MF GALAXY

Acclaimed for stunning performances in films such as In the Heat of the Night and In Cold Blood , actor Scott Wilson is and best known to today’s audiences as Hershel Greene on AMC’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead . Wilson got an early boost from superstar Sidney Poitier who respected his work on In the Heat of the Night. Poitier alerted In Cold Blood director Richard Brooks about the young actor who went on to beat out Steve McQueen and Paul Newman for his role as real-life murderer Dick Hickock. His chilling performance put him on the cover of Life Magazine when he was only 24 years old. Wilson went on to appear in numerous celebrated films including The Great Gatsby, The Right Stuff, Dead Man Walking , and Monster , and he was a recurring guest on CSI . Although by his own description he was devoted to the craft of acting and never sought fame, Wilson is now so much of a fan favourite that he earns even more from his autograph-signing sessi...

Gene Luen Yang is the celebrated graphic novelist behind the recent LA Times Book Prize-winner Boxers & Saints and the award-winning American Born Chinese.   Yang is a remarkable force in the world of American comics. He’s the first comic creator to be nominated for the US National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Printz Award. He’s also the writer of the graphic novel sequels to the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Somehow while he’s changing the face of American comics, Yang finds the time to teach high school computer science and graduate-level creative writing. In part two of our conversation, Yang discusses: how and why he joined three previously unrelated stories together to create his career-defining graphic novel American Born Chinese how story and structure drove each other in American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints the anti-colonial movement featured in Boxers & Saints , a militi...

Gene Luen Yang is the celebrated graphic novelist behind the recent Boxers & Saints and the award-winning American Born Chinese, and a remarkable force in the world of American comics. While thoroughly enthralled by the artistic traditions and lore of US superheroes, Yang is equally engaged by other artistic traditions such as Chinese opera, which is full of super-powered heroes and villains in primary-coloured costumes, and massive backstories with centuries of continuity behind them. Although Yang laboured for years at making comics and losing money, he eventually struck adamantium with American Born Chinese. The 2006 graphic novel features a contemporary Chinese-American boy, an outrageously offensive fictionalised sitcom character named Chin-Kee, and the Monkey King from classical Chinese literature. The book is Yang’s fascinating fusion of three stories exploring alienation, racial self-hatred, and transformation of social consciousness and personal self-concept....

Great news, MF GALAXY fans! You can now subscribe to the MF GALAXY using iTunes! Just click here or the graphic below. And please share, repost, and retweet!

Comic book writer Brandon Easton ’s original graphic novel Shadowlaw received an Eisner Award nomination for Best Single Issue and won the East Coast Black Age of Comics (or ECBAC) Glyph Award for Best Writer. For scripting Watson and Holmes #6, Easton won three Glyph Awards, including Fan Award, Story of the Year, and Best Writer. He’s also written Miles Away, Roboy, The Joshua Run, and Arkanium, the motion comic Armarauders , and a bio-graphic novel about pro-wrestler Andre the Giant. In addition to being the documentary film-maker behind Brave New Souls: Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers of the 21st Century , Easton is a screenwriter who’s worked on Transformer Rescue Bots and the 2011 reboot of ThunderCats . In part 2 of our conversation, we discuss: Easton’s experience of the US educational system in Baltimore as a student and in New York City as a teacher Why he concluded the system was broken How he attempted to improve kids’ lives and how tho...