Book Review: Drawn to Satire: Sketches of Cartoonists in Singapore by CT Lim and Koh Hong Teng.

 Drawn to Satire: Sketches of Cartoonists in Singapore. CT Lim and Koh Hong Teng. Pause Narratives, 2023. 144 pages, $26.89.

 reviewed by Felix Cheong

If one uses a metaphor of satire as the art of stabbing an issue to draw humor instead of blood, so too does the biographical Drawn to Satire -- in ways that are as inventive as they are at times infuriating. Therein lies the double-edged sword of this lovingly produced book -- you wish it could have done so much more, but paradoxically, so much less.

 

Written by CT Lim and illustrated by Koh Hong Teng, Drawn to Satire sketches, both literally and figuratively, the lives of eight pioneering cartoonists, from well-known names like Morgan Chua, to the relatively obscure Dai Yin Lang. While the chosen cartoonists tend to be ethnically Chinese males, the book also includes one Malay, Shamsuddin H. Akib, and one woman, Kwan Shan Mei – which begs the question if they were added as token gestures. I will return to this question later.

 

Each chapter begins with a quick overview of the cartoonist’s backstory and before you know it, drives directly into his themes, motivations and, occasionally, hang-ups. Here, Lim, the go-to authority on comics in Singapore, has obviously used his extensive research, having published previously on the history of comics (in particular, political cartoons) in the Lion City, in addition to being an IJOCA editorial advisor for the city-state. For this book, he has also conducted interviews with the cartoonists who are still alive, such as Shamsuddin and Koeh Sia Yong, and with relatives of those who have passed away, such as Tchang Ju Chi and Lim Mu Hue.

 

In keeping with its subtitle that the book is nothing more than “sketches,” each chapter (14-15 pages) reads rather, well, sketchily. It is akin to the experience of speed-dating, but on the printed page; just as the reader gets into the story – whoosh! –  it is gone. 

 

A case in point: the opening chapter on Tchang Ju Chi, a political cartoonist who was abducted by the Japanese military and presumably executed during the Sook Ching massacre of 1942. He was only 38 years old at that time. While the narrative tries to know the man, instead he comes across as a type -- the Chinese émigré with apron strings still knotted tight to the motherland, rather than a person in his own right. The in-your-face thought bubbles do not help by merely telling, rather than showing why, that despite having found his calling in Nanyang, Tchang still harkened back to China and viewed Sino-Japanese tensions with growing unease.

 

Indeed, if Drawn to Satire has a failing, it is how it sacrifices depth for breadth. Instead of featuring eight cartoonists, it could have gone with just five. Pioneer artist Liu Kang, for instance, could have been dropped; after all, his life is already well-documented and his comics output was limited to just Chop Suey, published in 1946. Similarly, Kwan Shan Mei’s reputation rests on her children’s picture books, rather than satirical cartoons. Perhaps she was included to showcase a fair representation, but much of her chapter is devoted to conjecture and a summation of the authors’ intentions for the book. And while Din Yin Lang’s life certainly makes for an intriguing espionage tale, too little is known about him to be anything more than a sidebar.

 

So, while covering eight cartoonists might fulfill Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) required by funding bodies – the authors acknowledge support from four institutions, such as the National Heritage Board, the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts – the book does itself a disservice when more could have been done with less. 

 

Still, Drawn to Satire is a breezy read, helped, no doubt, by Koh’s unfussy art style, and at the same time, pays homage to the cartoonists by reproducing their works (and even two iconic Singapore paintings, Liu Kang’s “Artist and Model” and Chua Mia Tee’s “Epic Poem of Malaya”). 

 

What ultimately sells the book for me is Lim’s unconventional storytelling, which takes a leaf from the growing creative graphic biography field. Instead of writing a Wikipedia-like chronology, Lim dips into each cartoonist’s life and extracts specific incidents that define and shape him. More interestingly, he introduces an interloper (or provocateur), a fictional foil who flits in and out of the panels with time-travel ease and with whom the cartoonists interact. This unnamed character (who sometimes breaks the fourth wall) creates a Brechtian effect, a narrative device used either for Lim to set the context of what you are reading, or to slather asides and editorial comments.

 

In fact, Lim even cheekily inserts himself into the narrative; after all, he is as much part of the comics ecosystem in Singapore as the cartoonists he writes about, but he does it in a way that neither grates nor gloats. If anything, his self-referential character borders on self-deprecating, particularly in a funny sequence when he is depicted as a clueless emcee at the launch of Koeh Sia Yong’s art exhibition in 2023. Indeed, as befitting a book about satirical cartoons, humor is its chief calling card; sequences such as Morgan Chua fleeing to Hong Kong (to avoid the Singapore government’s crackdown on The Singapore Herald, a newspaper it had deemed subversive) have a Looney Tunes zaniness.

 

While it is not perfect, Drawn to Satire is what the comics scene in Singapore needs – it plugs a gap of scholarship and, in equal measure, is entertaining and enlightening.   

JUST A SIMPLE MAN: The 1994 Lat interview

by Lim Cheng Tju

 (this article originally appeared in print as JUST A SIMPLE MAN. The Lat interview by Lim Cheng Tju in a Singaporean magazine, BigO (Jan 1994), pps. 59-60. It is reprinted and available outside Singapore for the first time here)

Mohd Nor Khalid is a traditional kind of fellow. Better known as Lat, the Malaysian cartoonist is familiar to us in this region. But his works have also gained quite a following in the United States. But despite the fame and the high regard others have for his works, Lat retains a simple lifestyle. He also carries the past with him and he will share it with you easily over a cold beer or just laying back in a storeroom at the basement of Nee Ann City where this interview was conducted. And there’s much laughter during the interview. Perhaps it’s the man’s way of overcoming a certain shyness among strangers. And the stories a way to reach out to another human being.

LIM CHENG TJU: Do you consider yourself as a political cartoonist?

LAT: No. I don’t do political stuff. It’s social commentary. So, once a while I draw probably prime ministers, minsters, prominent people because these people everybody knows. People talks about. But not politics.

CT: So you don’t think your comics will change people?

LAT: No. You can’t change anything with drawings… never. I don’t know about the future or whether somebody has done it. That’s not the reason for drawing. It’s to get in touch with people, you know, to communicate. But if you read the Chinese papers in Malaysia, you get a lot of political ones but quite mild, I think.

CT: Do you think there is room for political cartooning in Malaysia?

LAT: Yeah. But it’s too late for me anyway because I‘m known to people that I deal with certain things. Like simple everyday life, scenery of Malaysian life, street scenes, living room scenes.

CT: You having been freelancing since you left The New Straits in 1984. Was it a difficult decision to make then?

LAT: I was one of the first to go out on my own and yeah, there were actually some days I was worried because at that time I have a child. My first child, so no more of these benefits, you know. But it’s fun. When I left The New Straits Times to be on my own, it was because I have been going around and meeting cartoonists all over the world and they are all freelancing. Many work at home and I learnt that’s better. There’s freedom. But at the same time there are more responsibilities. You are on your own.

CT: Is there a community of cartoonists in Malaysia?

LAT: Yeah, we have an association. I’m the president. It’s the second year. Many of the younger cartoonists are still in their 20s. They draw for Gila Gila (a Malaysian version of Mad magazine) and other magazines. They are good but we’ve got to give them time because sometimes you don’t know how long a person wants to stay as a cartoonist. They might just want to move on. Yeah, I do want to help them get published. I hope they will come up to me and offer me their work. But sometimes with cartoonists it is quite difficult. I know my character. I look at myself and I know all are the same. All cartoonists are almost the same. Very difficult to deal with. Sometimes you go an approach them, you get nothing. Sometimes if you wait for them to hand over something to you, to offer something, you also get nothing. So I don’t know… we just wait or what.

CT: Will there be a sequel to Mat Som?

LAT: I don’t know… I did that book because I want parents to know about how their children work and live in the cities. It’s the same over the world. If I look around, it’s being done in other countries. The same thing. The same story. They think their children are doing very well. In my time when I first came to Kulua Lumpur, there was very little pay and I had to struggle. And every time I went back to Ipoh or to the kampung they were treating me, you know, as if I was making it in the city. They would ask about life in Kuala Lumpur and they thought it was a glamorous life. But actually there are so many things you have to go through but it’s better to go through all these hardships than just to be spoon-fed. You know, you get everything you want by 23, like what has happened to some people. By 26, they’ve got everything waiting. Finished college and then they’ve got a job waiting. They’ve got a car waiting. You don’t really know what is real hardship and work.

I have done some 40 to 50 pages for the second book. But I don’t know when to finish it. So like I told you, there’s always something waiting for me to do at home. It’s nice you know but then you get tired of it so you do other things. Now I’m collecting books on ancient boats. Mostly from our part of the world. The sea route. I don’t know what I want to do with them. But I can see that that will be the background of something I will do later but I don’t what is it. So don’t ask me ... Maybe I want to do a story about Southeast Asia in ancient times.

CT: I found the panelling [i.e. panel layout] in Mat Sam to be very cinematic. Was that done on purpose?

LAT: Yeah, that was done on purpose. I got influenced by the Japanese way. I’m so used to newspapers drawings. One big panel, you know, so I want to do that. As for the small size format of the book, maybe I like it to look like a novel. But it’s a bit weak, the story. There’s nothing spectacular. So ordinary. For many it worked. But if I’m another cartoonist, I want him to be something different so that you can have this and that. Mat Som is still a kampoung boy in the first book. Now I make the other Mat Som in part two different. Maybe you’ll see that he’s no longer that shy kampung fella. He becomes at city rat. Shout at motorcyclists and cars and he’s got to move because his home that he is renting is being turned into a condo or something. So he’s moving to a squatter house. And he’s still not getting better off. But I’ll just leave that for a while. I don’t know. I haven’t done it because of this Kampung Boy animation project. But when I complete it, I might want to make it magazine size this time. I will still publish it myself but I don’t know when. I spend too much time on the animation now.

CT: You have been talking about the Kampung Boy cartoon in interviews since the late ‘70s.

LAT: Yeah, it’s a dream. So when this happen, I look forward to a series of it. But as you know, animation takes more than one person. It’s a team project. It’s meant for TV but it’s aimed at the international so there is a lot of story considerations involved. It will only be 26 minutes but it has taken me more than a year. I started on it July last year.

CT: How much of it has been done?

LAT: I have just finished the second storyboard and the production will start very soon. It may be completed this year. The funding comes from Malaysia but the animation itself will be done in Canada and Philippines. I am working with two Canadians rights now. One is the director and the other does the storyboard. In fact this guy who does the storyboard, he is quite a young man. He has looked at me too much. So much so that his Kampung Boy looks exactly like me. You know, a fat little kampung boy. So I say no. Make him a thin boy because this was when I was a kid. Don’t look at me now!

CT: Going back to an earlier autobiographical book, Town Boy, can you tell us about your childhood friendship with Frankie? (a Chinese boy whose parents own a coffee shop)

LAT: Many people have asked me that. But what can I say? Frankie. I cannot tell you whether there’s a Frankie. I don’t think anybody in my class would be able to come up to me and say we know who’s Frankie but is that his real name? But I tell you. When I went to that house above the coffee shop, I think I was in Standard 6. So it was a happy occasion at that time. There was also pop music. We became friends because of music. We talked about the music. We talk about the Beatles, other singers and when a new hit came out, the feeling that you get … the morning you wake up and you hear the song, wah! you know and then you cycle and you go see a friend and discuss and then we later learnt to play. We also formed our band. We did "Yellow Submarine" with the special effects. So that’s all. You know youth and excitement. I remember all that because it’s in my head. To get that kind of excitement is so difficult if you look for it. So it’s appreciation. You appreciate music. It’s good. It’s better to appreciate music. It’s better to appreciate something and then you have someone in common to share with you. That’s better. Even politicians cannot tell two boys you must be friends. They say look at the other fella, why should I be his friend? But because of music, because of art, you know, you become friends.

CT Lim, Lat, and Miel in 2009 at Lat's kampung.

CT: I suppose most of your stories are created out of a feeling of nostalgia, having to grow up in a kampung and then to move to the city. You said once that the more you listened to Neil Young, the more you wanted to go back to the kampung.

LAT: I think Neil Young has got an album called Old Ways. He was singing some old songs also. So, it’s not only me. Everybody has that nostalgia thing, you know. First when you are in your 20s, you suddenly realize you are an adult. So, you miss school days. That’s the first nostalgia trip. Then when you are in your 30s, you miss bachelorhood. Then when you are in your 40s, all sorts of things, many things. Like in my case, I miss the quiet life because, you know, the children (Lat has four of them) make so much noise. So sometimes I really wish it could be nice if it’s quiet. But then because we are so used to all the noise then when it’s so quiet, the children are missing, then you say, ah, it’s good if you could hear the noise. It’s that kind of thing.

Nostalgia is … you know. Some people have it more than others. But there’s nothing much you can do about it. And you must not live in the past, of course. You look back so that you know the changes. Like me, I look at the children and I say we spend too much money now because in those days there was not money needed. No money at all for children to play. Now if you take them to the shopping complex and then you got to pay to play the computer games and all these electrical things. So the children, what they know is where to put the money in. Even the two-year-old. You need it to put it there or else the thing won’t move.

We didn’t know that because we were playing very different games. So that’s why I tell the children so that they know. Parents need to talk to their children. Just to bring them together. That’s all. It’s a very common thing. Also I tell the children and families to just hold on for a while and not to go too fast because we’re going too fast with everything. So that’s it. Hold on, you know. Just some years ago I remember, we didn’t have to pay like this. So is it necessary?

You know, usually Malaysians are not … the normal kampung way of life is always be modest. That’s what everything is about. Be modest and that’s why I always get scared when I have to spend money for children. Every time my children ask for money and I would say what? Because it’s so unnecessary. Let’s have something very simple, lah. Not so expensive. It must be cheap. Better for me. That’s why even my book (Kampung Boy Yesterday and Today), which costs $12.90. Now friends already call me up and say how come so much? I say, “I’ve got some people coming with ideas to do coffee-table books. They want to sell for M$150. You pay M$12.90 and you’re already complaining, eh?” But you know the cost of printing and the cost of paper? Already gone up. So that’s what I do.        

CT: How do your children look at the world of Lat?

LAT: Well, first of all, when I told them I was living on a house on silts, they didn’t believe it. How can you live like that? No TV? No one believes that there’s no TV because you wake up in the morning and you see the TV. So yeah, in a way I sympathize because they don’t have the space. They live in a little compound so they don’t have it. For them to run you have to take them to the park. So I try my best to take them out of town to the rural areas and show them.

Note: (1994) Thanks to Johnny Lau for arranging the interview with Lat. (2023) Thanks to Karen Goh for re-transcribing the interview from the 1994 publication.

Ruminations on the Opening of Rumah Lat dan Galeri (or, Lat is still a simple man)

by CT Lim

Years in the making. And inevitably delayed by Covid. Rumah Lat dan Galeri (the Lat gallery), a permanent museum devoted to the Malaysian cartoonist, finally had its official opening on July 8, 2023.

I had received a call from Lat two  weeks prior, asking if I was free to attend the opening. I said yes. I have known Lat since the 1990s and all of us are getting on in age. These days I travel to meet up with friends, most recently in June, with a trip to Hong Kong to visit the political cartoonist, Zunzi. 

Lat also asked me to contact Miel, a cartoonist for The Straits Times in Singapore. Miel and I had done a road trip in 2009 to visit Lat in Ipoh. That trip was partly for me to seal the deal with Lat for his contribution to Liquid City Volume 2, a Southeast Asian comics anthology which I co-edited. He sent in a short story about the thrills of attending a soccer match. 

I once described Lat as a simple man. I think that is still true. But life is complicated. When we arrived at the gallery, an instrumental version of "Just My Imagination" was playing in the background. We imagine our best selves and future, but sometimes reality lets us down. Life is often a series of disappointments and disillusionments. 

But dreams also do come true, as in the case of the Lat gallery. The opening was no simple affair. The event was graced by the presence of the Sultan of Perak and his wife. It was a full-on Malay royalty occasion, a first for me and totally fascinating, the rituals and procedures. 

The Sultan was a cool guy. He not only officiated over the opening and made Lat the royal artist / cartoonist of Perak; he also played the cartoon historian. In his speech, he gave a historical overview of Lat's career and cartoons. (Ok, most likely he did not write his own speech, but it is still cool that he made it.)

The Sultan and his wife

After all the speeches and the private tour for the VIPs, we were able to go around to see the gallery and the recreated kampung house on our own. Being the consumers we were, we headed to the gift shop to buy mech - caps, tees, pencil cases, etc. 

Lat merch

The gallery was a mix of reproductions (the old Lat cartoons: the originals were long lost) and originals for the newer pieces. There was a preview of the new book, Mat Som 2. Long anticipated and in the works for the past few years, Lat was aided by Arif Rafhan for the inking. Arif and his family were there too to attend the opening and we chatted. 

Mat Som 2

There was a recreation of Lat's desk in the gallery. Next to it was a record player. I wondered if it was a Bob Dylan vinyl on it and true enough, it was Nashville Skyline. My friendship with Lat was cemented by our love for Dylan and old John Wayne movies. I remembered Lat telling me that when Nashville Skyline came out, he was a young man and poor. He could only buy the EP version of the album (with less songs) and could only afford the full album later on. 

This got me to reflect on what would be my opportunities if I were born in Malaysia. Would my family be middle class like Frankie from Town Boy? Would I have to go overseas for my further studies? Or would I be a Chinese gangster in Cheras?

But enough of my ruminations (but the best works of art do that to us). Finally we found Lat and we recreated our kampong shot from 2009. 

Miel, Lat, and CT Lim in 2023

CT Lim, Lat, and Miel in 2009

Lat and family were tired by the end of the event. Many asked Lat for autographs and quick sketches. Some even took the plates from the catering to get Lat to draw on. We decided to let Lat rest. I went to Ipoh to start my food tour of the town. I also found a rare P Ramlee remastered record. I told Lat and he said that was a good buy. 

Book Review: Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature

 
reviewed by John A. Lent

James Hodapp, ed. Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature. New York:  Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 285 pp. US $130.00. ISBN:  978-1-5013-7341-1. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/graphic-novels-and-comics-as-world-literature-9781501373428/

James Hodapp’s introduction, “Global South on Their Own Terms,” plays on needs this reviewer has called for in writings and teachings in the U.S. and abroad since the 1960s--that South mass communications (and, in this case, comics art) should be looked at from their own cultures, not those of the West; that Western-oriented theories, notions, and research methodologies are not appropriate in the South with these countries’ wide-ranging linguistic forms, reading patterns, and visual literacy levels.

Hodapp gets at these points, stating, that comics studies have “lagged considerably in coming to terms with its Eurocentrism and in offering alternative and better paradigms that place non-Western comics on equal footing with their Western peers.” Much of what he finds lacking harkens to the 1960s-1970s’ debates concerning a need for a new world information order, consisting of a free and two-way flow of information, the ending of cultural imperialism, and media that are accessible and affordable to the masses. Hodapp provides as main tasks of his book, to “conceptualize non-reductive ways of reading and understanding Global South comics in and of themselves without prioritizing Western legibility” and to avoid a “Global South one-size-fits-all singularity of theory and method.” These are worthy goals, but, as mass communications studies have shown, they may be a long time in coming.

Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature itself, an excellent compendium of comics research dealing with 13 countries and the Francophone Africa region, nearly all in the South, makes a start in satisfying what Hodapp seeks, putting comics in frameworks of “south to south exchange, transculturalism, and translocality.” For example, Jasmin Wrobel, while highlighting women as important to South American comics, focuses on the work of Colombian-Ecuadorian Powerpaola (Paola Gaviria), showing how her comics coincide with some Western successes, at the same time, how they differ; Dima Nasser, describing Egypt’s The Apartment in Bab El-Louk as a series of “visual poems,” points out how the book rebukes the graphic novel form, and Jana Fedke analyzes the Western comic Black Panther and its pretensions to represent African cultures.

Other chapters deal with the acceptance of Japanese “boys love manga” in Chile; the statelessness of Palestinian comics; an overview of the comics scene of Francophone Africa; a rundown of the contained-in-Malaysia Reach for the Stars comic; an allegorical study of the South Korean graphic novel, Grass (dealing with comfort women of World War II) and grass vegetation; graphic reportage overwhelmingly about refugee camps, including in Mexico; Indian graphic novels; the Ramayana epic and its comics adaptation, Sita’s Ramayana; an argument for using the storytelling traditions of Yawuru people of Australia to give an indigenous Global South perspective, and a split narration in a graphic memoir about a perplexed Korean-born boy existing in a Belgian adoption setting.

Though a noble effort to look at the non-Western comics through Global South perspectives, Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature and its contributors cannot resist depending on Eurocentric comics theories (actually, notions that have not even made it to the hypotheses stage) and research techniques, and mostly taking the word of Western writers (e.g., Hillary Chute is cited on at least 17 occasions).

However, delineating the challenges awaiting Global South comics researchers, which this book does, is the first step towards action. For that, and providing fascinating case studies of comics in every region of the world, James Hodapp must be commended as a pioneering voice.