Voice of Youth Advocates

This full-color graphic novel highlights and re-creates an obscure 1940s comic book character by providing a backstory. It starts with Chinese mythology, where Dragon and Turtle are having a conversation about the changing world and humanity losing its honor and character. It quickly shifts to the immigration story of the Shadow Hero's parents. Hank grows up wanting to be just like his father, working in their grocery store. Chinese mafia take much of what they earn, and Hank's mother disrespects his father, thinking him weak. She wants more for Hank, and after she is saved by a superhero, she decides that Hank needs to be a superhero too. When a terrible tragedy happens in his life, Hank dons his mother-made outfit sporting a turtle symbol. Hank is befriended by Turtle, giving him a superpower, and he fights the grip of the Chinese mafia in his neighborhood.There is consistent quality of both storytelling and artwork. Motherûson and fatherûson relationships in Chinese American culture and Asian immigrant communities in the United States are explored. Great details in the storyboards with both humorous and dramatic dialogue are thought provoking. There are ethnic slurs throughout, somewhat sparingly, but used within the Chinese community by Chinese characters to illustrate the time period. This book would be a good addition to existing older teen and/or adult graphic novel collections. The insight into Chinese mafia and 1940s American superhero comic book culture is wonderful. Illustrations have both a retro and a modern adaptive look and are easy to follow and read. An informative and helpful afterword from the author explaining the comic book character's origination and American 1940s culture, as well as a sample from the original comic, provides good historical background.Karen Sykeny.

Horn Book (Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2015)

Yang and Liew have crafted an origin story for the Green Turtle, a little-known World War IIera comic superhero who was "perhaps...the first Asian American superhero." Teenaged Hank wants a quiet life, but his mother wants her son to be a superhero. Yang and Liew keep the superhero-in-training trope fresh with abundant humor, strong characters, and cracking good action.

School Library Journal (Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Gr 7 Up-Award-winning author Yang and artist Liew tackle a lesser-known aspect of history, breathing new life into the Green Turtle, a 1940s comic book hero. According to lore, the Green Turtle was originally drawn to be Chinese, but publishers quashed artist Chu Hing's plans, and Hing rebelled by drawing his hero so that his face was never visible. The Green Turtle is cast as an unlikely 19-year-old young man, Hank, the son of Chinese immigrants who own a grocery store in 1940s America. When his mother is rescued by a superhero, the loving but overbearing woman decides that it's Hank's fate to become a hero himself, and she does everything in her power to push her son in that direction. Though Hank initially shies away from assuming the role of caped crusader, when tragedy strikes, he's eventually inspired to call himself the Green Turtle, and fight back against gangsters who have been intimidating his family and many others in Chinatown. Liew's scratchy, action-packed illustrations have a nostalgia-tinged vibe ideal for the gritty/hard-boiled setting, and Yang plays expertly with clich&3;s and stereotypes about Chinese culture without ever becoming heavy-handed or obvious. A detail about the four spirits of China, one of whom allies himself with Hank's father and then Hank, injects an element of magic and of Chinese history and mythology that made Yang's American Born Chinese (First Second, 2001) such a layered and complex work. A creative take on the superhero genre. [See author Q&;A, p. 20.] Mahnaz Dar , School Library Journal

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Yang further establishes himself as one of YA-s leading voices on the Chinese-American experience by inventing a backstory for a forgotten comic-book character who was arguably the first Asian superhero. As explained in a postscript, the Green Turtle blinked into and quickly disappeared from publication during the 1940s superhero boom; he would likely be condemned to obscurity if not for rumors suggesting that creator Chu Hing masked the character-s ethnicity so that he could be read as a Chinese superhero (the face of the original Green Turtle is almost always obscured). Yang and Liew run with this theory and cast the Green Turtle as 19-year-old Hank Chu, a second-generation Chinese American who (at his mother-s urging) takes up crime fighting, aided by an ancient shadow spirit that gives him limited superpowers and provides some hilarious banter. Racism, romance, humor, and identity all play important roles in Yang and Liew-s evocation of Hank-s life in pre-WWII San Francisco as they create an origin story that blends classic comics conventions (at one point, Hank-s mother pushes him into a toxic spill in an attempt to give him superpowers) with a distinctly Chinese perspective. (July)-

Starred Review ALA Booklist (Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Starred Review In the 1940s, the golden age of comic books, Chu Hing, a little-known Chinese American cartoonist ry likely the first ever eated the Green Turtle, a superhero tasked with protecting China from invading Japanese forces. Though the comic ran for only five issues, Yang uses Chu Hing's Green Turtle as a launching pad for this story of young Hank Chu, a Chinese American teen in the 1930s who becomes a hero in his Chinatown neighborhood. In a loving spoof of classic superhero origin stories, Hank is exposed to toxic radiation, visits a mystic, and is bitten by an animal used for science experiments before simply working hard at becoming a good fighter. It isn't until he is faced with real tragedy and inherits the wish-granting turtle spirit who lived in his father's shadow that he becomes a real hero, the Green Turtle. There's plenty of humor in this lively, entertaining adventure story, and it capitalizes on the dashing bravado of golden-age comics, particularly in Liew's stylish pages, full of inky outlines and dramatic paneling. At its heart, though, this book is a subtle comment on China's changing cultural landscape and growing multiculturalism in America. A lovingly tongue-in-cheek homage.