Later this month Avatar: The Last Airbender Volume 1—The Promise Part 1 TPB arrives on shelves and we took a few moments with a good buddy Gene Luen Yang, writer for the series. Get ready the awesomesauce that will be coming your way.
Dark Horse Comics: You are an award-winning comics artist and writer, and your American Born Chinese was incredibly well received. In light of that brilliant work, what made you want to write in the amazing Airbender world, and are you still pursuing more original work?
Gene Luen Yang: I’m a huge Avatar: The Last Airbender fan! Fellow cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim first turned me on to the series. I came to it a little late. We don’t get cable, so I watched the whole thing on DVD. Three episodes in, I was hooked. The series was incredibly well written, possibly the best-written American animated series ever produced. So when Dark Horse asked me to write the A:TLA graphic novels, I had to say yes. Not only do I get to play in this fully realized fantasy world, but I also get to work with Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of A:TLA.
I am still working on my own stuff. Right now, I’m in the middle of two other projects. The first is an Asian American superhero story set in the 1940s. I’m writing, Sonny Liew is drawing, and Janice Chiang is lettering. It’ll eventually be released by First Second Books.
My other project is a two-volume historical-fiction series set during the Boxer Rebellion, a war that occurred in China just over a hundred years ago. Back then, the Chinese government was incredibly weak, so the European powers set up concessions—pieces of land they had full control over—on Chinese soil. A group of poor, illiterate Chinese teenagers decided to do something about it. They ran through the countryside with swords and spears, killing Europeans and Chinese Christians. I’m doing both the writing and drawing on this one. I’ve been working on it for years and years. When I’m done, it’ll be released by First Second Books, too.
Incidentally, a lot of the research I did for the Boxer project came in handy for the A:TLA graphic novels. Ba Sing Se and Earth King Kuei are based on late Qing-dynasty China.
DHC: What challenges have you come across in writing within the Airbender world?
GLY: This is my first big project with characters that aren’t my own. And the original series is a tough act to follow! I’m writing within an established world with an established history. I still have plenty of creative elbowroom, but I have to make sure that my story fits with everything that came before in the original A:TLA series and everything that comes after in the upcoming Legend of Korra cartoon.
DHC: Airbender fandom is legion and fervent. What do you hope to give them in these new comics?
GLY: Yes, it certainly is! My ultimate goal with the A:TLA comics is the same as my ultimate goal with all my comics: I want to tell a story compelling enough to get the reader from the first page to the last.
Beyond this, we want to sow the seeds for the new world. Legend of Korra is set seventy years after the end of the original A:TLA cartoon. The world changes quite a bit in those seventy years. The A:TLA graphic novels will show the beginnings of those changes.
DHC: Who’s your favorite character to write in the Airbender story line?
GLY:When watching the show, Zuko was my favorite character. He’s incredibly complex. In a way, the show was about his journey toward goodness. While writing the series, though, I developed a special fondness for Toph. She’s really, really fun to write. I read in Dark Horse’s Avatar: The Last Airbender—The Art of the Animated Series book that she was originally going to be a large boy. She works sooo much better as a small girl. Making her a small girl was a stroke of genius.
DHC: What stories influenced you the most from the comics world?
GLY: Man, I could give you a list as long as my arm. Here are some:
Adolf by Osamu Tezuka
The Land of Nod: Rockabye Book by Jay Stephens
Bone by Jeff Smith
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Disney Duck stories by Carl Barks and Don Rosa
Same Difference by Derek Kirk Kim
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga
Zot! by Scott McCloud
One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry
Stories from the Ward by Lark Pien
Bitten Apple by Jesse Hamm
Peter David’s first run on The Incredible Hulk
Frank Miller’s Daredevil run
Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen
DHC: Did your creative process differ from other work for Airbender? How so, or how did it not change?
This is the first time I’ve ever written without thumbnails. (By thumbnails, I mean sketches, not the nails on my thumbs.) It’s the first time I’ve turned in a script with just words and no accompanying visuals. That was a little weird for me.
This is also the most collaborative project I’ve ever worked on. The story began with a conversation between Mike, Bryan, Dark Horse, and me. All the way through we stayed in touch over e-mail. With most of my comics, it’s either just me or just me and a close friend. I have to say, I’ve learned a lot from seeing how other people—especially Mike and Bryan—approach a story.
DHC: What are you most excited about in the next book of Aang’s adventures?
GLY: I’m excited about exploring a recurrent theme in a new way. Many of my books deal with the coming together of cultures. That’s one of the reasons why A:TLA appeals to me. There are four distinct cultures in the Avatarverse: Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomad. And each culture has subcultures.
In Legend of Korra, the cultures end up meshing together, much as cultures do in New York. So how do we get from a world where harmony is maintained by the separation of cultures to one where they intermingle? And is it possible for one culture to live beside—or within—another without losing some of its distinctiveness? These questions are very interesting to me.
Aang, of course, is at the heart of this. As Avatar, master of all four elements, he embodies the coming together of the four cultures. And his romantic relationship with Katara also represents a coming together of cultures.
DHC: If you had a superpower, what would it be?
GLY: I want to be able to clone myself, like Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man. Think of how much more I could get done!
Thanks, Gene!