Secret Origin of The Shadow Hero Part 4

by Gene Yang | Originally posted at GeneYang.com

All this week, Sonny and I are taking you behind the scenes of our new comic The Shadow Hero! Buy the digital first issue of The Shadow Hero on Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, or B&N Nook for a mere $0.99!

Here are the previous posts, in case you missed them:

Secret Origin of The Shadow Hero Part 1
Secret Origin of The Shadow Hero Part 2
Secret Origin of The Shadow Hero Part 3

Here are the script, thumbnail sketches, and Sonny’s final art for page 4:

SCRIPT

THUMBNAIL SKETCHES

FINAL ART

Folks who read the preview copies of The Shadow Hero have asked me, is Hank’s mom based on my mom?

Nope. My mom is much less “tiger-y” than Hank’s mom. She has artistic inclinations, so she understood my love of comics. That’s not to say that she didn’t also have a practical side, though. She did force me to take summer school Physics alongside my Intro to Comics Illustration class.

Hank’s mom is based more on the ladies at the church my family attended when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong, they were amazing people, but they were also very… well…

Read the comic and you’ll know what I mean. Especially if you grew up in an Asian American church.

More tomorrow!

---

Gene Luen Yang’s first book with First Second, American Born Chinese, is now in print in over ten languages and was a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Printz Award. Yang’s other works include the popular comics adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and the New York Times Best-Selling graphic novel diptych Boxers & Saints. The Shadow Hero, the story of the first Asian American superhero is his most recent graphic novel.