A:TLA The Promise, Part One

Yang, Gene Luen (art by Gurihiru). Avatar: The Promise Part One. New York: Dark Horse, 2012.

In honor of World Book Day yesterday, I sat down and read a book. This one, in fact! It was so great to just read a book. I should do that more often.

Ahem.

I had the very great pleasure of hearing Gene Yang give a book talk when this, the first of the ATLA sequel comics, was published in February. The story takes place a year after the end of the cartoon, when Fire Lord Zuko revokes his promise to Earth King Kuei and Avatar Aang to support the "Harmony Restoration Movement," which is seeking to repatriate the citizens of the Fire Nation's colonies in the Earth Kingdom to their (ancestral) home. Zuko changes his mind after the daughter of the mayor of the city of Yu Dao, the oldest and richest of the colonies, tries to assassinate him, setting up a conflict with just about everyone, including Aang, who'd promised Zuko that he'd kill him if he ever decided that Zuko was turning into his father, Ozai.

Oh, Zuko.

For a kids' comic book, this is some surprisingly heavy stuff to deal with, and I think Yang, who's clearly done his research, is handling the complexities of these issues well so far. Hybridity and rootedness and foreignness and authenticity are all complicated things, and in the eye of the beholder as often as not. I also thought Yang did a bang-up job of getting the characters' voices right - it sounded just like an episode of the show in my head, and that's high praise. I laughed out loud at multiple points. Indeed, my one complaint is that the book is too short, and the second volume isn't coming until May.

I will say, passe the protestors' signs demanding Harmony now! in characters that are written left to right and have an exclamation point at the end, that to me the hybridity of A:TLA itself - that is an Asian-American, rather than an Asian or an American, show - is itself an example of what the comics are getting into here. Yu Dao was inspired by Qingdao, the German treaty port in northeast China, and Zuko is right when he points to Yu Dao's hybridity as the source of its wealth and advancement, just as Katara is right when she points out that that wealth and advancement aren't parceled out equally within the city. But it's Yu Dao and the cities like it that become the great cities of Korra's time (the Sino-Japanese for "republic", 共和国, literally means something like "together harmony realm"), and that is just one of the painful truths of the world we live in. You wouldn't have the one without the other, injustice and all.

Making dinner with Electra for great lolz

Step 1: Make rushthatspeaks' yummy apple tofu spinach salad. 

Step 2: Sit down at table, drop fork on the floor. 

Step 3: Decide floor is too dirty for five-second rule, get a second fork. 

Step 4: Sit back down, fumble fork and plate off the edge of the table and onto the floor. Grab futilely at plate as it goes by, manage to grab most of the spinach and some of the apple-tofu mixture. Hold it in your hands over the floor until your roommate brings you a bowl to put it in. 

Step 5: Lick the sauce off your fingers before you wash your hands. Decide it's pretty tasty.

Step 6: Clean up the mess with your roommate. Laugh at yourself. 

Step 7: Get a third fork. Give yourself a high-five when you manage to actually eat a bite.

Step 8: Lament the loss of 2/3 of your portion. Contemplate eating the other half of the recipe that you were planning to eat for dinner tomorrow night. 

Step 9: Decide to have another piece of cranberry-walnut bread and call it good. 

Step 10: Decide that the apple sauce needs more roasted garlic, for next time.