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An Open Letter to Secret Asian Man FansHow will America's favorite Asian-American comic hero be affected by his success?
To all the Loyal, Long-time Secret Asian Man Readers,
You may be wondering what changes lay ahead for Secret Asian Man. Is Secret Asian Man going to be some watered-down version of what is was? How can the dailies possibly have the same brutality and edginess as the weekly strips? Will we never see his shiny butt crack ever again? I pondered these very same questions. Without a doubt there need to be some changes to make the adjustment into the daily pages. Luckily, they are changes that I’ve been wanting to make anyway. Here are some of the changes you will see: Structure One of the first things that the editors at UFS suggested I do was come up with a fixed cast of characters. This is something I had never developed. Technically, Secret Asian Man didn’t even have a name. There were some recurring character types but that was about it. But it made a lot of sense. It would be safe to say most of the people who will be reading the daily version of the strip have never seen the weekly versions. They are starting at square one whereas you may be very familiar with the strip for years. This is a chance to start over, rethink Secret Asian Man as a character and focus him into someone that people will want to read about every day. When it came to the cast, the characters came fast and furious. Sam would be me. My wife became Sam’s wife and my son became Sam’s son. Other characters became combinations of friends and colleagues, purposely mixed and matched to create roles that defied many stereotypes. I had to resist the urge to create dozens of characters right off the bat. I was told that I had all the time in the world to develop characters, but the most important ones were the core characters: the family and close friends. The Simpsons didn’t start out with a cast of one hundred either. The structure of having fixed characters has made it a lot easier to develop storylines and play off of each of their character traits. I’ve come to expect how they will react to different situations and they are becoming more real to me every day. Tone One of the first things that crossed my mind was, “I guess I won’t be able to say ‘shit’ anymore.” Then I thought about it and the point of the strip isn’t to get away with saying the word “shit”. Hell, I can still do that on my blog. SAM needs to be on his best behavior, at least for now. It’s like meeting your girlfriend’s parents for the first time. You’ll want to be nice and polite to make a good first impression. Then later, when they get used to you, you can start swearing and farting in the den with your future in-laws. SAM also needed to be likeable if he was going to succeed. There are many issues that I’ll be bringing to the daily audience and the last thing I want to do is preach to them. I’ve been criticized for that in the past so I took that to heart. So where will the angst-ridden side of SAM go? Fear not, I’m developing a character that will embody the epitome of the angry Asian guy. Subject Matter Over the years I have made it a point to diversify my subject matter to include other races, religions, sexual orientations and even political affiliations. I’m going to continue doing so with the dailies. At its core, SAM is about group dynamics. We all belong to many different groups and each group has its own unique struggles with identity, stereotype, and clashes with other groups. I may go days without talking about a single “Asian American topic,” but whatever SAM will be talking about, it’ll be coming out of an Asian American mouth and that’s key. You can only scream that you are Asian so many times before people tune you out. First and foremost, SAM needs a strong point of view that a wide range of people can identify with. I’m not concerned with whether or not people will agree with me (never have been) but I do want to make sure people know where I stand on things. I’m looking forward to talking about a whole bunch of things that I’ve been wanting to say but always felt it didn’t quite fit into the format of what Secret Asian Man had been over the years.
So there you have it. There will definitely be some changes coming down the pipe for SAM, but if you’ve stuck with me over the years, I hope you’ll trust me enough to keep supporting the strip that you helped to succeed. Thank you and I hope to live up to your expectations. I promise to do my best.
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