INTERVIEW: Pornsak Pichetshote talks new comic, THE GOOD ASIAN

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By Zack Quaintance — Next week, we’re getting an over-sized true noir story built upon an undercovered era of U.S. history, with The Good Asian #1 by writer Pornsak Pichetshote, artist Alex Tefenkgi, colorist Lee Loughridge, and letterer Jeff Powell. Today, we have a great chat with Pornsak, who stopped by to talk about the huge amount of research that went into this one, the noir/historical influences, and much more. Check it out below!

INTERVIEW: Pornsak Pichetshote talks THE GOOD ASIAN

The Good Asian #1 is out May 5, 2021.

ZACK QUAINTANCE: The first thing I wanted to ask about is the level of research that went into this comic. This story really goes deep into its era and setting, and I was wondering how much and what sort of research did that require?

PORNSAK PICHETSHOTE: It was so much research. Seriously — SO much research. THE GOOD ASIAN is a genre we’re calling Chinatown noir. A detective mystery set in in 1936 featuring the first generation of Americans who came of age under an immigration ban of their own kind – the Chinese. And if you’re looking at Chinese-Americans in the 1930s and the generational impact of how the Chinese Exclusion Act affected them, you’re not going to find many books about it. You’ll find almost none as a matter of fact. So what that meant on my end was Tetris-ing together research from a few different sources – some that focused on immigration, some that focused on Asian-Americans in the 1930s, some that focused on their relationship to the police and composite a picture together. I’ve always believed that one of the reasons people come to fiction is because they’re looking for the truth between the facts, and that’s really what I strove for here. 

ZACK: This is such a great-looking comic, one of the sharpest noir aesthetics and color palettes I’ve seen in a monthly comic maybe ever. What was the collaborative relationship like on this book and how did you work together to create these visuals? 

PORNSAK: Alex [Tefenkgi] deserves all the credit on that, and I agree. He’s done a magnificent job. I try to make his life easier by finding as much reference to the things I’m writing about as I can, but he goes above and beyond getting documentation on the fashion and architecture of the era on top of that. But we talk a lot about approach and if I have a certain effect in mind, I’ll describe it in the script, but then Alex will blow my ideas out of the water with his artistic interpretation. Alex has his own aesthetic that he filters the era and Chinatown through, and what I love about it is that it romanticizes everything in the way I think a good noir should while still keeping the truth of the environment. 

I’m also really glad you mentioned the color palettes. Alex can actually be a really hard person to color, because his work is so complete in black and white. A lot of colorists don’t know what to do with that, adding colors and effects and making the page overly complicated. I’ve been friends with Lee Loughridge for a really long time, and when you’re that close with someone there’s always the paranoia that your friendship might influence your creative decisions. But he was one of a few colorists we exposed Alex to and Alex instantly was drawn to his style. Lee’s a genius. Even with art as complete as Alex’s, he’s able to add a tangible sense of mood and atmosphere. Plus, his color choices are so bold and clever – with colors you’d never think you’d see in a noir, but that nonetheless work so organically and perfectly. 

ZACK: I wanted to ask about your main character. I thought he was incredibly compelling. Can you talk a little bit about creating that character and the internal conflict he’s facing? 

PORNSAK: Edison Hark was inspired by the many Asian detectives of the 1930s who I wanted to reinterpret – crimesolvers like Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong – but I wanted to bring that archetype in line with the actual history of Asian-Americans. Because while those characters were wildly popular during their time (Charlie Chan had dozens of movies, as well as radio shows, cartoons and more), the first Asian-American detective in mainland America wasn’t until 1957. The only place you could find an Asian-American detective in the 1930s was Hawaii, so Edison Hark, like Charlie Chan, was inspired by real-life Hawaiian detective Chang Aparna, who very much policed other Chinese people. And I thought that conflict was a great place to start and so many of the ideas for Edison Hark happened there -- having a detective who became a cop because he wanted to do the right thing only for his community to see him as a traitor – and for him to wonder if he just might be one. 

But to me, Hark – in the tradition of all good genre stories – take hopefully relatable positions and heightens them. Because the title “THE GOOD ASIAN” is an allusion not just to the model minority myth Asians deal with, but also brings up the idea of what constitutes a “good Asian?” To what degree should you show loyalty to the place you’re living in and its laws? To what degree should you show loyalty to your people or your culture or your heritage? One of the things I like about Edison Hark is that despite the dark, high-stakes world he lives in, he’s a person straddling two worlds, trying to reconcile the conflict between the place you’re living in and the culture you come from. That resonates deeply to me as an Asian-American, and I hope it does with other children of immigrants. 

ZACK: What do you hope that readers take away from your work on this book?

PORNSAK: Probably most of all, I’d want them to feel entertained and surprised and shocked and moved – I like them to get the same excitement I get when I read a good noir mystery. But it would be great if they also realized how much Asian-American history we’ve don’t teach in schools and as a result, have forgotten. I hope they feel inspired to explore some more of it. This book is coming out during a time when anti-Asian hate crimes have been skyrocketing, and I do think it’s important for Americans to know how our current moment sits alongside the context of American history. 

ZACK: Finally, what's the scope of this book? Do you have an ending in mind already, or might Edison Hark be the sort of noir detective that tackles many cases?

PORNSAK: While I’m too superstitious to commit to anything until we see the sales of this book, this volume of THE GOOD ASIAN is slated to run nine issues and I definitely have an idea for more cases and future volumes if the book finds an audience.

The Good Asian #1 is out May 5, 2021!

Read more great interviews with comics creators!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.