Tag Archives: Ng Suat Tong

Ooku Volume 1: Some Impressions

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Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku is set in an alternate Edo period Japan where the male population has been halved by an epidemic known as the Redpox with the women taking the majority of male societal roles as a result. Noah has a short synopsis and glowing review of the first volume at the previous HU site and is probably its most articulate proponent. In fact, his gushing enthusiasm for the series is the reason why I picked up a copy of volume 2 without even bothering to read the volume I had at hand.

I’m a bit more ambivalent about what I’ve read so far.

One of my problems with Ooku is that it asks us to accept a logical leap of faith without sufficient justification: that a Japan reduced to a population consisting of 25% men would be ruled and dominated by women over the course of 3 Shogunates (80 years). The haste with which the scenario is dispensed to the readers in the initial pages of the first volume suggests that Yoshinaga is less concerned with the internal consistency of her scenario than with its final consequences.

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Torturing Children for the Honor of the Nation – A Comment

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(or Torturing Children can be Ignored, but only sometimes)

This is a reply to some of Noah’s comments following his review of Lady Snowblood which can be found here. From the looks of things, this might be a manga themed week at The Hooded Utilitarian.

In his final comments, Noah writes:

“Well, there’s appalling morality and then there’s appalling morality. I don’t have any trouble with lots of things that are variously horrific, from Johnny Ryan to Female Prisoner Scorpion to slasher films.”

It’s difficult for me to mount an adequate defense of the manga of Kazuo Koike (and Lady Snowblood is somewhat typical of Koike) since I’m not really that much of a fan. In fact, I’m pretty much totally detached from his works in the same way I’m pretty detached from Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – interested enough to recognize him as an important voice in manga but not enough to recommend him to anyone with only a peripheral interest in comics.

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Ghost World Roundtable: The Comics Outside the Story & Other Things

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[Editorial Update: This is a post in a roundtable on Ghost World. The first, by kinukitty is here. The second by Charles Reece can be found here. Richard’s contribution can be found here and Noah’s take here.]

I bought a hardcover collection of Ghost World sometime in 1997 because I enjoyed Dan Clowes’ story in serialization when I first read it in the pages of Eightball.  “Always nice to have a hardy, well-packaged edition for future reference,” I thought to myself. I don’t think I’ve cracked open the pages of the hardcover more than a couple of times in the intervening years.

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Original Art : Some Lessons from the Contemporary Art Market

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When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

– Warren Buffet


The reason why I’ve chosen to start this blog entry with some quotes by the world’s most famous investor is, in a sense, the same reason why an economist by training chose to write a book about the contemporary fine art market (the book in question is Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art). It is also the reason why the same book has been mentioned sporadically in original art (OA) circles including industry professionals like former TCJ editor, Robert Boyd.

While original art was never designed as an investment tool, that is exactly what it is often viewed and discussed as – often by default considering the high prices commanded in recent years for certain pieces. Certainly original art is viewed as a business by many of the significant players in the hobby and a working knowledge of the original art market is indispensable if anybody has a mind to acquire comics art without losing one’s shirt. It is a rare thing indeed for a discussion of comics art to revolve around the aesthetic qualities of the page in question. Discussions inevitably return to questions of price. Questions of value are often more discretely handled through the privacy of personal messages if at all. Such is the nature of a hobby which values a degree of sensitivity to fellow collectors and their tastes.

Buffet is long term investor who aims to divorce emotions from any act of investment. In contrast a skilled professional trader successfully preys upon the emotions of the amateurs who form the bulk of the market. Buffet’s reminder to assess the underlying value of a stock also applies to a piece of original art. Yet the average collector would have great difficulty in calculating the equivalent of a PE ratio or NAV for a piece of original art. What makes it doubly hard to put various time tested ideas in investing into practice in the original art market is the fact that the appreciation of a significant proportion of the art is predicated to a large extent on fluff – emotions filtered through nostalgia. It is a market ripe for manipulation.


Don Thompson’s book has gained more notice in recent times because of the collapse of the contemporary fine art market.The original art community’s interest in Thompson’s book pertains to its accurate description of the irrational aspects of collecting art, the market forces which can be applied to a hypothetical original art bubble and the apparent immunity of the original art market to such forces.

Here are a few quotes from the book up here which may be relevant to original art collecting not only for their similarities but for their significant differences. I present them without commentary so it would be wise to evaluate Thompson’s statements and facts with care:

“The experienced art collector will take a work home before buying it, to look at it several times a day. The question is whether a week or a month hence, after the novelty disappears, the message and painter’s skill will still be apparent.”

“”Never underestimate how insecure buyers are about contemporary art, and how much they always need reassurance.” This is a truth that everyone in the art trade seems to understand, but no one talks about. The insecurity does not mean art buyers lack ability. It simply means that for the wealthy, time is their scarcest resource…So, very often, the way the purchase decision for contemporary art is made is not just about art, but about minimizing that insecurity.”

“Of the thousand artists who had serious gallery shows in New York and London during the 1980s, no more than twenty were offered in evening auctions at Christie’s or Sotheby’s in 2007. Eight of ten works purchased directly from an artist and half the works purchased at auction will never again resell at their purchase price. In the end, the question “what is judged to be valuable contemporary art” is determined first by major dealers, later by branded auction houses, a bit by museum curators who stage special shows, very little by art critics, and hardly at all by buyers.”

“[Jasper] Johns was in awe of [Leo] Castelli’s ability to market art. In 1960 Willem de Kooning said of Castelli, “That son of a bitch, you could give him two beer cans and he could sell them.” Johns laughed and created a sculpture of two Ballantine Ale empties. Castelli immediately sold the work to collectors Robert and Ethel Scull. The cans are now in a German museum.”


“One former Gagosian employee claims that in about a quarter of the cases, clients says “I’ll take it” without ever asking “What does it look like?” or “How much?”. These are not cold-calls; they are made to existing clients only. Gagosian says he avoids what he calls “impatient money,” that which chases art only as a short-term investment.”

“The reassurance given by the dealer’s brand is reinforced by the behavior of the crowd. As critic Robert Hughes says of New York collectors: “Most of the time they buy what other people buy. They move in great schools, like bluefish, all identical. There is safety in numbers. If one wants Schnabel, they all want Schnabel, if one wants Keith Haring, two hundred Keith Harings will be sold.””


“When a work appears at auction, some dealers bid up to what it would sell for at the dealership, to protect the gallery market. Some buy back the work to protect the artist from going unsold. Opinion differs as to whether such price support is necessary. Some claim that it is an absolute obligation for dealers…”

“When, after a long bidding battle, the auctioneer hammered down Mark Rothko’s painting White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) at $71.7 million, there was sustained audience applause. What was being celebrated? The buyer’s oil wealth? The triumph of his ego? His aesthetic taste? A new record price, sometimes well above that asked for a similar work earlier that day by the gallery down the street? When the auction hammer falls, price becomes equated with value, and this is written into art history.” [bolds mine]


“Robert Storr…says one of the challenges facing museums is “getting the public to forget the economic history of the object once it leaves the market; the more stress on how much a museum or donor paid…the more likely people will miss seeing the work of art because of preoccupation about the price tag.”….Art critics and curators also follow the dictates of art prices. Expensive work becomes meaningful in part because it is expensive. Critics write essays interpreting the work of Jeff Koons or Tracey Emin – and many articles about Damien Hirst – but never admit that the reason the work has meaning is because so much has been paid for it…The history of contemporary art would be different if there were no reported auction results…”

“How does a work then come to be worth $12 million or $140 million? This has more to do with the way the contemporary art market has become a competitive high-stakes game, fueled by great amounts of money and ego…The value of one work of art compared to another is in no way related to the time or skill that went into producing it, or even whether anyone even considers it to be great art.”

“Perceived scarcity also produces inflated prices. It does not have to be real scarcity; it can occur when an artist’s primary dealer withholds her work and announces the existence of a queue of high-status buyers. It isn’t that anyone believes the artist’s work might never again be available; it is a combination of fear that prices will go up, coupled with the “I will pay to have it now” approach of the wealthy young collector.””

“Art prices are propelled by what is known in economics as a ratchet effect. A ratchet turns in only one direction, and then locks in place…The ratchet effect in art occurs when two collectors bid up the auction price of a Matthias Weischer oil to ten times the gallery’s list price, and this becomes a new reference price below which no collector wants to sell. In an auction, a form of ratchet is at work when the first five items sell for double their estimate. The higher quality items that follow must be worth more.”


“If the ratchet, perceived scarcity, and too much money consistently push prices up, is the entire contemporary art market just a bubble, a form of Dutch tulip craze? Art dealers and auction specialists never use the word “crash”, and hate the word “bubble”. The immutable rule in a buoyant art market is that the participants suspend all doubt.”

“Tobias Meyer famously claimed that “The best art is the most expensive because the market is so smart.” Jerry Saltz responds, “This is exactly wrong. The market isn’t ‘smart’, it’s like a camera – so dumb it’ll believe anything you put in front of it…everyone says the market is ‘about quality’, the market merely assigns value, fetishizes desire, charts hits and creates ambience.”

_______________________________________________

One of the most acrimonious public debates this year pertaining to the wheeling and dealing in the original art market occurred sometime in July on the Collector’s Society original art message board where the collectors Felix Lu (a relatively new collector with a penchant for digging out dirt) and Jonathan Mankuta (a self-described big player in the original art market) clashed over a piece of art. It also involved the dealer Mike Burkey (one of the oldest and most canny dealers in the business) who runs Romitaman.com. It is a dispute which will be very familiar to original art collectors but a short summary might be of some interest to people who don’t indulge.


In short, a Kirby splash page from X-Men #2 appeared on Burkey’s website with an asking price of $150,000. Lu suggested that it was overpriced and actually on consignment with Burkey with Mankuta as the possible consignee. It was a dispute which escalated to accusations of the page being shopped to various collectors with no success prior to the alleged consignment, imputations of nefarious dealings and, not unexpectedly, mutual belittlement. The thread in question can be found here (with a parallel discussion on the Comicart list) and takes in talk (real or suggested) of a black listing, humorous asides concerning black robed original art cabals and exclusive “sandboxes” for the big players in original art collecting. Readers of Seth’s Wimbledon Green will be amused.

Questioning the “ethics” of comic art dealers would also appear to be a particularly touchy subject in the hobby. I suspect that many of these complaints would fall by the way side if most collectors viewed original art dealers in the same way they viewed professional stock traders who I do not consider definitively immoral but who should probably be held at arms length by those seeking to dive into such waters.

It is of course a far cry from the straightforward market manipulation in the contemporary art market as described in Don Thompson’s book or Ben Lewis’ documentary. The asking price of $150,000 for the X-Men splash was probably inflated because of the expectation of a mixture of trade involved in such deals (i.e. deals in which other similarly inflated pieces of art are exchanged). A whole different economy comes into play when cold hard cash is the medium of exchange as it is with most auction houses and sites such as Heritage Auction Galleries which only accepts cash (sometimes leveraged I do believe but still “cash”). This historically important and very early Kirby and Ayers Journey Into Mystery #84 Thor splash which was recently sold for $44,182.50 at a Heritage auction (a mere fraction of the asking price for the X-Men splash) is a case in point.


There are signs though that the original art market is far more healthy than some collectors had hoped. The incredulity which greeted the sale of a Steve Ditko Mr. A splash page (which sold for close to $38,000 at the same auction) is the “freak” result getting the most mileage at present.


For those not in the know, this dollar value is higher than most of the Dtiko Amazing Spider-Man pages sold recently at auction. The same auction saw this Prince Valiant Sunday going for $21,510.


Some believe the depreciation of the US dollar against the Euro is a factor in these relatively high prices but a quick look at the Prince Valiant Sundays which have come up in recent auctions would suggest that the price has also been bumped up by the quality of the Sunday in question. Similarly, a very respectable and historically important Krazy Kat Sunday went for $27,485 at the same auction. It is not the best Krazy Kat Sunday that has come up for auction in recent years but it is perhaps in the top 20% in terms of aesthetic quality if such things can even be gauged accurately.


I believe that the most important reason (and there are many I assure you) for the original art markets apparent resistance to the global economic downturn is that in absolute terms, the sums of money being discussed are still small – even more so in global terms with the falling US Dollar and incipient inflationary pressures. Certainly the sums involved are small enough that any leverage involved is minimal. The entire original art market is insignificant enough in economic terms that it will never be provided with very large amounts of excess liquidity – an important component in the formation of asset bubbles. Nor does it provide anything close to the requisite amount of bragging rights which fueled the madness seen in the fine art market. If there is a bubble forming in comics original art, it is a small one.

This is not to say that current original art prices present themselves as value buys – that’s anyone’s guess. Still it must be said that you couldn’t buy a car (a depreciating “asset”) in Singapore for the cost of the Krazy Kat Sunday mentioned above and there are many of those zipping around the streets where I live. Actually, you couldn’t even pay for the right to buy a car (called a Certificate of Entitlement or COE) in Singapore for the price of an average Krazy Kat Sunday.

I present these facts in order to provide some perspective on the real cost of original art. Prices for original art seem crazy only because of the provincial attitude with which the entire original art market is viewed. I say this even though I’m a collector (albeit a lackadaisical one) of original art myself. While there is something to be said for a certain kind of naïveté there are a number of associated traits which collectors might do well to leave far behind in these shark-infested waters.

Desert Island Comics

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As you may have heard, the HU bloggers are taking a break this Thanksgiving week.

I will be heading off to Indonesia myself so it seemed “appropriate” to bring up the subject of desert island comics (see here for Shaenon K. Garrity’s survey of various industry professionals on the same subject). I was first exposed to the whole concept through the BBC’s Desert Island Discs about 20 years back. Now I won’t be following all the rules laid down by Roy Plomley but the radio program did have the useful proviso that the guest would be “automatically given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work” (from Wikipedia).

One way in which I’ll deviate away from that program’s premise is that I’m going to be choosing a comic and only a single one at that. I’ve never viewed a desert island comic as one which a person might objectively consider the best ever made. Nor would it necessarily be that person’s favorite comic (though this would be the most obvious choice) or even a comic which has affected the person the most deeply. These factors might be seen to overlap but some books have a habit of affecting readers at particular periods of their lives only. Rather, it whould be a combination of all these factors to varying degrees: aesthetic beauty, emotional involvement or attachment, length and most importantly timelessness – a complex simplicity which affords endless re-readings. After all, you’ll be stuck on that island for quite a bit of time – maybe for the rest of your life.

Lest we forget, you’ll be taking along your desert island disc and desert island book as well. In my case, I will be searching for a desert island comic to go along with my copy of Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms and a piece of music by J. S. Bach. It certainly wouldn’t be a copy of Watchmen, a run of Kirby’s Fantastic Four, Chris Ware’s The Acme Novelty Library or a collection of comics by Robert Crumb. As far as modern day pamphlet comics are concerned, Love and Rockets probably stands as good as chance as any of being included in my short list but even that would be a stretch. I would consider bringing along a collection of Krazy Kat or Peanuts strips. The former in particular seems to demonstrate quite engagingly the growth of the artist from his early years of enthusiasm to a middle period of great flowering before the final months of unmistakable and very palpable struggle and depression.

[Second to last Krazy Kat Sunday from Rob Stolzer’s collection.]

But what I would really need is something to balance out a palate made raw by too much erudition and history and whenever I think about this, it is Carl Bark’s Disney Duck Comics which come to mind first (the Uncle Scrooge stories in particular have a place close to my heart). When I read Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics a few months back, one thing I noticed was how exceptional Bark’s stories were even in the presence of his illustrious peers. It must be said though that I can’t discount the effect of nostalgia here. “The Paul Bunyan Machine” story from Uncle Scrooge #28 was one of the first comics I ever read as a child.

Is it perhaps a bit disturbing that I’m putting a Barks Duck story in the same category as Shakespeare or one of the most important books in Chinese literature? Perhaps. It may simply be a reflection of the youthfulness of comics as an art form. Still, as far as reading material is concerned, there are few things as relaxing or viscerally delightful as a good comic. Certainly no piece of traditional literature has offered me so much for so little effort. In the same way that the qualities of the best children’s comics exceed those of most (if not all) children’s literature, what comics have always offered is a very accessible and intensely rich and fulfilling experience, one which has every chance of breaking down the crumbling barriers between high and low art. Only time will tell if it fulfills this promise.

Original Art: Living with Comics Art

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As with any hobby, collecting comics original art has its own complexities which take in both the aesthetics and economics of the form.

The latter aspect is one of the most hotly debated topics in the hobby because of the escalation of prices of original art over the last few years – prices which which have been barely affected by the ongoing global recession (more on this at a late date).

With regards the aesthetics of original art (i.e. an original page of comics art viewed in isolation on a wall), the academic Andrei Molotiu has written an approach to this in The International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) the main points of which I might bring up sometime in the future.

That article uses Molotiu’s own collection as a frame of reference. I should say here that much of the writing concerning original art tends to focus on the individual writer’s personal collection if only because of the lack of public access to most of the art in question. Not only are public collections of comic art small in number, even fewer have sufficient depth to allow for the study of a broad range of cartoonists. In fact, the vast majority of important pieces lie in private hands. There are exceptions of course. The large collection of original art from Little Orphan Annie under safekeeping at Boston University and the complete art to Amazing Fantasy #15 for example.

Viewing a piece of original art can sometimes reveal circumstances not immediately apparent on a simple reading of the final product (i.e. the comic itself). For example, some might find the number of corrections and white out marks on this page by Frank Miller from The Dark Knight Triumphant worthy of interest.

The fact that people own small panels from the same comic which are likely to be Miller’s reworking of some scenes as well as possible corrections to Klaus Janson’s inking might also be of note historically speaking.

At the risk of stating the obvious, pages from The Dark Knight Returns are some of the most expensive pieces of art in modern comics. Pages from Walt Kelly’s Pogo on the other hand are cheap. Certainly much cheaper than a page from The Dark Knight Returns but also considerably less expensive than art from some other classic strips like Flash Gordon, Krazy Kat or Prince Valiant etc.

[A Pogo Sunday from an upcoming Heritage Auction which is another site to find high quality scans of comics original art.]

Most of Kelly’s strips have not seen publication for a few decades which obviously contributes to their lack of visibility and desirability. Only a person with access to a sizable collection of vintage newspaper cartoon sections would be apprised of the bulk of Kelly’s run.

Pogo is, to me, one of the greatest strips ever published. A full Sunday is available at a fraction of the price of other more illustration-based strips or even the estimated price of a Calvin and Hobbes daily – a strip which it influenced significantly and to which it compares very favorably. This relates to supply and demand. Not only is art from Calvin and Hobbes much more desired than art from Pogo, the supply is virtually non-existent (though there’s this example by one of the biggest collectors in the hobby) because of Bill Watterson’s understandable reluctance to sell his art work.

One of the pleasures of “living” with a piece of art is that you begin to notice details which you would not in a 2-3 minute gallery appraisal (online or otherwise). Most readers would probably have read through an average Pogo Sunday like the one below in a matter of minutes (if not less). Take a moment to read it now.

As most readers will know, while Pogo is of particular note for its political content, it began life as a children’s comic in Dell’s Animal Comics. The example above reflects the strips more light-hearted origins. Even so, it reveals a great deal of Kelly’s craft.

For one, there’s the extensive wordplay which may not register, in all its fullness, on a simple Sunday morning read through. The constant exposure to the Pogo Sunday above (which hangs in my apartment) has made me even more acutely aware of the density of Kelly’s technique.

In the fourth panel of the strip, we have Miz Beaver commenting on “the finest mess of pies..ever seed” in anticipation of what is to happen later in the strip – something which would require more than a single reading to pick up (And who has actually asked the question of her? Are we the readers asking with anything but our eyes?).

In the sixth panel, Albert breaks into a soliloquy on the seasons declaiming, “Off I spring, as prettily as a summer zephyr…” , as he launches into one of his cricket hops. In the eighth panel, Miz Beaver exclaims, “Oh dear, always they go Splobsh”, almost as if she had some experience in the bespatterment of pies, while the last 2 panels of the Sunday suggest a reference to the economics of the same. The pies are noted to be “a mite tart but tasty”, not only referring to their slightly acidic taste (def: 1 : agreeably sharp or acid to the taste 2 : marked by a biting, acrimonious, or cutting quality) but also a synonym for that type of confection. And let’s not forget that Albert is using the word in relation to a female baker who has recently laid out her wares.

Perhaps most complex of all is Albert’s complaint in the third panel where he states, “My Ma was cricket champeen of Ol’ Gummidge-on-the Wicket”. Gummidge-on-the-Wicket is an obvious reference to a cricket ground and nothing to do with insects. Nor is it named after any notable first class cricket ground but is ostensibly some Anglicized village in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp in the Southern United States. If anything, the name of the cricket ground has more to with the nature of Albert’s mother. One online encyclopedia defines “gummidge” as:

“Gummidge a peevish, self-pitying, and pessimistic person, given to complaining, from the name of Mrs Gummidge, a character in Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850).”

And here we have the Wikipedia entry which I have not confirmed myself since I read David Copperfield far too many years ago to remember the character’s exact nature:

“Mrs. Gummidge – The widow of Daniel Peggotty’s partner in a boat. She is a self-described “lone, lorn creetur” who spends much of her time pining for “the old ‘un” (her late husband). After Emily runs away from home with Steerforth, she changes her attitude to better comfort everyone around her and tries to be very caring and motherly. She too emigrates to Australia with Dan and the rest of the surviving family.”

The crickets which appear in over half the panels remain silent bemused observers throughout, pacing along with Pogo while not demonstrating any of their own hopping skills.

Beyond the dense wordplay, there are certain elements which can be seen only upon viewing the original art. There’s the carefully hand-drawn title “Pogo” which contrasts with the occasional title paste-ups which occur in some of Kelly’s Sundays.

There are the ubiquitous blue pencils which were used to sketch in the script in many of Kelly’s strips and his careful arrangement (or rearrangement) of word balloons.

A pencil sketch which does not correspond to the final inked version is used to delineate Albert’s flight (a change of heart or merely a guide?) …

… and later, Kelly corrects the disposition of one of Miz Beaver’s pies to allow for a more accurate trajectory with respect to a previous panel.

Something else which might not be apparent from a simple reading of the final printed strip is Kelly’s effortless technique which is devoid of hesitation, a single inking correction or white out.

A simple and somewhat insignificant Pogo Sunday like this one may not have the endless fascination of a truly great painting or etching but it still affords a reasonable amount of pleasure whenever I glance at it each day.

Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese: A Few Observations

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(Black and White and Startlingly Offensive All Over – Part 5)

Readers looking for reviews, synopses and reading guides pertaining to Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese should head straight to the links above.

(1) Gene Yang’s comic concerns an American-born Chinese boy called, Jing Wang, and his journey of self-discovery through the largely white American landscape of his new high school. It has been described as a personal though not autobiographical work, the creation of which helped the author work through a number of problems.

I asked an Asian American friend who collects Yang’s art why he enjoyed American Born Chinese. He wrote back saying:

“For me, growing up Chinese in the US (and specifically, a very white town), I could relate to Gene (as the story is somewhat autobiographical). I enjoyed everything about the story: I’m a sucker for Monkey King, I liked how the three stories converged at the end…even the horrible racist caricature, something I would normally take great offense to, I thought worked well in the context of the story…I think the book resonates with anyone who has felt like an “other”…so it’s not necessarily specific to ABCs. I’ve met Gene and had some nice talks with him…Derek Kirk Kim said that ABC is a book he wish was around when he was a kid…so I’m happy for all the kids now, like my daughter, who have a book like ABC as part of their library”

I should add here that I found Yang’s book largely unprofitable both emotionally and intellectually speaking when I read it a few years back and my impression has changed little following my current reappraisal.

It is, however, notable for its close examination of the complex relationship between Asian Americans and their Eastern and Western heritage. Yang’s alteration of a famous segment from Wu Chengen’s Journey to the West (to fit in with his Catholic faith) is probably representative of this aspect of his comic. Kristy Valenti’s interview with Gene Yang in The Comics Journal #284 explains some of his motivations:

“There have already been a lot of adaptations of the Monkey King story…it’s almost like a genre in and of itself, adaptations of Journey to the West. When I was doing research on on the Monkey King, I realized this and I thought I couldn’t bring anything new to the table…I decided to approach it from an Asian-American outlook. And the way I decided to do that is by combining the two foundational stories from these two different cultures: the Monkey King story and the story of Christ…I would say it’s more C.S. Lewis-y than what you would find in medieval Catholicism.”

and later…

“…in the final scene, Jin is still speaking in English even though Wei-Chen’s speaking in Chinese….for me personally a lot of it is about finding who you are, having the definition of who you are be informed by both Western and Eastern cultures and making something new out of it. I think that’s what Asian-Americans are in the midst of doing right now…I think for Asian-Americans the temptation is to completely deny the Asian side, the Eastern side. And when you do that, you make the legends and the mythologies and the culture of your parents into these stereotypes. So that’s why I had the Monkey King become Chin-Kee.”

I don’t know if Journey to the West can be described as “the” foundational story of the Chinese people but it is certainly one of the most important works of classical Chinese literature. Here are some scenes from Yang’s comic juxtaposed with corresponding episodes from a famous adaptation:

[The following images are from a low quality English-Chinese bootleg translation. The original comic was published by the Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House.]

Over the course of his comic, Yang not only relates his slightly altered version of the origins of the Monkey King (otherwise known as the Monkey God in many parts of Asia) but also transforms Monkey into a distant cousin of his protagonist – a caricature of all things Chinese.

This cousin, Chin-Kee, represents Jin Wang’s grotesque view of his Asian heritage as well as his acceptance of various stereotypical views promulgated by Western society. It is only following Jin Wang’s epiphany at the close of Yang’s comic that Chin-Kee’s true and more illustrious identity is revealed.

(2) As would be expected, the liberal use of racial slurs (“chink”, “nip” etc) by Asian Americans and white Americans (both in Yang’s comic and in reality) is something which occurs rarely in Chinese majority nations. The former group probably feel they are in the process of reclaiming such terminology in the way African Americans have sought to reclaim the word “nigger”. I can’t say that I find this approach particularly useful but then again, I’m not Asian American. If anything, it’s a bit jarring for me to hear these terms strewn about generously in conversations or in on-line chat rooms.

In Singapore (where I live), the racial slurs are directed at other minority races (Caucasians, Malays, Indians and even mainland Chinese). Singapore is an ethnically diverse country where the lingua franca is English and the population over 70% Chinese. Approximately one third of its population of 5 million has foreign citizenship, a factor which has led in recent years to growing social tension. It has to be said though that the situation is considerably less acute than the discrimination directed against foreigners in South Korea (which is more racially homogeneous) as described in a recent New York Times article concerning a South Korean woman and her Indian boyfriend.

For better or worse, Singapore has long had strict laws against racial incitement as demonstrated by the recent arrest of a number of bloggers for racist content on their websites. The bloggers were Chinese and their targets Malay (who constitute 15% of the population).

For some, this would be justification enough for William Gibson’s somewhat exaggerated and completely unrelated article on Singapore for Wired magazine (“Disney Land with the Death Penalty”) where he writes, “…and you come to suspect that the reason you see so few actual police [in Singapore] is that people here all have, to quote William Burroughs, “the policeman inside.” Of course in this case, the police were having a ball of a time on-line.

Singapore’s Minister for Law reiterated this stance in a Q & A at the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) Rule of Law Plenary Session in October 2009:

“Freedom of choice must include the right to make bad choices. But where it impacts society, and where it impacts on key aspects, say for example, stability, society should have a right to have a say. Let me explain that by specific reference to an illustration. Let’s say, hate speech on the internet or publications. If anyone stood up and said I am expressing or I am exercising my right of free speech by saying that “all Jews are hateful”, or “all Muslims are bad’, we will arrest and charge him. Because for us, that freedom of expression does not extend to this sort of hate speech where violence against a particular ethnicity or religion or belief can be encouraged. And we have charged people for putting up such notices. We are particularly sensitive about it in our Chinese, Muslim, Hindu context. People have been charged for putting up notices against one or the other ethnic communities where it goes beyond some expression of opinion to incite them towards violence.”

(3) These are moves which would meet with strong resistance in a liberal Western society. While Yang directs a large amount of his ire at Patrick Oliphant in the pages of his book, there is no indication that he would deny Oliphant the right to disseminate his brand of “racism”.

Over the course of American Born Chinese, Yang not only names his racially challenged high school after Oliphant…

…but also quotes directly from one of Oliphant’s offending editorial cartoons.

Oliphant is of course well known for using racial caricatures in his cartoons. In this case, his animosity was directed at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Oliphant’s cartoon is objectively offensive and designed as such. In fact, the only adequate gauge for its effectiveness lies in its ability to draw a response from its target (in this case, not so much the CCP which could care less but Chinese in general). Its ability to draw the knowing nods of the majority of Americans who have a deep antipathy towards the CCP is of course important but hardly newsworthy and hence only a small measure of its success.

Controversy is mother’s milk to the political cartoonist. This is amply demonstrated in an article for the New York Times by Francis X. Clines who writes:

“Mr. Oliphant feels that the ”confrontational art” of political cartooning needs a boost from provocative work like Mr. Genn’s if it is to survive the homogenizing pressures of American culture. ”We are drowning in political correctness and somebody’s got to kill it,” he said. ”It’s the ruination of my business,” he added, citing individual newspapers that withhold his more controversial work or quickly apologize for it when the first complaint is lodged.”

And later…

“Mr. Oliphant’s inclination is to pick on everyone and never apologize for what he does. ”You have to get mad in this business, work yourself up to a boil once a day,” he said, as if this precious work dynamic can only be dulled by trying to keep in mind the multiple sensitivities of his variegated audience.”

It must be said though that such cartoons are as demanding on the satirical and artistic abilities of the cartoonist as drawing a large, beautifully cross-hatched penis on the editorial page of the New York Times.

It is not too difficult to see why Oliphant’s cartoon was seen to be threatening by some Asians living in America – that is, individuals with a vested interest in making the U.S. a more accommodating place for Asians. For the majority of Chinese throughout the world, however, Oliphant’s cartoon may simply confirm deep seated prejudices against Caucasians and the West.

[Not a political cartoon but a famous soap advertisement poster.]

With the passage of time, such cartoons may come to be seen as a marginally useful cultural and historical markers. Just as the Africans in Tintin in the Congo or Ebony in Will Eisner’s The Spirit continue to provide silent rebukes several decades down the line, such cartoons highlight the failings of a significant number of modern day political cartoonists. This is a form which consistently elevates superficiality and sensationalism over depth and intelligence. I for one will not mourn its passing.

[A positive image by a slightly more enlightened cartoonist, Thomas Nast.]

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Update by Noah: The whole racism roundtable is here.