In this week’s edition of The Goggler Pull List we take a look at Pornsak Pichetshote’s brand new detective noir, The Good Asian and revisit Frank Miller’s seminal work, The Dark Knight Returns.
The Good Asian (Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi)
Edison Hark is a Chinese-Hawaiian detective, the only one of his kind in San Francisco, who is helping the police there figure out the disappearance of a maid named Ivy Chen. It’s the 1930s, being Chinese in America means that you’re subject to all kinds of indignities (heck, it could even be 2021 for that matter), and Hark detests himself a little for being a part of such a racist and corrupt system. He nevertheless plays the part that society demands of him, dutifully doing his job, never speaking out of turn, and always careful to not rock the boat.
At least that is the state of things when we first meet him in the first issue of The Good Asian. At least until he finds himself face-to-face with injustice and having to make a crucial choice.
I’ve always been a sucker for theses sorts of hardboiled stories. I grew up reading Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and found the gritty and cruel worlds that they described to be incredibly compelling. There was something enticing about those manly men, who were all a little broken on the inside, but still driven by a strong moral compass. Who were trying to do the right thing in a world that refused to make it easy.
Pichetshote leans hard into all of these genre tropes. His writing sparkles with era specific dialogue. He pulls no punches with his depictions. It is a harsh and brutal period in American history and this story is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. We’re entering a world in which no one is free of prejudice, which doesn’t just make for a great setting for a mystery, but also an important lesson on how we should always strive against our lesser, baser instincts.
Hark’s character was inspired by Chang Apana, a real life, honest-to-God Chinese-Hawaiian detective who served in the Honolulu Police Department between 1898 and 1932. Chang was the inspiration for the Charlie Chan novels and films, as well as the character of Inspector Ishida in Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo comic.
In his author’s note to the first issue of The Good Asian, Pornsak Pichetshote writes:
And, sure, most of those movies had Chan played by Caucasians, and, fine, by today’s standards, the stories weren’t just racist, but… kinda boring? So I have no idea why they intrigued me so much. But I’d like to think maybe it was because I saw what they had the potential to be… Asian noir. Or more specifically, Asian-American noir.
And this is exactly what he does with The Good Asian. He reclaims the character of the Chinatown detective, he infuses an outdated and problematic genre archetype with a new sense of agency. Pair that with Alexandre Tefenkgi’s muted colors and lived-in aesthetic and what you have is one hell of an atmospheric read. It looks sinister. It feels menacing. And its narrative has consequence.
Now all I need is an HBO adaptation with Daniel Dae Kim. Maybe Stephen Yeun
The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller)
So it’s like this. Any list of must-read comics and graphic novels will always include a few familiar names: Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Neil Gaiman, Jeph Loeb, Brian K. Vaughan, Mike Mignola, and Frank Miller. Few writers are fortunate enough to write one great piece of literature in their lifetime, these talented folk have written a whole slew of them.
I first read Frank Miller’s seminal Batman story when I was far too young to appreciate what it was. Growing up, I loved Batman. I loved Adam West’s campy Batman. I loved him as the world’s greatest detective. I even loved the Batman who dabbled in the supernatural, taking on vampires and ghosts and monster men. What I wasn’t quite sold on was Frank Miller’s take on a Batman who was tired, bloodthirsty, and somewhat sadistic. It just didn’t feel like “my Batman”.
I also didn’t like the idea of a future where superheroes had all but abandoned the world. Wonder Woman had returned home, Green Lantern was lost among the starts, and Superman was a mindless tool for a bellicose American government. All of it felt just a little too hopeless for my liking.
But boy was I wrong…
What my teenage self failed to realise was that Miller’s Batman was the perfect embodiment of the grim realities already present within the canon – both in the blue and grey of Batman ’66 and in the monotonous black of Nolan’s imagination. What I didn’t know at sixteen was that Miller used these four issues as a literary exploration of the driving motivations of comicdom’s most complex character. What happens to a psyche that is unable to fulfil the Sisyphean task set upon it by a grieving boy? How does Batman eventually become this jaded hyper-violent vigilante? Is it possible for the superhero to be at one with the establishment or are they opposing sides of the same coin? (And because he only looked at the pictures and didn’t quite read all the text, these are also all the questions that Zack Snyder failed to address in the train wreck that was Batman v. Superman.)
Here’s the thing, you don’t need to be a Batman fan, or have read any Batman comics to appreciate what this is. This isn’t just another superhero comic. It is a work of social commentary. One where your heroes aren’t always right and your villains aren’t always wrong. Where costumed lunatics aren’t quite as scary as the media, or politicians, or the unwashed masses. By giving us a moral landscape without any moral absolutes, Miller puts forward a hauntingly prophetic picture of a world in which news is entertainment, reality is caricature, and reason, rationality, and contemplation is supplanted by mob mentality and epistemic violence.
What Frank Miller, Lynn Varley, and Klaus Janson deliver is a true masterpiece of literature. Every issue is unforgettable, establishing a new tone, and reforging the character for another generation. Frank Miller didn’t just create “your Batman,” he made me reassess mine.
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