There’s a story I like to tell about my time at Marvel when @JimViscardi and I placed the world premiere reveal of MILES MORALES at USA Today with @briantruitt.

It’s a story about bad faith actors and racism, which seems especially relevant in comics.

Thread time. The news broke and everyone at Marvel was thrilled. The press coverage of the Miles Morales news was incomparable and unending - news networks came through the office all day.

And then I started getting phone calls…so many calls that my voicemail was filling up each hour.

Everyone has their favorite comic book event stories. For a lot of my friends it’s X-Men: Age of Apocalypse.

But my favorite?

REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN. This is such a perfect marketing poster.

The value proposition is clear: there are four potential Supermen.

And there’s no lying: none of may be Superman.

So you go into the story with questions, excitement and managed expectations.

It’s interesting to watch some of my favorite TV shows from times past and realize that someone who looks like me has no place in those worlds except as a background character or as someone “exotic.”

And then realize how much that generally hasn’t changed. We rarely see Asian-American characters in pop culture whose roles aren’t as “the other” or whose stories aren’t about overcoming that other-ness.

It’s like we can’t exist as normal in any way.

There’s no Black Panther for us.