Discover Top Posts Tagged with #blazing comics

The little known superhero the Green Turtle is the first Asian-American superhero in Western comics. Kind of.

Created in 1944 by Chinese-American cartoonist Chu F. Hing, the Green Turtle first appeared in Blazing Comics #1. Lacking any superpowers but being a skilled fighter and pilot, the Green Turtle helped the Chinese army fight the invading Japanese army in World War II.

When Chu F. Hing first proposed the character to his publishers, Blazing Comics, he had every intention of the Turtle being an overtly Chinese or Chinese-American hero. However the publishers were against the idea, believing there was no audience for an Asian hero in America, especially during World War II. Despite this, Hing managed to allude to the character’s Chinese heritage through the comic. For starters the Green Turtle is always shown with a mask on, and in the few instances he isn’t wearing a mask his face is in shadow. Additionally, we have the very name the Green Turtle. In Chinese mythology, the Black Turtle (玄龜), is one of the four celestial guardians of China, representing the north. The turtle’s name Xuan Wu (玄龜) literally translates as the Dark Warrior or the Mysterious Warrior, and is shared by a Taoist god. This Xuan Wu is a powerful warrior who fights demons and is particularly worshiped by martial artists. Finally the color green itself has special meaning in China, usually representing potent and auspicious powers.

Following his run of 5 comics in 1944, the Green Turtle largely disappeared from comics, only appearing briefly in two issues of FemForce in 1991. This changed in 2014 when Chinese-American Gene Luen Yang and Singaporean Sonny Lieu created a six-issue miniseries The Shadow Hero, which tells the origin of a new explicitly Asian Green Turtle, this time a young Chinese-American man named Hank Chu living in 1930s California. The comic balances Chu fighting crime as the Green Turtle with his experiences as an American born child of Chinese immigrants.

As to who was the first explicitly Asian-American superhero? Finding this out was a lot harder than I expected, with most articles or lists I found in my research saying the Green Turtle was the first, while still also noting that he was coded as white. The best candidate for the first Asian superhero is our friend Jimmy Woo, a Chinese-American FBI agent who first appeared in Yellow Claw #1 (Oct. 1956), by Atlas Comics, the 1950s predecessor of Marvel. Woo would later be retconned as being a SHIELD agent, and still occasionally shows up as a recurring supporting character in Marvel properties; and made even more famous by the Ant-Man movies and Wandavision

Sources

Chinese American Eyes: Chu F. Hing

The First Asian American superhero

Lost 1940s Asian-American Hero Green Turtle Returns in THE SHADOW HERO

Was The Green Turtle The First Asian-American Superhero?

#green turtle #Jimmy Woo #marvel #Blazing Comics #comic history #favorites

Gene Yang revives the first Asian-American superhero in "The Shadow Hero"

Gene Yang revives the first Asian-American superhero in “The Shadow Hero”

Bay Area creator Gene Yang is arguably one of the most consistently celebrated modern graphic novelists. His 2013 two volume novel Boxers & Saints was a finalist for a National Book Award, landed on numerous end of year lists, and was noted as one of the best books of the year by Library Journal. His 2006 book, American Born Chinese, was also a National Book Award finalist, received both a Printz…

View On WordPress

#Blazing Comics #Chu Hing #Gene Yang #Green Turtle #The Shadow Hero