Next February, the superhero Shang-Chi will become part of the extended Marvel Studios film universe when “Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings” arrives in theaters. Before that, though, the character, a martial arts expert, will have a five-issue comic book series beginning in June from Marvel Entertainment.
The series will be written by Gene Luen Yang, a comic book writer and cartoonist making his Marvel debut. It will be drawn by Dike Ruan, for the present-day scenes, with Philip Tan drawing for the flashbacks. Yang is a prolific cartoonist whose most well-known work is perhaps “American Born Chinese,” which explores issues of identity. He was also named the national ambassador for young people’s literature in 2016 and won a MacArthur fellowship the same year.
Yang could not be more excited. “I mean, it’s Shang-Chi,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “He’s probably the most prominent Asian — I guess he’s Asian-American now since he’s moved over here — Asian-American superhero.”
When the slate of upcoming Marvel Studio films was announced last summer, the diversity was noted: an Asian lead, an openly L.G.B.T.Q. superhero and a hero with a disability were all part of the mix.
Shang-Chi was introduced by Marvel Comics in 1973, at a time when martial arts became popular in America, and had a run that lasted nearly 10 years. But Yang, 46, avoided the character until college. “It’s that same embarrassment I had in third grade,” he said. “There was a second grader who moved here from Taiwan and the teachers really wanted me to be his friend. I felt embarrassed about it and I didn’t know why.”
He continued, “It was almost like picking up a Shang-Chi comic would have been highlighting what made me different from the other nerds at the comic book store.”
But the world since Shang-Chi’s introduction has changed, Yang said: “I just don’t think that kids growing up today, for the most part, have that same sort of embarrassment. I think for a lot of them, it sort of flipped. You definitely saw that with ‘Black Panther.’ I think that conversation is changing too for Asian-Americans.”
Shang-Chi has had a supporting role in many recent Marvel stories, but the new series will put him in the spotlight. The story will shed more light on the character’s past and that of his father, Zheng Zhu, who is a supervillain. “The basic idea that his father is a supervillain is still there; we don’t want to overturn that, but we do want to add some nuance,” Yang said. “Zheng Zhu has been around a very long time. He has other kids besides Shang-Chi, so we’re going to explore some of those sibling relationships.”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
