Taiwan Today

The Taiwanese market for comic books is dominated by mangaka, or Japanese cartoonists, but local comic artists are fighting for their share.

As soon as the doors opened, visitors swarmed the exhibition hall of the Taipei World Trade Center for the 2010 Comic Exhibition held last July. Hundreds of books were sold in a few minutes. Bags, T-shirts, figurines, posters, DVDs and tea sets bearing pictures of manga characters sold like hotcakes. Some fans even camped out overnight to be the first to get autographs from dozens of authors invited to the exhibition. On the opening day, some 95,000 visitors flocked to the 350 stalls erected by 50 publishing houses, while 540,000 visitors were recorded during the six-day show, shattering the previous attendance record.

Comic books and comic strips have been seen throughout Taiwan since the beginning of the 20th century. As in most artistic fields, present-day comics show signs of influences from Japan and the United States. For a long time, comic strips were published mostly by newspapers. As for magazines, at first there was only Tokyo Puck, a Japanese periodical inspired by Puck—the now defunct American humor and satire weekly—but with a local flavor. The first comic book entirely made in Taiwan dates from 1935 and is the work of Chi Lung Shen, the pen name of Chen Bing-huang. This initial attempt was soon followed by a creative flow of talented and often politically committed artists such as Ye Hung-chia, Chen Kuang-hsi and Chen Ting-kuo, among others. According to Yang Jinn-shyh, an author of children’s comic books, the medium appeared throughout Taiwan in the 1940s. Artists like Lee Tze-fan, for example, contributed to comics before becoming a famous painter and art professor.

From the 1950s, during the standoff between the Republic of China on Taiwan and communists in the mainland, comic strips took on another mission: to spread anti-communist messages for the government. This was the first time Taiwanese comics hit a dry spell as authors switched to writing safe stories about Chinese legends and historical sagas that were less likely to draw the attention of the censors. This was regrettable since many great Chinese artists had taken refuge on the island by 1949.

All of Taiwan’s comic artists had trouble living off their work. “Drawings were paid by the sheet, but one sheet could barely buy a bowl of noodles,” Yang Jinn-shyh says. Many artists gave up and looked for better paying jobs. It is for this reason that Japanese comics, first imported in the 1960s, were able to take over the market. Thanks to mostly pirated copies, manga found an eager readership in Taiwan. Another reason for their popularity was that compared to American comics, they shared an Asian cultural background. In the 1980s, authorities decided to crack down on the industry and required editors to respect copyrights. Manga magazines were also required to publish at least 20 percent “Taiwanese” comics. Though the Japanese style is still widely used, comics with a more “local” flavor have enabled some of the island’s artists to survive and have even launched the careers of a few new ones in the profession since that time.

In the 1990s, Taiwanese artists took advantage of this craze for Japanese manga. Riding the wave of the imports’ popularity, they managed to garner a certain amount of success with very similar plots and drawing styles. One of the few exceptions is the Young Guns series penned by Lin Cheng-te. The title stands out not only because of its better-than-average drawing, but also because it tells about the daily life of young Taiwanese, in total contrast with Japanese manga. The author released the 11th installment of the series in 2010, with the promise of one final volume to come. Today, the overall environment for the industry, however, is not so promising, as the Internet and digital games have overtaken the habit of reading. “In such conditions, Taiwanese [comic book] authors—there are around 40—are barely able to survive,” says Chen Zhao-wei, manager of the Wawa Bookstore, which his father founded in 1973 in Taipei. “The market has lost 50 percent of its value over the past 10 years.”

Still, comics represent a market of around NT$2 billion (US$65 million) in Taiwan, although that market is dominated by Japanese artists, who occupy a 90 percent market share. Chen thinks that an author’s personal drawing style is not the key factor in marketing comic books, however. “What counts here is the ability to tell a story, and most importantly, one that appeals to local readers independent of the drawing style, be it Japanese, American or a hybrid of the two,” he says. The bookseller says around 50 percent of the market is made up of manga stories for teenagers, where characters usually overcome their fears. Manga stories for young adolescent girls involving princes take up 30 percent, and office love stories popular among younger employees occupy around 10 percent. “Japanese mangaka have mastered the recipe for success. Even if the quality of drawings varies, their stories all share the same three fundamental ingredients: they tell of a victory, are full of suspense and focus on friendship,” he says. “These authors build gripping plots out of nothing and target their readership very precisely.”

One of the more successful local authors who share the 10 percent of the market not controlled by Japanese competitors is Wei Zhong-chen, whose story inspired by the goddess Mazu has sold more than 10,000 copies. Another is Akru, the pen name of Shen Ying-jie, who participated in the International Comic Fair held in October 2010 in Chambéry, France and has sold around 10,000 volumes of her moving stories about Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. From a business point of view, publishing is not cost effective unless a book sells more than 3,000 copies, Chen Zhao-wei says, while it is a true feat for a Taiwanese author to sell 10,000. By comparison, Japanese manga titles sell in the hundreds of thousands, he adds.

In addition to professional authors, there are “tongren” throughout Taiwan. Tongren is an obscure term even Taiwanese have trouble explaining, though an approximate translation could be artists working in the tradition of the fanzine, or fan-generated comics “inspired” by original works. The expression, originally doujin in Japanese, also describes amateurs, some of them quite talented, who create pastiches of their favorite manga heroes, developing new adventures for them, which they then print and sell more or less under the table. Try imagining the Adventures of Tintin in Formosa or Harry Potter and the Yushan Dragon as a pocketbook of 16 to 20 pages—the minimum number of pages usually accepted for printing in Taiwan—with rough drawings that sometimes look extraordinarily similar to the original ones, but are unlicensed.

Fans keep the tongren networks alive from blog to blog, through special events announced online and at fan club meet ups. Though these publications border on the illegal, they are mostly tolerated by authorities. “The phenomenon has garnered a certain importance, but is more like a game among friends, teenagers,” Taiwanese author Kid Jerry says. Nevertheless, from the point of view of publishers and authors, mostly Japanese, tongren violate intellectual property rights and legal action should be taken against them. On the other hand, in Taiwan, tongren are the direct result of the publishing houses’ policy, Chen Zhao-wei says, as editors have pushed away talented authors by refusing to invest in them or by offering them meager salaries to reproduce popular Japanese series after publishers purchase translation copyrights. “Of course it’s not right, but what is important about tongren is their creativity and this is where one should look for future talent,” Chen says.

Recent years have seen government efforts in promoting the comics industry. The Creative Comic Collection, for example, is the result of an ambitious project sponsored by a national program that started digitizing archives in 2002. The goal of the program is to gather documents, archives and artistic creations representative of the richness of Taiwanese culture, and has resulted in unprecedented recognition for comics. Four volumes of the collection, divided by theme, have been released since January 2009. Together they offer excerpts from some of the best works published in Taiwan during the past 10 years.

Last year, the Government Information Office held the Golden Comic Awards for the first time to encourage individual authors as well as the industry. Winnie Lin won the Grand Prize and the Best Young Woman Comic Award for Chicken Cutlet Princess. With a manga-inflected style, she tells the adventures of high school girls that try to preserve their school’s Chicken Cutlet Eaters Club. Lin’s sharp drawing depicts many of the delicacies young people enjoy eating at night markets. “A tasty story,” the jury humorously concluded. Meanwhile, senior artist Liu Hsing-chin was rewarded for his overall career achievement, and three publishing houses received awards for their comic publications.

The industry has also seen the rising popularity of reading comics online. Wang Wei-lun, a 21-year-old design student living in the outskirts of Taipei, started reading comics when he was 8. “At that time, my older brother bought me Doraemon comics, but today, I prefer horror manga as well as ghost or murder stories,” he says. “I now read only Japanese comics and I’ve read them online since I graduated from high school because I can’t afford to buy them at NT$100 (US$3.20) apiece anymore.” Wang notes that some mainland Chinese websites offer pirated copies of most of the Japanese titles and translate them into simplified characters.

Yet for many fans, the best way to enjoy comic books is still the old-school approach of visiting one of the many small private rental “libraries,” where one pays for the number of books borrowed or the time spent reading them. These shops have been around for decades and the business model, it seems, matches well with the needs of a stressed urban clientele looking for a place to unwind. “Most of our customers are white-collar workers who come here to relax, read a comic book, watch TV … Some of them even come here to discuss business, sitting in a quiet corner and sipping a soda,” says Peter Pan, owner of Manhua Ge, a small rental library in Taipei. Most comic books at Pan’s shop are by Japanese or Korean authors. He says that there is a lack of authors in Taiwan, as the majority of them prefer working on a contract basis for Japanese publishing houses.

Author and collector Yang Jinn-shyh thinks that comics are an unfairly neglected part of popular culture. The problem, as he sees it, stems from the lack of distinctive traits of local comics. Currently, Yang is preparing to give his 36,000-volume collection of Taiwanese comics to a museum.

For now, the manga craze is likely to continue as the 2011 Taipei Book Fair, which will take place in February at the Taipei World Trade Center, promises fans a 5,500-square-meter hall dedicated solely to comic books.

Niu Ke

Niu Ke, or Uncle Ox, is the pen name of Li Ching-kuang, 1925–1997). Born in Hong Kong, the artist had a hectic life. He belonged to the generation of artists who lived through the turmoil of the Sino-Japanese war and experienced exile, repression and censorship under authoritarian rule in Taiwan.

The young Ox started his “career” in 1937 by drawing anti-Japanese graffiti on his school’s walls in Hankou, Hubei province. A few years later, he was back in Hong Kong, where he sought refuge with his brothers and sisters. It was during his stay in the British colony that Niu Ke was introduced to classical Chinese culture, which became an ever-present element in his work. He also learned English, a skill that led him after 1945 to work for the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), an American agency that provided technical and agronomic help. His mission was to translate the JCRR’s messages into drawings so that illiterate Chinese peasants could understand them. Then in 1949, he moved to Taiwan in the wake of the nationalist troops. Two years later the Central Daily News published his comic strip Uncle Niu the Guerrilla Fighter, a humorous recounting of the Chinese refugees’ experience. It was an instant success that increased the newspaper’s circulation tenfold. In 1966, he became editor-in-chief of the comics section of Ta Hwa Evening News. At the beginning of the 1980s, he and other artists started a protest campaign against the invasion of pirated copies of Japanese manga in the local market at a time when censorship rules were resulting in local artists giving up the profession.

—Laurence Marcout

Liu Hsing-chin

With his amply bosomed grannies, toothless grandpas and mischievous kids, Liu succeeded in creating a small, pleasant world with a deep local flavor. The former teacher, who published his first comic book in 1955, became famous thanks to characters such as Brother A-san, his alter ego, or Big Auntie, inspired by the artist’s own grandmother, a strong woman who was still running up the stairs and winning singing contests at 95 years old. A funny little robot with a mouth like a piggy bank’s coin slot is another of his popular characters. When he tried to recreate the character as a physical object, Liu’s career took an unexpected turn: he became an inventor. More than 100 inventions bear his signature, ranging from children’s toys to numerous household objects. Neiwan Township, his home town in Hsinchu County, pays tribute to the artist by exhibiting life-size replicas of his characters.

—Laurence Marcout

Tsai Chih-chung

Tsai Chih-chung is probably the most prolific and best known among all Taiwanese comic book artists. His work, inspired by Asian and especially Chinese philosophy, has made him famous worldwide. His books—there are more than 100 to date—have been translated and sold in 45 different countries, with sales of more than 40 million copies. Some of them have even been turned into animated cartoons. With nimble brush strokes and inspired by the great Chinese calligraphers, Tsai, who is a Christian, gives life to the writings of Confucius, Laozi, Mencius and the founding texts of Buddhism. The author is also an avid collector of buddhas—he has more than 3,000 statues at home—and owns countless books and treatises on math and physics. Recently, after a 10-year hiatus, Tsai reentered the limelight by explaining he is about to revolutionize Western physics by proving that Albert Einstein was wrong.

—Laurence Marcout

Chu Te-yung

For several years, Chu Te-yung enjoyed creating humorous depictions of the absurd daily life of married couples and of life at the office. With four-panel comic strips and just one short sentence, he managed to reveal truths about relations between men and women or employer and employee that most would rather not discuss. However, like many cartoon artists who reached a certain level of fame at the end of the 1990s, Chu moved to mainland China to pursue his career in simplified Chinese characters.

—Laurence Marcout

Kid Jerry

Born in 1965, Kid Jerry is one of a kind among Taiwanese comic artists. He is not very talkative, both in real life and in his books. He wants readers to understand his stories without the help of words, but rather only through his drawing, which he has improved upon for the past 20 years. Kid Jerry started by reading Japanese manga, on which he is still hooked. But around the age of 20 he also became interested in American superheroes, Snoopy and Walt Disney. Reading Heavy Metal, the American version of the French magazine Métal Hurlant, was a true eye opener for him. It gave him his strongest aesthetic, introduced him to Moebius—a French comic book artist—and most importantly, convinced him to persevere.

Kid Jerry’s style is marked by short, plain dialogue and eloquent drawings. The artist sketches “homo urbanicus,” whose lifestyle he makes fun of while smiling at his loneliness and dilemmas. The precise lines, the comical roundness of shapes and the sharpness of a universe he considers sterile give an elegant and comfortable coherence to Kid Jerry’s comics. In fact, it is thanks to his ability to use imagery that is borrowed directly from advertisements and fashion that makes him so successful throughout Taiwan.

—Hubert Kilian

Qiu Ruo-long

Qiu Ruo-long is a devoted ambassador for the Atayals, one of the main indigenous groups in Taiwan. Living in Alang Snuwil, an Atayal village in Nantou County, the Miaoli native has acquired a deep knowledge of their history over time, particularly of one of the most tragic episodes: the Wushe Incident. In 1930, Sediq tribespeople, who were formerly considered part of the Atayal, rose up against Japanese colonizers and resisted several months before being crushed. Qiu’s only comic book to date tells about this event with a lover’s passion and a researcher’s rigor. With a strong hand and a remarkable mastery of the black and white format, this is the work of an author freed from the classic manga style and which possesses true artistic value. However, following the book’s release in 1990, Qiu turned to movies and television. After first directing a documentary and participating in a TV series about the Wushe Incident, he worked as artistic adviser on the shooting of Seediq Bale, a new film by director Wei Te-sheng about the 1930 aboriginal uprising.

—Matthieu Kolatte