The Good Asian vol. 2

No podcast… yet.  There were some unavoidable logistics problems over the weekend and John, Steve, and I haven’t been able to connect yet.  We’re looking to record either Friday or Saturday, at which we’ll upload it once we’re done.  Until then…

The last time we saw Edison Hark, he was investigating a series of murders that looked to be perpetrated by Hui Long – an ax-wielding Chinatown legend.  He also had to deal with a blackmail plan against an influential Chinese lawyer and the reason he was in town in the first place:  Finding out what happened to his adopted father’s mistress.  Vol. 1 ended with a death that threatened to make life worse for everyone in the city, and things only get worse for Edison from there as he investigates further into the identity of Hui Long and winds up losing more than he expected to.  So much so that it might come down to someone else having to sort out this tangled web of murder and lies in Chinatown.

I felt that this second volume of “The Good Asian” was a solid enough read that wraps things up well enough.  There are plenty of twists, turns, surprising reveals, and an ending that ties everything together with a bow on top.  The problem here is that I can appreciate how all this is structured by writer Pornsak Pitchetshote without feeling very invested in it all.  That’s partly due to how the writer keeps feeling the need to reiterate the developments in the mystery with every issue, which makes it feel like he’s not confident in the audience’s ability to follow it all.  There’s also the fact that the majority of the cast feels pretty one-dimensional.  This is aside from Edison, who also has self-loathing as his single dimension, but at least it’s a multi-faceted kind of loathing.

Then you’ve got the fact that this story feels like it was intended as a history lesson to show us how bad things were for Asian Americans in the 1930’s.  While it may seem like a redundant lesson to talk about something like this, it’s still a necessary one given how hate crimes against this segment of the population have been on the rise in recent years.  Pitchetshote and artist Andre Tefenkgi do a good job of illustrating these issues for the reader’s awareness even if the story feels like it’s serving that idea rather than the other way around.  Given the quality of the story being told, “The Good Asian” is left feeling like something that’s more important than genuinely engaging.  It’s promised that Edison Hark will return at the end of this volume, and I can only hope that he comes with a story that’s as entertaining as it is important.