Southeast Asian Cartoon Art

This is the first overview of cartoon art in this important cultural nexus of Asia. The eight essays provide historical and contemporary examinations of cartoons and comics in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and sociocultural and political analyses of cartooning in Singapore, Myanmar, and Malaysia. The collection benefits from hundreds of interviews with Southeast Asia’s major cartoonists, conducted by the four contributors, as well as textual analyses of specific cartoons, on-the-spot observations, and close scrutiny of historical documents. All genres of printed cartoon art are studied, including political and humor cartoons, newspaper comic strips, comic books, and humor and cartoon periodicals. Topics of discussion and comparison with cartoon art of other parts of the globe include national identity, the transnational public sphere, globalization, alternative media forms, freedom of expression, consumerism, and corporatism. Southeast Asian cartoon art has a number of features unique to the region, such as having as pioneering cartoonists three countries’ founding fathers, comics that gave their name to a national trait, some of the earliest graphic novels worldwide, and a king who hired a cartoonist to illustrate his books.

Unexplored territory in the rapidly expanding field of the study of comics and comic art, Southeast Asia has been home to a rich cartooning tradition for decades. This unique collection brings together veteran and emerging scholars to illuminate the various dimensions of the region's comic art, such as its history and contemporary developments. The contributors to Southeast Asian Cartooning offer insights into the entire spectrum of comic art, including political and editorial cartoons; newspaper comic strips of both the gag and serialized adventure varieties; comic books in various sizes, shapes, genres, and formats; graphic novels and book-length comics; and humor magazines containing comedic articles, illustrated jokes, and comic strips. They also tackle a range of issues and themes, such as the transnational public sphere in Burma, national identity in Malaysia, and the chauvinism of Chinese cartoonists in Singapore. Offering English-speaking readers entrance into a fascinating new universe of cartooning, this well-illustrated book will be essential for comics fans and scholars alike.

This is the first overview of cartoon art in this important cultural nexus of Asia. The eight essays provide historical and contemporary examinations of cartoons and comics in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and sociocultural and political analyses of cartooning in Singapore, Myanmar, and Malaysia. The collection benefits from hundreds of interviews with Southeast Asia's major cartoonists, conducted by the four contributors, as well as textual analyses of specific cartoons, on-the-spot observations, and close scrutiny of historical documents. All genres of printed cartoon art are studied, including political and humor cartoons, newspaper comic strips, comic books, and humor and cartoon periodicals. Topics of discussion and comparison with cartoon art of other parts of the globe include national identity, the transnational public sphere, globalization, alternative media forms, freedom of expression, consumerism, and corporatism. Southeast Asian cartoon art has a number of features unique to the region, such as having as pioneering cartoonists three countries' founding fathers, comics that gave their name to a national trait, some of the earliest graphic novels worldwide, and a king who hired a cartoonist to illustrate his books.

Today, comic art is the favorite reading fare for millions of Asians, and is a government-sanctioned, value-added product, as in the case of Korean and Japanese animation. Yet not much is known about Asian cartooning. Themes and Issues in Asian Cartooning uses overviews and case studies by scholars to discuss Asian animation, humor magazines, gag cartoons, comic strips, and comic books. The first half of the book looks at contents and audiences of Malay humor magazines, cultural labor in Korean animation, the reception of Aladdin in Islamic Southeast Asia, and a Singaporean comic book as a reflection of that society’s personality. Four other chapters treat gender and Asian comics, concentrating on Japanese anime and manga and Indian comic books.

This book explores various aspects of transnationalism and comics art in six East Asian and seven Southeast Asian countries/territories. The 14 richly illustrated chapters embrace comics, cartoons, and animation relative to offshore production, transnational ownership, multinational collaboration, border crossings of comics art creators and characters, expansion of overseas markets, cartoonists in political exile, colonial underpinnings, adaptation of foreign styles and formats, representation of other cultures, and more. Using case studies, historical accounts, descriptive overviews, individual artists’ profiles, and representational analyses, and fascinatingly told through techniques as document use, interviews, observation, and textual analyses, the end result is a thorough, interesting, and compact volume on transnationalism and comics art in East and Southeast Asia.

Illustrations used for story-telling and mirth-making have enlivened Asian walls, scrolls, books, public and private places, and artifacts for millennia. Often playful and humorous, Asian pictorial stories lent conspicuous elements to contemporary comic art, particularly with their use of narrative nuance, humor, satire, and dialogue. Illustrating Asia is a fascinating book on a subject that is of wide and topical interest. All of the articles consider cartoon and/or comic art in the historical and social setting of seven South, Southeast, and East Asian countries: India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan. The contributors treat comic and narrative art—including comic books, comic strips, picture books, and humor and fan magazines—in both historical and socio-cultural perspectives, as well as portrayals of ancient Chinese philosophy, gender, and the enemy in cartoons and comics. Contributors: Laine Berman, John A. Lent, Fusami Ogi, Rei Okamoto, Ronald Provencher, Aruna Rao, Kuiyi Shen, Shimizu Isao, Shu-chu Wei, Yingjin Zhang.

Grand in its scope, Asian Comics dispels the myth that, outside of Japan, the continent is nearly devoid of comic strips and comic books. Relying on his fifty years of Asian mass communication and comic art research, during which he traveled to Asia at least seventy-eight times and visited many studios and workplaces, John A. Lent shows that nearly every country had a golden age of cartooning and has experienced a recent rejuvenation of the art form. As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan. Lent covers the nations and regions of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides 178 black-and-white illustrations and detailed information on comics of sixteen countries and regions—their histories, key creators, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. One chapter harkens back to predecessors of comics in Asia, describing scrolls, paintings, books, and puppetry with humorous tinges, primarily in China, India, Indonesia, and Japan. The first overview of Asian comic books and magazines (both mainstream and alternative), graphic novels, newspaper comic strips and gag panels, plus cartoon/humor magazines, Asian Comics brims with facts, fascinating anecdotes, and interview quotes from many pioneering masters, as well as younger artists.