In the last few years, my work with Dorkaholics has not only been my efforts at expressing myself as a comic book dork but also exploring my identity as an Asian American. From time to time, I have been fortunate to find these two things intersect whether it’s been celebrating a Vietnamese-American Green Lantern, reviewing Shortcomings as a graphic novel that allowed for flawed individuals who happened to be Asian American to simply exist and grow, as well as interviewing Gene Luen Yang, the author of American Born Chinese and executive producer of the television adaptation. Recently, I was fortunate enough to meet and interview Payhuan Shiao, founder of Immortal Studios, an “entertainment company dedicated to creating modern martial arts fantasy stories in the Wuxia genre.”
Neil Bui: What can readers expect from the interconnectedness of Immortal Studios’ Storyverse?
Payhuan Shiao: First of all, there’s four pillars in the interconnected world. So people who like the martial arts fantasy genre you’ve seen, kind of where Bruce Lee’s at which is more grounded action or Cobra Kai, or something more elevated and mysterious and things that look more spectacular like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, upwards to like a Matrix where it’s out blown supernatural, all the way to like a Monkey King or a Dragon Ball Z so we’re now talking about intergalactic. So these four pillars have always been influences of the genre, they’ve never been put together in an interconnected world, so what people can expect is a confluence of these subgenres that they love. Now when we pull back a little bit, that’s why you have these four different stories to see how they’re actually part of an interconnected world. There’s actually a major threat that’s threatening them. And hey by the way, the world looks a lot like ours. Even though these different characters come across different times, they have different kinds of powers and influences. You have one interconnected world to bring together all these various influences, so what people can find is kind of an ode to the things that they really like and also some interconnections that are very refreshing and then also see a lot of themselves, the challenges of the modern person reflected back in these stories.
Watch the rest of the interview here:
And to support Immortal Studios on their latest Kickstarter campaign click here or visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theadept2/the-adept-assassin-g-immortal-swordsmen-and-fa-sheng
