In this second part of our interview with Gene Yang, we speak in more detail about his latest book, The Eternal Smile, a collaboration with fellow Bay Area-based cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim, which collects two brand new stories and an old, largely forgotten fantasy tale, which saw a small run on Image Comics in the late-90s.

Yang discusses his collaboration, the impact of its predecessor’s success, and the difficulties of tackling ethnicity in comic book form.

[Part One]

It sounds like Derek initiated this collaboration in which you wrote the script and he illustrated. Was that sort of method something that had interested you before the project?

Yeah, I jumped at the chance to work with him. He’s a world-class illustrator. And it’s also the most physically tasking part of putting a comic together. One of the things I really like about comics is that one person can really drive a project. One person can really have a hand in every element, and I think that’s much different than other storytelling media, like animation. But I think when you’re able to work with another person who really has common sensibilities with you, I think it can work really well. That’s how I feel about working with Derek. Especially in that last story. He took a greater role in the last story. I storyboarded the other two, and in the last one, I wrote the story, but he was the one who wanted to break it up a little more into a panel layout. I think that really set the story better—it enhanced it a lot.

Then he didn’t play much a role in terms of developing a plot for the first two pieces?

Well, I think the plot was mostly mine. All of the characters were mine. For certain panels, I would have the camera shot in a certain way, and he would shift it in a way that he thought was more dramatic. When I storyboard, I storyboard for me. I storyboard almost subconsciously for my own limitations in illustration. He would come up with visuals that I just couldn’t draw, so he doesn’t need to tell stories in that way. He did a lot of that, where he would reshoot panels. But the general pacing and the panel layouts on each page were from my thumbnails. But in the last one, the actual panel structure was all him.

When he approaches you and says he wants to create a fantasy story from the aesthetic point of view, how do you approach that? How do you tackle such a potentially alien genre?

I actually wrote another story first and showed it to some friends, and it didn’t get a very good reaction. Duncan’s Kingdom was actually the second story that I wrote for him to draw. I think that was actually helpful to write a project that didn’t actually get finalized. At the heart of it, it’s not really a fantasy story. That was helpful, too. I haven’t written a straight fantasy story, yet.

There were some fantasy elements to American Born Chinese.

Yeah, I think so. I think it’s the whole magical realism thing, where you blend the two together. The whole “Monkey King” story takes place in a fantasy setting.

The second two-thirds of The Eternal Smile were done specifically for the book.

Yes, they were done after American Born Chinese and Duncan’s Kingdom was done much, much earlier.

American Born Chinese won all manner of awards and was really well-received in general. After having that manner of success, is it important for you to try on something new?

Yeah, I think I was a little freaked out by it. I didn’t really expect all of the attention that it got. I was just happy that it was being collected into a graphic novel by a great publisher. But I did get a little freaked out. It definitely changed my life, especially the support from teachers and librarians. So I was a little freaked out by the next project. I think working with Derek took some of the edge off, because I know, if nothing else, it’ll at least look pretty gorgeous.

Was it important to take the work in a different direction, story-wise? You get a little more legroom with short stories, because you don’t have to carry a piece out for 200 or 300 pages.

Yeah. I think that I do end up hitting lot of the same notes, though. One of the people I work with makes fun of me for putting a twist in each story. So there’s that element that I think I’m a little tired of that, by this point. But that’s where I was, and that’s one of the things that kept coming out when I was writing. I didn’t really want to explore ethnicity again, in the second one.

Is there a reason for that? Is it a hard subject to keep hitting, over and over again?

I think there are definitely other ways of hitting that. I’m dealing with some of those themes in the new project that I’m working on with another artist.

It’s something people tend to shy away from. Sometimes it seems hard for people to digest it, in the form of entertainment.

Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think that different generations perceive that  topic very, very differently, depending on how old they are, and what part of the country they grew up in. it can be a difficult thing to talk about.

You mentioned before that you were surprised by all of the feedback from teachers and schools for American Born Chinese. Is that something that you’re taking into account now, as you’re working on new books?

No, I don’t. I really, for the most pat have tried to keep my cartooning life and my teaching life separate, but nowadays they’re kind of convergent.

–Brian Heater

It was 2006’s American Born Chinese that put Gene Yang on the sequential art map. The book, an exploration of Asian-American identity situated at the cross section of cultural struggles, stereotypes and fantasy, was nominated for a National Book Award—the first graphic novel to receive that prestigious honor.

Yang’s follow up to that much lauded project is this year’s The Eternal Smile. The book—the artist’s sophomore work for First Second Books—teams him up with fellow Bay Area comics veteran Derek Kirk Kim on three short stories that explore the sometimes thin lines between fantasy and reality.

In this first part of our interview with Yang, we discuss his day job as a high school teacher, the roles he sees technology playing in the creation and consumption of comics, and how his collaboration with Kim first came about.

It’s loud on your end. Are you at work now?

I am at work now, but I was only supposed to be here half the day, so I’m working on my own time now.

What’s your day job, if you don’t mind my asking?

I work at Bishop O’Dowd High School—it’s a Catholic high school in Oakland. I teach computer science and I also do computer stuff for them, like managing their database.

So you do interact with some of the students directly?

Yeah, yeah. This year actually, I’m only here part-time. I only have one student in an independent study course.  Later this year I’ll still be part-time, but I’ll have one regular class.

Does being a cartoonist make you the cool teacher?

Uh, not really. There are actually three of us here that are cartoonists.

Oh yeah? Who else?

There’s Thien Pham. He does a book called Sumo. He’s with First Second, too. And then there’s Brianna Miller.

How did that happen that there are three cartoonists at the same high school?

Well, I got Thien the job and Thien got Brianna the job. And we all kind of know each other from the Bay Area comics scene.

Is that your background, computer science? Is that what you went to school for?

Yeah, yeah. That’s what I went to school for.

Has that had any influence on your work? You seem to draw comics rather traditionally, on paper, for the most part.

Yeah. It ends on my computer. It starts on paper, but it always ends on my computer. I don’t use White Out anymore. I do all of the corrections on Photoshop. I fill out all of the blacks in Photoshop, and I also don’t letter anymore.  I do that in Photoshop, too.

Do you create works specifically for the Web, or is everything targeted to ultimately end up in print?

I’ve done Webcomics before, but they’re always formatted for print. I’ve never done anything that wouldn’t work as a print comic. I’ve never used Scott McCloud’s “infinite canvas” or anything. I’ve always formatted the pages so that they’re printable. But I have done comics where it’s up on the Web before it appears in print form.

Is that something of a personal preference? Would you rather read something in print, in terms of your own consumption?

I definitely read way more print comics than Webcomics. But I’m actually starting to get into the iPhone. I just got the Kindle application. I don’t have an iPhone, but I have an iPod Touch. I think that’s actually a really good medium. But I’ve also gotten some of those Uclick comics for my iPod. And while I think there are some problems with it—because they mostly take print comics like Bone and format them for the iPhone—I really thank that it’s something really exciting to explore, comics for the iPhone and comics for the iPod.

You’re sort of working your way to that end, and you mention Scott, who’s obviously written plenty about the Internet as the medium. Is that a space that interests you, moving forward?

Yes, yes. I would say, not necessarily the Internet, but definitely some sort of handheld device, like either the Kindle of the iPhone. I would definitely be interested in that. I think that reading in front of a computer, a desktop or even a laptop computer, is still a little clumsy. But the portability of the Kindle or the iPhone really makes is so that it’s much closer to the print reading experience.

The Kindle, for the most part, seems to want to maintain that traditional page-at-a-time reading experience. The iPhone gives the reader more freedom. If you were to format something specifically for the iPhone, what sorts of things are you taking into consideration as an artist?

Well, the page size would be different. I think just the size considerations would be different, like the number of panels on a page and that sort of thing. And even the way a page turn works is different. I think all of those things come into play. And I think the use of color, especially on the iPhone, is important. a black and white comic in print, I think there’s something that feels very native. Most of what we read in print is black and white. When we read prose, it’s black and white. I think black and white comics in print really feel at home. I think black and white comics on the Web or on these portable devices feels a little bit more foreign. People are used to seeing so much color when they’re reading on the Web.

The iPhone has such a beautiful screen that you want to take advantage of it as much as possible.

Yeah, yeah. That’s definitely true.

The new book is out this month, right?

It’s out next Tuesday, actually. [Yesterday, -ed.]

How did you first start working with Derek?

Derek and I met at an Alternative Press Expo a long, long time ago—maybe ten or eleven years ago. And we became friends soon after that. At first we’d just go to cons together, and eventually we would draw together every week. We would have this thing called “Art Night.” So we hung out a lot. He lived in Oakland for a while and so did I, so we lived within walking distance of each other. Around that time he was working for an animation company that never went anywhere. But he was feeling really creatively stifled.

He wanted to work on a project where he didn’t have to write the story, where he could just provide the visuals. So we came up with Duncan’s Kingdom that was eventually released as a two issue black and white from Image Comics in the late 90s. Derek had been published by Antarctic Press before that. That was my first experience working with an actual publisher. That story was a lot of fun to do. Larry Marder was in charge at the time.

And then after that we just did our own projects for a long time, but we always wanted to do something together, but Duncan’s Kingdom was so short that it didn’t merit its own graphic novel. After we both hooked up with First Second, we talked to Mark Siegel, the editor over there, about putting together the sort of themes that we explored in Duncan’s Kingdom, but it would take things in a slighty different direction.

So you do definitely see a common thread between the three short stories in the book?

Yeah, I think they’re all explorations of the intersections of fantasy and modern day life.

When you were trying to figure out what to do with the first story, did the thought of expanding it into a full-length graphic novel occur to you?

We hadn’t actually thought about it. I think in the beginning, we just wanted it to be short, because we both had our own personal projects that we were working on. And then Derek wanted to draw something fantasy, because at the time he thought it was really fun. I think since then he’s moved into more of a cartoony style that he pairs up with naturalistic stories. But at the time he was really into fantasy.

Looking through the book, it seemed like an opportunity for him to try out as many styles in as short a space as possible.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I don’t know if he really wanted to try out the styles—I think he was more concerned about using styles that would serve the stories. I think he did a really incredible job.

Yeah, it really looks like a different artist did the three stories.

Yeah, yeah, it really does. I was really luck to work with him on that.

[Concluded in Part Two.]

–Brian Heater