Remember Wave — the Marvel superhero from Cebu that the internet just couldn’t get enough of a few months ago? Well, following her appearance in War of the Realms: Agents of Atlas she is now about to get even more screen (page?) time in the AERO series. We’ll be getting more than just glimpses of her as the Aero/Wave stories will definitely feature at least her origin!
Art by Leinil Yu
(Meet Wave — Marvel’s newest Filipino Superhero)
AERO will find Wave at the beginning of her story, a young swimmer from Cebu who is also working in order to fund her education. Even more intriguing? Her story will be written by fellow Filipina, Alyssa Wong. Wong is a multi-awarded fiction and comic book writer and was personally asked by Wave’s creator, Greg Pak, to co-write the series with him.
She shared in an interview with Marvel how she first came on to the project and what the experience was like:
Greg Pak, whose work I’ve admired for some time, called me and asked me if I wanted to co-write the Wave and Aero stories with him! He’d read some of my work and thought I would be a good fit for the project. My mom is Filipina and my dad is Chinese, and a lot of my sci-fi and fantasy stories tend to be about women with strange, supernatural abilities. I was honored that he thought of me, so obviously I said yes!
As a kid, I never saw any Filipino characters, much less superheroes–so getting to write stories for one, & for Marvel(!!) is so beyond my wildest dreams 😭😭😭
— Alyssa Wong (they/them) 💖🌈 (@crashwong) July 19, 2019
(Comic book artist confirms he based Pinay Marvel hero Wave from Nadine Lustre)
On a personal note, she described her excitement at being able to develop a character close to her heart:
I’m also so excited for Wave and the fact that we have a Filipina Super Hero who’s taking center stage. I never got to see Filipino characters when I was growing up, so it’s so, so cool to write Wave now! She’s strong because of her water manipulation powers, but she also draws strength from her community and her lolo. And that feels emotionally true, to me, for a Filipino Super Hero.
https://twitter.com/gregpak/status/1152334359741042690
(Artists are posting their “Darna” art on the internet and they’re so beautiful!)
Wong does disclaim that though elements of Wave’s story may have been derived from her own experiences it was mostly subconscious. She understands there is a great difference in growing up Asian-American versus purely Filipino:
Wave is Filipina, and I’m Filipina-American, and there’s a distinct difference there that I think should be acknowledged. But there’s also a ton of variation even within shared cultural experiences, so what rings true to one person might not track with another person. I wanted to get some Filipina expertise, so I relied on my mom and my friend and fellow writer, Isabel Yap, to be my touchstones for this project.
Still, Wong seems to be an incredibly apt writer for the task as she has both Filipino and Chinese blood — which are the two cultures of the story’s heroes. And it’s inevitable that we will see these both come into play as Aero and Wave navigate their powers and the “strange ties” they share with one another.
What would you like to see in this new series?
