Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 218



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218.

As always, things went a little differently than DC Comics had planned.

‘Kung-fury: comics’ created a huge response among nerd readers. They were crazy about this comic that completely broke the ‘social contract’ that existing comics had.

This situation reminded me of the time when one of the new writer’s previous works, ‘Princess Quest’, was being serialized.

‘Looking back, that’s true.’

Simon Carver thought with a grin, as he opened Issue #1.

Shin’s writing style was a bit different when he wrote serious novels and light novels. The serious novels were more popular, and the light novels were thoroughly nerd-oriented. I thought it was probably a reflection of the author’s own personality. Contrary to his appearance, Shin was a nerd among nerds.

That’s why the comics he was in charge of were groundbreaking and, frankly, ridiculous.

Does the line that the ‘hero’ utters in episode 1 to the ‘super’ named ‘Kung-Fury’, ‘I’m finished. I’m only doing this for money. Just learn kung fu and pay me.’ make any sense? And on top of that, he dies at the end? Everyone must have been shocked and dumbfounded.

But the content after that was even more of a masterpiece.

‘The process of Joe, who was revived through time travel, becoming a true superhero of the capitalist era.’

And the ‘superheroes’ of this world appear one after another.

I felt that all the materials would give readers a tremendous shock.

As Simon predicted, as the issue progressed, readers became more and more absorbed in this ‘Kung-fury’ work.

When Issue #2 was released and the main character Joe’s special ability, ‘time travel’, was revealed, a heated debate erupted in comic book stores everywhere.

“What exactly is the main character’s ability?”

“Isn’t that Captain America with the ability to travel back in time?”

The explanation was simple, but the setting of dealing with time was very interesting.

“Is there no one else besides the protagonist who knows about the ability to travel back in time?”

“It’s awesome~.”

“But why did you become a super soldier through a state experiment?”

“That will be revealed later!”

From what readers can see and feel, the fact that the main character has special abilities that others don’t know about makes him seem incredibly ‘super’.

Even the powerful powers that he possesses by default through physical modification were so great that even though Shifu in the story was unaware of the ‘time reversal’ ability, he encouraged Joe to become a superhero just by seeing his superhuman physical abilities.

[Practice kung fu harder.]

And that was because a huge number of applicants gathered at the one word he uttered as a superhero!

Through Shifu, ‘Kung-fury: Comics’ completely redefines the ‘superhero’ of this world.

[After all, it’s money! Money!!]

Shifu, with a greedy face, cheered wildly.

Because it was a comic, it was somewhat sanitized(?), but in the novel that came out later, this scene was definitely described with this sentence: ‘He has the face of a hideous Asian villain that only appears in old movies.’

[Superheroes don’t make money!]

Under those lines, the pictures in the cut showed heroes active in various places.

Starting with characters like ‘Sodapop’ who would appear later, and ‘Star Chaser’ who is the most representative hero of this world, many characters with the appearance of ‘superheroes’ that many people would feel in the realm of cognition were presented in advance.

And inside they were acting like television celebrities.

Appearing in television commercials and receiving applause from people.

‘Hoo.’

‘That could certainly be the case.’

It was a series of interesting developments.

Eventually, Joe decides to become ‘Kung-Fury’.

He knew his power and tried to live quietly in hiding, but the American society was not easy at all. He thought that if he could make a lot of money with another identity as a superhero, then that would be good enough.

Joe goes out into the street, wearing a black mask over his head and a red headband tied tightly around his forehead.

No, the name is ‘Kung-Fury’.

He appeared before the wicked who were trying to harass people and steal their money and said this.

[I can hear the sound of a train.]

[Wh, what are you talking about?!]

[This is the express train to hell. Get ready to board.]

The eyes revealed through the black mask flashed for a moment.

At first glance, it felt like a really cool line for a superhero, but as befitting a ‘black comedy’, a ‘postscript’ was clearly written below it through a cut.

It’s a line from a Western movie that Joe saw a while ago.

“Poohahaha!”

“Wow, what the heck?”

“······This is the real thing.”

Everyone was dumbfounded and turned the page, and the scene changed.

Shifu shouted in anger in front of the newly opened ‘Fujiyama Kung Fu’.

[These guys are now in front of someone else’s business place without any business ethics······!!]

Sales office, I definitely used that expression.

······Even Shifu himself no longer thought of kung fu as a martial art.

It was just part of business.

“······Phuhu.”

There were people who read the comics to that point and couldn’t laugh like everyone else and just sighed.

It was none other than Rebecca Wong, a girl who attended Stanford University and was close to God.

And she was Chinese-American.

When she returned home for the first time in a long while due to school break, she felt her head spinning after reading the shocking, if not groundbreaking, comic book ‘Kung-fury’.

At that moment, a thick-built Asian man wearing only a running shirt came in.

“You Yankees, you eat bread and still feel good in the morning. I don’t know why you run ten laps around the neighborhood. You get hungry quickly. In that case, you might as well just lie down and watch TV.”

The Chinese immigrant father, like Shifu in ‘Kung-fury’, grumbled and spat out discriminatory remarks without a care in the world.

Although he spoke like that, he adapted well to American society and got along well with people of other races, but he always spoke like that in Chinatown or when he was with his family.

‘Shifu’ was a character that seemed to perfectly capture the realistic image of such a father.

And Rebecca had never seen a man like this in any novel before.

It was a shock in itself.

‘You prepared this piece while showing your best throughout the semester?’

Rebecca laughed in disbelief as she recalled last spring semester.

As always, God continues to be a great inspiration to Stanford creative writing students. His flashes of wit in class always make you wonder, “How can he think like that?”

Since ‘Country of Losers’, Rebecca has been following him and writing diligently, thinking that the cause lies in genre novels, but once again, she had to feel dizzy because of his work.

God was such a being.

Most of the novels written as assignments using simple materials were so fresh that it was impossible to estimate their depth and breadth. Even the genres were diverse. They started from general pure literature style writings and also digested styles with strong genre characteristics such as SF and fantasy.

Because of this, there was talk among students taking classes with Shin that they were becoming seriously interested in genre literature.

Isn’t that the case with Rebecca Wong right now?

‘That’s interesting.’

Holding the first comic she had ever bought with her own money, Rebecca, like everyone else who had read the series, couldn’t wait to read the next installment.

No, if I were to go even further, I would have liked a novel version of this comic to come out sooner. According to the explanation I received from people I met at the comic book store, this book was also published as a novel.

‘They were such kind people.’

When I first went in, everyone suddenly looked at me in shock and I wondered what I did wrong, but after that, for almost two hours, they explained the history of comics, so I gained a lot of knowledge.

But then a fight broke out over the question, “Who is the best superhero?”

‘I have to go again next week.’

Rebecca, who had no idea what terrible thing she had done, was simply delighted by the new experience.

***

It’s been three weeks since ‘Kung-fury: comics’ was released.

I went to a hard-boiled publisher with my ‘cleaned up’ manuscripts.

“······Holy moly.”

Simon looked speechless for a moment after seeing the manuscripts I had brought.

“Author, what the heck is this······.”

“I heard you’ve been getting a lot of work. This is my response to that.”

I answered with a grin.

After winning the Nebula Award, my name definitely spread throughout America.

Even though he chose to collaborate with DC Comics, Simon often told him that he still gets a lot of requests for manuscripts.

And my answer to that was this.

Numerous short story manuscripts I wrote over the past few years while attending college.

There were school assignments, writings to relax, and manuscripts written when an idea suddenly came to me that would fit into a short story.

“Please read them, and if there are any good ones, why don’t you work on them further and post them here and there?”

“Oh, no. Are you saying that the author really wrote all of this?”

“Simon, I’m a college student. A creative writing major at that. I spend almost all day writing, you know?”

I said it as if it was nothing special, looking at Simon’s astonished face.

‘I’m in a position where I have to write at least one short story a week.’

Personally, I have selected about 20 of them, but compared to the numerous manuscripts I have written so far, this is a very small amount.

As a result, the genre was mostly science fiction, with a few fantasy and hard-boiled genres mixed in.

Simon asked cautiously after hearing the explanation.

“Did they say it was okay to use it at school?”

“I asked the professor, and he said, ‘It’s a novel you wrote, so of course it’s okay.’”

I suddenly remembered Edward MacMillan, who looked at me as if I was his cute grandson and laughed heartily.

Moreover, it was not a novel I had written for a school assignment, but rather something I had copied as is.

I have been working on this ‘short story’ since last spring semester, in parallel with working on the story for ‘Kung-fury: comics’.

There were even a few works that were rewritten by changing the setting to space, and after extensive revisions and editing, I was confident that they were good enough to be published in a science fiction magazine.

‘It’s a natural progression for a writer who is just starting to become famous. Unraveling a short story that has been lying dormant for a while.’

I didn’t necessarily take this route because I was strategically making money and gaining popularity from the beginning, but things are different now. My fame has spread beyond California and all over North America.

Novelists of today often write short stories and publish them in magazines or newspapers. Since personal homepages were not yet developed, this was the most intuitive way to gain a name for yourself as a writer and expand your base.

For example, in the case of my ‘fellow writer’, Mr. George RR Martin, whom I had met at a party before, he serialized many short science fiction stories during this period and, based on that experience, completed an epic poem like ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ in the future.

‘Wow, I can’t believe I can call George R.R. Martin my fellow writer.’

What a glorious and yet unholy joy this is!

Simon, not paying attention to me shivering slightly, began to look through the manuscripts one by one with a serious expression. He was confident that the novels, which were stapled together and separated for easy reading, were all things I had brought because I thought they were good.

Simon nodded, as if he had roughly figured out the situation from my confident expression, and said this while neatly organizing his manuscript.

“Author, I will read it as quickly as possible and proceed with a contract with the appropriate place for each work.”

“Please take care of me.”

I nodded my head, feeling a sense of trust in him.

Now, the ‘Kung-fury: novel’ that will be published in a week or two, the ‘Kung-fury: comics’ that is still being serialized, and lastly, the numerous short story manuscripts that I have decided to publish after receiving requests for manuscripts from all over the United States.

‘This will be fun.’

How high can a writer like me go?

How will people receive my writing?

I was almost impatient to see what changes would come next.

***

‘Kung-Fury: Comics’ issue #3 continues with a look at Joe and Shifu and how they battle the first foe they face.

He was a Japanese immigrant named Fujiyama.

He was a good person on an individual basis, but after taking charge of ‘Fujiyama Kung Fu’, he turned into a terrifying evil!

······Of course, in reality, it only appeared that way in Shifu and Joe’s eyes.

The three East Asians in American society, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, fought.

The problem was that no one could properly distinguish between them, and at the same time no one understood what they were saying when they said they were different from each other.

After all, we are all the same East Asians!

But following the fight, which was depicted in such a comical manner, a brutal revenge was carried out.

‘Kung-Fury’ has gone beyond simply teaching people to learn kung fu, and now they’re helping people while wearing their own custom-made hoodies with the ‘logo’ of Shifu’s kung fu dojo emblazoned on them!

The occasion and the act were extremely petty and petty.

However, the unique ‘immigrant’s agony’ that emerges from it made many readers unable to help but sympathize.

“It may seem like a funny story at first glance, but it actually has many implications.”

Bill, the comic book master who pushes up his glasses.

The numerous comic book nerd guys in front of him nodded.

7:53 am.

It’s now seven minutes until the opening of Kitten’s Comic Book Store.

The nerd guys who have already dissected, chewed, tore, and savored this work in every way have already concluded that ‘Kung-fury’ is not simply a comical work, but a satire of the immigrant society and the capitalist America.

The novelty and groundbreaking storyline as a superhero story are not all there is to it. That is also the charm of this work. By using the subject of ‘Orientals’, a minority in contemporary American society, it creates a sense of distance and freshness, while also making readers aware that they are also Americans.

Everyone kept pushing up their glasses and praising the clever strategy of the god, and the anticipation for the great work made them gather here from the morning on the day the next issue was published.

And finally it was 8 o’clock.

They entered the comic book store at opening time and moved across the bookshelf to find issue #4 of ‘Kung-Fury’. The majestic momentum was like Indiana Jones in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ searching for treasure. Of course, because it was a hot topic, it was displayed in a prominent place.

So about 3 seconds later, Bill, who had discovered the comic book cover faster than anyone else, shouted in shock.

“It’s a girl!!”

“Hey, a girl?!”

“A female character?!”

The eyes of nerds who discovered ‘Sodapop’, the licorice of this work and the fairy of capitalism, were set on fire······!