Since May is officially Asian American Heritage Month, we at
Secret Identities are going bi-coastal to kick off the festivities.
First up, SI Editor Keith Chow and legendary writer/artist Greg LaRocque ("Trinity") will be celebrating
Free Comic Book Day at
Super Villains, Inc. in Nottingham, Maryland beginning at 11am on May 2nd.
Then, on the other side of the country on May 2nd, SI Editors Jeff Yang and
I, with writer Jason Sperber ("Many Masks") will be facilitating a workshop at the
Japanese American National Museum as part of the one-day "Imagined Futures" conference.
Here are the programming details for the "Secret Identities" Workshop:
ALTERNATE REALITIES: Re-Imagining America Through the Lens of Graphic Fiction: What if the U.S. were originally colonized by its first explorers--the Chinese? What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor ? What if masked marvels and caped crusaders were a matter of fact, not fantasy?
Jumping off from the "shadow history" presented in the new graphic novel collection SECRET IDENTITIES: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, editors Jeff Yang (Asian Pop columnist, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE), and Parry Shen (actor, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW) will use the conventions of comic book continuity to frame exercises that consider how the world--and our own lives as Asian Americans--might be different if major historical events had taken a different path.
In the second half of the workshop, writers and artists will be put into teams to collaborate in creating and presenting outlines of graphic short stories set in these new imagined realities. Participants should bring samples of their artwork or writing (sequential or otherwise). A book signing and sales will follow.
Then later that day at 5pm, we will be joined by artists Benton 
Jew ("Driving Steel"), Martin Hsu ("Long"), and A.L. Baroza ("A Day at CostumeCo") for a booksigning at Kinokuniya on 123 Astronaut E. Onizuka Street in Los Angeles.
Finally, on May 3, visit the SIUniverse Media booth at the 30th annual Asian/Pacific American Heritage Festival in NYC at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on East 47th Street & 2nd Avenue.
Keith Chow and Jerry Ma will be on hand at Booth #21 signing copies of Secret Identities and selling specially made SI t-shirts with this print of the ENTIRE SI Universe drawn by Jerry Ma - (Man, I want one!)
