashu:

In S2E2 of ATLA we get the story of Oma and Shu - and we learn that they come from "warring villages." Now why exactly would their villages be warring if The Earth Kingdom already existed? Why the need for a power struggle? Why is it not presented as a civil insurrection or civil war, but as a conflict between two distinct groups of people? The answer is that the "Earth Kingdom" as we conceptualize it did not exist. I'd go further and say that we can assume that after Omashu was established it became a powerful regional kingdom, and created strong sphere of cultural influence. Think about it - Bumi is King Of Omashu. King. NOT the Earth King, King Of The Earth Kingdom, but still King Of Omashu.

[Now there's some debate about where Omashu's founding sits on the timeline but to me it HAS to be post-Wan, probably very nearly immediately post-Wan. The line that calls them the "first earthbenders" and that they "learned earthbending from the badger moles" has caused some to question if they fit in with the "Lion Turtles bestowed bending" lore, but to me it fits pretty easily. The Lion Turtles may have bestowed the power but the actual technique was learned from the badger moles and dragons and blah blah blah.]

I also find this line from Jianzhu in The Rise Of Kyoshi very illuminating:

VINDICATION !! And Jianzhu's moaning over the cultural diversity within his country brings me to the second part of this post...

FC Yee And Gene Luen Yang Accidentally (?) Make Avatar's Cultural Mish Mash Make More Sense

Avatar's cultural gumbo of visuals has always been a little hard to parse. If you follow @atlaculture then you know it'd be kind of fruitless to try and apply any one single ethnicity/culture to one nation. A common, and very valid, criticism of Avatar is the pan-asian approach it takes to worldbuilding. I'm not here to defend that lol. I think people who dislike Avatar on that basis are well within their rights to do so, and I also think it's important to enjoy things critically.

HOWEVER, from a worldbuilding perspective, the mish mash becomes easier to swallow when you think of it in terms of multiple groups of people being unified into different nation states over a very long period of time and slowly intertwining their cultures into a single(ish) identity.

Take the Fire Nation for example: in FC Yee's The Shadow Of Kyoshi we learn that the government was much more decentralized and the country was controlled by different clans, like the Saowon and Keosho, who had individual spheres of influence and strong senses of identity. It makes me think about Mai and Ty Lee

They're both Fire Nation nobles and they both live in the Fire Nation capital - but their styles/clothes are completely different. Now, obviously that can be boiled down to personality-based character design but. There's a wide discrepancy between Mai's Edo Japan inspired hair and Ty Lee's Thai inspired performance outfit, and a little retroactive canon about them being part of different but powerful clans .. ? Yeah. That'd be fun, at the very least.

I could go on about this... was there a Water Lion Turtle at the north AND the south? How did the airbenders transition from relatively sedentary life on a Lion Turtle to nomadism? etc etc etc BUT in conclusion: TLOK and the comics have some very fun worldbuilding implications snuck in there !! Which makes up for a lot in my opinion. Personally I'd KILL for an Avatar series set in the warring states/unification period... I think that could be insanely cool...idk. The End. For Now.

[onlylonelylatino]

Blue Beetle, Mary Marvel, Supergirl, Monkey Prince, Cyborg, Power Girl, Zatanna and Blue Devil by Bernard Chang

[valravn72]

Apparently the ATLA graphic novels are on Webtoon now.

While I’m excited for them to get a wider audience I honestly doubt that Gene Leun Yang and the rest of the graphic novel team came up with this idea on their own terms and there’s no way whoever suggested it had 100% the integrity of the art and the artists at heart.

So yeah, you can read them for free now. That’s nice.

But as someone who has read through all the artist commentary and seen how much went into this series it really pains me to see this happen. I hope the team has been compensated in some way for this, they all seem like great people and it’s been fantastic to have an Avatar series actually primarily written by someone of East Asian descent, especially one that goes out of its way to address issues the series couldn’t.

It also sickens me in a lot of ways that webcomics, a format once utilized to escape the constraints of publishing, has become another industry built on artists having to let companies make decisions about their art for them.

[browsethestacks]

The Green Turtle: The Shadow Hero

[atla-confessions]

Aang was going to murder Zuko because reasons. Who the fuck wrote those comics?!

[vlackevil]

Kataang in the Library Art.

[ohihopeicanchangethislater]

seriously I had to watch the Disney show (which I'm loving) to figure this out.

Thank you to Everything Everywhere All At Once for introducing me to American Born Chinese

[evilhorse]

You can’t just accuse somebody of being a spy!

(Action Comics #1058)

[comicsclois]

Superman Smashes the Klan #3

[icedsodapop]

I love Batman, I really do, but Gene Luen Yang's take on Batman tho?

He's 👏🏼 right 👏🏼 and 👏🏼 he 👏🏼 should 👏🏼say 👏🏼 it 👏🏼

[onlylonelylatino]

Blue Beetle and the T-Council by Sergio Dávila

[bringbackwendellvaughn]

[survivalove]

imagine writing a whole essay about why the characters are so ooc in the comics and completely leaving out that the writer is a proclaimed zk shipper who admitted he did not understand the main characters or why certain ships were canon in the first place 😵‍💫

[wonderbatpanels]

New Super-Man #2 (2016)

"Ready?"

"Always."

[stuff-diary]

American Born Chinese

TV Shows/Dramas watched in 2023

American Born Chinese (2023, USA)

Creator: Kelvin Yu (based on the graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang)

Mini-review:

I loved this so much! Sure, it has its flaws, but its strengths far outweigh them. The show feels refreshing and almost groundbreaking thanks to the way it takes inspiration from Journey to the West and Chinese culture. With these elements, the show gets to tell a fantastic story about coming of age and finding your identity. It also tackles the topic of representation head-on, with a beautiful monologue by Ke Huy Quan in one of the last episodes. I can't think of many TV shows that talk so frankly about this, and American Born Chinese deserves big kudos for that.

But the main reason why this show is a hit is its cast. For starters, we have legends like Michelle Yeoh, the aforementioned Ke Huy Quan and Daniel Wu. Obviously, they are as great as anyone would expect from them. But the young cast also delivers: Ben Wang's comedic timing is perfect, and Jimmy Liu pretty much steals the show with an incredibly charming and adorable performance. On top of all this, the action scenes are fantastic, with amazing choreographies and very stylish and cinematic direction. Also, I thought this was supposed to be a limited series, but I guess it's not? I'm not complaining, cause I really enjoyed it, but I hope it's doesn't end up being cancelled.

P.S. Why the f**k is Disney+ not promoting the hell out of this? They have Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu from Everything Everywhere All At Once, plus Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed the Shang-Chi movie, and they are doing nothing to promote it. It's seriously baffling.