Lost 1940s Asian-American Hero Green Turtle Returns in THE SHADOW HERO

[Roygbiv666]

http://www.newsarama.com/21562-lost-1940s-asian-american-hero-green-turtle-returns-in-the-shadow-hero.html

[bminor]

I heard this graphic novel being covered on National Public Radio Tuesday morning....

 http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/07/15/330121290/was-the-green-turtle-the-first-asian-american-superhero

bminor

[narfstar]

I will have to get it

[KevinP]

The Green Turtle who never showed his face, so you couldn't tell he was Asian. An early example of the way comics introduced black heroes: Black Panther in full face mask and full body costume and Deathlock who was mutilated beyond racial recognition, and Spawn, who combined the two.

[John C]

FYI, 27 Artists Brilliantly Reimagine the World's First Asian-American Superhero.  "Brilliantly" might be a bit of hyperbole, but if you're into copyrighted appropriations of public domain material and the Green Turtle, have at it.

(Yes, I'm forty and getting at least some of my news from a site written by and targeting millennials...)

[Yoc]

Thanks John!
There's a couple that are Very Good among them.  I've always liked the idea of GT so this was fun.

[erwin-k]

I was linked to this "revival" some time ago by the Tor Books newsletter. Say I produced a strip about a Greek Cyclops set in the future. If I called the character Popeye, he would have as much connection to our spinach eating friend as the new Green Turtle does to the old one.

The first Green Turtle operated in Japanese occupied areas in Asia. In new the sample strip he's a Spider-Man wannabe in a modern big city with Aunt May/mommy issues of horrendous proportions. The creators may be Asian, but, IMO only, with ZERO respect for the character they're highjacked.

[John C]

Well, it's public domain.  Just like a person can remake Romeo and Juliet about singing animal-themed gangs on the mean streets of the city, people can remake the Green Turtle or any other superhero they like in whatever image they please.

And if it's not good...?  Well, I haven't liked much of what the mainstream industry has produced in pretending to respect the characters they revive, so it's not like one more misstep is going to bother me, at least.

[Roygbiv666]

For what it's worth, I agree.

The entire idea of public domain is that anyone can do anything they want with the material. By definition, PD stuff can't be "highjacked". New 'users' are under no obligation to anyone to keep the original source untouched.

Well, it's public domain.  Just like a person can remake Romeo and Juliet about singing animal-themed gangs on the mean streets of the city, people can remake the Green Turtle or any other superhero they like in whatever image they please.

And if it's not good...?  Well, I haven't liked much of what the mainstream industry has produced in pretending to respect the characters they revive, so it's not like one more misstep is going to bother me, at least.

[erwin-k]

Whether intended by the creators, or not, the publicity for the new strip implies that it is some sort of direct  follow-on to the first Asian created super-hero published in the U.S. who was also supposed to be of Asian heritage.

If the creators said, "We decided to create a new modern Asian hero. We call him the Green Turtle as a tip of the hat to the first ever Asian Mystery Man." then I would have no complaint. 

[crashryan]

I remember reading somewhere that Chu Hing never drew the Green Turtle's face as a passive-aggressive response to the editor's refusal to make the hero Chinese. However when I googled the character I couldn't find any reference to this. I did find an in-depth research piece about Hing by Alex Jay:

http://chimericaneyes.blogspot.com/2014/01/about-artist-chu-f-hing.html

Of course with a public domain character you can do whatever you want to. However I don't see the point in "reviving" a PD  character only to jettison most of what made him what he was. If you give a character new powers and a new backstory, put him in a different locale in a different time period, and write stories that have nothing to do with the original's history, you're left only with some guy wearing the same costume and bearing the same name. If you're going to all that trouble, why use an existing character at all? Build your own from scratch. My personal opinion is that if you're going to use a PD character you ought to "play fair" by respecting the limits of its original concept. The challenge is to create interesting stories that appeal to a modern audience within that framework. This is just an opinion, not a moral stance, and it's obviously a minority opinion.

[John C]

My point was that it only seems to be comic books where anybody cares about this sort of thing.  Nobody's offended that Ray Charles lifted his early songs from contemporary (but uncopyrighted) Gospel songs.  Nobody complains about appropriating Bram Stoker or Mozart.  It's just comic books.

But not all comic books, though.  I've yet to see the letter columns in the '60s about how there was no point in bringing back the Atom if he was going to be a normal-height hero with special size-altering powers and a physics degree or that the post-Fox Blue Beetles aren't cops with super-strength or Green Hornet ripoffs.

[crashryan]

Touche, John C, you make an excellent point. It is only comics fans who seem to care about this, and among them only those who grew up after Marvel Comics started this whole interlocked-universe thing. The new Atom was the sort of character I talked about: a completely new guy with the same name (not even the same costume). Fans of the time didn't seem to care, though maybe they didn't know the Golden Age versions existed.

[narfstar]

The GA was not far removed from the SA so many knew of the GA. I think that had a lot to do The Flash of Two Worlds story and later the crossovers in JLA. The original characters were shown to still exist mostly as fondly remembered.

[TheGreenTurtle]

You can probably guess what I think of the book based on my username.  

The first Green Turtle operated in Japanese occupied areas in Asia. In new the sample strip he's a Spider-Man wannabe in a modern big city with Aunt May/mommy issues of horrendous proportions. The creators may be Asian, but, IMO only, with ZERO respect for the character they're highjacked.

The book is explicitly set in the late 1930s, right on the eve of WWII. While The story is set in the fictional American city of San Incendio, but ends with Anchor of Justice, an obvious Superman knock-off, asking Green Turtle "Have you been following the news out of Europe and Asia? Sooner rather than later, America will be called upon to defend our allies. The president's already spoken with me about it. They'll need people like you and me to bolster our troops. If your country needs you would you be willing to lend a hand?", inferring he will later go to Asia to support the troops there. And there is lots of little references and explanations of characters and concepts from the originals. If he's modeled after any hero it's Batman, something apparent even in the original stories. In The Shadow Hero Green Turtle get some of his inspiration from a dark caped crusader. And it's not like the original character had much of a personality beyond fighting Japanese invaders.