Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology [ペーパーバック]

Words are really inadequate to describe the import of this work. Revolutionary, historic, groundbreaking? The feeling I had when it was delivered was like holding an advance copy of Takaki's work, "Strangers From a Different Shore". I was holding something that hadn't been seen before. After reading it, I was speechless, because for the first time in this genre, I saw myself reflected unapologetically in the stories and artwork contained in the pages of this book. I never thought I'd live to see the day where I had the opportunity to read about APA superheroes and eventually, share them with my children. An excellent job by everyone involved in this project, and a "must own" for the personal libraries of anyone interested in Asian-American studies, modern mythology and folklore/oral histories. After picking some copies up for your friends and family, ask your local library to carry it. Smart, witty, and visually stunning, I hope this title is only the vanguard and herald of more to come.

Unfortunately, the Kindle version of this book is too low resolution to make out some of the text. I was only a few pages into it before I ran into a panel with a narrative block and a word bubble which both used small lettering and were both too low resolution to read. I'm using the iPad 2 Kindle app, but I've seen the same sort of problem on the Kindle itself, with some manga and with illustrations in text-based Kindle books. The scan resolution just isn't high enough for fine detail that you could easily read on a printed page. And zooming the picture, of course, just gives you a blurry larger image, so no help there.

I'm returning this and buying the print version instead, which I'm sure will be excellent.

Secret Identities is one of the few comic anthologies I enjoy tremendously. There are 48 chapters, all drawn by Asian Americans -- of course -- but a few are 1-page superhero profiles and stories. So really, there are only 40 longer stories.

For most of the 1-page stories, it's an artist talking about the concept of superheroes, Asian Americans and the influence of Asia on western comics. The longer stories are really fun, bizarre and creative.

The book starts off with a comic book cover art of "The Y-Men", featuring super lame superheroes with quotes like "Feel the suicidal wrath of KamiKazei", "Sweaty Feet of Coolie are express ticket to hell", "The myopic blasts of Four Eyes" and "Special delivery from Riceman pork-fried pain". This pretty much sets the satiric tone for the book, although there are more serious stories as well.

My favourite story is "James", written by Michael Kang and drawn by Erwin Haya. James's power is super-agility and super-strength. His partner has the ability to emit light, like a light bulb. Somehow amazingly, James began to lose the limelight (pun intended) to his partner and his career crashed. In the end, he had to start over going to like N.O.A.S.S* and A.S.S.H.O* networking events. *Which translate to National Organization of Supers and Sidekicks, and Asian Student Super Hero Organization.

My second favourite "A day at Customeco". This family is shopping at a groceries supermarket dedicated to superhero shoppers and suddenly a how-dumb-can-you-get villain strikes! Now imagine every superhero rushing in for the kill.

The story concept and creativity are really commendable. The superheroes are shown in many different aspect of life, in different communities, going about their daily chores. It's mix and match everywhere, littered it with funny quotes.

This book is highly amusing and should appeal to more than just Asian Americans.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)