SAMPAN - 1/17/05

The Guy Behind "Secret Asian Man"
By Adam Smith

"Secret Asian Man" doesn't have the super strength of the Hulk. And he can't fly like Superman. Heck, he can't even climb a wall like Spiderman.

But what "Secret Asian Man" lacks in the area of superpowers, he makes up for in his one true strength: the ability to share real life experiences. In short, "Secret Asian Man" is real.

Over the past five years, the circulation of the "Secret Asian Man" comic strip has grown from about 2,000 to nearly half a million. The comic strip, which started in the Weekly Dig newspaper in Boston, now appears in newspapers throughout the country, such as in Chicago's Red Eye, the Silicone Valley's Metro in California, and Asian Week.

The creator behind the everyman hero (or non-hero) is 33-year-old Tak Toyoshima.

Toyoshima, the son of Japanese immigrants (who are both artists themselves), grew up in New York City near Chinatown, and writes mostly of his own experiences and observations. His comics are sometimes controversial -- such as one strip about God and September 11 that got Toyoshima a mailbox full of hate mail and death threats -- and sometimes plain goofy. And they are often eye-opening, such as the one referring to McDonald's efforts to market to the Asian American population.

In addition to writing "Secret Asian Man," Toyoshima is the art director of the Weekly Dig. On January 22, he will present his comic work and discuss it at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

Sampan recently spoke with Toyoshima:

Sampan: How long have you been with the Weekly Dig?
Toyoshima: Since the beginning, before it was the Weekly Dig. The same group of people (who are at the Weekly Dig) started a monthly called Shovel. It started in 1999. It was more artsy, kind of progressivKpoetry, photography, fiction, illustratioK We did that for a couple of years.

When did you start "Secret Asian Man"?
It started in Shovel magazine as a two-page spread. It was much more space and much more sequential, like an actual comic book.

How did you get into comics?
I got a degree in advertising at Boston University, but I started veering away from that. I wanted to do freelance illustrations, and I started applying that to a comic style. So, I started entering contestK with the goal of landing a job doing a comic book for Marvel or D.C. Comics (two major comic book publishers). But then the early 1990s hit, and suddenly there were independent comic book companies everywhere. So I sent out submissions to all these places, and meanwhile, I worked on my own comic called "Couch." I handed those out at stores like New England Comics. I charged a dollar for the comics. I would be like "hey, look, my stuff's up on the shelf," and that was the reward, beyond the dollar I would get.

[Through creating that comic, I landed a job working on "The Tick" comics (a major comic published by New England Comics).] I did that for about two years or so. That gave me the opportunity to go to San Diego to go to comic book conventions. I don't know if you've done that before but comic book conventions are as weird as they sound.

Now I was a big-shot guy with New England Comics, and there's people coming up [to me at the conventions]. It definitely felt good. But after a while, you realize that they're not really there for you, they're there for the character. People are like "can you sign this [Tick merchandise]" and I'm like, I have nothing to do with that. So that kind of is what sparked me wanting to do something on my own. And so I started thinking, What could I write about that's kind of meaningful? [That's when I started the "Secret Asian Man" comic strip.]

How do you come up with ideas every week for the comic?

Most of it is personal observations. I did a whole year called "The Origin of Secret Asian Man" and basically that was my autobiography. I thought, well, I'm going to map out my life from birth. The reason why I wanted to do that was because I was getting a lot of visceral reactions (to "Secret Asian Man"). A lot of people were like "How can you say that, that's offensive." I got a lot of hate mail. I still get it. So, I thought maybe people need to get a glimpse as to where I'm coming from.

What is your background?
I grew up in New York City, pretty much at Canal and Broadway. Basically all my friends were Chinese from Chinatown; my elementary school was in Chinatown. I was kind of engulfed into that, but at the same time, that was from more an outside perspective that I was lumped in. Because the Chinese kids definitely knew I wasn't Chinese. It wasn't really a problem, but every now and then I would get weird reactions from parents, because historically, Chinese and Japanese don't get along real well. Definitely there was a couple of kids whose parents wouldn't let me go to their houses.

You have a wife and child, correct?
[I have a child who's a year-and-a-half old.] My wife is Caucasian, white, a cracker, whatever you want to call it. So, you know, the kid's half. So that's a whole other world to explore. That's another thing that a lot of future comic strip ideas will come out of. I'm more mixed for nationality, not race. [My child] is going to have completely different experiences than I had, so I look forward to seeing that and helping him, and going through things for the first time along with him. I did one comic about me teaching him Japanese. My Japanese is horrible. In some ways I can be the ultimate expert in Japanese, but in another way, man, I couldn't find a bathroom in Japan if I wanted to.

How much of Secret Asian Man is based on your own experiences?
I would say about 98% of it is based on things that have happened to me, things that I've seen, things that I've heard, things that I've come in contact with. Then I'll also do more national things, but again it's through my personal observations. Like this week I did a comic strip about the tsunami coverage in the media.

The more you talk about things that everybody knows, the more people will probably be able to relate. But the flipside to that is, the more personal you get, you'd be surprised at how many people [will relate]. Like during [a comic strip of "Secret Asian Man,"] I talk about how a friend of mine was killed in college. [And I got responses from people who said:] "My God, I experienced the same thing, I felt the same way."

Talk about the tsunami comic strip you just wrote.
Basically, it's my reaction to the first wave of news coverage. The first face I saw was that blonde kid from Sweden. He held up a sign saying that he was missing his parents. Why is this the face of that huge South Asian tragedy? In the background you can see all the other brown people. Also, you see the people in the footage of the disaster, piles of dead people, babies, faces down in the mud. Beyond being just upsetting, you think well, where are all these dead white people? You never see dead white people in the news. Right after 9-11 happened, there were bodies everywhere. But there was pretty much a clampdown with the media. Do you remember any bodies on the news? The media has this weird ethic that says 'well, we don't want to show any dead bodies because it's disrespectful.' But there's no problem with [showing] dead brown people.

Do you ever get stage fright as an artist?
Typos. I feel horrible when I get my facts wrong. It's definitely happened a few times. One of the worst times was when I [wrote] that Bangladesh was in India. That was just dumb.

As the comic grows, do you feel that you have a social responsibility?
Ultimately my responsibility is to myself. If I start veering away from how I feel or what I believe, that's irresponsible. I've got to focus on what I feel, not just what I think people would like, or what they would enjoy or what they want to hear. That's the daily comic strips; that's crap. I am an Asian American. I do this strip. There's no lie or catering or anything like that.

What are you going to talk about at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on January 22?
I'm pretty much going to present the most reaction-getting slides as well as get reactions from the audience. My biggest hope is that we don't get to finish all the slides because we'll be in such deep discussion that we'll get only two or three in. But I'm prepared to have a stone-cold silent crowd as well.

But I have a knack for picking on the audience and trying to get what they're really thinking.