There aren’t many pieces of media as important to me as Avatar: The Last Airbender. It either shaped my morals and beliefs or just aligned well with them, depending on how dramatic I’m feeling, and continues to be a comforting story for when I need one. Episodes like ‘Crossroads of Destiny’ and ‘Sokka’s Master’ are among my most viewed episodes of television ever. It’s difficult to even estimate the amount of enjoyment I’ve gathered from it.
Gene Luen Yang is one of my favorite creators working today, but more importantly is perhaps one of the most talented creators working. Essentially all of his work at First Second is transcendent, but he’s my favorite Superman writer maybe ever, and is currently writing my favorite Marvel comic. His work is able to be entertaining and full of personality, and is almost always a treat for all ages.
Gurihiru is one of the best all ages artists, full stop. Even outside of all-ages work they stand out, with a style that is easy to understand while being gorgeous. They made Superman Smashes the Klan with Yang, to great acclaim, and I would argue it as being one of the best all-ages comics in existence.
Yang and Gurihiru working on Avatar: The Last Airbender comics is basically pulled from one of my dreams. North and South is their last time collaborating on the series as of now, but their presence on the title addresses one of the greatest flaws that exists in the franchise in general.
You ask most fans of Avatar—and the creators even—how to describe it, they’ll likely use the term “Asian-inspired’. Both “Asian” and “inspired” are loaded terms to some degree, but the former is a much bigger issue than the latter, for various reasons.
The idea that there is some collective “Asia” that exists is silly on every possible level. It’s an entire continent. There are over 4.5 billion people who live there, across 48 (or so) countries. There is simply no reasonable way to represent everyone there. I recently read a piece by Ronald Wimberly about this, the colonization involved in this cultural flattening, and the way that American creators have used/stolen “Asian” aesthetics with little to no care.
This is further compounded by the majority of the creative force behind the franchise being white, from the creators, to actors. They did some due-diligence with the hiring of Sifu Kisu for developing the bending styles, and (the elusive to Google) Edwin Zane as a cultural consultant, but the reality is that the Avatar creators had nothing real to say about “Asia,” they just used the aesthetics to create a world that stood out.
Nothing can fully repair that problem that’s at the core of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s not something that changes my love for the show, nor am I asking anyone reading to do so, especially as there are still so many reasons to love it, from its ability to talk about genocide in a child-friendly way to its treatment of women of all ages, and its whole story just being great in general. Still, nothing can fundamentally fix that problem.
But Yang and Gurihiru do a real good job trying.
North and South is a story about gentrification and colonization. It’s about a group of people who are seen as less developed, who are being pushed and manipulated into changing “for their own good”. It’s about groups of people deciding to work together to advance, and in so doing, learning and helping each other to grow in the process.
In many ways, the story is itself a fiction. The sort of colonization being done to the South Pole here is typically far bloodier, and the oppressors are more likely to win. Realism was never the point of Avatar, though, and Yang and Gurihiru understood that, and understood how to deliver this story in a meaningful way, without speaking down to anyone. Beyond that, they work together in a way that speaks truth to the “Asian-inspired” nature of Avatar in a way that feels so much more authentic because, well, Yang is Chinese-American, and Gurihiru are Japanese.
My favorite stuff in North and South is how much it spends its time talking about identity, which Yang has tackled in basically everything I’ve read by him. It’s something that makes this a work that feels personal, and is elevated through it. And isn’t that the ultimate goal of for hire work, and the best outcome with franchises like Avatar, which was made by white Americans, for an American audience?
Yang and Gurihiru were able to make money off of a franchise, while also telling meaningful stories within it, ones that only they could tell. North and South is a comic that made the wider universe it belongs to more rich, and it’s through the creators embracing the source material in a personal way.
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