Cartoonist Gene Luen Yang is having a good year. His most beloved masterpiece, American Born Chinese, which began as a xeroxed and stapled series hand-sold at comics conventions and became the first graphic novel finalist for the National Book Award, is now, seventeen years after its release, debuting as a Disney+ TV show starring Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan.

American Born Chinese has been a staple of my syllabus in almost every comics class I’ve taught. It’s the graphic novel that teaches the lesson of form: the best comics do things that only comics can do. ABC’s formal innovation, most notably the satirical use of stereotypes to skewer the white American gaze, explores the tensions of assimilation and the paradoxes of identity experienced by so many immigrant groups in America. But true comics obsessives (like me) know that Yang’s oeuvre exceeds ABC, and it’s epically vast: his first books, self-published under the imprint Humble Comics, won him a Xeric Foundation grant in 1997. Prime Baby (2010); Boxers and Saints (2013); Dragon Hoops (2020); the collaborative works The Eternal Smile (2009), Level Up (2011), Secret Coders (2015-18), and others; along with his writing for Avatar: The Last Airbender, Superman, his most recent Books of Clash, and other superhero and adventure comics, all build a legacy that delights in variations on nerdery and everyday heroism. Yang is a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and a many-time Eisner and Harvey Award winner.