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Secret Asian Man Now Syndicated Nationally
Beloved strip considered the first syndicated strip to feature
Asian-American lead character
Stewart David Ikeda, Editor
July 25, 2007 - The editors are pleased/proud/thrilled to announce
that our own hometown boy, Secret Asian Man, has been picked
up for national newspaper syndication by the comics world
uber-syndicator United Features Syndicate!
According to the UFS release, the move makes SAM the first Asian
American to ascend to the Pantheon of such funnies titans as
Charlie Brown, Marmaduke, Dilbert, and many more
of the top drawn superstars to have graced the nation's
lunchboxes and office cubicles, holiday specials and Sunday
magazines!
A long time in development, the deal between former AAV
Artist-in-Residence Tak Toyoshima closed earlier this year,
and SAM made his official debut in newspapers on July 16th.
The launch of the strip is part of a new direction by UFS, which has
been increasingly releasing cartoons for more diverse audiences, and
making them accessible through both traditional paper and new media
outlets. In addition to syndicating the strip to newspapers on
increased daily basis as well as in full color weekly strips, UFS
also makes strips like SAM available for direct subscriptions
through its Feature Bank web site.
When Toyoshima first conceived of the character of Secret Asian Man,
he already had experience in comics publishing. He caught the bug
and honed his art skills working at New England Comics on the noted
comic book, The Tick. He soon went on to self-publish
his own full comic book, The Couch.
An exploration of Toyoshima's own interests, identity and background
as Asian American, SAM was first introduced in 1998 as a feature in
the fledgling Boston Weekly Dig, an alternative weekly
newspaper based in Boston's Chinatown, where Toyoshima was an
original contributor and later served as its Art Director. In 1999,
SAM became a regular feature at the Asian-American Village Online
published by IMDiversity.com. By the turn of the Millennium, SAM was
becoming a more than just staple or cult reading for online Asian
Americans of diverse backgrounds -- he became a virtual addiction.
Still something of a best-kept-secret among ethnic readers and
in-the-know alternative comics buffs, SAM found devoted supporters
and new publication homes among Asian American niche newspapers,
student organizations, and websites. Modest attempts at
creating homegrown "SAM-gear" -- T-shirts, locker stickers and the
like -- proved so popular that in 2003, Toyoshima partnered with the
California-based clothing business, Blacklava, to create a
successful online SAM store.
Invited to conference events and comicons, as well as art exhibits
and club showings, Toyoshima believed firmly that SAM could have
appeal that was not exclusively -- nor even primarily -- limited to
Asian Americans. Indeed, around the same time, two
developments served to widen SAM's exposure to ever more diverse
audiences around the country. First, Toyoshima dedicated
himself to forging his own syndication agreements with a number of
non-ethnic, alternative news weeklies similar to the Dig in
major urban markets around the U.S. Second, SAM caught the
attention of prominent book authors in both the
alternative/political comics sphere and in academia. SAM was
seen in the book Attitude 2: The New Subversive Alternative
Cartoonists by Ted Rall, released in February 2004. Then, the
following spring, Toyoshima himself was a prominent subject of
widely read scholarly essay, "Secret Asian Man: Angry Asians and the
Politics of Cultural Visibility," by cultural studies scholar Tasha
Oren, in a surprisingly popular academic collection by NYU Press,
East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Toyoshima was
also invited to by the Press to illustrate the book's cover, in
which Tak's distinctive "SAM-style" is highly recognizable in a
street scene that illustrates both varied Asian American cultural
references as well as a detailed world of Asian influences on
mainstream popular culture.
After reaching the current syndication milestone, we can hope that
Secret Asian Man may soon be ripe to move on and conquer other media.
(Secret Asian Man's Lunar New Year's TV Special, anyone?) In the
meantime, Toyoshima has his work cut out for him with the
much-accelerated, daily strip schedule, and says he doesn't yet know
exactly how or if the nature of the strip may change down the road to
suit the new audiences, formats, and frequency. For now, he's just
hoping that the legions of SAM's long-time enthusiasts will write to
their local papers and otherwise create a buzz and build demand for the
strip in syndication.
Asian American Village's editors will be doing our part to this end,
and we hope that all of SAM's devotees who have enjoyed the strip
here these many years will do the same. And please join us in
congratulating SAM on his great success. It couldn't have happened
to a nicer 'toon!
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