"I love Taiwan, but I love comics even more," said President Chen Shui-bian last week as he visited the exhibition documenting the history of comics in Taiwan since 1945. Though trying to be humorous, Chen probably echoed the feelings of almost every teenager in Taiwan.
This is one show the kids will think is all right. Local comic books from the past are displayed alongside a few from Japan and the western world. Others included are manuscripts from the cartoonists, and popular comic books still out on the market.
Exhibit items go back to the year 1945, which is a defining year for local comics when the magazine "Hsin-hsin" (新新雜誌) was published. Active proponents of comics Ye Hung-chia (葉宏甲), Hung Chao-ming (洪晁明) and Chen Chia-peng (陳家鵬), whose samples can be seen in the show, filled the magazine with cartoons depicting social chaos after the World War II. Corruption, injustice, and inflation are vividly recorded on the "paper movies" by those socially conscious cartoonists that were unshaken even by political threats during the White Terror period.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HISTORY
The 1950s is another exciting phase for local comics. Some long-standing cartoonists started to flourish during this decade, exhibiting tremendous creativity and style, showing a strong local color and emotional attachment. Some of the artists featured in the show include: Chen Ting-kuo, (陳定國) who animated the local opera story "Beauty with the Chinese Eyes" (鳳眼美人); Liu Hsing-chin, (劉興欽) who detailed the life and culture of locals through the loveable, popular cartoon characters "Brother A-san" and "Great Auntie" (阿三哥與大嬸婆); and Niu Ke, (牛哥) who attracts a range of comic fans with his creation Uncle Ox (牛伯伯). Another special feature of the show is the work of Chen Hai-hung (陳海虹), who used traditional media of ink and brush to create martial arts stories and is thus dubbed the father of that type of comic book in Taiwan.
Local comics has their halcyon days until the mid-1960s, when comic artists came under political suppression. Censorship caused a dramatic drop in comic book publications, from 4,000 in 1966 to 200 in 1970. That year, when restrictions were relaxed, Japanese comic books dominated the market and have done so ever since. Recovery was slow for local comics, yet in the mid-1970s some local comics began to show up in newspapers, a harbinger of another heyday for Taiwanese strips.
Comics came to life again mainly because of the relaxation in the political arena and this encouraged new artists to express themselves. As can be seen from the multitude of copies in the show, all kinds of comic magazines flooded the market, with the long-awaited coming-of-age for local comics occurring in the 1990s.
Uen Cheng (鄭問) is one of the artists featured that rose to stardom in the mid-1980s. He was able to more freely express himself after the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979 because freedom of speech became a major issue. His comics could be seen in newspapers like the China Times Weekly (時報週刊) and he enraptured local readers with works such as "The Master of Warrior (鬥神)," "Panzer General (裝甲元帥)" and "Sword A-Bi (阿鼻劍)." Uen later on even drew the attention of the Japanese comic fans and aroused hugh interest with his "The Legend of Heros in East Chou Dynasty (東周英雄傳)."
For comic buffs, the museum has more information available.
The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations. Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved
Gabriel Gatehouse only got back from Florida a few minutes ago. His wheeled suitcase is still in the hallway of his London home. He was out there covering the US election for Channel 4 News and has had very little sleep, he says, but you’d never guess it from his twinkle-eyed sprightliness. His original plan was to try to get into Donald Trump’s election party at Mar-a-Lago, he tells me as he makes us each an espresso, but his contact told him to forget it; it was full, “and you don’t blag your way in when the guy’s survived two
The self-destructive protest vote in January that put the pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) side in control of the legislature continues to be a gift that just keeps on giving to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Last week legislation was introduced by KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-lin (翁曉玲) that would amend Article 9-3 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) to permit retired and serving (!) military personnel to participate in “united front” (統戰) activities. Since the purpose of those activities is to promote annexation of Taiwan to the PRC, legislators
Nov. 18 to Nov. 24 Led by a headman named Dika, 16 indigenous Siraya from Sinkan Village, in what is today’s Tainan, traveled to Japan and met with the shogun in the summer of 1627. They reportedly offered sovereignty to the emperor. This greatly alarmed the Dutch, who were allies of the village. They had set up headquarters on land purchased from the Sinkan two years earlier and protected the community from aggressive actions by their more powerful rivals from Mattau Village. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) had been embroiled in a bitter trade dispute with Japan, and they believed
RSS