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Gene Luen Yang


Chinese
August 9, 1973
Writer
waterfall water nature river falls
'Shadow Hero' was my first superhero story. I don't know why it took so long.


Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Know First Long
Every superhero has this superhero identity and a civilian identity. A lot of their lives are about code switching.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: About Lot Every
'Avatar: The Last Airbender' creators Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko have, along with their team, painstakingly planned out the Avatarverse.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Out Last Along
I grew up with an Apple 2E - I had a deep, emotional attachment to that machine - and I loved doodling.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Up Had Grew
wave smashing foam spray sea
I never worked a job that required research. I'm not really good at it, to be honest.


Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Good Really Never
There's something about the intimacy of comics that gives you a false bravado; you don't always consider the consequences.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: You About Always
During the Cultural Revolution, the communists came in, and what they wanted to do was eradicate all sense of traditional Chinese culture.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Wanted Sense Came
When I was growing up, I did go to the arcade. We had a neighborhood arcade, and my friends and I would go fairly regularly.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Up Had Would
I love the interplay between words and pictures. I love the fact that in comics, your pictures are acting like words, presenting themselves to be read.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Like Your Love
I minored in creative writing in college, and I've played with the idea of doing something more hybrid, but comics are my first love.
Gene Luen Yang
I was a huge fan of the Bruce Timm animated series and, of course, the live action 'Lois & Clark' series. I watched that when I was in college.
Gene Luen Yang
Nobody really knows for sure how the Boxer Rebellion started. It began among the poor, and the history of the poor is rarely written down.
Gene Luen Yang
I grew up in a religious community, and like everyone, I went through a period of doubt and later made a conscious choice to embrace the faith of my childhood.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Faith Like Up
I have a fairly limited drawing style. I'm not like my friend Derek Kirk Kim, who can pretty much change his style at will. My drawing style can handle some of my stories, but not all of them.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Change Like Who
I was a superhero fan in the '90s, so I'm definitely familiar with John Romita, Jr. In fact, when I was in high school, I would go to local conventions and line up and get his signature.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Get Up Would
My experience of Chinese culture is indirect, through echoes. When I approach the cashier at my local Chinese supermarket, they switch to English before I've even said a word. They somehow know that I'm not quite Chinese enough.
Gene Luen Yang
As I was researching, I was struck by how similar the Boxers were to Joan of Arc. Joan was basically a French Boxer. She was a poor teenager who wanted to do something about the foreign aggressors invading her homeland.
Gene Luen Yang
In traditional Asian arts, the word and the picture always sit next to each other. I have an aunt, a Chinese brush painter, who told me that when you do a Chinese brush painting, you have to pair the image up with some poetry.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Poetry You Me
This is a profession for me, but I started off as a self-publisher working on my own schedule and my own stuff before moving on to graphic novels with First Second Books, where there was definitely a schedule, but it was very different from monthly comics.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Moving On Me Very
Many Japanese families moved to Taiwan during the occupation. Then, when the war ended, they were forced to move back. And at the macro level, the Taiwanese had every reason to cheer when the Japanese left. The Japanese military could often be incredibly brutal. The Taiwanese lived as second-class citizens on their own land.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: War Had Were
In my research, I learned that the Boxers' kung fu wasn't all that formalized. The vast majority of them didn't belong to some age-old martial arts tradition. They were basically poor, starving teenagers doing the best they could to figure out how to fight, relying more on their mystical beliefs than formal training.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Best More Out
When I first started making comics, I was living with a bunch of guys, old college friends. We had this deal. At the end of each day, they would ask me how far I'd gotten on my comic. And if I hadn't made my goals, they were supposed to make me feel really bad about myself. They happily obliged.
Gene Luen Yang
Tags: Me About Really