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| cover to #13 on Webtoons |
Zhen, Ye. Singapore Lords of Veracity (Book 14 of the Singapore Hip-Hop Horror comics series). Self-published.
Ye Zhen’s Singapore Hip-Hop Horror is the second longest running comics series in Singapore. The longest is Wee Tian Beng’s The Celestial Zone which started in 1999. The “Mr Kiasu” book series by Johnny Lau and friends was started in the early 1990s, but it had a long hiatus in between books. So Ye Zhen’s comics holds the record for being the second longest running comics series in Singapore. His is different from the others because Singapore Hip-Hop Horror is self-published and self-distributed by Ye Zhen himself. This makes him unique in Singapore comics. He is truly indie.
In essence, the series is about the protagonists Skateboard P and Snoop Eastwood (it is hard to call them heroes) fighting aliens and beings from alternate realities. It is not clear why they are fighting so hard, but my reading is that the continuous battles are fights to preserve the indie way of life in Singapore. You can have a name like Skateboard P or Snoop Eastwood and look nothing like any 'normal' Singaporeans, but you still deserve your place in the sun on this island city. The mainstream need not prevail, and we can be who we want to be.
Books 1 to 3 were published in 2007 and launched at the Singapore comic con. I remember seeing a nerdy guy wearing a cap and glasses hawking his books hesitantly with his mother. I was wondering where this guy came from – he was releasing three books all at once! Later he revealed that book 1 was drawn in 2004 when he was studying comics at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Over the years, I have gotten to know Ye Zhen and reviewed his books.[i] In 2018, I interviewed Ye Zhen for Ben Katchor’s Comics and Picture-Book Symposium over Skype.[ii] In 2019, I curated a small exhibition of Ye Zhen’s original comic art. I liken his work to be like outsider art. His efforts of doing it alone and doing it his own way reminds me of Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom.
In this new book, Ye Zhen continues the non-stop battles between Skateboard P and Melissa Preta, and between Snoop Eastwood and Lady Impervious. The action scenes are good and Ye Zhen is experimenting with different sound effects to make them look more dynamic. Like the previous books, the dialogue is peppered with what I call Ye Zhen-isms, which express his views about Singapore and the world:
- Peace just stagnates progress.
- Son, I couldn’t do a more poignant declaration of war than that.
- My young lass, in order to get stronger one must risk one’s own life. P chose this voluntarily. I CAN’T stop their fight.
- This will, in short, save your lover’s bacon. If you catch my drift. Hehe.
- I don’t know how I did it. But I’m not one to question heaven’s will.
- P’s girlfriend: There’s more to life than endless fighting P. Just don’t get yourself killed…
- P: Your caresses are all I live for …
- Needless to say, my triggered emotional states further boosted my power. Whether I liked to fight or not was another question entirely.
VROOOOM!
Ye Zhen can do comics fulltime because he does not have to work, although he does some basketball coaching occasionally. He spends most of his time playing basketball. Maybe his life is like the manga, Slam Dunk - if only we can be so lucky. I await eagerly his next book.
Some of Ye Zhen’s comics are free to read on Webtoons at https://www.webtoons.com/p/community/en/u/n9o1n. A short documentary about Ye Zhen by his wife, Atman
Lim was made in 2019 and is online at https://atmanlim.com/documentary
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