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Top Shelf to Publish George Takei's Graphic Memoir, They Called Us Enemy

Published Thu, 19 Jul 2018 11:23:02 -0500

Last updated Fri, 20 Jul 2018 07:01:24 -0500

George Takei, best known as Sulu from the Star Trek TV shows and movies but also a strong political activist and author, is taking his life's experiences suffering xenophobia and turning them into a comic book.

In summer 2019, Top Shelf Productions will publish Takei's They Called Us Enemy, created in collaboration with co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker.

George Takei revisits his childhood in American concentration camps as one of 120,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II.

Tomorrow at San Diego Comic-Con, co-writers Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott will discuss They Called Us Enemy and share early glimpses of Harmony Becker's artwork, in the panel "The Human Condition: Connecting Humanity with Graphic Novels," Friday at 1 p.m. in Room 23ABC.

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his magnetic performances, sharp wit, and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's — and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's tested faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.

Justin Eisinger is Editorial Director, Graphic Novels & Collections for IDW Publishing, where he has spent more than 12 years immersed in graphic storytelling. Since publishing his debut comic book in 2010, Steven Scott has worked regularly in comics, most notably as a publicist. Harmony Becker is the creator of the comics Himawari Share, Love Potion, and Anemone and Catharus.

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