I read American Born Chinese about two years ago for the Asian and Asian American Diaspora LMST Class, but I did not quite remember everything that happened, so I decided to read it again. While there are seemingly three story lines, they all merge into one at the end, which caught me off guard again the second time reading it. I definitely think this fits into the category of literary comics. Not only does it have great writing, it tells a compelling story that really makes the reader stop to think. While I cannot say that I relate to this story in the same way, I can see how this story could be relatable. I feel like this is an important novel that everyone should take a second and read. I also really enjoyed the pacing of this novel, both in the sense of the three stories coming together as one and in the panel by panel framing of the scenes. The writer understands well how to use blank panels and pages.
One trend that I felt was interesting, albeit upsetting, was that with the incentive of making money by creating comics, the lines of ownership of the artist's creation seem to blur. Of course, other factors lead to the uncertainty of giving credit where credit is due, such as having multiple people working towards one comic. However, I feel that when comics became more mainstream, companies valued the income that comics made over the treatment of the artist that created them. In particular, on pages 109 and 110 of The Comic Book History of Comics that Marvel allowed for the continuation of Stan Lee as the sole credit of their comics for quite some time, leaving artists like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby unhappy with their lack of recognition. Marvel (and Stan Lee) made profit off of Stan Lee's rise to fame, practically letting people believe he was a genius for creating such works by himself. In actuality, talented artists were drawing and plotting the comics while Stan sometime...
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