Blackhawk is one of the comic books featured in Marvels & Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986, a new exhibition at the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia's Chinatown, which takes a long, hard, critical look at the depiction of Asians and Asian Americans in superhero comics.
Originally shown last spring at New York University, the show includes panels and covers from a broad range of comics, including Doctor Strange, which features a mysterious Asian sorcerer and guru named The Ancient One; The Yellow Claw, from the mid-1950s, whose titular super-villain is a manipulative Fu Manchu look-alike; and the horror comic Tomb of Dracula, which features Dr. Sun, a former Chinese Communist scientist who has been reduced to a homunculus, a disembodied brain.
Marvels & Monsters will be on view through March 23 before going on a national tour. The exhibition will feature a panel discussion March 1, with four Asian American scholars from the region and comic book workshops for kids.
Asian Arts Initiative program assistant Nancy Chen said she was stunned when she first saw Marvels & Monsters in New York.
"I was shocked because I have seen these images before in my childhood but never stopped to think critically about them," she says. "It shows us that you can't take images for granted, that we need to look at them critically and to ask what kind of ideology they're promoting."
Chen said she hoped the show would give viewers a chance "to open up a dialogue about entrenched stereotypes of Asians over the years."
The exhibition was created by author and Wall Street Journal Online columnist Jeff Yang, whose books include Once Upon a Time in China: A Guide to the Cinemas of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
