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.

Fumetto Opens Up Again in 2022, But Underwhelms: A Review Essay

by Wim Lockefeer; photos by Nick Nguyen

Founded in 1992 as the Luzern Comix Festival, the Fumetto International Comics Festival can rightfully call itself one of the most important comics events in Europe, along with the Festival Internationale de la BD in Angoulême (France), Lucca Comics and Games in Lucca (Italy), and the Erlangen Comics Salon (Germany). Over the years, many internationally-renowned creators attended the festival, including Edmond Baudoin (the Festival’s first creator in residence), Jack Kirby, Daniel Clowes, Ulli Lust, Robert Crumb, Jacques Tardi and Emil Ferris. Additionally, the Festival has proven to be instrumental in bringing comics scenes from various Swiss language communities together.

Pandemic

As a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic and national and international measures to counteract its spread, the Festival had to cancel its 2020 edition, as was the case for most public gatherings of that time. The 30th anniversary of the festival was celebrated in a hybrid format, with events organized in the city of Luzern, as well as online with the Comic Chat Café and a virtual exhibition.

This year’s edition (2022) was supposed to be a joyous return to form, with a full-fledged festival all across the city of Luzern. Whether the organization would be able to pull this off remained uncertain until about two weeks before the starting date, when program information was finally published on the Festival’s website. Most likely this delay was as a result of the uncertainty regarding international Covid-19 measures, and how this might affect the possibility of international guests to even attend the Festival. After all, only days before the opening, Switzerland radically reduced its pandemic regimen, but even so, various international visitors were unable to attend.

Kornschütte

More than ever, the Festival was centered around the Kornschütte, an old official building in the center of the city that is often used for cultural events. The building hosted the main information hub, as well as a small bookstore with selected new comics, predominantly from Switzerland and Germany, including Strapazin, Switzerland’s leading comics magazine. The room also hosted a craft market, where small press publishers, printmakers and other creative types hawked their wares. In a corner cartoonist Julietta Saccardi presented her Tiny Tragedies project, a series of  minicomics based on true stories of sexual abuse and harassment.

Julietta Saccardi's Tiny Tragedies

Five exhibitions were housed in and around the inner city, with two smaller ones devoted to the Swiss comics magazine Ampel and French Edelporn publisher BD Cul (which, true to form, was designed as the aftermath of a very dodgy party, with empty bottles, condom wrappers and assorted paraphernalia strewn around the room). Similarly small in size was the exhibition on French cartoonist Emilie Gleason, this year’s artist in residence.

A bit more ambitious was the presentation in the Kunstmuseum of a selection of video artworks by the Swedish duo Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, famous for their idiosyncratic, rowdy and often disturbing stop-motion animation centered around desire, lust, and the inevitability of human decline. Their work typically features grossly deformed personas that prey upon one another, are taken apart and then reassembled or simply wander around to their impending doom, accompanied by soundscapes that, thanks to the setup of the exhibition, blended together in an almost hypnotic, alienating experience. Even though its link with comics as such may have been tenuous, it was a strong show, both artistically and in terms of message. 

Zorro

Plenty of comics content was present in Peter Poplaski’s The Curse Of Zorro exhibit, the Festival’s main event and housed in a rather dilapidated old warehouse. For his show, the American cartoonist selected a large number of items from his personal collection, as well as original artwork from himself and other cartoonists, to sketch an alternative history of the (super-) hero as the typical archetype of the Twentieth Century. While Poplaski’s main argument, that modern superheroes are the direct descendants of ancient gods' pantheons and of the characters from late medieval chivalry, and play the same role as aspirational examples, may be tenuous, disputable and quite likely very American-centered, the show itself was interesting and entertaining, with numerous old editions of Zorro stories (Poplaski’s personal favorite and obsession), as well as board games, action figures, movie posters and the like. 

 

Peter Poplaski's The Curse Of Zorro

The long list of additional features and events on the Festival’s program proved to be mainly showcases of artists or books in various shop windows around the city, mostly without any context or information, and often so small you walked past looking for them before you knew it. One notable exception was the tiny but exquisite exhibition of original artwork that local cartoonist Pirmin Beeler had assembled with pages from his latest graphic novel, Das Leuchten Im Grenzland (The Glow in the Borderlands, Edition Moderne, 2022). With his delicate lines and subtle pastels, Beeler is a name to keep track of.

Even though separately these shows and events certainly were not without value, on the whole the Festival left this visitor rather unsatisfied, and constantly checking the program to see if he wasn’t overlooking anything, after all? Was this really everything, not just in numbers, but also in quality? Indeed, with the possible exception of the Djurberg-Berg presentation, none of the Festival’s offerings really went beyond just acceptable in terms of content, presentation or urgency. At the FIBD in Angoulême, the Poplaski show would at best have been an also-ran, a nice addition to the Festival’s main events.

Pirmin Beeler' beautiful artwork

 

Narrow?

It is unclear whether this year’s Fumetto attracted the 40,000 visitors that it boasted ten or fifteen years ago. We visited the Festival, which was said to run from April 2-10, during its first weekend when, indeed, there were some people around. The presentation of this year’s Stipendien (or grants) filled a small auditorium, and visitors did show up for the exhibitions. But there were no lines for the ticket booth or information stands, no throngs to wade through to see that one piece, no presence in the streets. On Monday, the Festival was basically dead.

Restarting a public event after a long and difficult period like the Covid-19 pandemic is a hard and risky endeavor. In the coming years Fumetto may indeed grow again to dimensions on a par with its reputation. The question, however, is whether that is the Festival’s current direction. 2022’s Festival clearly showed a narrow, quite exclusionary view on comics. Except for the book store, mainstream comics, and even literary comics aimed at a larger audience, were completely absent, while this year’s awards went to niche or activist cartoonists.

This analysis, of course, may be just Hineininterpretierung (German for interpreting in meaning that doesn't exist) from an unprepared guest who did not have the right expectations, or it could be an explicit, and doubtlessly meritorious view on what the Festival should be. Maybe the Festival’s directors feel that the Festival’s future in changing times, and a changing landscape, is not so much in inclusion, but rather in focus on specific audiences and themes, a smaller scale and an explicit view on artistic politics. But in my personal view, it would be unwise to limit the scope of one of the most venerated comics festivals in Europe to just that, especially in a time when the importance and weight of the medium as we know it is not what it used to be.

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