Printz Award winner Gene Luen Yang and artist Sonny Liew are teaming up for a graphic novel featuring The Green Turtle. This Asian American superhero, created by Chu F. Hing, was first introduced in the 1940’s.
According to Yang’s blog post, this protagonist only appeared in five issues of Blazing Comics. With the character now in the public domain, Yang and Liew came together to revive him with an origin story called The Shadow Hero.
First Second, a Macmillan imprint, plans to divide the book into six issues and digitally publish them on a monthly basis. The first issue, entitled The Green Turtle Chronicles, came out on February 18th. The finished print book will contain all six sections; a release date has been scheduled for July 15th.
Both collaborators recently shared behind-the-scenes content on their blogs. Yang talked about his writing process for this comic project in two posts. Liew wrote one post about character sketches and a second one about background designs. (via School Library Journal)