Gene Luen Yang

Dwayne McDuffie was one of my favorite writers. When I was growing up, he was one of the few African Americans working in American comics. ”

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. ”

My experiences growing up in both a Chinese American household and the Catholic Church define much of who I am. ”

I've tried to write from my own understanding of identity in all my comics, whether it's about superheroes or historical conflicts or monkey gods. ”

Eventually, I just couldn't imagine myself being in a cubicle for my entire career. ”

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. ”

I never worked a job that required research. I'm not really good at it, to be honest. ”

When I got the job with 'Superman,' it felt like somebody threw me into the ocean. I was just trying to figure it out, to figure out how to tread water. Lucky for me, I'm part of a great team. ”

Both my mother and my father grew up in Asia, in a time of political instability. They'd earned college degrees before setting foot in the States but had to work menial jobs early on in order to make ends meet. ”

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. ”