The WANG: Who's Your Daddy by Stan Yan

Stan Yan understands comedy, and comedy timing more than most people I have read. He really knows how to build a story that leads to a simple, but brilliant punch line and keep you laughing and wondering along the way. He seems to understand how to make the highly dramatic completely hilarious as well. That includes car crashes, break-ups and not knowing whom your father is or if he’s even alive. 

Who’s Your Daddy? feels like season three or four of a TV show that’s so good with brilliant writers, that you can drop right in and quickly know who’s who, what’s what and what you’ve missed that’s important to the current situation. It will take you but a moment to want to join Eugene Wang down his wacky, weird world of stockbrokerage, old college friends, ex-girlfriends who used to have sex with his mother, and a brush with life and death. That feeling btw of season three is essentially because The Wang is the continuing story of Stan’s lead creation Eugene Wang.

On the Squidworks website one can read the Pre-History of The Wang, a hilarious strip updating once weekly that tells exactly what he claims, the story of Eugene Wang before “The BIG One”, back when he was a steroid induced superhero known as The On-Campus Crusader! Sound crazy? It is, but in a good way. Stan’s artwork fits his story telling sensibilities perfectly. It’s got that cutesy meets realism aspect I tend to really enjoy, but he also has dynamics that blow you away. 

There’s a sequence in Who’s Your Daddy? which is stirring, scary, funny, violent and dramatic all in once and Stan captures this all in his dialogue, pacing, artistic decisions and that un-nameable thing that just speaks to you and makes you say “This is what comics exist for”. 

Stan also has a comic which he drew written by Ape Entertainment’s Managing Editor Kevin Freeman called Subculture coming in Spring. The preview feels like we’ve got one of those nerd meets “no way can she be a nerd” love stories inter-spliced with bad job, crazy roommate, and nerdy pop-culture references. I personally never tire of that type of material and in Stan’s artistic hand it looks fabulous. Keep an eye out and make sure you go to Squidworks to get yourself copies of Stan’s The Wang books.