Re-Gifters

Carey, M., Hempel, M., & Liew, S. (2007). Re-Gifters. New York: DC Comics. ISBN 978-1-4012-0371-9

Why read this graphic novel

When your hormones make it hard to keep your thoughts straight, you’ve got a problem, especially if you are in a martial arts competition and the object of your hormonal interest is your chief competitor. Find out how Dixie resolves her crush on Adam in Re-Gifters.

Plot summary

Dik Seong Jen – that’s her Korean name, which in English becomes Jen Dickson, even though her friends call her Dixie – is a high school student whose passion is hapkido, a form of Korean martial arts. Her dad, who moved to the United States from Korea when he was 10, and her mother, who is second generation Korean American, are proud that Dixie is keeping her Korean heritage alive. Dixie, however, is feeling kind of wacko these days. Her teacher tells her she’s one of the best hapkido students he has ever had, but he also notes that she has lately lost her ki, the spirit that informs her fighting. Dixie knows why, too. She’s got a crush on Adam, the other best fighter in the class. Hapkido and romance are resolved in sync as Dixie and Adam compete in the national hapkido competition and Dixie figures out how to regain her ki.

Critical evaluation

Dixie is a great first-person narrator, fully venting her frustrations in emotional outbursts and inappropriate displays of ki directed at innocent friends. The story is well-structured in that writer Mike Carey intertwines and resolves in a single climax the romantic issue of Dixie’s crush on Adam and the sports angle of the national hapkido competition. Carey also embeds some nice symbolism in the form of a model of a medieval Korean warrior that Dixie gives Adam for his birthday and then is re-gifted from one person to another throughout the story until it ends up with the martial artists at the finals of the national competition.

About the creators

The team that created Re-Gifters is spread across three continents. They also collaborated on the comic series My Faith in Frankie.

Writer Mike Carey was born into a working-class family in Liverpool in 1959. He was a teacher for 15 years before he began publishing comics and graphic novels. Among the hundreds of comics and graphic novels he lists on his web site are titles in the series X-Men, Fantastic Four, Lucifer, and Hellblazer. Carey has also written six novels and one book of non-fiction. He lives in London and maintains a blog at http://mikeandpeter.com (About Mike Carey, n.d.; Carey, M., n.d.).

Artist Marc Hempel was born in Chicago in 1957 and has been drawing comics professionally since 1978. He has lived in Baltimore since the early 1980s (Hempel, n.d.).

Artist Sonny Liew was born in Malaysia in 1974 and studied at Cambridge University and the Rhode Island School of Design. He began drawing comics professionally in 2001 and currently lives in Singapore (Lee, 2004). He maintains a blog at http://sonnyliew.wordpress.com/.

Genre: Asian American, Graphic fiction, Romance, Sports

Curriculum ties

Re-Gifters is a good resource for any unit dealing with identity formation. Although identity is not a key theme in the story, Dixie models how a young person with dual cultural heritage can integrate both into his or her life. Dixie also provides a good model of a female participating in co-educational sporting competition without any explicit issues around her gender from anyone involved.

Book-talking ideas

• I like the scenes where Dixie gets carried away and uses her hapkido skills inappropriately, such as pages 33-35, where she floors her friend Avril just because Avril is disagreeing with her. (Avril is right, of course.)

• The scene where Dixie resists some boys in the neighborhood who tell her to walk on the other side of the street is also a good introduction to Dixie’s high-spirited ways (pages 24-27).

Reading level/interest age

I think this story will appeal mostly to middle school students and younger high school students. Older high school students might enjoy it as a quick entertainment read, but the focus on a first crush would probably seem a little young to them.

Challenge issues

The romance is all very innocent and there is no foul language, so it’s hard to imagine a challenge to this graphic novel.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

Why I chose to read this book

I asked an Asian-American teacher friend what he thought of American Born Chinese, and he gave me Re-Gifters, saying that if I liked ABC I should read Re-Gifters, too.

References

About Mike Carey. (n.d.). Mike-Carey.co.uk. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://www.mike-carey.co.uk/ABOUT.HTML

Carey, M. (n.d.). Mike Carey. Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://mikeandpeter.com/about/about-mike-carey/

Hempel, M. (n.d.). The Mark Hempel story. Insight Studios Group. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://www.insightstudiosgroup.com/march/march.htm

Lee, T. L. (2004, December 14). Sonny storms into international comics circle. allMalaysia.info. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://www.allmalaysia.info/news/story.asp?file=/2004/12/13/msiansabroad/9396921&sec=mi_msiansabroad