The new comic book series White Savior is an adventure story which parodies a certain kind of adventure story. Written by Eric Nguyen and Scott Burman, with art by Nguyen, the first and second issues of the limited series from Dark Horse are available now.
Continue reading “‘White Savior’ Comic Spoofs a Familiar Asian American Movie Problem”
Because I cannot wait for Kate —
Apple kindly drops Dickinson Season 3 —
The final part of Emily Dickinson/Hailee Steinfeld’s quest for Self —
And Immortality.
Now that it’s breaking box office records, Keith, Britney, and Dominic are joined by HK cinema and martial arts movie expert Raymond Chow to break down Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on a new episode of Hard NOC Life.
Keith rejoins Britney and Dominic to share final thoughts on The Suicide Squad, revisit Cathy Yan’s contributions to the DC canon, break down the whole Shang-Chi experiment “controversy,” and review the first episode of Disney+’s What If.
We pay tribute to the boss man, The Real Chow.
Guest co-host — and The Defenders greatest, uh, defender — Dominic Mah joins Keith to look back at Jessica Jones season 3 and the end of the Marvel Netflix era.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: ‘Jessica Jones’ and the End of Marvel Netflix”
Iron Fist is cancelled, Titans is launched, and Superman returns to The CW! All this and more on a new episode of Hard NOC Life.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: The Show That Shall Not Be Renewed”
This week on Hard NOC Life, Keith is joined by his DC TV Classics co-host Britney Monae to fill in for Shawn as they break down the week in Nerd Pop.
Continue reading “Hard NOC Life: Olivia Munn vs. Super Predator”
This year seems to be the Year of the Tan, aka Lewis Tan.
After the internet went nuts over Tan’s portrayal as the drunk villain, Zhou Cheng, in last year’s Marvel’s Iron Fist, the 31-year-old actor gained a large following and many job offers including last week’s Deadpool 2 and a recurring role in AMC’s hit martial arts drama, Into the Badlands.
Continue reading “Lewis Tan on Shatterstar, Representation, and How He Really Feels about Thirst Tweets”
Just when Marvel thought it was safe.
Color Commentary is back and this time we’re breaking out the Snark Fu once more on arguably the biggest disaster of 2017: Netflix’s Iron Fist.
That’s right. Myself and Madame Gao will once again be providing the tea, the shade, and the truth on all things Discount Arrow.
Continue reading “Color Commentary: Iron Cyst and the Return of the Draggin’”
AMC’s Into the Badlands is in their second season and are going strong with their viewership, storyline, and martial arts. Unlike other series that attempts the martial arts genre, Into the Badlands’ stellar moves can be attributed to executive producer, and star of the series, Daniel Wu.
The Nerds of Color got a chance to sit down and chat with the actor about the second season and what makes the show so appealing to audiences.
Continue reading “One-on-One with Into the Badlands’ Daniel Wu”
It’s been nearly two weeks since Iron Fist debuted all 13 episodes of its initial season on Netflix. Prior to its release, the first half of the season previewed for critics received a drubbing the likes of which is unheard of for a Marvel/Netflix property. I’ve since watched the whole season, and yeah, it wasn’t good. Setting aside my issues with the casting of the lead, Iron Fist suffers from the worst sin of any piece of entertainment: it’s boring! Worse than that, it has absolutely zero point of view. I still don’t know what Scott Buck is trying to say with this show. To that end, I wrote a post about different Asian American showrunners who could have brought a unique perspective to the Iron Fist story that the current show lacks. In response to my article on twitter, one of those writers, Steven Maeda, even revealed he actually pitched an Iron Fist concept to Marvel!
I reached out to the former X-Files and Lost writer to get the skinny on what happened to his pitch to Marvel.
Continue reading “The Iron Fist That Almost Was: One-on-One with Steven Maeda”
Last week, we hosted a special live-streamed edition of Hard NOC Life with filmmaker John Brougher about his new short film Iron and Rage. John talks about his inspiration for creating his own #AAIronFist and why representation of Asian American humanity on screen is so important.
It’s too bad Iron Fist wasn’t remotely close to being as entertaining and brilliant as the backlash it’s been receiving. If it had, it would’ve been as popular as Daredevil or Luke Cage as opposed to being one of the biggest punchlines of 2017.
I’m sure one day we’ll all be tired of the proverbial “T” Madame Gao is serving us.
However, today is not that day.
Shifting into Midnighter mode, I’m about to demonstrate my 8-point strike on the fustercluck of white mediocrity that is Iron Cyst.
This past weekend, Netflix finally dropped all 13 episodes of Iron Fist. For the most part, the internet was not pleased. While a smattering of Fist Stans tried their damnedest to pretend what they watched was, you know, good, the consensus among critics (and fans too) was this was Marvel’s first big miss. There was one awesome outcome of the Iron Fist debacle, however: a slew of awesome comics artists began sharing their takes on a redesigned Asian American Danny (or Dani) Rand! And it all started when Jen Bartel shared her riff on Kris Anka’s original:
Continue reading “Thanks to Jen Bartel, Kris Anka: This #AAIronFist Redesign Took Over Twitter”
by Andrea Tang
This weekend, between bouts of story-editing, I meandered my way through the first four episodes of Netflix’s Iron Fist, which I’m actually quite enjoying so far, probably for the same reasons I’ve seen Vampire Academy three times. I’m pretty sure the writers pitched this series as, “What would happen if you put a goldendoodle puppy in the body of a WASPy ten-year-old blue blood, then traumatically dropped him off in the Himalayas for Fifteen Whole Gap Yahs? Probably, he would die, but that is boring and untrue to comics canon, so what if we made kung fu magic happen along the way in a manner most likely to bring the wrath of Edward Said’s ghost down on our heads? LET’S FIND OUT.”
Doctor Strange. Iron Fist. Ghost in the Shell. It’s hard out there to be an Asian American actor. Or an Asian American consumer of media. Or someone who would prefer to see more Asian Americans on screen (and behind the scenes). That’s why guest host Valerie Complex (whose #IAmMajor clapback recently went viral) gathered an all-star panel to talk about being Asian in Hollywood: feminist pop culture writer Clara Mae, Geeks of Color Creative Director (and Finn Jones’ favorite person on Twitter) Asyiqin Haron, Man in the High Castle actor Lee Shorten, and (the man who should’ve been) Iron Fist’s Lewis Tan.
Continue reading “An All-Star Lineup Discusses Whitewashing and Asian Erasure”
We are rapidly approaching the release of Iron Fist, the fourth Marvel series on Netflix, and reviews have been less than kind. When the show announced it had a (non-Asian American) showrunner, NOC re-introduced the hashtag #AAIronFist. It was an attempt to get Marvel to acknowledge that Iron Fist is a character whose origins are Asian, and should be played by a person of Asian descent, to increase representation in media.
For my part, I wrote an opinion piece about why we need an #AAIronFist. I submitted that being Asian, or even half-Asian, would give Danny Rand a depth to his character that we hadn’t seen before. The “stranger in a strange land” trope where the white man is the foreigner has been done to death, and is vaguely insulting. An 8-year old orphan comes to magical Asian land and becomes the ultimate martial artist? That right there is the definition of the white savior.
Why would my approach have been more interesting? Let me educate you on what it’s like to be an outsider.
Filmmaker Releases Iron and Rage to Contribute to National Conversation of Fairer Asian American Representation in Hollywood.
Continue reading “RELEASE: Netflix’s Iron Fist Reimagined with Asian American Superhero”
Three years ago, when I initially wrote about casting an Asian American in the lead role on Iron Fist, I had no idea the NOC would become ground zero for the #AAIronFist movement. I just never thought an Asian American Danny Rand was that radical a notion! Now that we’re on the eve of the show’s debut on Netflix — in addition to its star’s recent twitter tantrum — years-old arguments are starting to resurface on twitter and elsewhere. Coupled with early reviews savaging the series, I figured now was as good a time as any to resurrect one more Iron Fist thinkpiece before (hopefully) never having to talk about this goddamn show ever again.
Continue reading “Five Showrunners Who Could Have Gotten Iron Fist Right”
by theblerdgurl | Originally posted on Medium
Yesterday, Finn Jones, the actor playing Danny Rand on the Netflix debut of Marvel’s live action version of Iron Fist abruptly quit twitter. He wasn’t being harrassed, he wasn’t threatened, there was no controversy. In fact, to most observers, he simply seemed to be having a conversation. This raised more than a few eyebrows, especially since the show is set to debut in less than two weeks on March 17.
On Sunday night, Jones appears to have gotten into a discussion on twitter with Asyiqin Haron, a 21 year old artist from Singapore who also happens to be the creative director for Geeks of Color, (Heron’s comments are from her own personal twitter account and she was not representing GOC or tweeting from their account when she made them).
Continue reading “Finn Jones Whitesplains Iron Fist to Asian Woman Then Takes Twitter Timeout”
It’s been nearly a year since we were hit with the double whammy of Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johannson. Now with Iron Fist and Ghost in the Shell just around the corner, we’re joined by BuzzFeed News’ entertainment reporter Susan Cheng to let us know where Asian Americans currently stand in the greater pop cultural landscape.
Continue reading “BuzzFeed’s Susan Cheng on the State of AAPI Pop Culture”
So in desperate need of attention and relevance, Rob Liefeld has decided to weigh in on the #AAIronFist controversy.
For those of you just joining us, this summary here breaks it down.
Created at the height of the 1970s kung-fu movie craze, Iron Fist is an American who learns martial arts from masters at the hidden city of K’un-Lun. He becomes their best student and earns the power of Iron Fist, the ability to channel superhuman energy into his fists. Basically it’s a story about a white guy being better at martial arts than everyone else, steeped in tropes that critics regard as examples of cultural appropriation.
According to Liefeld, Iron Fist “has never ever been considered racist,” (never ever never ever) and casting an Asian American actor would be “reverse white-washing.”
