Meet Silk, Marvel’s Newest Female Asian-American Superhero

Crime-fighting superhero, female, Asian American, and kick-ass. What more could you ask for from Cindy Moon, AKA Silk?

Moon comes to our comic book stores one year after Kamala Khan, the first ever Muslim superhero to lead her own series. Speaking to NBCNews, Marvel spokesman Joseph Taraborrelli Sr. explained, “If you go to any comic book convention, the entire audience is so diverse, almost 50-50 men women. There are all walks of life. It’s everybody from different ethnic backgrounds.”

When Dan Slott, Moon’s creator, signed on in 2008 as writer, he wanted bring more Asian-American characters into the Spider-Man series. He said:

“In 50 plus years of Spider-Man comics, one of the things that stood out to me was that there had only really been one prominent Asian-American character in the cast, Flash Thompson’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Sha Shan Nguyen Being six degrees away from Peter Parker, that meant she didn’t even really show up that often.”

So he introduced Martin Li, a philanthropist turned crime lord; Yuri Watanabe, police captain and vigilante; and eventually, Moon.

Now Cindy has her own series, which deals with how the character’s isolation from the outside world affected her mentally. She was hidden in a bunker after being taken away from her close-knit family, creating layers of themes and relationships in the story.

Silk touches upon concepts of gender, ethnicity, and psychology, and writer Robbie Thompson’s goal (and artist Stacey Lee, of course, who does the interiors) is to allow people from all walks of life to relate to Moon. After all, she’s still human.

The first issue is out in stores now.

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