Graphic Novel Review: Cat Mask Boy by Linus Liu

 Reviewed by Joe Hilliard

Cat Mask Boy by Linus Liu, Nakama Press, 2025. 192 pages. $10.99 paperback. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cat-Mask-Boy/Linus-Liu/9781545821732

"For every superhero, there's a monster. For every lazy student, there's homework." (13) So begins the journey of Tiger in Linus Liu's Cat Mask Boy. Set in early-70s Hong Kong, Tiger is a lackadaisical student, preferring to dream of a life of superhero than concentrate on his grades or working hard for the future. Well, that's not exactly true, Tiger is working hard for a future of fighting crime. Liu never shows us Tiger's "human" face. The preface shows Tiger from the back tossing a paper airplane off a building. Going forward, we only see him wearing his cat mask. Tiger is Cat Mask Boy!

Tiger just doesn't just fight for justice though. He fights a society that only cares for performance, for results. For grades. Even in second grade, Tiger's world is obsessed with the best in class, getting good grades, and how this defines life. Moms beat children for poor grades. His friends constantly worry about the future, what their grades are going to be. Perhaps this is early-70s Hong Kong, or perhaps it speaks to the constant struggle we see:  performance versus being real. Being true to yourself. The struggle we see today.  Every day. "I promise I'll still be a decent person even if my grades are poor." (133) The push and pull of Tiger versus Cat Mask Boy.

It all comes to a head for Tiger on report card day. Through a series of events that would only happen in a comic book world, Tiger loses his report card, which needs to be signed by his mom and returned to school. A lost report card which sends Tiger on a quest into the walled Kowloon City. From this juncture, a traditional hero’s journey quest does permeate the top level of the book, as Tiger moves through dangerous situations rife with gangsters, violence, loss, as he searches for the elusive report card. It's here. It's gone. It's there. It's here again. It's found and discarded, lost and not needed. All at once. Beyond this physical journey though, Tiger fundamentally chases the meaning of life as well. What it means to live well. To live meaningfully.

Liu cleverly uses the cultural touchstone of the Japanese tokusatsu television show Kamen Rider throughout, which proves an interesting counterpoint to Tiger. For those who came in late, as Lee Falk would put it, the original Kamen Rider ran from 1971-1973 and featured the namesake character, a cyborg man-grasshopper hybrid created by the villainous organization Shocker to be their agent, but who has escaped their brainwashing and now fights against them. While none of this background is dropped into Tiger's story, this context adds another layer. Who has created Cat Mask Boy? What has created Cat Mask Boy? Is he escaping societal brainwashing? Tiger needs to find what makes a hero. The true goal. "School teaches us to be a good person, but never teaches us how to protect ourselves from bad people." (154) Initially, the image of the Kamen Rider is used as a foil, as Tiger's schoolmates berate him for not being a real hero like the Rider, leading to trouble in school.

When he meets Dragon, a fellow masked boy in Kowloon, they mimic the arm motions of the Rider to each other, signifying first their bond as fellow superheroes. Later, as they work together, and Tiger sees Dragon as an embodiment of heroism, they repeat the action, this second time as friends. It's a neat piece understanding how pop culture helps create friendships. How we bond over the simplest things. As an 80s teen, buying Justice League International off the shelves, my friend and I would call ourselves Blue Butthead and Buster Gold. And mimic Giant Robot's hand signs. It's simple. It's real. And Liu taps into that.

Beyond that simple pop artifice though, Liu delves deeper with Dragon. "Even if I have tons of toys, would I be happy if there's no one to play with?" (103) Dragon understands something that Tiger does not yet. That Cat Mask Boy does not yet. This is the journey that Tiger must travel through Kowloon, and then ultimately out of the walled city. Out of his walled self. The acceptance of true friendship, true relationship. Dragon's selflessness counterpoints Tiger's selfishness.

Artistically, Liu has a beautiful clean line style more reminiscent of Los Bros Hernandez or Adrian Tomine than of manhua. It works perfectly to express the stylized Kowloon of the book – where kids wear animal masks with no question. The use of only a three color palette over the panels, accentuating the action, gives the book the feel of a 70s comic book, where the colors are perhaps bolder and off-kilter, and yet still modernized to give counterpoint to the panel work and dialogue. It reminds of J. Gonzo's use of color and paper effects in La Mano del Destino. Down to the texture of the paper. Even in eBook form, Lu captures the rag texture of paper, real paper, on each page. Manifesting as a book, an artefact, a journey. And neatly complementing the 70s feel of the story. The only ruining effect is the font used by Book Buddy Media for the English translation caption boxes and dialogue. Darker black and baldly nondescript, it gives the impression of having been typed in later on a copy and not really integrated into the book. It's a strange, and distracting, look.

"The report card reflects only schoolwork. Personal growth is based on life experience." (147) Tiger earns his life experience. He learns his freedom. He completes his hero’s journey. More than that, he affirms that life is more than simply school, work, more than the expectations and demands of society.

"My mom told me getting good grades means a can earn a lot of money from work." – "Just some comic book dialogue, which I don't think you've read." (125)  To which, always read the comic book dialogue. And always read between the lines. Read Cat Mask Boy.

 A version of this review will appear in IJOCA 27-2. 

Exhibition Review: Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form

Review and photos by Charles Hatfield

Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form. Paul Gravett (curator). Santa Ana, California: Bowers Museum, March 9-September 8, 2024. Admission  US$28.

https://www.bowers.org/index.php/current-exhibition/asian-comics-evolution-of-an-art-form

     Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form, now at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, is a massive traveling exhibition of comic art and artifacts representing some twenty countries across Asia. Consisting of over 400 works, it takes hours to see thoroughly, and I can attest that it is worth revisiting (I have been four times, but have not exhausted what it has to offer). Launched in Europe in 2017, this is the first international exhibition of its type, and is both instructive and stunning. Asian Comics will be on view at the Bowers until September 8, 2024, and, I gather, may then tour further in the United States. I hope so.

Organized by London’s Barbican Centre, Asian Comics is the brainchild of curator Paul Gravett, a well-traveled comics historian and leading English-language scholar on Japanese manga (I should note that Gravett is a longtime colleague and friend of mine, and that the Bowers comped my first visit to the exhibition). To create this show, a process that started in 2014, Gravett collaborated with the Barbican’s Patrick Moran and more than twenty advisors from various countries. The exhibition’s design, including architecture and interiors, digital installations, and branding, is the work of the London-born international firm Pentagram.

Originally titled Mangasia: Wonderlands of Asian Comics, the retitled American version of the exhibit consists of roughly half Japanese work and half comics from other countries and areas, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam. The blueprint for the exhibit is Gravett’s book Mangasia: The Definitive Guide to Asian Comics (Thames and Hudson, 2017). While rightly acknowledging the prevalence of manga as an international influence, the show goes beyond the Japanophilic stereotype implied by the original Mangasia title. National traditions are treated as distinct, not interchangeable, and the show’s text is properly sensitive to the history of conflict and competition among Asian nations (as well as the influence of Western imperialism and the Cold War). Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Indonesian, and South Korean works are particularly well represented.

The show, as Mangasia, toured six to seven years ago, running at the Palazzo Esposizioni in Rome (October 2017-January 2018), the Villa Reale in Monza, Italy (February-June 2018), and then Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, France (June-September 2018). Its current run at the Bowers marks its American debut and the first time it has been seen since 2018. The exhibit incorporates published comics, autographic original art, digital reproductions, woodblock prints, scroll paintings, digital video, and sundry objects. Published comics are the most heavily represented, but originals are plentiful, and the digital reproductions are exacting (for example, facsimiles of boards from Tezuka’s Buddha fooled me completely). I especially enjoyed those items that stretched my understanding of “comics,” such as two examples of the Kaavad, a Rajasthani tradition in which elaborately hinged boxes covered in sequential art unfold to tell a story—essentially, portable shrines, brought to life by an oral storyteller (as demonstrated in an accompanying video).

My experience of Asian Comics began with a gala opening that my family and I attended on March 8th, a Friday night. A lowkey reception in the Bowers’ sculpture garden was followed by a fairly quick walkthrough of the exhibition, and capped by a well-attended introductory talk by Paul Gravett in the museum’s auditorium. That Sunday, March 10th, Gravett followed up with a more extensive and formal lecture in the same venue, which, again, my family and I attended—and on that day I spent the better part of three hours within the exhibition, where I took hundreds of photos. We returned a third time on Saturday, April 6, for a stimulating lecture on “The Shared Origins of Modern Comics” by scholar Eike Exner (author of the monograph Comics and the Origins of Manga). Again, I spent much time in the exhibit. Finally, we revisited the exhibition on Saturday, July 13, for a sort of refresher course (and much notetaking).

Curator Paul Gravett

Throughout my several visits, my first impressions have not changed. Asian Comics is a triumph of research and design, immersive, transporting, and super-informative. It looks great and is easy to navigate. This is a superbly crafted presentation—evidently a turnkey exhibition, one whose design elements are pre-prepared and provided complete to the host museum, then adapted as needed. Online photos from Italy and France suggest a high degree of consistency from venue to venue despite drastically different spaces. At the Bowers, the show occupies roughly a third of the first floor. It makes for a dense and winding experience—not crowded, but very rich.

Approached through a long, narrow foyer, the exhibit opens with a digital marquee visible from far off, flanked by wall murals referencing Osamu Tezuka, Junko Mizuno, and other artists. Passing between the murals and under the marquee, you enter a corridor overhung with vividly crimson drapery printed with comic art. Japanese work dominates this space, but above my head, the first thing I noticed was Nestor Redondo and Mars Ravelo’s classic Filipina superheroine, Darna. The surroundings—walls and ceiling—are made of paper printed with varied and striking imagery, evoking printed comics and Asian paper craft. The effect is brilliant. From there, you are swept down a tunnel of red and black, and around corners, until you reach a transition to yellow, visually noting a new subject section.

Like the Mangasia book, the show divides into six domains, each clearly themed and color-coded. First comes “Mapping Asian Comics” (in red), then “Fables & Folklore” (yellow), “Recreating and Revising the Past” (white), “Stories and Storytellers” (green), “Censorship and Sensibility” (pink), and finally “Asian Comics Go Multimedia” (purple). This scheme, intuitive and subtly didactic, imparts a holistic design in which I never felt lost. The wall text (plentiful yet never a drag) comes in dynamic panels recalling comics pages, another evocative design choice. Pentagram’s use of paper is a wonderful example of simple materials put to mesmerizing use.

The exhibition tends to proceed from manga to broader views, as if using Japanese landmarks to sketch out the larger field. This strategy, while of course debatable, yields big dividends in terms of narrative and flow. For example, the first vitrine samples diverse manga from a seventy-year span (1937 to 2007) but is paired with a second containing works from a dozen different countries, some perhaps expected (China, India, the Philippines, South Korea) but others surprising (Mongolia, Sri Lanka). Right after this, another vitrine poses mid-19th century Japanese ukiyo-e prints beside contemporary Chinese and South Korean works. Radical juxtaposition of cultures, periods, and genres is the show’s logic—that, and a resolve to find commonality across differences. Admittedly, this syncretic approach presents challenges, not least the danger of flattening “Asia” into homogeneity, but it also highlights transnational themes and affinities.

The “Fables & Folklore” section epitomizes this. Spotlighting depictions of spirits and the supernatural as well as adaptations of ancient and classical epics, this area juxtaposes works by renowned Japanese mangaka like Shigeru Mizuki, Masashi Kishimoto, and Junji Ito with a startling variety of others: for example, influential krasue (ghost) comics by Thailand’s Tawee Witsanukorn (from roughly the early 1970s); various issues of India’s famed Amar Chitra Katha (starting in the late 1960s); many Wajang Purwa adaptations by Indonesia’s S. Ardisoma (from the late 1950s); a beautiful scroll (patachitra) painting depicting Krishna by Bengali artist Gurupada Chitrakar (2004); an illuminated page from the Bhagavad Gita (anonymously created circa 1820 to 1840); diverse depictions of the Monkey King; and various originals in voluptuous brush-inked style from Indonesia and the Philippines. Hanging overhead—a lovely touch—are paper lanterns bearing shadow puppet-like silhouettes of monsters from Filipino folklore (adapted from the book The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo by Tan, Hontiveros, et al., 2022).

If “Fables & Folklore” stresses commonality, the next section, “Recreating and Revising the Past,” highlights difference. Devoted to national histories and international conflicts, this area challenges any synthetic notion of shared Asianness and is, not coincidentally, the show’s most thickly documented portion. With detailed timelines starting in the mid-nineteenth century, it synopsizes generations of divisive and painful conflict, including imperialism, war, and decolonial struggles. Here the show emphasizes the potential of comics as both propaganda and witness, indoctrination and activism. Works on view span from classic manga (such as Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen) to Chinese lianhuanhua to South Korean and North Korean volumes to Cambodian Prum Vannak’s harrowing memoir of enslavement onboard a Thai fishing vessel, The Dead Eye and the Deep Blue Sea (2013).

The exhibit’s back half gestures in many directions at once. “Stories and Storytellers” focuses on comics creators, from revered auteurs to striving independent artists, and emphasizes markets, struggles for creators’ rights, and material processes. From an unfinished page by Tezuka, to a comic book script by Mars Ravelo, there’s a lot to take in. A roughly 10 x 13-foot installation in the form of a house with glass walls recreates studios used by the late mangaka Takashi Fukutani and by the team behind the popular online manhua Queen’s Palace. Next to this is a drawing station offering visitors a chance to cartoon, a reading area including scores of manga magazines, giant wall photos of Japanese newsstands, and a defiant blurb, “Print is not dead.”

However, this all intermingles with the next section, “Asian Comics Go Multimedia,” which suggests a different sort of triumphalism. Here comic art more or less dissolves out into and informs pop culture at large. This section embraces film adaptations, anime, manga-inspired fashion from collections by Mikio Sakabe and Jenny Fax, and the Vocaloid/virtual popstar Hatsune Miku (shown in a concert video). Nearby, in a motion-controlled installation, visitors can play the role of a huge mech (reminding me of an Iron Man installation I saw in the exhibition Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes in 2018). This area marks the exhibition’s big finish, and contains varied delights: for example, a focus on Leping Zhang’s character Sanmao, production cels from Otomo’s film Akira, and the revelation that Satyajit Ray storyboarded his first film, Pather Panchali (1955), in comics form.

Yet the most striking element here, in the show’s back half, is a curtained installation devoted to “images which may not be suitable for visitors under the age of 18”—that is, an adults-only alcove focusing on “Censorship and Sensibility.” This is a potentially controversial thing to include in a show determined to wow a general audience, but I believe it works well.

One could question the logic of this move, as there is much throughout Asian Comics that caregivers might wish to hide from young children. Visitors are advised from the start that the show’s varied “artistic expressions” may include “instances of nudity and violence,” and startling images can be found most everywhere. Moreover, not everything in the curtained “adult” area is explicit; some works seem to have been sequestered simply because they are queer-themed. For example, the selections from Shimura’s Sweet Blue Flowers and Yamaji’s Love My Life, both gentle, character-based queer manga, are quite understated. That said, the curtained area does contain many shocks, from Joji Akiyama’s notorious children’s manga Asura (1970), with its themes of famine and cannibalism, to classic horrors by Umezu and Maruo, to savagely satirical pages by heta-uma icon Takashi Nemoto. Vintage Japanese shunga (erotic art) and muzan-e (“atrocity pictures”) sit beside recent examples of yaoi, yuri, and gay manga of varied explicitness. Some works shown here are elegantly erotic, for instance pages by Chikae Ide, and some are repulsive, like the leering Sleep Rape, a Thai exploitation comic. Some are droll, such as a spread from South Korean Dae-Joong Kim’s “Beautiful Memories of the City of Cocks,” and some overtly political, like Rakudenashiko’s “arrest story,” which recounts the legal persecution of her feminist work on grounds of “obscenity” (a first for any Japanese woman). Cordoning off most of these examples in a separate alcove was probably a wise move, though the differences among them struck me more than anything they had in common.

In sum, Asian Comics is a bountiful, often surprising exhibition, well worth a long visit for scholars and fans who can possibly get to it, wherever it may go in the future. Gravett has cast the net wide, gathering in various artistic traditions under the rubric “comics” and thus affirming the form’s multifaceted cultural and historical relevance (interestingly, Eike Exner’s more specific conception of comics, shared on April 6, contrasted with the show’s inclusive approach). The show’s transnational scope and synoptic ambition are likely to provoke arguments, but the bottom line is, the fields of comics studies and comic art exhibiting are richer for this project. I’ve been exhorting students, colleagues, and friend to go to this show, and I’ll keep on doing that. Go!