By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

Seemingly lost amid the news of Disney’s acquisition of Marvel Comics was this post by Marvel Executive Editor Tom Breevort, where a question about non-American comic-book leads yielded this rather candid response:
Because we’re an American company whose primary distribution is centered around America, the great majority of our existing audience [...]

by Latoya Peterson
While Arturo was gearing up for Comic-Con, and Joe hung out at the Asian American Comic Con, I spent the weekend at Otakon.
Stepping off the bus near the Convention Center, I felt myself involuntarily break into a smile. Neko ears, Naruto headbands and wings galore. For three days, the Baltimore [...]

by Guest Contributor Joesph Shahadi, originally published at Vs. the Pomegranate

On my way out the door to attend the first-ever Asian American Comic Con in New York City last week I turned on the TV to keep my (awesome, but needy) dog company and suddenly my apartment was filled with the Owen Wilson/Jackie Chan vehicle [...]

by Guest Contributor Ay-leen the Peacemaker, originally published at Tales of the Urban Adventurer

“In the colonies the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on.”- Jean-Paul Sartre

Prologue
When I first became interested in steampunk last year, I posed a question to one of my friends.
Me: “So… I was wondering [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

It’s official: yours truly will be part of the press corps at fandom’s biggest media expo – San Diego Comic-Con.
The full schedule isn’t out yet, but already on my agenda are:
* The panel showcasing The Last Airbender
* The “smaller” panel for the show that built a Roundtable, Heroes
* I’ll be [...]

by Guest Contributor (and regular commenter) Jha

Steampunk! Variously described as an aesthetic, a genre within scifi/fantasy that sprouted from cyberpunk, and a subculture vaguely related to the goth counter-culture. Like many other things with vague origins and a tenuous identity that overlaps with others, it is hard to pin down what steampunk is.
The only that [...]

by Guest Contributor Cheryl Lynn, originally published at Digital Femme

*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
“Baby, you can fall down in the mud, but you don’t have to wallow in it.”
“I’m tellin’ you. It ain’t easy.”
Two sayings. Two grandmothers. Both mine. Both true.
One more saying. This one’s true too.

“This won’t kill me. I won’t die here.”
Martha Washington. The Black [...]

by Latoya Peterson

These are the notes for “ ‘Harshin Ur Squeez’: Visual Rhetorics of Anti-Racist Work in LiveJournal Fandoms.” The notes are from a paper by Robin Anne Reid at the Texas A & M University Race and Ethnic Studies Institute’s Symposium exploring Race, Ethnicity and (New) Media.
Reid’s paper is not yet public; however, the [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Reader Jason pointed me toward this article on Boing Boing covering the Avatar protests:

[F]an Glockgal began making t-shirts that read ‘This is not a tan’ and “Aang can stay Asian and still save the world.’ Viacom, one of the companies which owns a license for the series, has ordered Zazzle.com to take down [...]

by Latoya Peterson

So, this week, I made a shocking discovery: my boyfriend is a trekkie!
I have no idea how we went this long without exposing his latent nerdiness, but here I am watching Star Trek: First Contact and preparing to check out John Cho tomorrow.
In the meantime, he’s some race-related Trekkie goodness from the wilds [...]

by Guest Contributor Jenn, originally published at Reappropriate
The Backstory: This interview is the first in a series of interviews with the editors of Secret Identities, an anthology of comic short stories about Asian American superheroes from Asian American writers and artists. Secret Identities hit bookshelves last week, and in case you haven’t heard, it’s awesome.
In [...]

by Guest Contributor Jenn, originally published at Reappropriate
The first few pages of Secret Identities chronicle an exchange between Jeff Yang (writer of Asian Pop! at the San Francisco Chronicle) and Keith Chow (freelance writer) that originally inspired the Asian American superhero anthology released today. Yang, researching his now well-cited article on Asian American pop culture [...]

by Guest Contributor Regina (Brinstar), originally published at Acid for Blood

Recently, VideoGamer.com interviewed an “expert” to ask him whether the imagery in Resident Evil 5 was racist. The academic expert they consulted was Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. Bowman said that Resident Evil 5 is not racist in [...]

by Latoya Peterson

On Saturday, I received this email from regular reader Allison:
I found this article: “For Anime Fansa: Maid For A Day” by Dan Zak. The article talks about American women (read: white women) being hired to work as “Japanese maids” for a DC-area Anime convention. Among other duties, their volunteer responsibilities include [...]