Issue 4: Echoes

Penny Wong, also known as Boundless and formerly known as Chinese Orphanage, is a fictional comic book character that appeared in comic books published by Heroic Comics. Her original name is a reference to China’s overpopulation statistics and their one-child policy.

Born to her father Caninebal, a villain that consumes dog flesh to gain a superhuman bite, and her mother Lady Dragon, a villainess with the ability to turn into a seductive and venomous dragon, Penny was abandoned when she was a day old, the moment she revealed her powers of self-duplication.^[1]

Penny first appeared in The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage #1 (February 1980), created by writer Alan Harris Warrick and artist William Davis. In a 1981 interview featured at the end of The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage #10, Warrick stated he was inspired to create Penny after meeting a set of female Chinese triplets that he found “alluring and sensuous”.^[2]

Penny appeared in twenty-four issues of her title comic series which ran from 1980 to 1982, and featured in more popular Heroic Comic publications like White Warrior and The Triple Knockout Team.^[3]

However, multiple complaints from Asian Rights Associations that lobbied for Heroic Comics’ shutdown led to a boycott of Heroic Comics titles in the fall of 1982.^[4] When the company filed for bankruptcy in September due to the mismanagement of funds and general loss of revenue, The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage was discontinued.^[5]

Abandoned as a baby, Penny raises herself up on the streets of Hong Kong. At twelve, she is hired at a local money-printing factory as a line worker. During a fateful encounter when Penny saves an elderly coworker from the crossfire of an attempted robbery, the factory’s British owner, Mr. Jefferson Greenbill, notices her useful self-duplication abilities.^[6] Over the next four years, Greenbill hires local martial artists to train Penny as a horde of security guards and maids working for his factory and estate. Meanwhile, Greenbill teaches Penny to speak English as she cycles through multiple unnamed martial arts mentors. He becomes a father figure for Penny, inviting her to eat dinner with him every night.^[7] When Penny turns sixteen, Greenbill gifts her with a ticket to North America so that she can assist his nephew, Harold Greenbill, in his venture to establish a new factory in New York City.^[8]

A week after they arrive in New York City, Penny disobeys Harold’s orders to stay at home, sneaking out to explore the city. While she is gone, Harold is murdered by a Chinese Triad gang member after petty change. Making use of both her guilt and grief, Penny is spurred on to fight crime to protect her new home from corruption.^[9] She defeats the city’s Triad leader and his entire gang with her martial arts skills, receiving the moniker “Chinese Orphanage” when he deems her a race traitor, to which Penny responds she “[has been] adopted by the great nation of America.” Hearing the news of his protégée’s success, Greenbill sends Penny a congratulatory package with a superhero costume inside.^[10]

After establishing herself as a city protector, Penny gains the attention of villains operating in New York City, including Red Flag, an anthropomorphic Chinese Communist flag^[a] and Smoke-Choker, a wizened Chinese scientist with the power to generate and control smog. Penny’s battles with the villains typically end in a victory aided by Milk Meister, an all-American hero with superstrength and invulnerability derived from dairy products.^[11]

Penny receives a letter from Greenbill stating that he is unable to move to America to continue where Harold left off, but encourages her to stay in New York on his dime. She rents an apartment in Chinatown and comes across a red carpet in an alleyway that she brings home. But when she duplicates herself in order to move into her new apartment quickly, the carpet reveals itself as Red Flag and brainwashes all of Penny’s duplicates. The brainwashed duplicates subsequently assist the villain to perpetuate communism through America.^[12]

After the evil duplicates, dressed in scantily clad variations of Penny’s usual uniform, suffocate multiple innocent civilians by wrapping red flags around their heads, a surprise appearance by the superhero team Triple Knockout directs Penny in defeating the communist versions of herself.^[13] By learning humility and submission, Penny is allowed to aid Triple Knockout in capturing Red Flag. The arc ends in Penny moving out of Chinatown and receiving honorary American citizenship.^[14]

During an attack on the city by Smoke-Choker, Milk Meister comes to Penny’s aid.^[15] Their collaboration eventually leads to a forbidden affair, but due to Penny’s lactose-intolerance, her self-duplication powers are temporarily nullified upon physical contact with Milk Meister.^[16] Resultantly, Penny’s great struggle is her desire to become a “normal girl” via her romance with Meister, which comes in conflict with the superheroic duty given to her by Greenbill.

After a suggested consummation with Meister on the anniversary of her arrival in America, Penny temporarily loses her powers.^[17] Meister and Penny enjoy a week of normalcy, during which Penny reveals her desire for the family she never had. But during Smoke-Choker’s attack on the city hall, Penny’s subsequent damsel-in-distress status prevents Meister from fulfilling his superheroic duties, which leads to him ending their relationship.^[18] After Meister’s departure, Penny realizes through tears that she must aspire to become a hero wholly dedicated to her purpose, like her former lover and mentor. In a letter she pens back home to Greenbill, she writes:

“I may never become the mother I want to be, but at least I will be a daughter and sister to all citizens of America…”^[19]

After Caninebal and Lady Dragon kidnap and bring Penny to Bin-Tai, a mystical and dangerous Chinese village exclusively inhabited by superpowered criminals including Red Flag, she learns of the truth of her family heritage and the origin of her powers.^[20] It is revealed that Penny’s parents are descended from ancient aliens, and are teaming up with Earth’s greatest villains to conquer the world with their advanced technology.^[21] As Penny attempts to escape multiple times to return to her American home, her parents mind-control each duplicate to keep Penny in her prison. Consequently, Penny finds her mental state compromised by her duplicates, whose disloyal thoughts infiltrate her main consciousness.^[22] As she loses control over herself, she finds her duplicates becoming more animalistic in behavior and growing the features of a rabbit, similar to how her parents possess the features of a dog and dragon.^[23]

A week after the release of issue 24, which left readers on a cliffhanger about Penny’s decision to learn black magic from her villainous parents, The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage was discontinued.^[24]

On April 4th, 2012, in an opinion article for the Global Herald, Chinese Canadian journalist Katherine Wallis (née Ng) claimed Alan Harris Warrick was the pen name of the writing duo that her mother, Yuet Wah “Bernice” Ng, an administrative assistant in the department of Oriental Studies in Hampford College, had been a part of with William Lloyd Garrett, an American professor in the same department.^[25] Wallis claimed that her mother had been employed by Garrett to provide an “authentic” touch to the Chinese Orphanage character, though later issues of The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage were written entirely by Ng.^[b] In response to the article, the series’ artist, William Davis, stated that he never met the writers of The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage while he was freelancing for Heroic Comics in the early 1980’s, and had no qualms about his participation in the infamous series:

“Back then, it was just another job… It seemed like the only people who really cared about it were the Chinese that were happy about it, or the Chinese that were angry about it.”^[26]

Though Ng passed away due to cervical cancer in 2009, and Garrett in the following year due to advanced dementia, communications, notebooks, and drawings featured in the article provided evidence of Ng’s substantial involvement in writing The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage.^[27]

In 2014, Wallis released Two Sides of a Penny, a memoir that detailed her relationship with her mother. Wallis reveals that Ng never spoke about her involvement with the series, nor did Garrett, but that Garrett would often visit their apartment to discuss “work” and infrequently stay the night in Ng’s office. Wallis notes that while Garrett would not often interact with her, he would occasionally give her spare change for finishing her chores, which she would use to buy issues of The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage.^[28]

Notably, throughout the memoir, she draws a parallel between herself and her mother in their identities as writers:

“I began writing as a child because it was all I ever saw my mother doing—and like any daughter, I wanted to be like her. But I suppose I began writing because my body knew there was a language inside me that couldn't speak. My mother never taught me Cantonese, so I had no choice but to keep writing and writing in English… I realize now I only kept writing endlessly in English because I was trying to trick myself into believing that all these words could make up for the longing I had to hear three simple words from her: you are enough. But how could she ever tell me that, when she didn’t believe it for herself?”^[c]

In a review of Two Sides of a Penny for Jericho Daily, cultural critic Janice Bloom, a Chinese adoptee herself, noted that Wallis “opened up conversations about the unique role minorities have in the continuation of our own oppression, when we serve and strive to uphold and belong in a system working against us. While she does not attempt to answer for her mother’s complicity in the writing of an infamously racist caricature, she tries to understand her. Because after all, as Wallis demonstrates, isn’t love just trying, again and again?”^[29]

In 2023, after Ascendant Comics’ acquisition of Heroic Comics and its property, film rights to an adaptation of The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage were optioned by Fortune Productions in partnership with Ascendant Comics Universe Productions.^[30] After negotiations to acquire film rights were successful later that year, Fortune Production’s founder and executive producer Luther Wang stated in a blog post that growing up amidst The Adventures of Chinese Orphanage’s popularity formulated both a resentful yet endearing opinion of the hero:

“I remember a time during middle school when I attended class a few days after recovering from a cold. I coughed during class—and a kid yelled that I was expelling toxins like Smoke-Choker… and that doesn’t even compare to the sexual harassment my twin sister faced when the boys at school poured milk and piled the most vulgar insults on her… But bad representation was still representation, and Penny was all we had.”^[31]

In early 2024, writer and director Lilian Tsang was brought on to helm the film, with newcomer Mallory Li as Penny Wong, who was chosen for the role from over ten thousand auditions.^[32] After publicly announcing her involvement, Tsang shared that many creative discussions would take place to “revise the Chinese Orphanage character into an authentic, meaningful, and relatable representation of the Chinese immigrant experience.”^[33]

During the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con, the film’s synopsis and exclusive stills were released during the Ascendant Comics Universe panel. It was revealed that while Penny Wong would retain her original civilian name and powers of self-duplication, each duplicate would now possess a power unique to themselves, including pyrokinesis, levitation, and teleportation, while the original Penny would be powerless except for her duplication abilities.^[34] However, Li stated during the film’s Q&A panel that Penny’s superhero alias would now be “Boundless”, to recognize the “ability of the Asian community to exceed the stereotypes historically placed upon us.”^[35]

Stills also showed Taiwanese singer Yun Ya-Ling as Lee Yu-wen, a rising Chinese Canadian politician and Penny’s biological mother, and Hong Kong action star Jason Kwong in the role of Kane, Lee’s chief security officer and Penny’s biological father. Additionally, Cal Jackson Forger was cast as Michael “Mike” Meierhoff, a geneticist at PureGen Corporation, the biogenetic company that Penny interns for, and Priscilla Cheung as Dr. Szeto, a disgruntled atmospheric scientist that fosters and takes Penny under her wing.^[36]

The official synopsis for the film is featured on the Ascendant Comics Universe website:

Penny Wong, an orphan bouncing from foster home to foster home, has never known where she belongs or what she’s meant for—seeing as she’s never been able to figure out what she’s particularly good for. After saving Michael Meierhoff, a geneticist at PureGen Corp, from a run-of-the-mill robbery, he offers her a job as an intern on his newest experimental project. But when she accidentally gets locked in a testing chamber at work after-hours, Penny emerges with a newfound ability: splitting herself in duplicates that each possess a unique superpower. As she takes to a new side-hustle as a vigilante, Penny starts to find that her troubles fighting crime might be connected to a nefarious conspiracy unfolding at PureGen, and how the contained spread of a mysterious contagion in Chinatown is being framed on a local politician… All while learning to embrace the multitudes of her powers, dreams, and identity.^[37]

Boundless is scheduled for release in February 2026.^[38]