The Transformation of Asian Comic Books

Dr. John A. Lent With all the hoopla surrounding Japanese manga, what is often overlooked is that nearly every Asian country has had a comic book presence, some, such as South Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and of course, Japan, more noticeable because of their international marketability, the migration of their cartoonists to the West, or their hugeness and spectacular nature.

Comic books came to some parts of the continent shortly after World War II (Taiwan, Philippines, Hong Kong), and by the 1960s-1970s, had become part of the popular culture of most countries, oftentimes through singular efforts, such as those of Jademan Comics of Hong Kong, Amar Chitra Katha of India, Camillus Publications of Sri Lanka, Bun Lour Sarn of Thailand, or Gila-Gila of Malaysia.

The comic book as an art and industry has had several periods of rebirth over the years, but nothing that matched what has happened in the past decade, when the medium felt the heavy impact of manga; was structured differently with new companies and ways of production and distribution; was reinvented with new genres, varied formats, venues, and adaptations; was accorded more recognition and prestige by governments and society, and was opened up to more participation by women as creators and readers.

Impact of Manga

No country in Asia, or the world for that matter, has a comic book industry the size of that of Japan, where 1½-2 billion comic books and comics magazines are sold yearly, representing 45 percent of all published materials in this highly-literate culture. For years, about a dozen manga have had weekly circulations of more than one million each, the most popular at one time surpassed 6.2 million readers weekly.

The manga industry is both oligarchic and revenue generating. Four companies control 75.3 percent of a market that has long-reaching tentacles. The major spin-off from manga is anime (animation) which brings in billions of dollars through broadcasting rights, videos/DVDs, toys, and other merchandise.

Manga have traveled well, in the past several years becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Usually in pirated versions, they found their way into Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, and parts of Southeast Asia in the 1980s.

For about 40 years, Taiwanese and Korean cartoonists railed against the unwanted competition that manga inflicted upon local comics production, often as their governments turned a blind eye to the importation of the banned books. Although the importation of manga was illegal in Taiwan, they were regularly smuggled in, translated, and reprinted by local publishers, one even calling himself the “king of the pirates.” A number of Taiwanese cartoonists quit drawing in the 1960s — some for 20 years — as a protest against the government’s double standard of censorship that favored manga. In June 1992, the government banned all pirated manga for good, but legitimate manga continued to command at least 80 percent of sales.

When the Taiwanese create their own comic books, the Japanese influence is there, a most recent example being a popular series called Origami Fighter (22 books), with a sequel, Origami Fighter Generation. Popular throughout East and Southeast Asia, the series’ story revolves around a character with the extraordinary power to transform through origami (Japanese art of folded paper) to any shape that will help him win out over evil. The people behind Origami Fighter claim that despite its name, it is not Japanese style because of a lack of scantily-clad women or outrageously muscular figures. Many of the excellent Taiwanese cartoonists now work for Japanese companies, drawing manga based on ideas provided from Tokyo.

Similarly, Korean manhwa have been plagued by manga, despite government bans and censorship, cartoonists’ protests, anti-manga exhibitions, and public denunciations. Since the government’s lifting of the ban on all Japanese cultural products in the late 1990s, manga have had a freer rein on the comics market, with 44 percent of all comic book titles and 62 percent of all copies circulating in Korea of non-Korean (mostly Japanese) origin. Korean cartoonists and some critics and scholars often go to great lengths to show that manhwa differ from manga, usually offering that the difference lies in emotional expression.

Manga played a prominent role in the development of the Hong Kong comics industry. Throughout the 1970s and most of the 1980s, Tony Wong, the individual who almost single-handedly fashioned contemporary Hong Kong comics, applied Japanese-style sex and violence themes and assembly line techniques to the production of comics, with his company, Jademan; eventually, he gained 70-90 percent of the territory’s comics trade. Even the genre of comics Hong Kong is noted for, kung fu, used manga as the main reference in story, plot, character design, and drawing. Some artists who worked at Jademan, such as Ma Wing Shing, went on to establish their own companies in the early 1990s, taking the manga style and techniques with them. They and others have adapted manga stories, such as those on car racing, yoyo, and soccer; fashioned a genre of comics based on Japanese video games; copied manga drawing and formatting techniques, and adopted wholesale other aspects of Japanese comics culture, e.g. cosplay, dojinshi, comic book rental shops, and cafes.

Southeast Asia and China have witnessed the most profound changes in their comics because of the influence of Japanophia. Indonesia’s once thriving comics industry was almost put to ruins because of manga which make up 80 percent of the market. One major publisher has translated more than 70 Japanese titles into Indonesian. The first manga appeared relatively late (in the early 1990s, published by Elexmedia Komputindo), but quickly gained popularity. Reasons given for this switch from local to Japanese comics are: 1. Economics. It is cheaper to import and, besides, Indonesian publishers feel there is little incentive to support domestic comics; 2. Local comics have a very narrow repertoire, of familiar traditional stories or copies of foreign comics; 3. Indonesian social issues were too sensitive for comic book content under the Soekarno and Soeharto dictatorships. What passes as local content often is imitative of manga: a blind swordman hero; a hero who is dumb when awake and tough while asleep, or an ugly boy learning martial art who is a copy of a Japanese character. Most “local” comics at the 2005 Komikasia festival were influenced by manga.

Neither Malaysia nor Singapore had a strong local comics tradition when pirated manga and televised anime arrived in the early 1980s. Although piracy of manga has stopped in Singapore, relatively-new legitimate publishers such as Chuang Yi reproduce Hong Kong and Taiwan editions of manga with licenses from Japanese publishers, and Asiapac translates manga into English or publishes traditional Chinese stories done in Japanese style. Since its establishment in 1993, Chuang Yi has issued about 300 manga. Japanese-style comics cafes and libraries were introduced to Singapore in the 1990s. Singaporean manga differ from those in Japan, in that they have small circulations, are devoid of much of the sexual content, and appeal mainly to Chinese males.

Malaysia still produces pirated manga. Artists for periodicals such as those of Art Square Group or Blues Selamanya, Ujang, Apo? and Kreko employ the technique, style, and atmosphere of manga in their works, as they search for a new identity and the profits they know will come.

Before a 1995 copyright regulation was promulgated in Thailand, about 20 publishers produced manga, usually buying the same titles, sometimes changing the cover illustration and name before translating them into Thai. The law resulted in a 50 percent reduction in the number of manga, but did not eliminate piracy; the illegal publishers still grabbed 21.05 percent of the market in 1999. The other five major comics publishers do either (or both) manga and Thai comics in Japanese style, a result of which has been the death of most of Thailand’s unique characters. The homoerotic boy-love manga have been especially popular since the early 1990s, with 80 percent of their readers being teen girls and women in their early twenties.

In the Philippines, there is even a genre called Pinoy (Philippine) manga. New companies are doing Pinoy manga, such as Culture Crash and Questor, and, artists are following the Japanese style. Although some commentators feel manga and anime have brought Filipinos back to comics, others think they have removed the Philippines’ illustrious history of komiks production from public consciousness. Filipino cartoon historian Benjamin Ong recently wrote:

Then you have the generation that grew up on Japanese cartoons on local TV, that were (to no fault of their own) never exposed to the old komiks legends, and never given a strong sense of what it means to be a Filipino that their version of a Filipino character is a Japanese looking, and Japanese stylized drawing of a Japanese character with a Filipino name. Again, I cannot fault them but fault society for caring more for what is “cool,” and “in fashion” than what is truly Filipino.

Manga and anime are also very popular in China among artists and readers. Many young cartoonists use manga drawing styles and character traits in their works, much to the chagrin of older artists schooled in brush painting techniques and Chinese legend. In a visit to a comic store/Internet café near Shanghai University in 2005, I was not able to find one Chinese product; most of the books and accompanying paraphernalia were manga-related with a smattering of Korean and Hong Kong work.

While some critics credit manga with reinvigorating some dormant Asian comics cultures, which it certainly has done, others blame it for homogenizing the look of comics and obliterating traditional styles and means of producing them, which is also a truism. Whatever the case, the manga has helped change the face of Asian comics, as will be seen in the following sections.

Changing Status of Industry

As with Asian media generally, the region’s comic book industries have gone through changes since the dawn of the 1990s, in large part because of globalization, corporatism, and new information technology. The effects varied, in some cases, nearly decimating local comics cultures, such as in Indonesia; in other instances, enhancing already well-established comics industries, such as in Korea, or birthing rather new ones, such as in Malaysia and Singapore.

An impact of globalization, coupled with conglomeration, is the expansion of markets, both a blessing and curse — a blessing for countries such as Korea and Japan that themselves have the capability to export comics and animation; a curse to a country such as Indonesia that does not and is overrun by manga or Disney products. Korea was helped along by much government support once the authorities recognized comics and animation as important exports. For example, in 1990, 4,130 comic book titles were published in Korea, accounting for nine percent of the country’s total periodicals. Those books came out in 6,833,681 copies, or 2.7 percent of total periodical sales. Slightly more than a decade later, in 2001, those figures multiplied very significantly to 9,177 titles (21.5 percent) and 42,151,591 copies (36 percent). On the basis of Korea’s success, other countries have sought comics and animation markets in the West, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. In the past decade, Asian comics and cartoonists have been regularly represented at regional and international festivals, such as those of San Diego and Angoulême.

As comics and the merchandise spun off from them have become profitable in some places, investors have taken notice. In the early 1990s, Asian cartoonists lamented that investors were not interested in comics because they did not yield short-term profits. There has been some turnaround in this thinking recently, especially in cases where comics have been converted into animation.

Although Asian comics companies are not in the same league as business conglomerates, there are some relatively successful ones. Jademan, Jonesky, and a few other Hong Kong comics publishers continue to thrive; Jademan at one time, before its owner Tony Wong was convicted and jailed on fraudulent business charges, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Despite circulation losses of Sri Lankan comics newspapers, Camillus Pereira, owner of a stable of ten magazines, including comics, expanded his operations in 1997, becoming a major partner in a bank and director of four other firms dealing with engineering, finance, and securities.

A look around the region yields a number of comics publishers that are new since 1990. In Malaysia, the Art Square Group has made a big splash in the past decade, publishing five magazines (Gempak, twice monthly, 80,000 circulation; Utopia, Starz, HYpe!, and Comic King in Mandarin), moving into production of games/ lifestyle/enter-tainment magazines, and graphic novels, sponsoring an annual Malaysian Comics Carnival since 2001, and marketing merchandise such as T-shirts, sketchbooks, and vinyl figures. All of the magazines include comics and entertainment news and have a strong manga influence in illustrative style, settings, characters, and plotlines. The other major Malaysian periodical, devoted to cartoons more than comics, is Gila-Gila, part of Creative Enterprise, a company that has encouraged humor magazine publishing since 1978.Whereas before the 1980s, Singapore had only small publishers bringing out irregular comics, since then, an infrastructure of publishers has developed, described by Lim Li Kok, an official of Asiapac at a 2004 comics workshop in Singapore:

1.  Independent publishers, set up by individual authors to publish their own works. Most successful of these are Comix Factory, established in 1991 by Johnny Lau and three collaborators to publish and market their Mr. Kiasu book and its merchandise; and TCZ Studios, a creation of Wee Tian Beng to bring out his books, the most famous of which were the series Return of the Condor Heroes and The Celestial Zone. Others in this category are studios of Koh Hong Teng, Chub Tan, Huang Xiao Wen.

2.  Publishers who obtain reprint rights from various sources but especially Japan and Hong Kong. Chuang Yi Publishing Pte. Ltd., started in 1990, is the most prominent, publishing a variety of licensed popular Japanese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese comics. Recently, Chuang Yi branched into English, publishing with the Disney Group. M.G. Creative (1993) was started by well-known comics artist Teo Seng Hock to bring out his works, as well as those of Japanese, Hong Kong, and some Singaporean authors. The publishers in this category face problems with licensing, such as, fierce competition for a small market intensified by parallel importing, prohibitive costs of licensing foreign titles, and limited territory rights which restrict available markets and limit growth possibilities.

3.  Publishers with their own publication programs and direction, focusing on producing original titles. Asiapac Books (1983), which started publishing comics in 1988, dominates this group. The company has book series in leadership (5), history (7), values for success (7), fantasies (7), philosophy (7), jokes/humor (2), hilarious (9), and Romance of the Three Kingdoms (9). Asiapac, through selling foreign rights, has penetrated foreign markets (mainly Indonesia) and has translated its books into Indonesian, Thai, Korean, etc.

4.  Internet publishers.The magazine that early on promoted a comics culture in Singapore is Big O, started in the 1980s by the brothers Michael and Philip Cheah. Big O reviewed comics, hosted foreign artists, published locals such as Johnny Lau and Eric Khoo, and stimulated the growth of comics shops. In more recent times, the company has concentrated on popular music.The old Philippine komiks scene was starting to die out already in the 1970s, with the onslaught of martial law and the migration of artists to the U.S. By the 1990s, when young Filipino cartoonists could no longer find publication outlets, they started small companies to publish their own comics and formed groups of independent cartoonists such as Alamat Comics. Among new companies were Mango Comics and Nautilus Comics; other publishers, such as Adarna (children’s books) and Visual Print Publications, ventured into graphic novel publication. Mango is a family firm, headed by comics artist Hugo Yonzon III, whose father was a prominent Philippine cartoonist. The staff includes at least six individuals who carry the Yonzon name. A main activity of Mango in recent years is the reprinting of the Mars Ravelo classic Darna comic book series. In 2004, the company also started Mwahaha Magazine.The komiks movement of the late 1990s was composed mostly of young creators without much business savvy. The dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that the creators, first weaned on Marvel and DC comics and later influenced by manga, have no sense of identity as Filipinos.One of the new publishing houses in Indonesia, Dar! Mizan, publishes books for children and teens in comics format, including titles such as Thank You Allah for Toddlers, Islamic Comics, Teenage Novel Comics, and Novel Comic. The Japanese influence can be seen in these works as well.In Thailand, Bun Lour Sarn dominated comics production for years, but recently, the key comics companies usually have been parts of larger publishers, including newspapers. The 1999 comics market was divided thusly: Vibulkij (1989), 31.58 percent, publishers of Thai Comics and Boom Comics; Siam Intercomics (1990), 26.32 percent, subcontractor of a publisher of newspapers and sports magazines; pirate companies, 21.05 percent; Nation Comics, 12.63, part of the Nation newspaper group and publisher of manga since 1991; New Venture Generation Publishing, 6.32 percent, division of Manager Media Group Co.; and Post Comics, 2.10 percent, subsidiary of Bangkok Post newspaper. It is not clear whether these comics companies are profitable and, if they are, what the breakdown of earnings is from indigenous comics. In Thailand, Bun Lour Sarn’s locally-produced joke comic book sales plummeted 45 percent by 1998, attributable to the impact of manga.However, from what this author saw while browsing Kinokuniya Books in Bangkok in December 2006, Bun Lour Sarn (now called Banlue) books are still very popular, with old titles such as Selling Laughs still published, but others such as the Pang Pond series, tied to the animated television show of that name and with spin-off products such as DVDs and games, and books of adventure stories and Buddhist tales.Taiwanese comics companies are not very successful, according to cartoonists working for them. The number of companies has shrunk from eight to six in the last three years, and those remaining have cut staff sizes as circulations were lost. The long-lived Tong Li, which still publishes ten titles, was quoted as losing NT$2 million yearly. Taiwanese publishers have fewer cartoonists to draw from as many have left for China to do animation or they work for Japanese manga firms. One of them, Zhong Meng Shun told me in 2005, “the Japanese write a story, find a translator, and then I draw their ideas.” Another, Johnny Liao (Cool), formerly a popular artist for Tong Li, has switched to making animation and films. He attributed the loss of comic book popularity to a national economic recession and to cartoonists transferring their characters online. Veteran cartoonist/comics historian Hung Tei-lin said local comics cannot make money because Japan and the U.S. dominate the market, businessmen are unwilling to pump money into comics, and local cartoonists do not fulfill their obligations. He cited a couple examples of Taiwanese cartoonists chosen to draw stories for U.S. companies who did not finish their assignment.In Sri Lanka, the number of comics papers has dwindled from 13 at a peak in 1987 to seven in 1998; circulations also dropped considerably, the largest, Sittara, from 250,000 to 50,000. Only Sathsiri also had 50,000 circulation, the others considerably less. Camillus Perera, whose company is the largest comics producer, blamed a number of factors for the drop in comics sales: higher price per copy caused by inflation which escalated because of ethnic wars; the lack of reading on the part of children, and inroads made by electronic media. He said children do not read as much now, because they watch television, where they can get a whole story in an hour, whereas they had to wait weeks to find the ending of stories serialized in comics papers, and because they do not have time to read because of the highly competitive nature of their schooling.Not heeding the negative experiences of some comics publishers around them, a partnership of a British financier and several Indian intellectuals recently started an enterprise they believed would rival manga as a world shaker. In January 2006, UK billionaire Richard Branson, through his Virgin Books Ltd., joined with Indians, writer Deepak Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, and South Asian comics publisher Gotham Entertainment Group LLC to launch Virgin Comics LLC based in New York City and Virgin Animation Pvt. Ltd. in Bangalore. Contending that India has a strong storytelling tradition, Virgin planned to move works of Indian creators into the west much like the Japanese did with manga.Rather quickly, Virgin Comics started a series of titles (Sadhu, Devi, Snake Woman, and Ramayama 3392 AD) and three comic book lines — “Shakti,” “Director’s Cut,” and “Maverick” (later “Voices”), each of the latter with a distinctive mission. “Shakti” is to use Indian or Indian-based content and characters, while “Director’s Cut” will be a collaboration with internationally-acclaimed filmmakers such as John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Kapur himself, and others in a bid to find stories and means of telling them to appeal to 12- to 21-year old Indians. The third line, “Voices,” will seek talent in all creative fields, names already mentioned being Nicholas Cage and Dave Stewart. The series of books were launched in the U.S., Europe, and India, and plans called for them to be developed into related entertainment products (film, television, online, gaming, mobile content, merchandise, etc.) Although stories will draw upon what Chopra called India’s “5000 year vault” of culture, they will mix mythology with the modern. It may seem contradictory that comics sales are down in most parts of Asia, yet new companies and titles continue to appear.

Explanations might be that, 1. Some of the new companies have other survival strategies in mind. Art Square magazines, for example, do not isolate themselves strictly to comics, but also include entertainment news and other features. Virgin Comics in India has a similar strategy.

2. Comics companies in Asia as everywhere, expect to make profits from lines of merchandise spun off from favorite or hyped-up characters. For example, the once-a-year Mr. Kiasu comic book in Singapore generated many cartoonized junk products and commercial tie-ins (with McDonald’s, etc.), probably far more than the worth of the character.

3. A number of new (and old) comics companies exist to reprint Japanese manga, or in the case of Mango Comics, Philippine classics, resulting in large profits at relatively low overhead.

4. It is also probable some comics companies start up with dreams of having their characters adapted to television, animation, and feature movies.Other aspects of Asian comics industries that have changed are sales and distribution. In many countries, comics usually were rented in male-friendly comics shops or at roadside food stalls. Rental possibilities still exist but now they often take place in comics/Internet cafes, attractive to both male and female readers. Also, with the growth of middle classes, and a corresponding increase in youth spending power, comics are now sold in comics shops and retail book stores. The most obvious changes in comics distribution are through online adaptations and more attempts to market books outside their country or region of origin.

Reinvention of Comics

One might say that comic books as they have been known in the United States, Europe, and Latin America had already been reinvented in Asia decades ago, before the notion took hold in the West.Within Asia, comic books differ widely in size, format, and genre from country to country, and in most instances, they are very different from Western comics. In Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, a comic book is made up of hundreds of pages. Compared to traditional Western comics, manga have little text, no color, much cinematic formatting, and more explicit sex and violence. In Sri Lanka, a comic book has 16 pages and 14 stories in color, each story given only a page and drawn by a different artist. In Indonesia, traditionally, a cergam (comic book, an acronym of cerita bergambar, or story with pictures) was a string of newspaper comic strips bound together. Myanmar comics are larger, usually 60 to 80 pages and they come in different sizes; some are written and illustrated by one person, others by three or four. For years, Philippine komiks were 32- to 36-page weeklies, featuring three nobelas (serialized stories), four or five short stories completed in an issue (wakasan), some single-panel cartoons, and other items. When the Philippine economy had a downturn in the 1990s, nobelas became less visible as readers could not afford to purchase komiks on a long term basis to see how a story ended. In Thailand, comics for years were distinguished by variations in size; the pocket-sized version (18×13 centimeters) is most popular, said to be convenient for reading when Thais are stuck in traffic jams. Pocket comics are further divided into poorly-printed, one baht (now five baht) books, appearing weekly or irregularly and containing more adult-based serialized stories (often ghost), and humor books (15 baht, or about 40 cents), weeklies of 100 or more pages, featuring one frame cartoons with stock characters in humorous everyday life situations and occasional 5-10 page serialized stories.Genres also have been different from region to region. Japan has genres identified by gender — shonen (boys) and shōūjō (girls) –, as well as others such as samurai, unka (shit), rorikon (Lolita complex; portrayal of young girls sexually), saririman (salary man or worker), OL (office lady), redikomi (sex fantasies for women), pachinko and mahjjong (games), and june (for women, featuring love between men). In Hong Kong, gambling, video games (where a character is chosen from a Japanese video game), and kung fu have been popular, while Sri Lanka and Philippine fans have had a long-time preference for love and romance stories, and Thais have favored the gag, humor genre. China for decades has had lianhuanhua (tiny pictorial story books usually of a propaganda or moralistic bent). With recent inroads made by new technology, commercialism, and globalization, comic books in Asia have had a predilection to reinvent themselves again to offset sagging economic conditions and intensified competition. For example, professional and amateur cartoonists are displaying their comics and cartoons on the Internet in increasing numbers. Comics and cartoon Websites exist all over the continent, such as Myanmar e-Cartoon Network and Weekly Myanmar Cartoons and Entertainment News and Philippine Komiks Message Board. In Korea, two types of Web comics exist: book provided by the Web with a charge, and non-book, which are free and include the so-called essaytoons. Manhwa first published on the Web before being published as books, collected most of their revenue from online readership. Between 2002 and 2004, the Korean Internet comic book market more than doubled, from 16.9 billion Won to 35 billion Won, and the number one Internet portal site, Daum, transforms more than 50,000 comic books into digital picture files. International distribution of manhwa has sped up through the Internet; Netcomics, a U.S. arm of the industry, planned to bring out ten titles monthly via Web, issuing translated works at 25 cents per chapter. Many young Koreans are publishing their comics on home pages; so-called essaytoons are in their heyday. Many of these are diaries of their authors’ lives; others deal with the bizarre, more unsavory aspects of daily life, such as picking one’s nose, farting, etc. Website comics are also extremely popular in Taiwan. Two notable online comics popular there at the turn of the century were “A-Kuei,” which had millions of viewers in Taiwan and pan-China areas, and “K. K. Long,” a virtual singer known for his ugliness, obnoxiousness, and vulgarity. Both generated enormous profits in spin-off products.Another reincarnation of comics has come through mobile phones. In Japan, mobile manga proliferated in 2006 with high speed 3G phones, fixed rates, and high quality LCD displays. Initially, it was thought that these manga would appeal to commuters, but most “readers” are people in their homes and women — one reason being consumers can buy racy titles without being seen. Mobile comics cost 30-40 cents per episode. A doubling of the electronic book market from 2004 to 2005 was attributed mainly to mobile manga. Web comics magazines, such as Comic Seed! by Futabasha Publishers, were also popular in Japan in 2006, because they are less costly; they realize profits from ads and eventual print editions. One comic, Blood magazine, came in three forms: printed version monthly, paid distribution via cell phone Internet, and a Web magazine. A form of manga piracy, scanlators, is also possible through the Internet, where each page of a title is scanned into a computer, translated from Japanese to English, and uploaded to the Internet. At least 537 scanlation groups exist globally.The reinvention occurs in other ways, especially in formats. As in the West, there has been repackaging of comics into graphic novels and other high quality, literary-like forms. In Korea, the reprinting of quality comics popular from the 1960s to 1990s is fashionable and profitable. The books are printed on better paper with clearer impressions, thicker binding, and sometimes in hard cover (even encased in wooden boxes as in the case of Thermidore). The chief reason for the reprintings is easy profits, but they also fulfill adults’ nostalgia for stories they read as children, issue works serialized in comics magazines but never published in book form, or complete unfinished stories and those previously censored.Graphic novels also are popular in other parts of Asia. India had its first graphic novel in 2004, Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor, the story about a “brilliant and banal bookseller and his bunkum customers,” published by Penguin; two years later, Phantomville published The Believers, the story of an Edinburgh University anthropologist who returns to his native village in Kerala to find everything changed beyond recognition. These titles were successful enough for Phantomville to plan eight additional titles in 2006. In Taiwan, graphic novels have their own awards ceremony sponsored by the Government Information Office and Chinese Comics Publishers Association since 2003. Sixty-eight Taiwanese graphic novels were submitted for the 2006 competition. Thai bookstore shelves now carry a number of local graphic novels, including a series by EQ Plus Publishing entitled Knowledge Comic, characterizing the lives of local and foreign historical figures, such as Joan of Arc, Christopher Columbus, and the Rev. Daniel Beach Bradley, a missionary who started Thailand’s first newspaper, among other innovations. Others were the “A Day Story Comic” series, Amarin Books’ Buddhist story graphic novels, and collections of newspaper strips, such as Yod’s Daily Dirty Jokes. Prices for these graphic novels range from $3.50 to $4.40.Types of genres have changed, with increasing use of autobiographical, personal accounts of comics creators. Both the small press and very independent press of Korea are of this type. Small presses, main of which are Bada, Happy Comics Store, and Pathfinder, issue about 20 titles yearly, while the very independent press resembles Japan’s dojin press, where fans do their own books as a form of self expression, rather than a money-making venture. Because of Korea’s highly-competitive educational environment, a genre called haksup (study) is a best-seller, making up about half of the comics industry. The most popular study comic has been Greek and Roman Mythology Read by Comics, which in 17 volumes, sold 4 million copies. Of course, study or educational comics have been successful in Japan for more than 20 years, with titles such as The Japanese Economy for Beginners and Oishimo (gourmet) selling at least 15 and 16 million copies, respectively. Selling even more copies have been the educational comic books by Taiwan’s Tsai Chih Chung, who explains in drawings and text the philosophies of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and others. Tsai’s works are popular throughout East and Southeast Asia and have sold tens of millions copies. Other new twists in Korean genres are hard-boiled (organized) crime and hakwon (school). Organized crime stories have been around for years, the difference being that before 1990, they were directed against the Japanese, and now, they deal more with street fighting. Hakwon are built around everyday school activities, and can be romantic (popular with girls) or portray organized crime in school (a boy’s favorite). In Taiwan, queer comics have become popular in recent years and, like in Japan, Thailand, and elsewhere, attract a female audience. At lease 250 Japanese queer comics were identified in Taiwan over a two-year period in the late 1990s.Also quite new in Asia have been the development of underground/alternative comics and recognition and nurturing of adult audiences. A decade ago, cartoonists all over Asia told me that comics were not taken seriously, that they were considered only for children. That thinking is changing. Underground/alternative comics come in all forms, from the already-discussed online comics and small and very independent presses of Korea, to the so-called avant garde cartoons of China or art student independents of Indonesia. Among the latter was Athonk’s The Bad Times Story, whose main characters are devils making social and political commentary. In Thailand, alternative-style comics are published and sold in mainstream bookstores. One series, Hesheit, appears in graphic novel format, collecting the works of cartoonist Wisut Ponnimit and others. Indian underground comics include gupt sahityā, a secret literature in Banaras (North India) centered around the spring carnival of Holi (an Hindu festival). The annuals are a type of political pornography, depicting how men desire the bodies of other men and women, created in a political satire nature. The pamphlets consist of poems, cartoons, and photographs.Finally, though not new to Asia, adaptations and spin-offs of the comics have changed in their intensification. For a long time, comic books featured in movie screenplays in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, India, China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; until recently, up to 50 percent of all Filipino films came out of the komiks. In the past five years, the Philippines have had a rebirth of komiks movies. Similarly, there have been many animation adaptations and merchandise lines of comics, particularly in Japan, but increasingly throughout East Asia. In Singapore, the Mr. Kiasu comic books have been put on radio and television, using human actors, and have been associated with many products and promotional gimmicks. Lat’s Kampung Boy, as well as Jaafar Taib’s Jungle Jokes and other Malaysian comics, have been animated, and in India, Pran’s Cha Cha Chaudhary titles have been made into hundreds of television episode. Stories of Sri Lanka’s Camillus comics have also been animated for telelvision, and the very popular comics of Jimmy in Taiwan have been adapted to stage drama and TV series, and enough merchandise has been sold to justify opening a Jimmy store.A very synergistic use of comics is that of Korea’s Damo, a story about “tea maids,” female slaves who worked in police departments during the Choson Dynasty. Originally a comic strip serialized in a sports daily, Damo then became a paperback comic book for the rental stores, after which it was converted into a TV series, re-edited for the DVD and compact disk market, and rebroadcast on cable and satellite television. Later, the comics were republished for retail book sales and then made into a movie.

In India, the reverse has occurred — comics have been made from films in recent years. The film hit “Don” spurred a comic book (called a movic) based on its plot and involving all its characters. The comic was distributed free at multiplexes with “Don” tickets. Two of Virgin Comics’ titles, Devi, and Snake Woman, were originally films of Virgin’s co-partner, director Shekhar Kapur.

More Recognition, Prestige

A significant change during the past decade and a half has been the elevation of the comic book from a child-only medium to an art form, educational tool, and money-making engine, worthy of recognition and respect in governmental and cultural circles. Results have been the mushrooming of comic-art programs in universities and colleges, the establishment of museums, research institutes, libraries, and comics conventions, the infusion of government funding in some countries, and the conferral of honors on some comics creators.Granted that economics lay behind this activity in many instances, either in that governments saw the potential of comics and their merchandise as money-generating exports or local companies envisioned their worth as products themselves or promotional boosts to other saleables. After 1994, and again in 1997, the Korean government pumped large sums of money into comics and animation, hoping to cash in on the cultural globalism of the times. As noted earlier, other governments such as those of China and Thailand followed suit, concentrating more on animation, but the impact of government help has been felt most strongly in Korea where an infrastructure of both animation and comics centers, a government comics content association, at least two museums, comics libraries, conventions and competitions, and a TV cartoon network has been instituted. Specifically, the Korean Culture and Contents Agency, a government arm started in 1997, allots US$3 million yearly to comics and $10 million to animation, and at least two municipal governments have heavily funded comics/animation. In Bucheon, self-styled as the comics capital of Korea, city officials have put up 80 percent of the capital to sponsor the Bucheon Cartoon Information Center, an elaborate, spacious museum, and an annual comics festival. The Seoul Animation Center, fully funded by that city’s government, helps comics with stipends to creators of up to US$8,000 each, and the maintenance of a library of foreign and local comic books.Korea also was a sparkplug in the development of educational programs in cartooning in Asia. When a department of cartooning was started at the two-year Kongju Community College in 1989, it was one of two known programs in Asia, the other being Kyoto Seka University in Japan. After the government recognized comic art as an important resource, more than 150 university/college/high school comic and/or animation programs sprouted. Similarly in other countries, cartooning entered academia; within about a five-year period, the number of animation/comics departments in China climbed to more that 200, reaching for 300. At one of them, China University of Communication in Beijing, an Asian Research Center for Animation and Comic Art was created in 2006. Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other countries and regions now have comics-related academic courses of study. At the National Transportation University in Taiwan, another cartoon research center has been started.The government of China has taken notice recently of comics and animation, both as a reaction against the prevalence of foreign works on television and in bookstores and as an important investment. When a nationwide survey revealed that the most popular comics and animation in China were from Japan and South Korea, 60 percent, followed by U.S. and Europe, 29 percent, and China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, 11 percent, the government began to make efforts to offset the strong foreign influence. At about the same time, economists and national leaders also saw the economic potential of these industries, propping them as the third pillar of the economy with the possibility of achieving more than ten percent of the gross domestic product. During the 11^th Five-Year Projection for Social and Economic Development (2006-2010), the comics and animation sector was listed as a key cultural industry to be developed at the national level. The development had already begun by 2006, when more than 20 provinces had listed animation and comics as a new industry, nine cities had established their own production bases with preferential policies, and many animation/comics extravaganzas, such as festivals, competitions, and conferences had taken place.All over Asia, comics and cartoon professionalism is on the rise. A few more examples suffice to make the point: a planned Philippine Comics Art Museum in San Pablo City; a comics fair in Taipei that draws more than 100,000 fans annually; a well-frequented, Taipei government comics library of more than 60,000 books, established in 1998; other comics conventions in Malaysia (Comic Fiesta), Indonesia (Komikasia), and the Philippines (KOMIKON, established 2005); and the appearance of books and periodicals devoted to Asian cartooning. As stated before, some governments (Korea especially) give cartoonists incentives; since 2004, the Taiwan government has earmarked NT 10 million annually to be awarded in $500,000 stipends to ten cartoonists, the rest used to sponsor the Golden Elephant Awards in comics, cartoons, animation, and illustration, and to publish the periodicals Dragon Youth and Cartoon Creation Record. As mentioned earlier, the Government Information Office funds the annual Graphic Novel Awards.Individual cartoonists have been honored in recent years. Both R. K. Laxman of India and Mohd. Nor Khalid (Lat) of Malaysia have received government-conferred titles, while other cartoonists, such as Gunasta of Indonesia, Kim Song Hwan of Korea, Wang Peng of Taiwan, and others, have had the pleasure of seeing their works placed on postage stamps. When King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand translated and modified the story of Mahajanaka to fit a modern society, and later in 2004, decided to have his story about his pet dog illustrated, he chose famous cartoonist Chai Rachawat to draw the comics versions of both books. The latter, Biography of a Pet Dog, The Story of Tongdaeng, sold more than 600,000 copies within a month. Chai takes pride in his work with the King, saying it is his most important accomplishment.Merchants throughout Asia have recognized the draw power of comics characters, using them in logos and advertising campaigns and fashioning much comics merchandise. Pokemon and Hello Kitty are the most noted examples, but there have been others, such as McDonald’s creating Kampungburgers after Lat’s famous Kampung Boy in Malaysia and Kiasuburgers after the insatiable Singaporean comics character, Mr. Kiasu.<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>

Role of Women

The situation is not ideal, but nevertheless, nowhere in the world has gender been as prominent in comics (and animation) as in Asia. Except in Japan and Korea, the number of women creators in most countries is still comparatively small, but much improvement has taken place during the past generation in the importance accorded women artists, genres, and periodicals.Japanese women have had the most success in comics. Among the approximately 400 women cartoonists are a few millionaires; in fact, at one point, the richest woman in Japan had earned her wealth through comics creation. The manga world opened to women in the 1960s and 1970s when a group of women called the 49ers (born after 1949) started to draw shōujō (girls’ comics), previously a male domain. An example of these women is Machiko Satonaka, who debuted as a comics artist at 16 and drew eight titles simultaneously by the time she reached 20. By 1993, when I interviewed her, she had completed more than 300 books for Kodansha. Satonaka said compared to the rest of the business world, cartooning is “good, equal,” adding,I’m recommending young girls to enter cartooning as a profession. In Japan, you have a standardized society. You get published, sell a million copies, and you’re a big figure. As long as you can show your work, you are successful. So, it’s relatively easy for women.More than 100 women work as cartoonists in Korea, enough to have a Korean Women Cartoonists Association. In fact, 40 percent of the comic artists work pool consists of women, and nine out of every 10 dojin (very independent) cartoonists in Korea are women. There was a group of women in the 1960s creating their own comics or drawing Western novels stories (copying Japanese shōujō form), but the real breakthroughs were in the 1980s when dedicated artists such as Kim Hyerin began their careers, and when the first girls comics magazine, Renaissance, appeared in 1988. The latter was important because it and its successors were sold in retail bookstores, which girls were more apt to frequent than the traditional comics rental shops.In Taiwan, one in ten cartoonists is a woman; almost all artists for girls comics are women. The veteran among them, Ye Liyun, said she can identify only about 20 women cartoonists in the history of Taiwanese cartooning. She started her career in the 1960s as one of a group of ten artists for Wen Chang Publishing House; only 14 to 16 years old during that work period, she said her wages were higher than those of her teachers. “I was full of energy, imagination then; now, younger cartoonists imitate with enthusiasm,” she lamented.Though even fewer in numbers in some other Asian countries, women cartoonists and comics writers have left their mark. The most prolific komiks writers in the Philippines at the advent of the 1990s were Elena Patron, Nerissa Cabral, and Gilda Olvidado, each bringing out at least 14 episodes of continuing komik novels weekly. They, along with Pat V. Reyes and Helen Meriz, were partly responsible for the boom in komiks until recent times. One of the rare Malaysian female cartoonists, Cabai, gained enough popularity to merit a humor magazine named after her in 1997; Cabai was labeled as “exclusively for women.” In Pakistan, Nigar Nazar, who has drawn the character Gogi for more than 30 years, was recently given the top honor from the Ministry of Women Development, the Fatimah Jinnah Award.

Hong Kong has had only about ten women cartoonists in the past 30 years, but a couple have won fandoms. The most prominent, Lee Wai-chun, who created 13-Dot Cartoons (178 issues, 1966-1980), was a trendsetter in clothing fashion, her Miss 13-Dot and other female characters donning an average of 62 pieces of fashionable clothing in every 56-page issue. Women actually took the comics to their tailors to have clothes made like those of Miss 13-Dot. The fashion, material lifestyle, and sense of adventure in the comics did not fit the dominant ideology of traditional China where the son was preferred and women were not seen as adventurous or competent as men. In recent years, Lay Lee-Lee (Lily Lau) has gained a modicum of fame with feminist-infused themes in her books, Mom’s Drawer Is at the Bottom (1998), This Is How Stars Should Really Be (1999), The Beginning of the End (2001), and three other titles. Though Lau’s messages about gender inequality, politics, and heterosexual relationships (sometimes in sexually-explicit themes) are considered radical by Hong Kong standards, her books have had a positive reception; Mom’s Drawer… has had three editions in Chinese and English, including one published in Taiwan.

Different also from 15-20 years ago is the composition of comic book audiences. Seldom did women purchase comics in the past; now the situation has changed, especially in Japan and Korea, but to a lesser degree, elsewhere. A 2000 survey in Japan found that 42 percent of women surveyed between the ages of 20-49 and 81 percent of teenager girls read manga regularly. More than 100 manga titles target the female audience; the largest, Ribbon, has a monthly paid circulation of more than one million. A survey of 2,005 Koreans conducted in 2003 reported women were more experienced comics purchasers than men (6.7 percent of the women bought comics, 5.6 percent of men); that soonjung manhwa (girls comics) was the most preferred genre (21.6 percent), and that Korean authors (49.5 percent) were more popular than Japanese (46.4 percent).

Accounting for the growth of women audiences for comic books are: 1. complete turnaround in the way they are distributed/exhibited. In many Asian countries before, comics were available chiefly in rental shops, places “respectable” women did not like to frequent. Now, comics magazines and books are sold in mainstream bookstores and are rented in comics cafes and libraries. Also, comics can be read online, particularly in East Asia countries. 2. A continuing growth in comics genres and titles aimed at women and girls. This is particularly apparent in Japan, where, in addition to shōjō comics, other women’s genres are redikomi (ladies’) and young ladies. One scholar, Fusami Ogi, classified the three types as simply before marriage, after marriage, and before and after marriage, respectively, although the boundaries are vague. These comics and soonjung manhwa in Korea devote much content to sexuality and romance, but they also are concerned with much more, including every type of human relationship, as well as areas such as sports, everyday life, history, horror, science fiction, etc. Shōjō manga have more freedom than soonjung manhwa to deal with sexual taboos such as rape, sadomasochism, and Lolita complex. Love/romance comics, which appeal primarily to female audiences, are popular in other countries. In the Philippines, for instance, traditional love stories with pining lasses and happy endings have been the best-selling komiks. Sri Lankan 16-page “comics papers” also dote on romance, as do a number of comic books in Hong Kong, as previously shown, and Taiwan. 3. The influence of manga and anime. As East and Southeast Asia embraced manga, especially in recent years, women in those countries were exposed to women/girls’ genres and stories which they grew to like. The previously-stated example of Thai women’s fondness of Japanese boy-love comics is a case in point.

It is also possible more women read comics, because their portrayals in them have changed away from the hackneyed either/or set of “good wives/mothers” or “‘dirty’ prostitutes/vamps.” At various times, women’s groups, scholars, and critics have taken comic books to task for negative or less than equal representations of women. The series of 436 Indian educational comic books, Amar Chitra Katha, very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, took many hard knocks for its portrayals of women; the national university women’s group of India, after conducting a study of ACK, reported the series emphasized for women a “home syndrome,” self-sacrifice, obedience to men, and a high fertility rate. Feminists generally complained that the series depicted women in a “servile, simpering light”; showed “curvy maids” which offended a “sense of propriety and conservative sentiment”; and depended on the ancient Hindu code of manu in its portrayals: “good” women are devoted mothers/wives, ready to sacrifice all for their men; “evil” women are bold and arrogant adventuresses. Anant Pai, creator of ACK, often replied to the charges, saying that because his comics portrayed history, they had to stick with the mode and customs of those times, which did not favor women, and that, among his books were a number that carried stories and images of valiant, individual women.

Thai comics have been shown to treat mothers/wives as non-sexual beings by men desirous of multiple sexual encounters. A favorite topic of Thai comic books is domestic violence, a major problem in Thailand. But, the comic book abuse is committed by strong, sometimes enormous, women wielding saks (pestles) as they beat or threaten weak, emasculated husbands, thus masking reality. Gender problems are common topics of Indonesian and Malaysian humor magazines and newspaper strips. One comics researcher, Ron Provencher, said Malay humor magazines so frequently deal with matters of gender because of recent economic and social changes related to gender roles in the Malay house.

In manga, the portrayal of sexuality has been tempered to suit women’s desires, making them less uni-gendered than other media. Martha Cornog and Timothy Perper, in a 2005 article in Contemporary Sexuality, substantiated this point, saying:

1.  Romance, love, nudity (often non-sexual), and sex-related content exist in many manga, the sex portrayed as physically and emotionally desirable for men and “especially women.”

2.  Much gender-bending exists in manga/anime. In almost all cases, these stories whether yaoi (male-male love) or yuri (female-female love), are drawn by women for women readers.

3.  The “[D]epersonalization of the individual and reduction of personhood to genitalia” common in Western pornography are absent in Japan; “sexuality is contextualized by inventive narrative, strong characterization, and emotion” (p. 9).

4.  Rape and sexual assault on women are present, but they are not glorified as Westerners tend to believe.

5.  Manga show that sex sometimes results in pregnancies and children.

6.  In manga/anime, sex can be funny.

Conclusion

Asian comics have experienced a complete changeover during the past decade, both as an industry and as an art form, with the introduction of new companies and production and distribution methods; a wider global reach; different genres; varied formats such as graphic novels, online presentation, and mobile phone adaptations; increased governmental recognition, respect, and support in some countries; better professionalization and training possibilities, and more participation by women.

On the surface, the future looks prosperous for the Asian comic book. However, one must still contend with the facts that sales of comic books in their traditional formats are down in many countries, and that local comic book production has all but dried up in Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia, among others. One must also consider the possibilities that the west’s fascination with Japanese and, by extension, Asian popular culture will not last forever; that it will not take long for the aggressive multinational corporations to find ways to buy up and homogenize local comics cultures, and that supportive national governments could learn that they over-estimated the role of comics and animation in economic growth.