Nich Bei Times - 7/12/07

The Secret’s Out!: Tak Toyoshima’s ‘Secret Asian Man’ Becomes First Asian American Lead Character to be Nationally Syndicated
By Ben Hamamoto, Nichi Bei Times Weekly

Readers of the Nichi Bei Times and other Asian American publications have long been familiar with Tak Toyoshima’s "Secret Asian Man." As a weekly comic it appeared in ours and other publications to offer some perspective on, and some jokes at the expense of, current issues.

Readers outside the API community, however, will soon be a lot more likely to recognize Toyoshima’s title character. The strip has been picked up by United Feature Syndicate (UFS) – the same folks who market "Peanuts" worldwide – and will appear in newspapers across the globe on a daily basis and on comics.com starting Monday, July 16..

According to the UFS, "Secret Asian Man" will be the first-ever nationally syndicated comic strip featuring an Asian American leading character.

Toyoshima is currently the art director at the alternative newsweekly, Boston’s Weekly Dig, and has been drawing the strip since 1998.

The Nichi Bei Times caught up with the Shin-Nisei artist raised in New York’s Chinatown – who graduated from Boston University with a degree in advertising and lives in Dorchester, Mass. with his wife and son – to talk about his background and about "Secret Asian Man’s" past and future.

NBT: Some of your strips seem like they might be autobiographical. How closely does the strip mirror your life? Can you give us some examples of actual incidents that turned into comic strips?

TT: Almost all of my strips are autobiographical in one way or another. Some are literal re-tellings. Others like my strips about pitching AA stories to companies like MTV and Hollywood are things I’d like to do at some point in the future. I did a whole year’s worth of weekly strips that was called "The Origin of Secret Asian Man" that chronicled my life from birth to the day I finished the last strip. That was a lot of fun.

NBT: ‘SAM’ can be edgy at times and there is kind of a fine line between being irreverent and being insensitive. How cautiously do you tread it?

TT: If there is a line it probably has my footprints all over it, but not on purpose. I write about things I want to talk about and do my best to recognize those lines but in the end I’m more concerned with getting a point across rather than keeping in mind people’s reactions. Earlier in the strip’s life, I could care less... Now I’ve grown a lot more and realize that there are ways to get my points across without having to drop F-bombs, although you wouldn’t be able to tell that reading some of my answers.

NBT: What are the things you got the most heat for in terms of the strip? Were there any reactions that really surprised you?

TT: Right after 9/11 when I had SAM proclaim "F--k God!" because I was so sick and tired of the constant droning of "God Bless America." Yeah, that was pretty heavy. Lot of hate mail, physical threats, loss of advertising clients for some papers. Religion is a big hot button for a lot of people. I can’t recall any strips that were surprisingly offensive to folks. I was surprised when I got some comment that I didn’t like black people. Probably half the strips I’ve done should by all rights be offensive to someone. I guess that gives me a little comfort that maybe they aren’t. I’ve even seen postings about my strip on white power sites and someone actually said I made some interesting points! Who says I have a narrow audience?

NBT: You have some strips there are kind of single panel commentary pieces, largely expressed with words rather then pictures. How did you come to that idea?

TT: Pictures can say a thousand words but sometimes nothing beats good old fashioned writing. I’ve been criticized for doing that from time to time. I like to do it when it makes sense, like the Vincent Chin strip I just did, or when I want to make some broad statement about AA Month or if I’m doing a biography strip about a notable AA. It allows me to get more information on the little space I’m allotted.

NBT: It seems like you have your hands full right now, but in the future do you have any ambitions to do comics in a different format or tell different kinds of stories?

TT: The daily grind is much harder than the weekly one. I laugh when I think of weeks when I couldn’t come up with a single strip idea. Now they come to me out of thin air. The daily format has allowed me to write about so many other things that are not necessarily AA related. The main character SAM is AA so that element will always be there in a natural way. I think a strip that only talked about AA concerns will quickly lose the interest of the general public. First and foremost the strip has to be good. If I can get a few AA issues out there while doing so, even better. I’m always thinking of new ideas. For now I am focusing all of them to SAM.

NBT: Now that you have a more mainstream audience who may not be familiar with API issues, are you going to avoid jokes that are API-specific or are you going to have to stop and explain as you go along?

TT: It’s going to be "Secret Asian Man 101." I would venture to say that most people are not familiar with some of the AA issues that we have been discussing for years. Not everyone knows Vincent Chin or the sacrifices of the 442nd (Regimental Combat Team) or even the full extent of the internment camps. I am very excited to have the opportunity to present these things to a broad audience and am equally excited to see the reaction they will generate.

NBT: What are your hopes for "SAM" now that it has gone mainstream? What do want mainstream audiences to get out of it?

TT: I like to think of it more as the mainstream came to "SAM." I didn’t approach UFS to be syndicated, their new acquisitions guys got in touch with me. I do take a little pride in that. I realize that this is the chance of a lifetime and do not plan on squandering it. These companies get thousands of submissions every year. To be recruited by one is incredibly humbling but also places a great deal of pressure squarely on my shoulders.

I want the mainstream audience to like the characters and the stories. I want them to relate to things in the strip and to have SAM come across as a familiar face in the daily papers. I want readers to see a strip that isn’t afraid to talk about things that most cartoon cats wouldn’t touch but also feel like they are not being hit over the head by some overbearing agenda. Nobody likes to be told what they should think.

For readers who are accustomed to living in areas with Asian populations, I want to provide further insight. For people who live nowhere near another Asian person, I want to be their first contact. And for AA readers I want to be an outlet for getting our stories out into the mainstream and voice our frustrations and celebrate our successes. I don’t just want to be the Asian guy, but I’m also a realistic person and know that being the Asian guy at this time in American newspaper history has some significance. It’ll be the thing that people will notice first. Hell, it’s in the title of the strip.