A fascinating look at a clever, uncompromising artist married to the times in which he lived.
In this graphic novel, Liew (Shadow Hero, 2014, etc.) presents the life and work of an obscure comic-book creator in tandem with the turbulent modern history of Singapore, the land both call home.
This celebration of the real if largely unknown artist Charlie Chan Hock Chye opens with his two-page comic juxtaposing a pair of prominent Singaporean leaders—Lee Kuan Yew, the long-standing prime minister who shrewdly if brutally oversaw the country’s rise as an economic power; and Lim Chin Siong, a charismatic, populist orator who was outmaneuvered by political rivals, jailed as a dissident, and exiled, ultimately dying in obscurity. The opening is telling for its political focus, juxtaposition of pragmatism versus idealism, and status of having been drawn in 1998 but unpublished until its inclusion here. Born the year Superman and British children’s comic Beano debuted, Chan—a lifelong if self-taught student of the craft—became a sampler of comic styles, beginning with the manga-inspired tales of a boy and his giant robot, moving on to Dan Dare–style alien-invasion science fiction, comics strips in the vein of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, gritty street-level superheroics, and homages to MAD magazine and Windsor McCay. Sociopolitical issues abounded, with the giant robot responding only to commands given in Chinese (underscoring a Singapore divided by its English and Chinese schools) or colonialism playing out with alien overlords standing in for British rule and real-life figures and events in prominent if thinly veiled roles. Chan also created autobiographical comics detailing the struggles of a career frustrated by the repressive regime under which he lived (exacerbated by Chan’s compulsion for political commentary). But, acting almost like a politically minded Henry Darger, the undeniably talented Chan never stopped digesting his world into art, even if much of that work never saw publication. Liew provides sharp commentary throughout, illustrating interviews as well as accompanying strips that decode Chan’s layers of allegory.
A fascinating look at a clever, uncompromising artist married to the times in which he lived.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87069-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Gorgeous and troubling.
Cartoonist Kuper (Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.
As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.
Gorgeous and troubling.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.
Design veteran Chwast delivers another streamlined, graphic adaptation of classic literature, this time Mark Twain’s caustic, inventive satire of feudal England.
Chwast (Tall City, Wide Country, 2013, etc.) has made hay anachronistically adapting classic texts, whether adding motorcycles to The Canterbury Tales (2011) or rocket ships to The Odyssey (2012), so Twain’s tale of a modern-day (well, 19th-century) engineer dominating medieval times via technology—besting Merlin with blasting powder—is a fastball down the center. (The source material already had knights riding bicycles!) In Chwast’s rendering, bespectacled hero Hank Morgan looks irresistible, plated in armor everywhere except from his bow tie to the top of his bowler hat, sword cocked behind head and pipe clenched in square jaw. Inexplicably sent to sixth-century England by a crowbar to the head, Morgan quickly ascends nothing less than the court of Camelot, initially by drawing on an uncanny knowledge of historical eclipses to present himself as a powerful magician. Knowing the exact date of a celestial event from more than a millennium ago is a stretch, but the charm of Chwast’s minimalistic adaption is that there are soon much better things to dwell on, such as the going views on the church, politics and society, expressed as a chart of literal back-stabbing and including a note that while the upper class may murder without consequence, it’s kill and be killed for commoners and slaves. Morgan uses his new station as “The Boss” to better the primitive populous via telegraph lines, newspapers and steamboats, but it’s the deplorably savage civility of the status quo that he can’t overcome, even with land mines, Gatling guns and an electric fence. The subject of class manipulation—and the power of passion over reason—is achingly relevant, and Chwast’s simple, expressive illustrations resonate with a childlike earnestness, while his brief, pointed annotations add a sly acerbity. His playful mixing of perspectives within single panels gives the work an aesthetic somewhere between medieval tapestry and Colorforms.
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60819-961-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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