This Thursday come on down to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles to see the amaze-balls Marcus Choi and Jon Jon Briones sing my song Evil is a Yellow Face for the Preview Reception for Marvels & Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986.

Marcus, Jon Jon, and I rehearsed the song today and they made me laugh pretty hard. Marcus is playing the arch-villain Ming the Merciless and Jon Jon is playing the insidious Fu Manchu.

Marcus was in the Broadway productions of Wicked and the Flower Drum Song revival. But I’m most excited he was in Sharknado. Yeah yeah, big Broadway musicals, whatever. Sharknado!

Jon Jon cornered the market on Miss Saigon. He was in the US Tour, the UK Tour, the Asian Tour, and productions in Germany, the Philippines, and London. He and Marcus were also in the musical Allegiance with George Takei. Oh my.

And the exhibit is wonderful.

“Curated by Asian Pop columnist, Jeff Yang, this exhibition is a unique and fascinating look at how the images and characters of Asians and Asian Americans featured in comic books during times of war and unrest coalesced into archetypes that still remain today.

The exhibition also contains elements designed to encourage direct engagement with the archetypes, such as life-size cutouts of the eight archetypes that allow visitors to put themselves “inside the image” and an installation called “Shades of Yellow” that matches the shades used for Asian skin tones in the comics with their garish yellow Pantone™.”

The reception is Thursday, October 10, from 6:00-9:00. To RSVP, contact specialevents@janm.org or 213.625.0414, ext. 2222.

Come on down and see Marcus and Jon Jon tear it up. They’re going to be sensASIONal.