SI Draw Off! Even More Optimus

The SI Draw-Off mentioned last time was not exclusive to the four editors. In fact, this meme is open to the whole SI Crew, so if any of you have an Optimus Prime picture itching to "roll out," then feel free to send 'em our way!

As promised, here are a few more Optimus portraits from real artists. To your left is our friend Bernard Chang's contribution to the challenge. To make things more difficult, Bernard drew The Heartbreak Prime in less than five minutes while playing poker with Parry and friends.Had no idea the Autobots were down with wrestling factions from the mid-90s. Does this mean the Dinobots are the nWo?

Up next is a take on Optimus by our very own Senior Artist Jef Castro. The second Jef heard about the meme, he knew he had to take part, so he whipped up this sketch in a matter of minutes! And look at him. All dramatic and stuff. And if you notice, all the real artists (Jerry, Bernard, Jef) actually drew windshield wipers on the chest. Damn artists and their attention to detail!

So, is there anyone else out there in Secret Identities Land that wants to step up to the plate with their own Optimus?

Angry Asian Man Contest Winner: Tumbas

Also posted at angry asian man.

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As promised, here's the first rendering of the winning entries from the Secret Identities Superhero Contest, where readers were asked to submit their own original idea for an Asian American superhero. This is TUMBAS by Rochell Reyes, as drawn by Jef Castro. And all the details...

EDITORS' NOTES ON THE HERO

We thought this was a well-conceived and nicely developed character, and liked the way the story was set up to establish two brothers as equal and opposite forces -- a classic face-off of nemeses. At first we were a bit put off because the concept does have quite a bit of similarity with the story "Trinity" in SECRET IDENTITIES (which, written and drawn by Greg LaRocque, features not two but three half-siblings who are the children of a super-soldier and have each inherited some of his powers -- and dog tags are central to that story as well!), but we ultimately decided that this character complemented rather than duplicated "Trinity" and gave the creator the benefit of the doubt (Tumbas/Trinity crossover, anyone?).

In tightening the character and editing this origin, we made some small changes -- increasing Tumbas's age slightly from 13 to 15 (would a 13 year old be able to wear his dad's military uniform?) and altered Tumbas's powers slightly. To make the half-brothers more clearly an equal match, Tumbas has super-strength and heightened vision, while his sibling has super-speed and the power of invisibility. Strength versus speed and sight versus camouflage are classic counters. We also gave him a limitation -- his powers are initially limited, requiring "recharge," and must be triggered by adrenaline and an act of will. It's always better to give a hero room to grow!

And now, here's Tumbas, as drawn by Jef Castro, SECRET IDENTITIES' senior artist; Jef chose to draw John as he imagined him immediately after he discovering his powers, rather than "in action" in his dad's military uniform -- so you see him in this pic in all his surfer-boy glory!

EDITED DESCRIPTION

TUMBAS by Rochell Reyes

John Reyes is an ordinary 15-year-old Filipino American surfer kid from the San Diego coast. His name and complexion -- and the fact that he lives right next to the America's southern border -- often leads people to mistake him for Mexican. On the other, he's also often asked if he's Hawaiian, Samoan, Chinese, and at least one time, Egyptian. His ambiguous ethnic identity would be a source of irritation for many, but John has learned to take advantage of it, to fit in, or even disappear, as needed.

That skill at camouflage may be a legacy of his father, Marco Reyes, a 15-year veteran of Army military intelligence who recently was reported dead after a covert mission in Afghanistan; although the Army was unable to recover Marco's body, his unit's commanding officer has stated that the circumstances of Marco's death make it impossible that he might have survived.

When John's mother Jaya tearfully tells him the news, she expects him to be devastated; any other normal 13-year-old would be. But John tells her he feels nothing. His father's profession has made him an absentee for most of John's young life; how, he asks his mother, could he miss someone he'd never connected with at all?

A week after the news of Marco's death, John and Jaya receive a small package in the mail -- a box, containing a small metal rectangle bearing the name and rank of his father, LT. MARCO REYES, U.S. ARMY; his father's old dog tag from basic training. Jaya places the tag and its chain around John's neck, encouraging him to use it to remember his father, and to release whatever he has bottled up inside of him.

Later that day, sitting on the beach and holding the tag in one hand, John tries unsuccessfully to remember and mourn his father. In a fit of anger, he picks up a small rock and hurls it at the ocean. As he releases the stone, he feels a surge go through his body; when the rock hits the water, it doesn't skip -- it skates along at supersonic speed, raising a foot-high wake and sending mist and steam rising behind it as it disappears into the horizon.

John, shaken, tries to figure out what happened. He couldn't have thrown that stone that fast -- no human could. But somehow, he did. Piecing together what happened, he realizes that the sudden flash of strength came as he held Marco's tag and focused on his father's memory. But, try as he might, no amount of concentration can bring that power back.

Remembering that beneath his parents' bed is a foot locker of Marco's old memorabilia, John races home, hoping to discover some kind of clue. But the chest contains an old uniform, some snow globes collected from around the world, pictures of Marco's Army buddies. As John grits back tears of frustration and squeezes his father's dog tag in his fist, he feels another surge and the world goes white -- then refocuses with an entirely new perspective. He can now see with microscopic detail and perfect clarity, and even, as his eyes dart around the room, view the interiors of hollow objects. He blinks in surprise, and his hypervision fades, revealing the world in its ordinary state again...but not before he sees that the foot locker has a false bottom. John slides the bottom back. Beneath it is a yellowing notebook -- a diary going back to Marco's days before he'd met John's mother, recounting his days as a promising young high school grad who'd signed up with the Army to honor his late father, a Filipino veteran of the Second World War.

What they reveal is that Marco wasn't an ordinary member of military intelligence, but a recruit for a secret covert unit of super-soldiers, volunteers to undergo a series of experiments that gave them inhuman abilities. But then the diary stops, and John notices that a sheaf of pages have been torn from it. The only other thing left, tucked into the binding of the notebook, is an old black and white photograph -- a Polaroid of his father with his arm around a young Asian woman, who has a laughing baby in her arms. The woman, who looks East Asian, is not John's mother. The baby is not John.

In the days that follow, John learns more about his powers, activated by adrenaline and the memory of his father; the tag is a trigger, but the abilities seem inborn, a legacy of Marco's mutated genes. Unfortunately, the powers have limits; he can use either his strength or his vision, but not both simultaneously, and he can maintain them only for a short period of time. And after using either, he has to allow them to recharge; at first, he's unable to summon a "surge" more than once a day, though as he trains himself, using his father's old uniform and a souvenir mask his mother had brought back from a visit to the Philippines as his "costume," he quickly reduces the time lapse to an hour.

And then comes an encounter that will change John's life again forever. As he prepares to finish high school, San Diego is hit with a string of "silent robberies": Banks are being broken into and their contents stolen, without a trace of evidence -- except for a name graffiti spraypainted on the walls of every ransacked bank: "MARCO REYES."

The authorities question John and Jaya, investigating whether Lt. Reyes is in fact truly dead, and asking if they have any connection to the crimes. The combination of the harsh interrogation and the reminder of the loss sends Jaya into a state of depression, leading John to investigate the crimes himself, to clear his late father's name and raise his mother's broken spirits.

And that's when he encounters Marco Jr. -- the young boy in the secret photo, John's half-brother and elder by a year. Marco had met Marco Jr.'s mother, married her, and fathered Marco Jr. during his secret training overseas, at the USAG Humphreys base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. But when Marco Jr.'s mother passed away from an accident, his grandparents barred Marco from seeing him again, and ordered him to cut off all ties.

But upon Marco's death, each of his sons received one of his two dog tags -- activating the hidden secret within their chromosomes. John has inherited and is learning to use his father's superhuman strength and paranormal vision; Marco Jr., unnatural speed and the power to blend into the shadows. Fueled by rage at their deceased father (enhanced by the lies he's been told by his late mother's family), Marco Jr. has made it his goal to destroy Lt. Reyes's name; John, meanwhile, adopts the alias "Tumbas" (which means "equal" in Tagalog), John goes on a mission to stop his half-brother and clear his father's reputation -- while discovering the truth about the side of Marco Reyes that neither he nor his mother ever knew.

To learn more about Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, visit the website here.

Secret Identities at Time Warner

Our illustrious Senior Artist Jef Castro snapped some photos of the Secret Identities artwork that is currently on display at Time Warner, Inc. Gallery.

As we said earlier, we'll be at a special panel hosted by Time's Asian American Association this Thursday at 6pm talking about the book and presenting the artwork on display in these photos.

Check it out!

A3 PANEL: SECRET IDENTITIES

Hi everyone!
This is my first post on our SI blog. This is Jef, the Senior Artist of Secret Identities. For our upcoming Time Inc. A3 Panel, I designed this flier to promote the event. I hope you all can make it out... did I mention that this is a FREE event?

Here's the 411:

A3 - The Asian American Association of Time Inc.
Celebrates Asian American Heritage Month

A3 Panel: Secret Identities: Asian Americans in Comics

Thursday, May 21, 2009
5:45pm to 6:30pm -- 2nd Floor Gallery Reception - Original artwork
from the book will be displayed
6:30pm to 8:00pm -- 8th Floor Auditorium - Panel Discussion, Q&A, Book Signing

Address: Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas (50th & 6th Ave), NYC

*This Event is FREE
*Please RSVP to A3_mail@timeinc.com with "A3 Comics Panel" in the
subject line by Tuesday, May 19, 2009
(Photo ID required, Please arrive promptly)

Preview: "Peril" - Video 8 of 8

"Peril" can be found on page 183 of "Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology" which is now available in bookstores and comic shops everywhere. This is the eighth and final motion comic preview.



In the story By the Time I Get to Arizona, a young man named Mason Wong learns that his father has been incarcerated and accused of spying on the United States. His father, Dr. Benjamin Wong, was a research scientist that helped develop a series of nanotechnology prototypes that gave people superhuman abilities. Mason is sent on a quest by his fathers partner, Dr. Malcolm Eady, to retrieve a weapon before it gets into the wrong hands.

Peril was partially inspired by the real life case against Dr. Wen Ho Lee. In 1999, Lee, a Chinese American scientist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory was indicted on 59 counts of espionage, jailed in solitary confinement for several months, and released on time served after the government failed to prove its case against him. He was ultimately charged with one count of mishandling sensitive documents, while the other 58 counts were dropped. In the months leading up to Lees indictment and release, several media organizations, and top federal officials, had made Lees name public, which exacerbated perceptions that the foreign-born Lee was a threat to national security.

Written by Keith Chow, with art by Jef Castro, "Peril" is one of the 52 originally conceived superheroes of the S.I.Universe. Find it on YouTube here.

PREVIEW: "IN THE BEGINNING" -- Part 1 of 8

This story serves as the preface to SECRET IDENTITIES and can be found on page 7 of the book. It details a fun behind the scenes look into the how's & why's the book came to existence. It answers how the editors all met and explains why this particular anthology, right now.



A full pdf version of the preface is viewable here: http://secretidentities.org/preview.pdf

And here's the High Quality link if you'd like to pass it around.

SECRET IDENTITIES will be available in stores, April 2009 from The New Press but you may pre-order your copy at Amazon.com today!

"In the Beginning" - Story by: Jeff Yang, Art by: Jef Castro -- is part 1 of 8 trailer story videos scheduled to be released.

Who We Are

For those of you who might be interested in who we are, you can learn more about the book and us editors here.

If you're too lazy to click on the link, peep the mini-bios below:

Jeff Yang
Editor-in-Chief
Age First Began Reading Comics: 9 (“Yo Joe!”)
Maximum Size of Collection: 800 (and counting)
If I Had a Power It Would Be…: Instant adaptation (ability to rapidly evolve into the ideal form for any environment or occasion, from a boring lecture to the center of the sun)
Complete Bio

Keith Chow
Editor-at-Large;
Outreach & Education Director
Age First Began Reading Comics: “infancy” (“Captain Carrot”)
Maximum Size of Collection: never counted (nine longboxes)
If I Had a Power It Would Be…: flight or time travel
Complete Bio

Parry Shen
Managing Editor
Age First Began Reading Comics: 7 (“Richie Rich: Poor Little Rich Boy”)
Maximum Size of Collection: 800 (and counting)
If I Had a Power It Would Be…: Molecular moisture projection and conversion (e.g., Iceman’s powers)
Complete Bio


Jerry Ma
Art Director
Age First Began Reading Comics: 6 (“Dial H for Hero”)
Maximum Size of Collection: unsure (but has all of “Power Man and Iron Fist”)
If I Had a Power It Would Be…: Mind control
Complete Bio

Jef Castro
Senior Artist
Age First Began Reading Comics: 6 (“Disney’s Unca Scrooge”)
Maximum Size of Collection: 350(lame compared to brother, who has 2000)
If I Had a Power It Would Be…: Probability twisting, a la Longshot
Complete Bio

Welcome to the SI Blog!

Hard to believe, but it's been over a year since we first announced Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology to the world. In that time, release dates have changed (on shelves April 2009!), babies have been born (shout out to Skylar), and much awesome has been created. This blog is a chance for those of us behind the scenes to let you all in on some of our secrets. We'll keep you up to date on the progress of the book, let you hear from some of the folks writing and drawing some really incredible stories, and offer a sneak peek or two at some of the stories and art you'll find gracing the pages of the anthology (like that gem of a panel from the story "Peril" by the illustrious Jef Castro below). We're looking forward to hearing your feedback, so feel free to leave comments and let us know how we're doing!



Excelsior... or something... (Can we even use that as a sign-off?)



-- posted by Keith