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Q: Comic's in China : do you know which ones are well-known ?
I grew up with comics, from humor to adventure, they are one of the defining aspects of my childhood. They shaped my imagination, my dreams, my perception of art, they opened so many windows. I don't think we are born imaginative or creative, I think such qualities are acquired through exposure and example. Comics are great for this. It can be also a good way to introduce kids to many topics: ethic, science, history, etc, while they can have some fun.
Comics are also a first exposure to art (example: every single drawing of Jean Girault aka. Moebius can be looked again and again and yield something new, they all have a lot of tricks into it like forced perspective, etc.).
By comics, I mean the Belgium/French school one's
* not Japanese ones, called mangas
* not USA ones, typically, superheroes stories, even if there are a lot of other things like Calvin & Hobbes, psychedelic ones like's Crumb's work, etc.
But the above shares the same qualities .
I never saw *ONE* of those European comics in China. In Europe, we have literally thousands of titles, it's a big market. Some comic artists achieved world wide notoriety, as well as some albums. It became part of the popular art scene as much as cinema or music. Here, nope, nothing, only a small penetration of a small subset of Japanese mangas.
Questions:
* Is it just me who didn't searched enough ? Have you seen such comics for sale or in someone's home ?
* This gaping hole is just waiting to be filled, or is it just that there is no market for this in China ? (ie. kids should read exercise book only, no fancy Mickeys, and it would be perceived as a waste of money)
9 years 23 weeks ago in Arts & Entertainment - China
Oh, this is a really interesting question. I've been in contact with a few Chinese artists who tried to make a living off comics. At that time, I was trying to find some decent works that I was willing to try to translate and promote, for free.
What I discovered is that:
Traditional publishing isn't really an option, they are just not interested in this niche. Publishing in China is just another slow and risk-allergic elephant. They have a few titles, but mainly for kids, and honestly, not very interesting, although popular. And the bureaucracy in the domain just makes it impossible that a talented genius pops out just by himself.
Tencent has an online platform here http://ac.qq.com/ for independent authors, but even the most popular stories just don't earn enough.
And the cruel fact is that most of what is presented is simply not up to any standard. Stories are either boring, childish, or they're simply rip-offs whatever popular comic/manga/superhero story already exists somewhere else, made with "Chinese characteristics". Yeah, hide your surprise. I've been looking into it for a long time, and didn't find more than just 2 or 3 comics I could find interesting enough. All with many reservations.
Most artists just make comics as a part-time earner at best, while working for the gaming or children books industry. Which means that their works rarely mature into anything compelling. The incentives just aren't there. As with many things in China, I can't help but thing this is a gigantic waste of talents, as I'm sure many great artists would have so many interesting things to express, should they have the needed freedom/social safety to do so.
DrMonkey:
That's a pity, traditional Chinese painting meeting comics would be awesome. Think of the stories you can tell with a style inspired from ink-painting... There's a Belgish serie called "Le Moine Fou" by Vink (a Vietnamese), who's main protagonist is an European orphan in late Song Dynasty China. She travel through China, looking after a past, meeting various characters and kicking asses, a bit like Sun Wu Kong...
What you are saying, well, I kind of expected it (editors taking no risks, bureaucracy smashing any hope for grass-root efforts to do something new), but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I remember an acquaintance hiring the skills of a Chinese comic artist for a video game. I saw some of her unpublished work, and it was cool, original ... and unpublished. She could only get paid working for marketing.
DrMonkey,
Thanks for posting the question.
1) If time could go back to 1980s and early 1990s when I was still a adolescent, I was able to show you all the comics books at my home (we were poor Chinese family but rich in books); they were in various forms and readable for both children and adults. This attributed to my father, whom was working in Xinhua Bookstore and was fond of buying in various books for us such as those periodical magazines called Comics "连环画报“ and Profound mysteries "奥秘”. He also bought western culture books like The Adventure of TinTin and science fiction book (i remember there was the story that the elder brother got lost in a icehouse and was found 20 yrs later when his younger brother has grown up into a young man while he was still a 7 year old boy). All those stories are so vivid, spritual and impressed us a lot. I could hardly speak how much we loved those comics magazines and books (I also remember a poem which was telling us how young human being we still were that I read from a children's newspaper my dad subscribed for us). The comic books cover all cultures from western to eastern, from ancient time to modern age, from classical to anecdotes, and they were drawn by excellent Chinese caricaturists, some of them, have passed away a few years ago, as i remember. The books were sold very cheap at that time, and my father still keeps some of the old books including the Fapiao at home. It is also necessary to mention that Xinhua Bookstore is national-owned bookstore; it was prosperous during 1980s and earlier 1990s because of the nation's policy on publication kind of at "letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend". I was very lucky to have had the access to the comic books when was kid. Some neighborhood kids came to read and took books away and never returned us the books..
2) There has to be market for it. China achieved today's 'achievements' with only decades of years that developed countries used hundreds of years to achieve? Many good stuff shaded away and replaced with highly commercialized stuff that are dull and pale in spirit. My Chinese pals who didn't read some good comics in childhood know little fun about that. They are also the group to be educated; we need as many good stuff as possible to cleanse the stuffy brain. We need open minded and audacious government officials...
RiriRiri:
That's an interesting statement.
On many levels, China was much more lively culturally speaking a few decades ago.
But I'm afraid you'll never have "open minded and audacious government officials" under current circumstances. Get real, those folks are out with the cultural flamethrower and ready to put to ashes whatever sounds like a threat.
Which is exactly how they see a market of anything original and not necessarily "bankable".
Because if anyone is not making it into people's moneybag, then they're making it into people's heart and conscience. And that, my friend, is their private garden.
DrMonkey:
About 1) => Can you mention some title in Pinyin ? I would be very happy to find those, I'm sure there are some gems :)
About 2), on industrial transition => The statement "we did in a few decades what took others centuries" is, hum, to be polite, a fallacy. Let's assume we are speaking of an industrial revolution. You are comparing societies who have to figure out something never done before (setting up a steam-power base society, a petrol & electricity society) with zero examples, to a society who had plenty of examples to look for (a backlog of 50, 100 years to observe ?), with many of the problems solved and studied, with training facilities (ie. students sent abroad), people willing to help, foreign help, etc. I would rather blame some serious mismanagement at an epic scale and an extremely pig-headed attitude to the idea of reforming one-self. To give an example : Japan had a different attitude : they took Dutch science book, translated them and tried to reproduce what was new to them. They saw that those books were indeed mostly right and damn important. Later on, they sent students abroad, invited foreign expert, etc. The Meiji era and its reforms. They had a modern industry pretty fast too, despite a serious lack of natural resources. Duplicating the wheel rather than inventing it is of course much faster, especially with external help.
About 2), the contribution of comics to education => Same here, completely agree.
RiriRiri:
As always Monkey completes my half assed thought. We should team up and write something sometimes.
October1st:
DrMonkey,
I need to collect with my elder sister. She remembers those titles better than me :) will get back to you later.
@RiriRiri. Your comments are right for our heart voices. You must have done a lot of researches here. Those are insightful.
RiriRiri:
More of a witness really, like many others here. But thanks.
I know that Tintin was pretty popular in China.
Surprisingly, some people even knew Asterix.
As you said, popular comics in China are either Japanese mangas, or their Chinese ripo- I mean original products that share similarities but are totally unrelated.
