#ryan choi

I’ve been kinda burnt out lately so I thought it would be nice to do another sketch dump; from older to newer. (2/2)

This is mostly JLI and other miscellaneous characters

I’m not bothered to fix the older stuff, it’s not reflective of my current artwork. The first ones were mostly done months ago at school recess, self explanatory.

And there's always something that I find both very mysterious and very typical for DC in it.

So Damian has a little story in the issue which makes sense because he's a quarter Chinese (edit: and West Asian, being Arab with ties to the Peninsula).

(Okay and I just did a double take and was like "what this was written by Aziz Ansari? This was after the accusation too DC why would you-- but then actually read it and it's Aniz Ansari...who is Aziz Ansari's younger brother. Turns out. No controversy attached to him specifically, he doesn't even have a wikipedia page).

It's a kind of three page little nothing story, shorter than almost everyone else's which is surprising for such a prominent character, right? But then the real mysterious part...

There's a little profile for every Asian hero that shows up in the issue. EXCEPT Damian. He's the only one who got left out as far as I can tell.

(sidenote: Looking at Atom's profile specifically and remembering the time I asked why DC was killing off so many characters of color, specifically citing Ryan Choi, at HeroesCon and Ian Sattler responded that it wasn't a big deal and DC was plenty diverse because they even have green and purple skinned characters. But 15-ish years pass and we're proudly spotlighting him as an Asian hero and hoping nobody remembers that. What a journey we've been on, Ryan.)

Why is Damian left out? At the time, this coupled with the shortness of the story made me think they forgot he was a quarter Chinese until the last minute, then realized "oh shit" and threw something together and that's why they forgot to include it.

But now, I'm considering that it really could be that they just don't want to have to put down what Damian's race is in a comic.

Like they really don't want to. As if they're afraid that putting it down officially would bring them under scrutiny of how they tend to present Damian. Like even just putting down what his mixed race heritage is, what he is on the Al Ghul side, scares them for some reason. So they're just putting him in there to cover their asses and hoping you don't notice he didn't get a profile, kthnx.

Like it doesn't make sense it was just an oversight when he was even mentioned in the solicit

Grab your favorite boba and pull a chair up to the dim sum table as we celebrate Asian Heritage Month with all your favorite Asian DC characters, old and new! Join [..] Damian Wayne and the al Ghul clan, New Super-Man, and more as we present new tales of these characters from their thrilling history!

And yeah there is an illustration of Talia and Ra's (w/ Bruce) in this and Talia isn't profiled either.

And like, it wasn't written by someone white , so I don't have the right to come down too hard (though editiorial is always a thing to consider) but the cherry on top is how in his story Damian specifically says traits he gets from his relatives with Asian heritage are bad things like "cruelty and ruthlessness' etc and the traits he gets from the white side of his heritage are positive things like "compassion"...

(and no, I do not know why sisters in plural and Babs is being referred to as his adopted sister??? she's not like she's legally AND spiritually not. it's the Asian issue and they couldn't be accurate and put Cass there? Thing is, I think her adoption hadn't officially been reinstated for DC yet. so basically, rather than have Cass officially rejoin the family in the 'aren't Asian Heroes great' issue, they pretended a white girl had been adopted instead of her).

Celebrating Asian heroes everyone!!!!

my atoms #myatoms

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