Author Archives: Greg

The best things I wrote in 2017

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We’re coming to the end of 2017, and I’m ready to kvell a bit. Here’s a list of the work I’m the most proud of in 2017. Hope ya dig!

MECH CADET YU tells the story of a janitor’s kid who bonds with a giant robot and joins the elite Sky Corps Academy. Drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa with colors by Triona Farrell and letters by Simon Bowland, the book was originally approved as a four issue miniseries. But because folks like you went nuts for it, BOOM! Studios upgraded it to an ongoing series!

I’m not supposed to say which children are my favorite. But you guys, MECH CADET YU is my favorite. I absolutely love working on the book, I love all my creative collaborators, and I love our kid heroes and all their robots and all the monsters and mystery surrounding them. Ask your local comics shop to order the first trade paperback and issue #5 for you today — both hit stores on January 10!

The PLANET HULK PROSE NOVEL came out in October, and it’s my very first prose novel! I loved every minute of working on this book and I won’t lie — I think it’s pretty great.

If you loved the original PLANET HULK comics, the prose novel’s full of extra development and revelations and a bit of a shocker of an ending that you won’t want to miss. If you’ve never read a Hulk comic in your life, I humbly propose that this novel might be a great introduction to the massive emotion and glory of the character.

And holy cow, you can get it for JUST TWO DOLLARS right now for the Kindle!

TOTALLY AWESOME HULK #15, drawn by the great Mahmud Asrar with colors by Nolan Woodard and a stunning cover by Stonehouse, may be one of my favorite single issue comics I’ve ever written. It starts the “Big Apple Showdown” storyline, which is most infamous for featuring what I’m pretty sure is the biggest team-up of Asian American superheroes ever seen in mainstream comics.

I adore my editors for letting me follow this crew of heroes around as they perform at an Asian American bone marrow registry awareness benefit, get Korean barbecue, fight over the check, and sing karaoke before defending New York from an alien invasion. I love it for the diversity within diversity, with Asian Americans of different backgrounds and generations discovering their conflicts and similarities. And I absolutely love Mahmud’s and Nolan’s gorgeous art, which brings out all the emotion, action, and sheer fun of the story.

And you can buy the collected digital volume (which also includes a two-issue story co-starring the great Jeremy Lin) for a scandalously discounted price of just $2.75 at Amazon/Comixology today!

Sending out another Greg Pak Newsletter today with fun bonuses – subscribe now to get in on it!

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MECH CADET YU art from Takeshi Miyazawa and Triona Farrell.

My revamped email newsletter has been a blast so far — I’ve sent out three newsletters over the past few weeks with a few free comics and lots of news.

Today I’m sending out another edition with a nice discount coupon for the Greg Pak Shop and some exclusive sneak images that haven’t been shown anywhere else from an upcoming comic book!

Subscribe today and don’t miss out!

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#AsAmCreatorRollCall

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So a little over 24 hours ago, I posted this on the Twitter machine:

Since then, the tweet’s been viewed over 115,000 times and dozens if not hundreds of Asian American creators have used the #AsAmCreatorRollCall hashtag to tout their work. And hundreds more people have retweeted those tweets.

And my heart’s grown three sizes.

Fifteen years ago, when my producers and I were taking our Asian American sci fi feature film Robot Stories to film festivals, I remember a distributor telling us to our faces that it seemed weird to him that the film had all these Asian people speaking English without accents. I think we just stared at him in astonishment. He didn’t say it in a rude manner; he wasn’t trying to be offensive. He just totally didn’t get it. He didn’t get the film, and he didn’t get us. Even though he literally talking to real live Asian Americans, he didn’t seem to understand that Asian Americans exist or could tell stories that other people could relate to.

In the end, Robot Stories played in over 75 film festivals and won dozens of awards. We self distributed the film theatrically, and with the help of a bunch of incredible grassroots Asian American film festivals, Asian American cultural groups, sci fi fan clubs, college organizations, and indie film fests, we played across the country and ended up getting picked up by Kino for a DVD release.

A lot has changed in fifteen years. But Asian American creators can still face tremendous difficulties getting stories about Asian American characters out into the world. But as I learned with Robot Stories and a bunch of other contemporary Asian American films like The Debut and Better Luck Tomorrow, when folks come together, we can make amazing things happen for each other.

So last night I saw the great Daniel Dae Kim retweet the great Justin Chon on Twitter:

And shortly thereafter, I saw Reappropriate say some smart things about a recent list of 100 influential Asian Americans:

And I found myself thinking about how each of us is more powerful than we realize — particularly when we work together. And that one of the easiest things in the world to do is talk up the things we love so others can find out about them.

So big, big love to everyone who’s shared something using the #AsAmCreatorRollCall tag, and big, big love to everyone who’s retweeted anything someone’s posted using that hashtag. Folks are out there doing absolutely incredible work every day. Let’s all continue sharing in 2018, building that beautiful audience for everyone, and making the world we want to live in.

Please do check out the glorious projects and creators on display at #AsAmCreatorRollCall, and feel free to check out this very nice write up from Splinter News.

Universal FanCon announces Greg Pak as a featured guest!

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Big news — I’ll be a featured guest at the Universal FanCon in Baltimore, April 27-29, 2018! I’m super excited about this con — I even backed their Kickstarter a few years back! Here’s their mission statement:

Universal FanCon is the first large-scale, 24-hour, inclusive event that celebrates the diversity of fandom and the diversity of fans. With its broad range of attendees, celebs, and unique experiences – and its engaging, interactive festival atmosphere — FanCon is the place for everyone who is a part of the true fan universe.

I’ll be there all three days in Artists Alley and on various panels and whatnot!

Other guests include great colleagues and friends like Phil LaMarr, Jeffrey Vergge, Sumalee Montano, and Regine Sawyer. Oh, and Billy Dee Williams. 😉

Get your tickets today!

ComicsBeat on email newsletters with quotes from me & Warren Ellis

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A few days ago, I wrote about the precarious state of social media and internet services and how creatives and freelancers might consider revamping their email newsletters in order to maintain contact with readers and fans. That same day, Warren Ellis sent out some similar thoughts in his own email newsletter. And now Heidi MacDonald at ComicsBeat has written about both of those pieces!

Check it out — lots of great food for thought!

And please do sign up for my newsletter, natch!

And you can sign up for Warren Ellis’s legendary newsletter right here.

Smash Pages interviews Tak Miyazawa about MECH CADET YU and designing robots

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Smash Pages has interviewed my buddy and frequent collaborator, artist Takeshi Miyazawa! It’s a great interview that touches on his introduction to comics and his current work on MECH CADET YU. Here’s a cool excerpt:

You’ve been drawing comics for years and you’ve drawn robots over the years. Do you want to talk about how you designed the Robo Mechs for the series and how to give their own design and personality?

Like any kid from the ’80s, Transformers and Gobotswere properties I was obsessed with. Throw in some Gundam and old-school robot anime, stir it up, and that’s about where my brain is at with robots and robot design.

For this book, I paid particular attention to the generational aspect of the mechs in the world of Mech Cadet Yu. Skip Tanaka is the first to bond with a robot, therefore, his robot is square and blocky like an old Volvo. A real workhorse. The later robots that come to Earth become sleeker and more specialized in their strengths. Olivetti’s mech is a huge bruiser type while Sanchez’s mech has razorlike fins and sharper features. The man-made mech that Park controls is all angles and edges, something completely foreign to what we are used to seeing. So, playing with the various contrasts has been a great way to differentiate each mech from each other.

Read the whole interview here, and be sure to ask your local retailer to order you MECH CADET YU #5 and the first collected trade paperback, both in stores on January 3!

Rethinking social media, the internet, and email newsletters for creators in 2018

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I’m just old enough that email newsletters made my career possible. And I’m starting to think that they’re going to save us indie creators and freelancers all over again in the coming years.

Back in 2002, when I was taking my feature film Robot Stories around to film festivals, I’d pass around a notebook and collect email addresses from every audience I spoke to. By the end of our festival run, we had no real budget for publicity for our theatrical run, but we had a few thousand email addresses. And that was better than gold. I sent out email newsletters every week, asking our amazing supporters to get their friends in whatever city we were visiting next to come see, come see! And they did!

As the years passed, I sent out fewer and fewer newsletters and spent more and more time on social media. Social media was easier, and let’s be honest — it was more fun. At first it seemed like we were all just goofing around on Twitter, telling ourselves it was good publicity but mostly just cracking jokes. But Twitter proved its enormous value when I started doing Kickstarters. Without Twitter, we’d have been hard pressed to drum up the kind of support we did for Code Monkey Save World, The Princess Who Saved Herself, ABC Disgusting, and Kickstarter Secrets.

But with each passing day, the culture and administration of Twitter seems to get more overwhelmed with negativity and harassment. Something’s going to break. And when it does, where does that leave all of the creatives and freelancers who have put so much of their outreach efforts into the site?
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