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kikuhughes.bsky.social
Kiku
@kikuhughes.bsky.social
2.6K followers 270 following 2.4K posts
I'm Kiku Hughes (she/her), a mixed-race Yonsei (4th generation Japanese American) cartoonist from Seattle. I'm the creator of APALA honor title and Eisner award nominated comic "Displacement."
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kikuhughes.bsky.social
Kiku @kikuhughes.bsky.social · Feb 12
Hi I'm Kiku Hughes, a comics artist and organizer in Seattle.

🎏 Website: kikuhughes.com
🎏 Read my comics: kikuhughes.com/short-comics
🎏 Support on ko-fi: ko-fi.com/kikuhughes

✊ Check out groups I organize with at tsuruforsolidarity.org and laresistencianw.org
Cover of the graphic novel "Displacement" by Kiku Hughes. It depicts a mixed race Japanese American girl looking back at another Japanese American girl who is standing with a violin case. Behind them are barbed wire fences and a guard tower. A 3 by 3 grid of nine different images. The center image is a photo of a woman with pale skin and buzzed brown hair. The surrounding images are all illustrations. Digitally drawn comic page with four panels. An androgynous figure with spiky red hair, blank white skin and a green jumpsuit is seen outside the panels, narrating. Panel one shows a spaceship in space, with a huge geodesic dome window. Panel two shows people in a park, with greenery, buildings and a train in the background, but the sky is black with stars. Panel three shows a zoomed out view of a city courtyard with green fields behind it, and again the sky is the black of space. Panel four is a small panel with just space and stars. The narrator's speech bubbles travel throughout the page, saying "I like Science Fiction because it allows us to exaggerate the absurdity of the present. So, here is something absurd. These people were born on a generation ship, hundreds of years into its journey. It's a massive ship that houses millions of people, schools, farms, museums. It is also a bomb." Comic page with two panels. The first panel is tall and narrow, showing a woman with pale skin and short blue hair in a yellow shirt. She says "Sorry, there was a fly. What did you say?" She is waving her hand as a fly buzzes off. The second panel shows the same woman sitting at a bar with another woman, this one with tan skin and a blonde beehive. She says "I just asked what you've been drawing lately." The bottom of the page shows the first woman's hands opening a bag and taking out a tablet, which has a frowny face on it. The woman says "Oh god, actually, you're good at computers right? I haven't been drawing because my tablet won't turn on like, at all."
kikuhughes.bsky.social
everybody say Hello DELA
Digital doodle of a small orange robot
December 19, 2025 at 7:16 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
The way every mainstream dem refuses to push back on the gop's racist immigration narrative should be criminal. Their complacency is getting people disappeared and killed. Idk how they sleep at night
gelliottmorris.com G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 2d
matt & co’s theory of how public opinion on immigration would respond to new information was simply empirically wrong.
at this point the only reasonable conclusion is they refuse to update their priors w/ new data because the data is inconvenient for them
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-cost-o...
December 18, 2025 at 7:54 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
Just went to my first pub trivia and also my team got 1st 😊
December 18, 2025 at 6:15 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
The thing about the Remains of the Day is it has me thinking about the hollowness of taking pride in your work while tacitly propping up a fascist state and i already had a rough relationship with making art for a living
December 16, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Reposted by Kiku
jokeb0i.bsky.social
#artvsartist Favorite thing to draw this year was “face facing left”
December 12, 2025 at 9:10 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
more book wips, im going too slow right now but i feel like it's coming along!!
In-progress comic page in which an Asian American teenager sits on her bed while someone in her phone asks "What?" and she yells "I said I'm going, I'm going!" We see her phone end the call and she tries to open an app, but gets a notification that says it needs to be updated. She huffs in frustration and exits her room.
December 11, 2025 at 2:41 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
does anyone know how to keep CSP text live when importing the file into another program? I use CSP to letter but Sai to draw, and the live text gets nuked every time. Do i just have to save two versions of each file or...
December 8, 2025 at 7:33 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
Thanks everyone I had to change a few panels but this will be easier to draw at least lol
Drawing of a girl wearing a jean jacket with a fur-lined collar, talking on the phone drawing of a girl talking on the phone saying "hello" while looking skeptical
December 4, 2025 at 5:58 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
character design question: jacket with lined collar or no
Drawing of a girl wearing a jean jacket with a fur-lined collar Drawing of a girl wearing a jean jacket with lapels
December 4, 2025 at 3:28 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
we finished succession last night and i have been rotating shiv roy in my mind ever since
December 3, 2025 at 8:17 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
submitted my first grant application of the unemployed era 🤞
December 2, 2025 at 2:38 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
I have GOT to get an english lit masters*

*No i dont
November 28, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Reposted by Kiku
hannahtempler.com
everyone say "thank you jadzia"
Still, a character from the Galaxy short in DC's I saw Ma Hunkel kissing Santa Claus holiday special. Still is white woman with scraggly dark hair, angel bite piercings, a septum ring, and heavy makeup around her eyes. She is wearing a lot of leather and straps, and in this panel is wiping blood from her mouth. She is scowling while saying "i've missed that. I knew you still loved me."
November 26, 2025 at 5:38 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
guassian blur mvp
Comic page WIP showing an Asian teenager adjusting her phone as it records video
November 26, 2025 at 3:02 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
Another day i have to claw back from migraine hell.
November 25, 2025 at 9:17 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
ok my review, i'm actually obsessed with this book now
Text that reads "I didn't think I'd end up giving this 5 stars, but the more I sat down to think about it the more I appreciated. I see it in conversation with Remains of the Day - both juxtaposing personal shame with a much larger version. In this case, it is the shame of an entire nation. The flashbacks in this book take place in an almost literal crater in the remains of post-war Nagasaki. Politics are mentioned throughout, but mostly superficially, until one scene late in the book which suddenly reveals how absent all talk of the horrors of Imperial Japan have been the whole time. Like most Ishiguro narrators, this one is lying to herself and to us - and just like post-war Japan, she abjectly refuses to acknowledge the harms she has done. "
November 25, 2025 at 8:03 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
Meeting doodles
Pencil sketches on lined paper. A few heads in the corner, and a small comic that reads "this one little pill will fix everything, guaranteed*"
November 22, 2025 at 9:16 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
It's so good!!!!
arielries.bsky.social Ariel Slamet Ries @arielries.bsky.social · Nov 17
Sharing the opening pages of Strange Bedfellows to convince you to buy it day one:
November 21, 2025 at 5:37 AM
Reposted by Kiku
nonvieta.bsky.social
I feel like I forget to talk about it but here's a reminder that I have a comic coming next year called Last Ship to Mars 🚀 that is not even a little concerned about Mars and is instead a love letter to the Earth and the huge importance of staying and doing the work. It's also gay. ✨
November 26, 2024 at 8:40 PM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
back on my bullshit (making full length graphic novels)
Screenshot of a drawing program in which three panels of a comic are shown, incomplete. They depict a bedroom, then a blurry face, then a blurry body moving.
November 19, 2025 at 2:15 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
does this joke make any sense i need an outsider opinion
Two panel comic. The first panel shows a person opening a door and holding up a tub of Baba's brand hummus. She says "Hey! I brought the hummus you asked for!" The second panel shows a group of trees holding red solo cups, looking judgy.
November 18, 2025 at 3:20 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
Whenever i see the glowing blue eyes of the creatures that moved into grocery store parking lots
Pencil comic that depicts various angles of an automatic parking lot monitor - glowing camera, solar panel. Then a person standing in the sight of the camera. Text reads "I'm telling you, we didn't have these when I was your age. No reason, it just occurred to me....that if I don't say it now, you'll grow up thinking it was always like this."
November 16, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Kiku
automeruz.bsky.social
extra shots of the andor riso too meruz.bigcartel.com/product/ando...
November 14, 2025 at 12:18 AM
kikuhughes.bsky.social
Reading Remains of the Day finally and ive decided im going to read Ishiguro's entire body of work in 2026. Ive already read Never Let Me Go and the Buried Giant, what should i go for after?
November 13, 2025 at 1:31 AM