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Over the holidays, Dark Horse sent us a review copy of the first sequel comic to Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Promise – Part 1, written by Gene Yang (American Born Chinese) and illustrated by Gurihiru. (Our review does not contain major spoilers, but does contain info that might be considered minor spoilers, including information from Dark Horse’s currently posted preview pages.)

Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise Part 1 will hit local and online comic book stores on January 25th, 2011 and local and online bookstores on February 7th, 2011. (If you want to get the book early, make sure to ask your local comic book store to order it for you!)

Background on the Author and the Project

Gene Yang is one of the best comic writers today; his graphic novel American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz Award. A big fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, Yang was not shy about protesting the unfair casting in The Last Airbender film on his website, including drawing a web comic explaining his protest.

Yang’s vocal protest of the casting in The Last Airbender is actually a key reason for why he was brought onboard by Dark Horse to write the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. One of Dark Horse’s editors, Samantha Robertson, was a fan of American Born Chinese. After seeing Yang’s protest comic, she realized he was also a big fan of the series.

“In a weird way, my eventual connection to the property is the result of my being angry about the movie,” Yang said in a December 2011 interview.

The creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, are involved in The Promise, too. They have suggested ideas for the comic, read and approved every outline, and added tweaks to Yang’s scripts.

Review of The Promise

Part 1 of The Promise is 80 pages long and clearly the first book in a series. The book kicks in as the animated series ends and plays out the fallout from one hundred years of war, as well as laying the beginning foundations for the next Avatar animated series, The Legend of Korra.

The comic is primarily set in the colonies of the Fire Nation (conquered Earth Kingdom territory) and how the end of the war has affected these inextricably blended cultures. The characters are a bit older, and their post-war character progression makes sense. The Promise shows some of the interpersonal consequences from the series finale, including the fallout from Aang and Katara’s kiss (Sokka, naturally, is vocally against shipping Kataang.)

Although Aang and Zuko became allies and friends at the end of the animated series, their distinct personalities and worldviews still trigger conflict. As a young man who grew up in a now-extinct nomad culture, who lost everything he knew after being frozen in an iceberg, it’s clear that Aang has a hard time understanding why Zuko feels nationalism and loyalty to The Fire Nation people. While Aang is invested in balancing the Four Nations, Zuko carries the burden of leading a nation that has spent three generations conquering and oppressing other cultures. Paralleling the conflict between Roku and Sozin, Aang has to wrestle with being a check on Fire Lord Zuko’s new power.

It’s clear that Gene Yang is a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. In The Promise he captures the tone of the animated series, striking a balance of grave post-war situations and A:TLA’s quirky humor. Although there were initial concerns from fans that the Gurihiru art team‘s style would be too ‘childish,’ the dynamic line art and bright colorwork fits really well with Yang’s script. This is important since the book is pretty heavy on dialogue in between action sequences. Gurihiru’s exaggerated facial expressions during the book’s humorous moments are fantastic callbacks to the animated series’s style.

The Promise isn’t a sanitized version of the Avatar-verse. Like the animated series, it isn’t afraid of exploring mature topics like colonialism, class conflict, and the responsibilities of the Avatar and the Fire Lord. The viewpoints and motivations presented by each of the characters in conflict are morally ambiguous and complex.

Yang also brings back the series’ iconic Asian influences, including architecture and calligraphic writing system! Just like on the show and as required in the animated series’ ‘intellectual property bible’ , every Chinese word used in the comic book checks out. It works, since translations of the Chinese signs are not needed to understand the story. (This is in contrast to one of the short stories in the comic collection Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Adventures, which showed the Latin alphabet in English and was kind of jarring.)

If I had one complaint about The Promise Part 1 it would be that the book is too short! At only 80 pages, the book ends on a clear cliffhanger and it is definitely not a stand-alone, either as a comic book or as part of a greater franchise. (This means that Gene Yang fans should definitely consider checking out the entire animated series before reading the book!) It is not a series of interstitials like The Lost Adventures, but the start of a longer story arc.

If you’re interested in learning about what happened next to the gaang in Avatar: The Last Airbender (as well as some characters that you never thought you’d see again), make sure to call your comic book store and pre-order a copy of Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise – Part 1! A preview of The Promise – Part 1 is also available on Dark Horse’s website!

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