Pornsak Pichetshote brings an editor’s precision to horror, mystery, and historical crime comics, from Infidel and The Good Asian to Absolute Green Arrow.
Known for: The Good Asian, Infidel, Absolute Green Arrow
Pornsak Pichetshote came up as an editor at DC’s Vertigo imprint, where he spent years working on some of the imprint’s most critically acclaimed titles — Daytripper, The Unwritten, Sweet Tooth, Unknown Soldier, Swamp Thing. His editorial work drew dozens of Eisner nominations. Before leaving editorial, he moved into DC Entertainment’s TV department and helped shepherd what eventually became the CW’s Arrowverse.
When he shifted to writing comics, he didn’t start small. Infidel (2018, Image Comics), illustrated by Aaron Campbell with colors by Jose Villarrubia, was a five-issue horror series about Islamophobia and xenophobia told through supernatural terror — a Muslim woman living in a haunted apartment building where the ghosts reflect the prejudices of the people around her. NPR put it on their list of 100 Favorite Horror Stories.
Then came The Good Asian (2021–2022, Image Comics), ten issues illustrated by Alexandre Tefenkgi with colors by Lee Loughridge. A period noir set in 1936 San Francisco Chinatown, it follows Edison Hark, a Chinese-American detective navigating the racism, corruption, and community politics of the era. It won the Eisner Award for Best Limited Series and the Harvey Award for Book of the Year — both in the same year.
He’s also written Dead Boy Detectives (DC Comics), based on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Universe characters, and Man’s Best (BOOM! Studios), illustrated by Jesse Lonergan. He wrote and curated The Horizon Experiment, an Image Comics anthology, which included his one-shot The Manchurian — drawn by Terry and Rachel Dodson — a story about a Chinese James Bond running covert missions in America. He also wrote issue #14 of The Silver Coin, Image’s rotating horror anthology.
On television, he’s written for Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, Light as a Feather, and Two Sentence Horror Stories.
Currently, he’s one of the writers on Exquisite Corpses (Image Comics) and is the announced writer of Absolute Green Arrow at DC as part of their Absolute Universe line.
Period noir in 1936 San Francisco Chinatown. A Chinese-American private eye trying to solve a murder while the Chinese Exclusion Act and anti-Asian racism close in around him. Won both the Eisner and the Harvey in the same year. If you read one Pornsak book, it's this one.
A haunted house horror story where the supernatural is a direct metaphor for Islamophobia. A Muslim woman in a diverse apartment building starts to see ghosts — but the horror is really about the bigotry she faces from neighbors and society. Selected for NPR's 100 Favorite Horror Stories. Pornsak's debut and still one of the best horror comics of the last decade.
ornsak's most recent Image-adjacent creator-owned work — a dog-and-owner story with genuine emotional weight. A good follow-up read after The Good Asian to see his range.
Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine — Neil Gaiman's ghost detectives from the Sandman Universe — get their own ongoing series. Pornsak brings the same care for character and atmosphere he used in The Good Asian, but in a completely different register: supernatural mystery with dark humor. A good entry point if you came to his work through horror and want to see him play in someone else's sandbox.
A Chinese James Bond running covert missions inside America — for the other side. Pornsak wrote and curated The Horizon Experiment, a series of one-shots each using a different genre to explore Asian-American identity. This is his own contribution to it, and it's the clearest statement of the lens he uses across all his work: genre as a vehicle for asking who gets to be the hero. The Dodsons' clean, kinetic art makes it feel like a proper spy thriller.
