Thread "Depictions of American Asians in comic book art (WARNING POLITICS)" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 3:03PM, Mar. 26, 2021

Sorry for the oncoming war, but it is something I would love to talk about, and it's might ruffle some feathers.

I don't know how to approach the subject so I'll just rip off the band aid, when I was looking up comic book art of Asian people to learn some ideas and technique for humans in my comic like I do in the past and found a massive chunk of comic book art in America…

Honestly it is ether just a white/black person who is garbed in cultural gibberish with a painted face, something that would be perfect for WW2 propaganda or "what if" John K designed Speed Racer.

There feels like no attempts to learn common characteristics, find ways to better translate them into one's art style.

It felt unreal, and honestly kind of annoying because I keep hearing about all of this "progressive talk" about how the people in charge are doing this, this and that but still having mistral show style depictions of Asian people just rubs me the wrong way.

I know I'm opening a can of worms here, but I figure it is a subject that should be talked about.

Posted at 7:03PM, Mar. 29, 2021

Can you please post a range of examples with descriptions about what's going on with each.
You can host the pics on your DD imagelocker (https://next.theduckwebcomics.com/imagelocker/ ) and display them using the BB code image tags.

Posted at 5:06AM, Jun. 5, 2021

If you want to get a story or book out you just have to DO!

Yes, we all want to get people to represent their real-life counterparts accurately, but in many cases that's almost impossible. We can't know everything about everyone and every culture and to learn it all would take us a lifetime and by then your book never happens. I've had to learn this.

It sometimes gets annoying to see a black guy which is just a white guy blacked up , or stereotyped (this happens a lot in the Japanese stuff) but then again, when I do an asian guy (which I have to sometimes) or Indian or German or French or English or American, I get things wrong and stereotype.

By the way, some black guys are literally just white guys blacked up (at least in acting and speech) as they have been brought up in a white culture. And I have seen some people who have extremely caucasian features though they are black or Indian, etc. Not bad thing in my view. Have you seen a white Jamaican brought up in Jamaica? Quite an eye opener!

Right now I get some Germans annoyed with me cos how I depict Germans talking in their language. I do try to learn some of the language, even spoken to the odd German, understand what they like to eat, watch lots of German Youtube videos (!) but how much time can I spend on this? There has to be a limit. Then there is making them talk English to an English person how do I make their accent 'sound' since some people find that pigeon English is offensive. Germans unfamiliar with English speaking English certainly sound different.

But then I find others who don't have a problem with it at all.

Then there's the other peoples like the French and others, etc.

Movies and companies with huge funds can employ teams of writers and translation experts to get cultures and languages right- we poor artists and writers cannot.

In the end you just do the best you can and stop worrying about what you might get wrong as long as it is not meant to insult. None of it is meant to offend- It's just one guy's personal story in a huge world of all kinds of things. Once you see how hard it is to get right, you don't criticise others so much any more and just do.

Posted at 10:07PM, Jul. 6, 2021

I hear what you’re saying; and I’ve been very guilty of this, myself. My Drako the Barbarian comix series features many Asian characters. I’d like to think that most of the stereotypical drawings are subtle and I try to be respectful. But, perhaps not. I’ve been told that the brush style font (called Karate) that you see in Chinese restaurant signs can be objectionable.

In my Tag Forester comix, his lawyer is Bob Chin, a Chinese American, although you could hardly tell from my drawings, but you look at any anime or manga and their characters don’t really look Asian either.

Posted at 12:07AM, Jul. 7, 2021

I wrote a whole comic about Russians with a few Chinese visitors and no one said anything. I depicted them as people. I just write about people. Whatever culture or race they are is incidental unless it matters in the story like the Cockney make-up artist. She's actually from watching Eastenders, Are you being served and Carry On movies. But she's a person first, not "stereotypical Cockney#1 (female)".

I also did a story with an intentionally international cast. It was a space mission with an international crew so there had to be a mix. Everyone was person first, except the Frenchman, they all think they're God's gift to women. ;)