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.   

Lianhe Zaobao's 100th anniversary cartoon exhibition and the role of comics in Asia in 2023

by Lim Cheng Tju

On 20 May 2023, I attended the opening of the main Chinese newspaper in Singapore, the Lianhe Zaobao's 100th anniversary cartoon exhibition at One Punggol, a newly-opened community space in Singapore. 10 Zaobao cartoonists were featured, although only one of their cartoons each was showcased at the exhibition. The audience was supposed to scan the QR code to see more of their cartoons. These QR codes were also displayed on tables of selected hawker centers in Singapore for the patrons to enjoy their meal and read the cartoons on their phones at the same time. Most of the cartoons featured on the website are humorous takes on life in Singapore.

This was a very different experience from the Zaobao 90th anniversary cartoon exhibition held at the Singapore National Library 10 years ago. I was involved in that exhibition as a consultant. I had written a Masters thesis on the history of Chinese cartoons in Singapore from 1907 to 1980 with the Department of History at the National University of Singapore in the early 2000s. The exhibition made use of my research materials and I also gave a talk as part of the exhibition programs.

That particular exhibition was more historical in nature, featuring cartoons from 1923 to 2013 to show the changes in Singapore society for the past 90 years. This current exhibition is intentionally different and refreshing in using a different way to showcase local cartoons on new platforms and using technology. One need not visit a static exhibition but could still view the cartoon exhibition when they chance upon it at our local hawker centers, a staple activity in our daily lives in Singapore.

But this got me thinking – after 100 years, are cartoons now merely a source of entertainment to be read while eating our meals? Or can they provide more food for thought in thinking about social issues and international affairs? I was asked by a reporter at the exhibition what I would like to see more of in Zaobao – my answer was: given the current political and economic instability overseas, reading humorous cartoons can help us to relax. But I would also like to see more coverage of international current affairs as it is important for our young to know about supply chain issues and other volatile events that will affect us. And these can be in the form of words, pictures and cartoons. This would be a return to the tradition of newspaper cartoonists as commentators and journalists.

 

This was also the focus of a keynote address I gave on comics in Asia recently at a comics exhibition opening in Penang. Angin Berlabuh was an exhibition organized by an NGO in Malaysia who wanted to showcase social issues using the documentary comics of Taiwan and Malaysia artists. So far, there are few Anglophone books written on non-Japanese Asian comics (see Asian Comics by John Lent published in 2015 and Mangasia by Paul Gravett published in 2017) which cover 16 to 18 countries / territories, centering on the regions of East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. But, in reality, depending on which websites you checked, Asia is much larger than that. It is the largest continent in the world with 4.7 billion people, about 60% of the world’s population. There are almost 50 countries if we include Western, Central and North Asia. We can even include Russia if we are generous and be more encompassing in how we view the world.

With all these diversities, how do we even talk about Asian comics and its role in today’s world in 2023? It is precisely because of current global conflicts, which have resulted in globalization receding and nations putting up barriers and emphasizing on boundaries, that we should look for commonalities, connections, convergences and leading to collaborations. Diplomacy plays a big part in this, but culture and in this case, comics and cartoons can help people to see the possibilities in the sharing and movement of ideas and the creation of networks. Not to over-generalize issues nor to ignore local factors, histories and identities, but in this time of flux and conflict, something like comics can cut across borders and for us to identify the things that can still unite us. The role of comics is to lend perspectives and provide common grounds for dialogue.

 

For example, one of the themes I noticed in some of the Asian comics I have read in the last 15 years is the concern for the environment and climate change. In the story, Flooded House, Flying House by Shari Chankhamma (Thailand), which was published in Liquid City Vol. 2 (Image Comics, 2010), the divide between the rich and poor has reached new heights – the rich live in the sky while the poor lives on the sea (the world is flooded because of environmental disaster) and have mutated to have fins on their hands. It is a dystopia that touches on the environmental and economic threats we face today – a theme that any readers in the world can identify with.

Another powerful theme is social justice. Priya’s Shakti (2014) written by Ram Devineni and Vikas K. Menon and drawn by Dan Goldman has the look and feel of your traditional comics about Indian mythology. But it was inspired by the tragic events of the gang rape and murder of a female student on a private bus in Delhi in December 2012. The success of the comic, online and in print, has led to sequels such as a comic story about acid attacks on women.

Only by focusing on the bigger picture (or cartoon) about issues that concern all of us that hopefully we see beyond conflicting national interests which seem to dominate our narrative these days. It is intentional of me to include Russia as part of Asia earlier in my article. If we only see them as the bad guys (and Russia is not monolithic and some opposed the war), there would be no room for resolution and dialogue. Call me an idealist, but you are talking to someone who grew up reading comics and cartoons all his life and never stopped. In the Chinese dialect, Hokkien, it's called jiak beh tua (never grow up). But I believe that is the role of comics in Asia or anywhere - to help us see the world more clearly and perhaps innocently as well.

Introducing SG Cartoon Resource Hub, a new site for exploring Singapore cartooning

by CT Lim

Despite my reservations about state funding of the arts [1] (not that I think it is not needed, but I hope it does not lead to a crutch mentality among writers, artists and publishers), I am still grateful that the National Arts Council of Singapore launched many initiatives to support artists in the last two years of COVID-19. One of the grants launched was the Self-Employed Persons Grant (SEPG). It was spotted by a friend, Ho See Kum and he quickly brought in myself, Clio Hui and Clio Ding to send in a proposal for the SG Cartoon Resource Hub last year. It was approved and here we are: https://sgcartoonhub.com/

What is this website about? From our website:

The study of comics has recently gained traction globally, yet comprehensive documentations of Singapore comics culture remains scarce.

SG Cartoon Resource Hub is a project undertaken by a team of comic enthusiasts, practitioners and educators to raise awareness of comics as a significant part of our local cultural heritage, promoting a sustainable industry landscape by connecting comics practitioners, readers, academics and the wider community. SG Cartoon Resource Hub is a one-stop resource platform supported by National Arts Council (NAC), that publishes educational articles on local comics history, features works by veterans and upcoming artists, keeps track of the latest happenings, and engages with industry professionals to provide training resources for aspiring comic artists.

The purpose of SG Cartoon Resource Hub is to promote local artists in the comics and cartooning related field regardless of whether you are a student or a professional. The problem with many artists is they are good at what they are doing (creating their art) but they are not as good when it comes to promoting themselves.

art by Foo Swee Chin

While I have been documenting Singapore and Southeast Asian comics on my own for many years at https://singaporecomix.blogspot.com, mine is a singular perspective of the comic scene and I do not want my views to be taken as monolithic. I have blind spots. With more collaborators, more can be done - research articles, features, reviews, interviews, tutorials and online discussions. See Kum is a freelance artist-educator. Clio Hui is an artist and a web designer. Clio Ding is an artist and art teacher. We come from different fields and interests in the comic arts. To create engagement and anticipation, we went for the magazine concept of an edited group of posts on a specific schedule - we will release a new "issue" every other Friday, until content runs out. 

As I shared in my editorial for the first issue [2], "our comics scene and industry are complicated and fractured by language, race, class, gender and history. But we do not want to focus solely on that. We want to focus on building the comics community." So in a bid to overcome some of our current limitations of how we think, write and conceptualize comics in Singapore and to build the community, we have featured more female artists, artists who are veterans, and newcomers. We still need to feature artists of different races and working in different languages. 

art by Alan Bay

We also put together My World!, an e-comics anthology [3], to showcase new talent, bring people together and use this opportunity / platform to solicit feedback from readers on what kind of comics they like to read. This sort of market research is usually done by publishers, but comics creators need such information too. Unfortunately, comic readers are rather reticent, at least in Singapore. 

We see our work as complementary with our peers and friends in the comics world. comix.sg [4] is an online directory for Singapore's comic community. Unnamed [5] is a Facebook group for Southeast Asian (SEA) indie comics. We will also feature works from the SEA region, as it is important for us to know and learn from and about our neighbours.

[1] https://kyotoreview.org/issue-16/current-trends-in-singapore-comics-when-autobiography-is-mainstream/

[2] https://sgcartoonhub.com/editorial/

[3] https://sgcartoonhub.com/my-world/

[4]http:comix.sg

[5] https://www.facebook.com/groups/unnamedkomiks/

Book Review - Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship, by George and Liew

reviewed by Leonard Rifas

Cherian George and Sonny Liew. Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship. MIT Press, 2021. $34.95. ISBN: 97802625430
19 https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/red-lines

Red Lines surveys “21^st century restrictions on freedom of expression as experienced by political cartoonists around the world.” The most dramatic cases are of cartoonists who have been assassinated; abducted and presumed killed; arrested and died in custody; assaulted; jailed; threatened; sued; fired; or were forced into exile. In addition to presenting their stories, the authors describe the very ordinary, market-based pressures which result in dissenting cartoons playing a much smaller role than they could in the liberal democracies of the West.

The co-authors briefly include their own backgrounds. Cherian George had served for a few years in the 1990s as art and photo editor of the largest newspaper in Singapore, and Sonny Liew created a rightly-celebrated graphic novel about Singapore’s history. Unlike other nations with strong economies, Singapore lacks press freedom. Liew was responsible for the “scrappy,” very visual treatment of the text, and also contributed portraits of several of the cartoonists.

Their book’s scope is truly global, with examples from more than sixty nations. They thank such people as the supremely well-connected John Lent, the activist organization Cartoonists Rights Network International, Daryl Cagle, and others for their help in making this possible. For Red Lines, they interviewed over five dozen cartoonists from six continents, and they cite scholarly material from over 200 published sources (all in English.)

The idea of a “political cartoon” has no clear boundaries. For this project, George and Liew define “political cartooning” quickly and simply as “drawn commentary on current affairs.” They also include some examples from “the associated arts of caricature, comic strips, memes, and graphic novels.” Although clearly tangential to the kind of work that they love, the co-authors admit that memes have become “the most prevalent genre of political cartooning today” and credit memes for introducing a more participatory and engaging way of distributing messages (though through a medium, the internet, which has the potential to become the most fully regulated space ever known.) 

The political cartoons that seem closest to the heart of their project could be described more narrowly as single-panel, satirical drawings, published for a mass audience in a newspaper or magazine or posted on the web, which denounce a leader’s wrongdoing and for which the cartoonists paid a penalty. Even using this more restrictive definition, one book could not include every 21^st century cartoonist who has encountered serious limits to their artistic freedom.

Red Lines’ chapter on “The Boys’ Club” notes that “Traditional studies of censorship didn’t explore the gender dimension.” Ironically, even in studies of how various voices have been silenced, those “silences resulting from sexual discrimination were often ignored.” Once the issue has been raised, it becomes evident that “gender-based censorship” exists “everywhere” and that gender-based hierarchy and oppression rely on this. 

Red Lines discusses several extreme examples of gender-based censorship, including the persecution of Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani. Her cartoon mocking legislators who had passed a sexist law led to Farghadani receiving a prison sentence of 12 years. (She served two years before being released because of international pressure.) In the United States, some women cartoonists are silenced by the more everyday means of online harassment, which can create what Anita Sarkeesian calls an environment “too toxic and hostile to endure.” 

The focus on 21^st century examples keeps the book feeling current and fresh, but the authors also include some well-chosen historical examples for context, particularly in their chapter on racist cartoons. As George and Liew acknowledge, in the battles to promote full rights and respect for the dignity of all groups of people, some cartoonists have taken one side in these conflicts while some cartoonists have worked on the other opposing side.

In addition to the brutal older methods of state repression and the quieter and more effective methods of economic strangulation, increasingly the pressure on cartoonists comes from mob action, either in person or, more commonly, on the web. Internet responses to provocative cartoons can serve positive ends. George and Liew credit such criticism for sometimes helping cartoonists learn to avoid committing unintended offenses with lazy stereotypes, and for contributing to the evolution of society. 

Not all complaints, though, are well-founded or made in good faith. Sometimes political entrepreneurs strategically take offense, manufacture outrage and perform victimhood to advance a political cause. Cartoonists are sometimes caught in the crossfire of “proxy battles” in larger cultural wars. The rhetoric of “victimhood” has been used both by discriminated-against minorities and by majoritarian nationalists. Red Lines advises cartoonists to learn to tell the difference “between surrendering to a mob and adapting one’s work in solidarity with the oppressed.” The simple rule of “punching up and not kicking down,” though, becomes complicated partly because people disagree on which direction is up. For example, Red Lines asks: “Are cartoons about Muslims and terrorism punching up at a global movement of extremists […] or kicking down at marginalized Muslim minorities in the West?”

The long, penultimate chapter focuses on the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in 2015. The chapter (while, of course, never condoning the crime) analyzes the offending cartoons from multiple perspectives, and then rather than surrendering to “the Rashomon effect,” intentionally “privileges the perspective of the cartoonists at the center of the controversy.” By this, they mean that they trace the previous decade’s most immediately-relevant events that had led up to their deaths. The book does not simplistically deify the murdered artists as noble martyrs to high principles. The final word goes to a surviving Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, “Luz,” who says “The simple fact is that our friends died.”

Red Lines’ perspective seems more multinational than international, emphasizing each cartoonist’s situation largely within his or her own national context. Several of the nations in which cartoonists have suffered repression have been targets of the US government’s ongoing attempts to weaken their regimes or overthrow their leaders, including Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, China, and Iran. Nothing brings out the censors like a state of war, and, it would have been appropriate to add, this also applies in nations bedeviled by the CIA’s undeclared wars and the US Treasury Department’s sanctions.  (Possibly no recent study has been written that focuses directly on the historic roles of editorial cartooning in international propaganda campaigns, psychological warfare operations, and destabilization efforts.)

Given recent developments (with most jobs for professional, full-time staff cartoonists still disappearing rapidly), when the authors struggle to end on a hopeful note, they conclude simply that cartooning will not die. Political cartoonists who follow current affairs closely, demonstrate artistic skill, and seek to contribute to civic engagement will continue to struggle onward. Students and others who wish to support those struggles can find in this attractive volume a welcome, wide-ranging and nuanced introduction to the issue of cartoon censorship.

 A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 24-1.

Book Review: Chronicles of a Circuit Breaker by Joseph Chiang

Chronicles of a Circuit Breaker, Joseph Chiang, Singapore: Epigram Books, 2021. https://epigrambookshop.sg/products/chronicles-of-a-circuit-breaker

reviewed by Mike Rhode

The burgeoning genre of what’s being called graphic medicine started decades ago with earnest PSA giveaway comic books on the dangers of smoking or animated military films warning about diseases such as syphilis and malaria. By 1994, Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner’s Our Cancer Year (illustrated by Frank Stack) set the pattern for the autobiographical account of personal suffering from disease which remains the dominant type of story. 2020 saw the genre increased by a wealth of comics in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the lighter additions to these volumes is Chiang’s book collecting his webcomic, which unfortunately and undeservedly might be hard to get by most of our readers, only due to the ridiculous cost of international shipping. The production values and the care that went into it, with some strips redrawn four times and excellent computer coloring mean that the physical book is a pleasure to have. Chiang and Lim provided a copy to me for this review, but the webcomic is readable for free at https://www.josephdraws.com.

Chiang has collected his webcomic about Singapore’s struggle against COVID-19, and the government’s attempt to break the transmission of the disease via a pause in public life – a circuit breaker – from May through June 2020. “When the Circuit Breaker started, there was nothing to do for artists, which are the most non-essential workers, with no jobs, at that time I started a journal to record to the day-to-day happenings,” Chiang said in an interview with his editor CT Lim (who’s also country editor for IJOCA). His journal was written words but he would add in sketches and when the National Arts Council initiated a special COVID fund, he applied for a small grant for a digital project. While normally a print maker, he decided to turn his journal into a graphic novel, returning to the comics format he’d left about a decade ago. Due to the grant’s conditions, the comic would need to be a webcomic. Since every day was much the same, with everyone unable to leave the house, he decided to do a humorous strip. It was semi-autobiographical, not 100% true, but based on his family and what he saw on the news. “Putting myself in as a character, solved the problem of people possibly accusing me of laughing at other’s misfortunes.” 

 

 

His first attempt foundered when he attempted to adapted his journal directly because a straight depiction of his daily life quickly grew dull. Working with Lim, the strip’s look and content gradually evolved to humorous stacked panels, which could eventually be collected in a book, and also displayed in an exhibit. But at the beginning, he mostly wanted to draw a webcomic that he collected as a pdf and submitted it in fulfillment of his grant. The initial project took three months, but for a book, he needed to double the amount of strips, and he didn’t think he could force himself to do more. The end of the book as a result is a post-circuit breaker follow-up and some single-panel ‘lessons’ that Chiang learned.

The book is laid out by day – a prelude introduces the government’s plan and his wife’s immediate hoarding of toilet paper, and his family’s reaction to bonding – by looking at their cell phones just as they had been earlier, day 1 shows his daughter getting tired of her parents ignoring their morning alarm, and deciding to wake them with her saxophone, day 3 is his decision to launch a comic strip about his family (and his favorite page of the book). By day 10, he shows himself being winded by the exercise of running around his couch three times; on day 17 Chiang shows his mask snapping and his running and hiding in a toilet; on day 33, he draws a very traditional gag cartoon of playing Scrabble with his family and getting “covid” as a word; and by day 53, he’s got a suntan except for his mouth where his mask has covered it.

Chiang’s simple, clear cartooning, influenced by American indy cartoonists and traditional comic strips (and colored with faux Benday dots to reinforce that), is a both a serious recounting of some of the issues of isolation and over-familiarity brought about by quarantine enforcement and the fear of a communicable disease with no cure and unclear etiology, as well as an enjoyable light family comic strip. I would definitely recommend this volume to those interested in the genre.  An interview by Lim with Chiang, with a discussion of the cartoons and a look at the exhibit of them, can be seen on Facebook at <https://www.facebook.com/109354309101740/videos/312307143951724>

 A version of this review will appear in print in issue 23:2. Epigram publishes other graphic medicine books including White Coat Tales about attending medical school in Singapore, and The Antibiotic Tales by acclaimed cartoonist Sonny Liew. Also available online is James Tan's All Death Matters, about end-of-life care.