The character was rarely depicted from the front. The Green Turtle's identity was obscured in Chu F. "He was an emblem fighting to preserve China against Japanese invaders," said Jeff Yang, a columnist for CNN, cultural critic and author of the upcoming book Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now. Like many American superhero characters published during the Golden Age of Comic Books from 1938 to 1956, the Green Turtle fought against the Axis powers during the Second World War. "But the one thing that did catch my imagination was the fact that he might be the very first Asian-American superhero." Who was the Green Turtle?ĭebuting in the short-lived Blazing Comics publication in 1944 - less than a decade after the first appearances of Superman and Batman - the Green Turtle was created by Chinese-American artist Chu F. Yang is also working on a Shang-Chi series for Marvel Comics, alongside a team of Chinese diaspora artists. In 2014, he collaborated with Singaporean illustrator Sonny Liew to release a soft reboot of Chu F. Publisher A Wave Blue World (AWBW) also secured Heathen‘s Natasha Alterici for the cover art and The Tempest‘s Laila Alawa for the Foreword, with book and logo design by Nicola Black.American cartoonist Gene Luen Yang is the acclaimed author of American Born Chinese. Lewis teams with artist Noel Tuazon, Rob Croonenborghs, Taylor Esposito of Ghost Glyph Studios, and Kel Nuttal in bringing Kismet back to publication.
There may be something complimentary in comics creators seeing the potential for this non-Western material to fuel their stories, but it was largely Orientalist and filled with Anglo-centrist presumptuousness.
I doubt there was any real thought given to the real-life practitioners or inheritors of this lore, just as I think there was little deference given to Muslims or Asians with Kismet and Green Turtle, respectively. Or the more liberal-leaning comics creators of the Golden Age, I think there was a fascination with other cultures, even if it was only at the surface level.
David Lewis opens up about both the process and the motivation behind his new comic book Kismet, Man of Fate – Volume 1: Boston Strong. The series, which is a modern-day update of the 1940s Muslim superhero, had been delivered in online installments for much of the past year, but it now comes to comic shops in print for the first time this week.ĭerek McCaw of Fanboy Planet conducted the new interview with Lewis, who had this to say about Golden Age superheroes like Kismet or the Green Turtle: Comics scholar and Sacred & Sequential founder A.
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