Mech Cadet Yu

Interior art from MECH CADET YU #5 – line art by Takeshi Miyazawa, colors by Triona Farrell.

I’ve been interviewed by a few more folks about MECH CADET YU! The MECH CADET YU Volume One collected trade and MECH CADET YU #5 both hit comic shops on January 3 — please do call your local comic shop today and ask ’em to pre-order a copy for you!

Here’s an excerpt from the Comicon interview:

HMS: I think that as fun as giant robots are and can be in comics, animation, and film, they will fall a little flat if there’s not a bigger emotional component in some lead characters. In creating Stanford Yu, what main elements did you feel were core to his character? How did you develop those for the reader without getting too deeply into back story?

GP: Oh, the emotional story is always everything. We’ve all been to movies that are just spectacular in terms of action and visuals, but leave us totally cold and unmoved. Nothing’s more important than digging deep into your characters’ emotional lives and goals and conflicts. That’s the only reason we really care. In terms of Mech Cadet Yu, the most important details for us to establish were that Stanford’s an underdog–a janitor’s kid at an elite military academy. It’s also a subtle but important part of his story that his mother’s an immigrant and speaks to him in Cantonese, and his father died years ago, sickened by his work conditions, helping clean up in the wake of the first Sharg War.

This is a working-class immigrant family trying hard to make it in a world steeped in crisis and dominated by elites. We revealed those details mostly through showing rather than telling, bit by bit over the first few issues, doing our best to make it as organic and seamless as possible. The hope is that those elements help amp up the stakes for Stanford as he enters the Sky Corps Academy and provide depth to the conflicts he has with his fellow cadets–the General’s daughter, Park, in particular.

And here’s an excerpt from the Outright Geekery interview:

OG: How often do you and series artist Takeshi Miyazawa have the same vision of the mechs, the cast, and their first true threat, the Sharg?

The Geek Out Book Club podcast has released a rave review of the MECH CADET YU Volume One trade collection, which hits comic book shops on January 3.

Check out the review here — or play it below!

And call your local comic shop to pre-order the MECH CADET YU Volume One trade and MECH CADET YU #5 today — both come out on January 3, and today is the deadline for preorders for comic shops!

IGN has announced its nominees for Best New Comic Book of 2017 — and MECH CADET YU made this list! Please do feel free to check it out and VOTE for your fave today!

Hey, friends! Here’s the brand new trailer for the MECH CADET YU comic book, written by yours truly, with art by Takeshi Miyazawa, colors by Triona Farrell, letters by Simon Bowland, and published by BOOM! Studios. Music for the trailer is by the great David Libby.

MECH CADET YU tells the story of a janitor’s kid who bonds with a giant robot and joins the elite Sky Corps Academy — and ends up taking on the deadly Sharg invaders from outer space. It’s probably the best reviewed book of my career and I just love it and hope I can keep writing it forever. Hope very much you get a kick out of it, too!

The first collected trade and issue #5 both hit stores on January 3 — please do pre-order them from your local comic shop by December 11, the final order cutoff date!

Quick plug for MECH CADET YU #3, in stores today! Thanks so much for the support!

A post shared by Greg Pak (@gregpakpix) on Oct 11, 2017 at 7:09am PDT

Thrilled to report that because of the huge support of readers and retailers, MECH CADET YU has been upgraded from a mini-series to an ongoing comic book series! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who bought the book and spread the word! And please do let your local retailer know you want issue #2 and beyond!

For more about the upgrade, check out:

https://www.previewsworld.com/…/198779-Mech-Cadet-Yu-Promot…

Hey, friends! I’m thrilled to announce that I’m writing MECH CADET YU, a comic book series drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa, colored by Triona Farrell, lettered by Simon Bowland, and published by BOOM!

The series follows Stanford Yu, a janitor’s kid who bonds with a giant robot and joins the elite Sky Corps Academy. Here’s a little something I said about the book last month:

So many of the stories I’ve written over the years are rooted in things I loved the most when I was 10 years old—like giant robots, natch. It’s a thrill to finally be writing that kind of story from the point of view of a character who’s an actual kid. And I’m excited to be writing multi-dimensional Asian American lead characters in a genre that’s so beloved by so many Asian Americans, but seldom features them.

For more about the book, check out the SyFy.com article. The first issue hits comic shops on August 2 — call your local retailer and ask ’em to preorder a copy for you today!