The Shadow Hero

In 2014, First Second published The Shadow Hero, a single-issue graphic novel by writer Gene Luen Yang and artist Sonny Liew. This original story reimagines the origins of the Green Turtle, a little-known 1940s superhero, as a vibrant, modern tale about a Chinese-American teenager in a fictionalized Chinatown. Yang and Liew craft a heartfelt homage to the Golden Age of comics, reclaiming a pioneering Asian-American hero with warmth and wit. It stands as a significant, celebrated work for its thoughtful cultural revisioning and its place in the ongoing conversation about diversity in comics.