While some comics are pure escapism, others can serve as conversation starters. That's certainly the case for
The Good Asian, in which hard-boiled Chinese American detective Edison Hark hunts down a killer in 1936 Chinatown. While he comes from a place of privilege, raised by a white family, Hark's being used as a tool by a racially charged police force to rough up Chinese immigrants. Will he get past his own self-loathing to bring help to his community, or will he be no different from those who cut his checks?
This fictional story is set within a factual period of American history, during the fallout of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and Page Act (1875), which respectively prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers and banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States. They are the only laws to have ever been signed and implemented that banned all members of a single ethnic group from immigrating to the United States.