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!

Book review: Asian Political Cartoons by John A. Lent

reviewed by Matt Wuerker

John. A. Lent. Asian Political Cartoons. University Press of Mississippi, 2023. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/Asian-Political-Cartoons

At the risk of revealing my own shallow occidental ethnocentrism, I have to say that I was largely ignorant of the cartoon culture of Asia.  I have always had the general idea that cartooning was something that was particular to Europe, especially England and France, but also Spain, Germany and Italy.

It’s true that what we in the west think of as the political cartoon did come out of Europe.  But, like meat pies, macaroni, and beer, cartooning spread from there through colonial expansion to other parts of the world.  Some of those colonial territories were very fertile ground for this crude, yet very powerful and popular form of art, I think of South America in particular.  But I always suffered from the mistaken notion that Asia was largely not taken with the idea of political commentary in the form of exaggerated drawing combined with humorous word bubbles.  John Lent’s new book “Asian Political Cartoons” shows me how wrong that impression was.

In 300 mostly-color and beautifully-laid-out pages Lent takes us deep into the rich and culturally complicated history of the political cartoon in a part of the world that has seen staggering and tumultuous political change over the last century.

While all these cultures enjoyed unique traditions of their own in the visual arts, the arrival of the colonial powers introduced the novel and odd European concept that political dissent can be expressed in funny pictures and distributed in penny sheets and humor magazines.  In China for instance suddenly there were China Punch, Shanghai Charivari, and Shanghai Puck all imitating their Western antecedents.  The simple power of thumbing your nose at power and authority with arresting caricatures and graphic exaggeration has an innate appeal.  It spread quickly.

Ironically enough as Chinese nationalism and the struggle against colonial occupation started to build this same graphic form was turned against the imperialists, and not just those from the West.

Political cartoons don’t always use humor, but instead can express deadly serious outrage. In the war with the Japanese Chinese political cartoonists marshaled their craft to contribute to the war effort.  Lent shows how these cartoonists melded their classical Chinese ink drawing styles with more Western cartoon imagery to create devastating war propaganda posters.

The Philippine cartoonists also used a similar kind of jujitsu and turned this colonial art form against those that would colonize them.  First sharpening their pens on their nineteenth century Spanish occupiers, they then turned their fire on their twentieth century American occupiers.

Philippine nationalists used satirical magazines, often graced with cartoons on their front covers to lambast those who had colonized them as well lampoon their own compatriots who were going along with and embracing being colonized.

 Another country among the dozens Lent examines is Bangladesh, one that I had the pleasure of visiting myself about 10 years ago.  Despite attempts by the parliament to introduce blasphemy laws that would punish any images deemed unsuitable by the Islamic mullahs, the Bangladeshis enjoy a thriving and very industrious cartoon community. Beyond popular printed magazines like Unmad they’ve also built a home and a platform on social media that includes great animation work. When I visited back in 2013, I especially enjoyed getting to know many of the bright lights in Dhaka, especially Nasreen Sultana Mitu, Tanmoy, and Mehedi Haque.

 Lent also shines a light on the struggles that many Asian cartoonists face as those in power attempt to intimidate and censor them.  The fight for freedom of speech in Asia has been tough… and continues.  Authoritarians of all stripes really don’t appreciate political satire.  From Mao to Suharto, to the current leadership in China, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as religious fundamentalist movements throughout the region, censorship, jail time, and threats of violence can be the cost of creating political cartoons. Over the years many brave cartoonists have taken great risks to stand up for the ”freedom to cartoon.”  In recent times and despite the best efforts of those in power to shut them up cartoonists like Wang Liming (Rebel Pepper) and Badiucao in China, Zunar and Fahmi Reza, Kanika Mishra in India, among many others, have kept up the fight.

As the book ranges all across Asia, it also highlights the five decades that Lent has dedicated to studying and chronicling the cartoon culture across the continent.  He’s met and personally knows many of the prominent practitioners, as well as many of the new generation.  It’s a grand tour through cartoon territory not very well known by many of us.  A journey well worth taking.

Wuerker is a practicing cartoonist for Politico, and has won the Pulitzer, Berryman and Herblock awards/prizes.

Reminiscences: Fang Cheng, Sudhir Tailing, and Barry Linton

Reminiscences

John A. Lent

Fang Cheng (1918-2018). The doyen of Chinese cartooning, Fang Cheng, died the morning of Aug. 22, 2018. He was 100 years and two months old, an achievement that pleased him immensely, and one that he predicted in one of the dozens of interviews/chats Xu Ying and I had with him. In our initial visit with Fang Cheng, he told us he was going to live to 100, and each year, publish two books, continue to write newspaper columns daily, paint many humorous drawings and calligraphies. On a visit, Aug. 2, 2010, I reminded him of that prediction: he said he was down to compiling one book yearly. Up until a few days before his death, even while hospitalized, he continued to draw self-caricatures and, a bit earlier, calligraphy; with the help of his son, Sun Jihong, he gave the works to the Red Cross to be auctioned off, the proceeds used to educate less-fortunate children.

            After our first interview with Fang Cheng (June 10, 2001), which lasted from 9:10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (71/2 hours), Ying and I always looked forward to visiting him, mesmerized by retellings of his life and career, his theories on humor (see, IJOCA, 8:2 [2006]; 9:2 [2007]), his philosophies on life, his hopes and dreams, and his singing of songs in English, Russian, and Chinese that he remembered from his childhood. He still sang upon request the last time I visited him in March 2018. More often than not, Fang Cheng, from our first meeting until he was 99, challenged me to arm wrestle; usually the “match” ended in a draw, me holding on for dear life to prevent the embarrassment of this older man with a vise-like grip whipping me.

            Knowing of Fang Cheng’s desire to share his knowledge about humor and cartooning to a wider audience inside and outside China, I invited him to speak at conferences and symposia that I was active in at University of Western Ontario in 2000 (invitation cancelled for lack of funding); Singapore and Malaysia, 2004; Communication University of China in Beijing and U.S. in 2005; Guiyang, China, 2007, and Spain, 2009 (which he was advised by family not to attend because of his age). In the U.S., he stayed for a week at my house, during which he spoke at two universities/colleges, practiced his English reading David Copperfield in his room at night, drew a Zhong Kui painting for my house, and told (even retold) his life story in installments at the dinner table for a few days. Asked if he had dietary restrictions, he replied he ate everything except people, anything with legs except tables and chairs. Has he eaten mice? “Yes, three kinds; tastes delicious, like frog.”

            During his stay, he requested visits to a comics shop where he was disappointed (“these are not comics, just manga. No humor”), and a toy or novelty store where he wanted to buy something to “make me laugh.”

            Fang Cheng said in our 2001 meeting that he stayed healthy through love, humor, and openness and by riding his bicycle and swimming. The secret of a long life (he was 83 then)? “In one word, busy,” he replied, but then added, “not worry.” And busy he was those last 17 years of life -- doing calligraphy, writing his many books and daily newspaper columns, illustrating others’ books, drawing humorous paintings that included his own poetry, arranging the donation of his works to museums in Zhongshan and Shanghai, refining what he considered his unique theories of humor, lecturing in China and abroad, and helping less-privileged people. He even managed to run one leg of the torch carry to the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing before the 2008 Olympics; he was 90 at the time.

            On more than one occasion, beginning in 2001, Fang Cheng described how the route of his life was guided by fate. In the Winter 2003 issue of Persimmon, Xu Ying and I wrote about friends Liao Bingxiong and Fang Cheng and their careers and views on cartooning. In that article, Fang Cheng credits fate and heaven and the gods with determining his destiny. I end this remembrance with a section from that article that gives an overview of his career, and fate’s role in it.

Fang’s own cartooning career stretches to the 1930s and was determined, as he says, “by heaven, by the gods.” Fang was born in Beijing, but at the age of four moved to his family’s ancestral home in Zhongshan County, near Macao, in Guangdong Province. When he was nine, his family returned to Beijing, and he attended middle school there. Originally his goal was to become a doctor, but he did not pass entrance exams for Yanching University (on the campus of what is now Beijing University). Instead, he enrolled in the chemistry department at Wuhan University in 1936, but returned home the following year, when the Japanese invasion occurred. In 1939, he resumed his studies at Wuhan, where he also got involved in acting, at the same time learning on his own to draw cartoons. “I was one of the activists there; six of us who were involved in drama started a weekly wall newspaper. I drew cartoons on the wall each week for the two years the newspaper lasted,” Fang said.

After graduation, Fang went to work as a chemist in a laboratory in Sichuan Province when “the gods” intervened again: “I was in love with a girl and wanted to marry her, but she said no. I could not sleep or do anything else, so I left and went to Shanghai.” Fang said he had seen Shanghai periodicals with their many cartoons and decided he wanted to draw professionally. In Shanghai, he had no job and no place to stay, but the American director of an advertising company that represented cosmetics clients employed him as an artist. Not long after that, the chief editor of the Chinese newspaper Observer asked him to draw several cartoons weekly, and he began contributing to other newspapers as well.

In 1948, as the Guomindang realized their days were numbered, they made plans to flee to Taiwan -- hoping to take the most famous artists with them, Fang said. Not wanting to follow Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan, most artists escaped to Hong Kong, which is where Fang went in 1948. Although he wanted to return to Shanghai after Liberation in 1949, fate changed his course. “There was a sunken ship in Shanghai harbor, so [the ship we were on] went farther north and I ended up in Beijing,” Fang said. There, he worked for the Xinman Daily, but recognizing that the People’s Daily had the best opportunities for cartoonists, he joined that newspaper and not only drew cartoons but also wrote humor essays.

Fig. 1. Fang Cheng still drawing in his 100^th year. Beijing, China. Feb. 23, 2018.

Fig. 2. 99-year-old Fang Cheng arm wrestling IJOCA editor.

Fang’s apartment, Beijing, China. 2017. Photo by XuYing.

Sudhir Tailing (1960-2016). Veteran Indian political cartoonist, Sudhir Tailing, was a delight to interview. He said it the way it was, did not mince his words. He spontaneously spiced his answers with metaphors, anecdotes, and bits of humor, all the time staying on course. He was very articulate, multi-talented (a documentary filmmaker, animation producer, sculptor, and television show anchor too), highly-connected, and knowledgeable.

            He was his usual vibrant self when I last saw him at the 2010 Asian Youth Animation and Comics Competition that I invited him to in Guiyang, China; thus, my surprise when I recently learned that he died of brain cancer at age 55 on Feb. 6, 2016.

            I interviewed Sudhir the first time on July 6, 1993, in his Hindustan Times office. We talked for four hours. At that time, his professional career was only 11 years old, yet, already, he had been on the staffs of Illustrated Weekly of India, Navbharat Times, and Hindustan Times.

            That first meeting with Sudhir was a history lecture on Indian caricature and humor, a rundown of his career, a lesson on how to draw effective cartoons, and a critique of the good and bad aspects of Indian cartooning. The conversation continued over dinner at the Embassy Hotel, with his journalist wife Vidha Chaudhary joining us.

            Sudhir told of his beginnings as an “artist,” drawing with chalk and coal on his family’s floors, even though he knew a “beating” from his mother awaited each time. By ten years of age, he was seeing his cartoons appear in many of the national dailies, making him a “star” in grade school and a “rich man” with the five rupees per cartoon that he received. Sudhir said,

The newspapers did not know my age. I thought if I went to see an editor, he would stop publishing me because I was so young. Readers did not know my age either. They wrote, ‘Dear respected Mr. Tailing.’ I’d get letters like that.

            He had considered being a medical doctor but abandoned the idea; instead, he was graduated in biology, chemistry, and physics from the University of Rajasthan and finished a post-grad program in English literature later. His switching from medicine, he said, “saved a few patients.” Sudhir said his cartoons are “neat and clean,” with all details removed and the focus on the protagonist, adding, “I’m not here to show my prowess as another Michelangelo, but rather, to convey an idea with clarity.” The “politics circus” in India was his main source of ideas, and the “jokers in politics,” his “stars,” Sudhir continued.

            Comparing India’s leaders of the post-independence period with those of 1993 (time of the interview), Sudhir said the earlier ones merited respect and, as a result, cartooning was more difficult. In 1993, however, to attack national leaders was not difficult because “we have less respect for them, thanks to the leaders themselves,” according to Sudhir.

            A couple times during the 1993 interview, Sudhir decried the lack of tolerance in India, on the part of politicians relative to what is drawn about them; senior cartoonists and their reticence in recognizing younger colleagues, and the public and their sensitivities because of growing concerns about communal rights and political correctness.

            Generally, Sudhir Tailing was positive and optimistic about political cartooning in 1993, pointing out that a new generation of cartoonists had broken into the field in the 1980s, that he (and presumably other cartoonists) enjoyed a high degree of freedom, and that newspapers used political cartoons regularly (on the front and an inside page; as pocket cartoons).

            His position and views changed by the time of our second interview, July 9, 2009. He had left the Hindustan Times three years earlier, and the daily decided not to replace him. As he lamented: “The first Indian newspaper to have political cartoons in 1936 does not have a political cartoonist now. The paper that invented political cartoons has no cartoons.”

            Sudhir explained that during the previous decade, there had been an “onslaught” of private television channels that squeezed out newspaper reading and replaced the one “C” (cartoons) with the three “C’s” (crime, cricket, cinema). He said Indian newspapers had either stopped using political cartoons entirely, or moved them to inside pages, or replaced them with safer, no-opinion illustrations. Sudhir went on:

No newspaper wants to offend the powers-that-be. Anything without opinion is favored. Anything with opinion has to be thrown out or toned down. My generation is the last of the political cartoonists. Like the tiger, we are nearly extinct, but unlike the tiger, there is no law to protect cartoonists.

            The future of Indian political cartooning that Sudhir foresaw grew bleaker as we continued to talk that night. Sudhir saw the newspapers as co-opted by government, abandoning their adversary role, sharing a common interest with government to make money, trivializing and dumbing down content, and beautifying pages with illustrations and decorations in place of political and social commentary drawings. He felt a void had developed in the cartooning community, in that the post-independence cartoonists were completely gone and his own generation was “running on the runway at high speed, but just before takeoff, the tires are punctured. My generation was starting to have an impact before the blowout.”

            As for the present group of Indian political cartoonists, Sudhir said, “they can’t come up [advance] because they lack outlets,” and they don’t have stars to look up to, adding, “If we don’t see a future, how can the next generation?” He also deplored the death of the institution of relatively-independent newspaper editors, replaced, he said, by managers and business executives.

            Sudhir Tailing also told a few anecdotes before ending the evening, one relating to R. K. Laxman (see my remembrance of Laxman in IJOCA, 17:1, 2015), a very well-known cartoonist of the generation that preceded Sudhir’s:

In 1982, at age 22, I was in Mumbai. I was being published in The Times of India publications, when, one day, the editor called me to this office and said the TOI liked my work. ‘But,’ the editor continued, ‘Why don’t you just come in, do nothing, and we’ll pay you.’ When I asked why, he said that Laxman [the star TOI cartoonist] thought my success might go to my head. I decided to call Laxman and asked to talk with him. He said, ‘You want to talk to me? Come by on December 20.’ This was in March. I continued to do cartoons [despite Laxman’s rude discouragement].

Fig. 3. In No Prime Minister. Sudhir Tailang. 

Fig. 4. Sudhir Tailang with editor of IJOCA at AYACC festival, Guiyang, China. Aug. 17, 2012. Photo by Xu Ying.  

 

Barry Linton (1947-2018). If anyone exemplified the “my way” mantrum, it was New Zealand artist, cartoonist, guitarist, Barry Linton, who died Oct. 2, 2018 in Auckland.

            Early on, Barry knew he was not “cut out” to be a 9 to 5 clock puncher. He was working in a shoe store after receiving his school certificate when he was singled out to become a management trainee. As he told Arthur Baysting (2016), “I suddenly thought, ‘This is the end of the world. I’m selling shoes in Hannah’s in Hamilton and they want to make me a manager!’” He quit, hitchhiked to Auckland, attended art school, and published cartoons in Auckland University’s newspaper Craccum. Soon, the art school kicked him out for non-payment of his fees and distracting other students. Without money and not willing to become a wage slave, he hit the road again, hitchhiking all over New Zealand.

            In 1977, he self-published on a photocopier his first real comics character in Spud Takes Root, and for quite a few years after, Linton worked various jobs, constructing buildings, cleaning offices, washing restaurant dishes, and helping in a record warehouse. During these years, he contributed many comics to Strips. Later, Linton held jobs on newspapers and magazines that provided him a regular income.

            Dylan Horrocks arranged for me to meet up with Barry Linton when I was in Auckland doing research on New Zealand comic art in August 1999. He set up a gathering of eight cartoonists at the flat Barry shared with fellow cartoonist Cornelius Stone. During the little time allotted to Barry that night, he said he was repulsed by New Zealand culture as portrayed on television, calling it “nonsense.” His alternative was to portray “New Zealand landscapes in my work. Palm trees. Capture the local bush, not glass buildings that are everywhere. Phoenix palms, steep hillsides covered in bush. Lots of hippies in the cities -- people I knew. Students, bums, drunks.” He traced the start of his career to the mid-1970s, especially after the comic Strips (1977-1987) and the collective behind it were established. Of the books that he created up to that point, he singled out One Short Life with the Atom and the Elf and Chok Chok! as his favorites. Barry said he also “doodled a lot of erotica which I don’t know what to do with.”

            The next night (August 10), I invited Barry, Dylan Horrocks, and Lars Cawley to the hotel where I stayed, from which we went in search of book stores and stalls, and settled at a kebab place.  For nearly five hours, Barry regaled us about his career, lifestyle, motivations, shortcomings, interests in aliens, educational comics, music, and erotica, and the status of New Zealand comics.

            Without a regular paying job at the time, Barry explained that “raising a family, paying taxes is not my thing. I don’t see this as appealing.” He elaborated,

I’m terrible at business, at asking for my worth. I get little progress, because I don’t ask for my worth. In that regard, the opposite of ambition, that’s me. But, not in art; my storytelling and art get better. I’m not trying to avoid money. It’s just annoying to have to put a drawing aside to go talk business. … I’ve carried on doing part time work or none at all.

            Decrying the lack of importance younger cartoonists gave to portraying New Zealand, he said he, like them, also thought globally, but never lost sight of the need for him to depict New Zealand.  Barry said his drawings reflected his lifestyle; when he drew Mona Magnet, Beauty in the Beast, he was in his “party animal phase, only interested in fun and games.” But, overall, his main issue for years was multicultural, depicting Maori people and Polynesians to the north of New Zealand, a number of whom he knew. To Barry, it was important to use these cultures as subjects from an identity point of view. He said,

I drew nude women, drunks, Maoris, Polynesians, junkies. I don’t care if the public liked this or not. I had to draw it. I became more refined as I went along. The subjects included less nudity and more criminality. I refined my work on my own, and not because of criticism.

His multicultural friendships had dwindled by 1999, he said, because he was spending more time with artists and there were not many Maori artists.

            Barry reflected on his past, describing the late 1980s as a “dry spell” for him, perhaps, because he was more into music, “trying to draw comics that had the feel of music.” From those years on, he said, he had “not been organized, with very little plan,” adding,

I have had no ambition to publish for years. I just draw and collect it now. I am interested in ancient history and aliens … and educational comics. I’d like to do much more way-out alien stuff. Educational, spiritual without being didactic, preachy -- my way to do this. After reading ancient history, I realize we have to catch up spiritually.

            What was different in 1999 compared to the 1970s? For one thing, Barry said, comics carry on without him:

If I were to ignore comics, they would carry on. There are far more people involved now. Other towns, Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington -- small towns are doing small run-offs. Cartoonists are communicating with the rest of the world. That did not happen in the 1970s. Even at the grassroots, there is a lot more carrying on in comics. It feels like it is all starting over again, or it may be it is just changing. I used to say I knew all cartoonists in New Zealand. I can’t say that now.

            Barry accused punk of “liberating” people from quality, allowing them to make comics and music without worry about quality, “to put out rubbish and work on quality later.” He admitted his early work was “not great.” But nevertheless, he wanted it to be “refined, not to look like it was done by a burnt stick.”

            Later in the interview, Barry launched into his aspirations to draw both alien and erotic comics, but said alien theory was mind-boggling, that it was difficult to visualize futuristic technology. After four years of thinking about and conceptualizing an alien comic, he only had one six-page story to show for his efforts. On the other hand, erotica came naturally to him, because he always drew figures nude, and put clothes on them later, always making sure the clothes were “appropriate.” He was able to finish six 20-page collections of erotic comics.

            In recent years, Barry Linton published an expanded version of Chok Chok!, Conversations with Barry Linton, My 10 Guitars, and Galacticians, about extraterrestrial intelligence.

Fig. 5. Chok! Chok! Barry Linton.

Fig. 6. Barry Linton. Auckland, New Zealand. Aug. 10, 1999. Photo by John A. Lent.

References

Baysting, Arthur. 2016 “Barry Linton Profile.” June 25.

            https://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/barry-linton/discography. Accessed Oct. 2 2018.

Lent, John A. 2002. “New Zealand -- Exporter of Mainstream Cartoonists, Haven for Alternative Comics.” International Journal of Comic Art. 4 (1, Spring) : 170-204.

(This piece was written for the International Journal of Comic Art 20:2, but this version appears on the IJOCA website on December 4, 2018)