And it starts right at the beginning. Instead of the Hmong word for "hello" or "welcome," she says, is "something else that said, like, 'your honor' or'the queen' or'the king' instead." Seeing something so simple done incorrectly was frustrating and off-putting. "Not only was it just probably churned through Google Translate, it wasn't even peer edited and reviewed to ensure that there was fluency and coherence," she says. Xiong says this kind of carelessness is common online--and it's one reason she and others in the Hmong community can feel excluded from politics.

The first comic that cartoonist Gene Luen Yang ever bought was a two-in-one issue that featured a man made out of rocks and an intergalactic cyborg. He loved comics, especially the kind that featured space aliens. So he started making his own. He and a friend drew comics and sold them for 50 cents each. Among their earliest creations were the "Trans-Smurfers," Smurfs who transformed into robotic fruit. They also flew and fought crime.