Book Review: South East Asian Kommunity 2024

reviewed by  Duy Tano, of The Comics Cube commentary website and YouTube channel

South East Asian Kommunity 2024. Edited by CT Lim and Paolo Herras. Philippines : Komiket Inc., 2024. ISBN 978-621-8244-48-1. https://www.komiket.com/products/south-east-asian-kommunity-2024

South East Asian Kommunity 2024 is an anthology featuring creators from Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, edited by CT Lim from Singapore and Paolo Herras of Komiket Philippines. Personally, I am a huge fan of short stories and anthologies. This particular collection, one of the backbones of the Philippine International Comics Festival 2024, offers something for everyone, but to me one of the recurring themes is of confinement and escape.

Ping Sanisan (Thailand) kicks off the book with "Before the Curtain Calls," a sublime meditation on what life is like in South East Asia, while drawing the reader in with the use of color. Sanisan explores a fundamental theme of being Southeast Asian -- the perpetuation of your role in your family and in society, simply because of the circumstances into which you are born. It revolves around a dream sequence and is rendered in striking colors, most notably red. Nicely in contrast is “The After” by Erica Eng (Malaysia),* a black-and-white sci-fi short story set in the future, depicting the mundanity of life for everyday people. Eng’s story showcases that even as societies evolve and progress, people are always looking for something else to do, and perhaps something more.

Societal expectations and circumstances can feel like a prison, and it comes as no surprise that in an anthology such as this, we see several stories about escaping. "Le Beauttom" by Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray (Singapore), about two children who get a job in an underwear factory, is probably the funniest story in the book, and is created by someone originally from Malaysia who moved to the United States before settling in Singapore. "Son of Krypton" by Chappy Fadulon (Philippines) equates a standard “Filipino leaving the country to pursue better opportunities” story to the origin of Superman, a storytelling device that would always resonate with me. I think it also works more broadly, since Superman is often noted to be an immigrant, but immigrant stories in general do not equate back to Superman’s journey.

In keeping with the theme of escape, Yuri (Philippines) dedicates "Mawalang Galang" to all runaways, and is about the fragility of familial relationships in society, and how sometimes one has to break things in order to rebuild them. She also has the single most striking image in the entire book, a splash page that made me go "Wow." "Love, Remember" by June Dao (Vietnam) is a heartbreaking story about two siblings who are reunited ever so ephemerally and will resonate with anyone who has ever been away from their sibling for an extended period of time. "Metamorphosis" by Wooh Hmo (Myanmar) is equal parts Kafka's Metamorphosis and the legend of Icarus, with a grounding in reality and an art style that evokes the best horror comics. Literally about escape, it is another story by an artist living away from his home – Wooh Hmo is in exile in France.

Not all stories in the collection fit a theme of geographic and cultural confinement and escape, however. "Until When" by Tita Larasati (Indonesia) is a short graphic memoir about recovering from a stroke, which includes pages drawn during recovery. I really do believe that personal stories like this are uniquely suited to comics, in a way that they are not for other media. It is the only medium in which you can showcase someone learning to draw again by actually showing the drawings that they did in that time period.

Other stories may call to mind familiar genres to longtime readers of comics, or are a bit more abstract. Overall, this is a solid collection of stories from the region, showcasing a wide variety of talent and subject matter. And it shows that even one feels a desire to escape, there are, in similar current circumstances, cartoonists with an abundance of talent, creativity, and imagination. May all these creators find the audience they deserve.

*CORRECTION: The original post incorrectly stated that Erica Eng is in Singapore; she is actually in Malaysia. 

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.