cum as you are

What fuckery is this? How does one even approach cum and cuming in present day sincumpore? We actually like it and want it but we pretend not to…  come on, don’t pretend you don’t think glory holes is a good idea and you want to use your CDC vouchers at an outlet. 

I don’t have the time to write a long review as I am writing this on the mrt, so let’s get to the climax of any review. Just buy this shit ok? No, buy two, three, four copies because what, you can bring your money to the afterlife ah? We are all going to burn in hell anyway. What, leave behind a legacy and a pot of gold for your descendants? You know right, they think you are a pile of shit sucking on precious resources, oxygen, polluting the earth and causing environmental disasters etc etc. You don’t know? Climate change is our fault. We should have been killed and drown as babies and then gen alpha will have world peace. My generation is the worst. Talking about my gen my gen my gen we are so so sorry, we beg for your forgiveness, please destroy us on your socials. Hope I fade away... hope I die because I'm so godamn old. Old is not gold. Don't believe the hype. There is no silver lining in the silver generation. Aging gracefully? Tan ku ku. 

Ok wait, where am I? Ok climax, cuming right. Just buy this shit. Who the fuck is Ken foo?? Ken Foo won the best Singapore comic prize 2 years ago, you idiot. What, you never heard of him? 孤陋寡闻

I bet the organizers and judges regretted giving him the award, but too bad. Suck my big one as the fat kid says in Stranger Things. 

Cum on cum and meet the incel and his heroic brother. We can always be our better cum. You are cumbersome. 

Last Saturday, Ken had a book event at 1to3. Only people there are me, ye zhen, his wife and thanks to one brave soul who came and bought cum. (but if you have come, why do you still need to buy it??) Don’t believe me, ask George. He only sold 3 copies. He is a champ cumster.

Ken will have another book event at Book Bar this Friday. Don’t cum, prove him right we are useless. 

Whither the Singapore superhero

 

With the recent confirmed sighting that Roger Wong, the creator of Pluto Man is still alive and the sale of Captain V #1 for $150 at SGCC by kalibak komiks ( but SivaChoy, the writer of Captain V remains very dead), it begs the question: whither the Singapore superhero.

This year is also SG60 so maybe all Singaporeans are superheroes.

Especially Singa the Courtesy Lion and Teamy the Bee. My childhood heroes. Damn kilat one.

Some observations:

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye just marked its 10th anniversary, so there is some talk about Roachman as the Singapore superhero. Is Roachman a veiled comment of the Chinese as roaches, 小强 and they cannot be exterminated? Isn't that kind of racist? More on that later..

But way before that we have Roti Kaya and Guyu as the kopitiam superheroes. Then Singapore prime minister, Goh Chok Tong made an appearance at the end of the book. Writer Johnny Lau was worried that they would get into trouble. This was the dark ages known as the 1990s when political portrayals or caricatures of local politicians were a no no. But all went well without a hitch. Johnny was not arrested, lived to tell his tale and recently celebrated 35 years of Mr Kiasu at Sgcc.

Talking about Sonny, he also drew The Shadow Hero, which was like the origin story for the Green Turtle, the first Asian-American superhero. Some years ago, when I did a google scholar search, The Shadow Hero was the most written about of Sonny's works. Maybe it's Charlie Chan these days. 

10 years ago, The New York Times ran an opinion piece on That Oxymoron, the Asian Comic Superhero. The article's starting point was Ms Marvel aka. Kamala Khan, which was written by G. Willow Wilson, a guest of SWF some years ago.

SWF itself was the site of superhero-like fights about Singapore superheroes. In 2017, it organized a panel on Colour Outside the Lines: Diversity in the Comics World. The synopsis read:

A Middle-Eastern Doctor Fate. An Asian Monstress. A Black Spider-Man. When classic comic book characters undergo cultural transformations, they are often greeted with resistance from some quarters. As the comics world grapples with issues of racial and gender diversity, fans are split between purists and progressives. This panel, comprising a writer, a graphic novelist and a cultural historian, zeroes in on the tensions and implications.

The panelists were:

Marjorie Liu - writer of Monstress, X-23, Black Widow.

Boey Meihan - Vice-President, Writer & Editor of the Association of Comic Artists of Singapore (ACAS), Writer of SupaCross. (The creator of SupaCross was Jerry Hinds, the president of ACAS)

Ian Gordon - Australian scholar of American media and comics at the National University of Singapore

I was the moderator and I wrote to the panelists:

This is a very pertinent issue as it is a cultural war of sorts between old time fans who do not wanttheir favourite characters to be changed and new fans who felt the comics should evolve with the times. 

https://time.com/4012852/everyones-a-superhero-at-marvel/

For the more cynical ones among us, there is also an issue of whether some of these changes are done for tokenism or to chase the pink / ____ dollar, ie market considerations. Even if it is for the latter, some execs have claimed it is not working.

http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/marvel-exec-blames-diversity-women-comic-sales-slump-1202021440/

There is also the issue of cultural appropriation, and the question: can you speak for others? And the issue of white washing of Asian characters in movies like Dr Strange, Ghost in the Shell, The Last Airblender and Hellboy.

The SupaCross comic series was of interest because it features characters of quite varied racial origin - Malay, Chinese, Indian, Jamaica Born Black, America Born Korean/Black, Caucasian British and more.

I have known Meihan for some years. She is a good writer and has since gone on to write novels like The Formidable Miss Cassidy (co-winner of the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize and winner of the 2022 Singapore Book Award for Best Literary Work) and The Enigmatic Madam Ingram (finalist for the 2023 Epigram Books Fiction Prize).

Unfortunately at that SWF session, when she presented on the character, The Kreaper, it became a showstopper for all the wrong reasons. As part of character diversity, Hinds has created characters of different ethnicities and nationalities. It is like having the UN in a Singapore superhero comic. 

The Kreaper was a villain, who looks really creepy, all masked up and wearing a hat. He is from Bangladesh and works as a ... grass cutter. His weapon of choice is ...  a grass cutter.

The Singapore audience went ballistic. How can you be so racist? If it is not bad enough that we treat our domestic workers so badly and sometimes we ill treat them, beat them, starve them, and do not give them days off and we made them clean the houses of our relatives, we are now maligning our migrant workers as baddies as well? How can??! An old Chinese man was especially aggravated - aren't you ashamed of yourself, how can you even call yourself a Singaporean, he asked, almost foaming in the mouth, choking up in tears and choking in his own salvia. Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

I exaggerated, of course. Meihan tried to put up a defense but the audience would have nothing of it. I tried to defuse the situation by asking Liu and Gordon other questions but they would not want to have anything to do with this either. They knew better to touch this with a 10-foot pole. We were left to burn and to roast. Like Kenny Rogers. 

After the event, Hinds emailed me to be apprised of the situation. I told him no need, there would be no follow ups one. Our care for our helpers, maids and foreign workers only extend to so much. Once over, it's back to the same old. Siti, come and clean this cup ok? Hurry up liao, why so slow?

There are other public outrage about Singapore superheroes during the first few months of Covid in 2020.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/covid-19-superhero-virus-vanguard-exit-a-day-after-introduced-765956

ape shall never kill ape, as the tee shirt says.

but sometimes we sabo each other.

But why?

There is also some discussion / list of the Singaporean superhero on the scc fb.

And this article:

http://www.shout.sg/7-singaporean-superheroes-and-where-they-are-now/

Some more:

The Singapore X-Men

Sacred Guadians Singa

Kang Jing's The World My Arena

Collin Yap's Zodiac 

Edison Neo's Snake Claws

CS Comics' Crimson Star, ​Scalemail & Ixora, Genforcer and others

Joshua Chiang's Five-Foot Way Detective is a superhero of sorts?

And brother Ken Foo's sibei Cockman.

https://singaporecomix.blogspot.com/2022/11/review-of-cockman-by-ken-foo.html

Like everything and anything else, this article is part factual, part cbl cho bo lan research, part satirical, part parody, 100% self deprecation and not meant to offend anyone, anything, anywhere, anyhow, and so how like that?

Please don’t sue me, flame me or destroy me on socials. I have no money, no influence, nothing at all, I am a nobody. 

I only have friends like Kang Sheng who passed me a copy of his VR Man comic, which is the best Singapore superhero hands down. Nuff said!  

SINGAPORE HIP HOP HORROR BOOK 13: MASTERS OF DECEIT - PLAYLIST

I asked Ye Zhen for a playlist.

Music playlist 

1. Danzig, I Luciferi

2. Danzig, 6:66 Satan's Child

3. Danzig 4

4. Willie Colon, the Hustler

5. Willie Colon, idilio

6. Willie Colon, greatest hits

7. Hector Lavoe greatest hits

8. Seiji Yokoyama, saint seiya music osts

9. Mark Morgan, fallout ost. Lookout for aphex twin sampling

10. Mark Morgan, planescape torment ost, lookout for the Speed movie theme sampling.

Did you notice the cover? Melisma is at the hairdresser and you see nice Melisma on the mirror and not so nice Melisma on another mirror reflection. P is thinking how to get it on with the both of them at the same time. All things are possible on Tophet. 

REVIEW: SINGAPORE HIP HOP HORROR BOOK 13: SINGAPORE MASTERS OF DECEIT

Time flies. Can't even remember when Singapore Hip Hop Horror Book 12 came out. A check on Ye Zhen's IG says it was in 2021. So that's during the pandemic. Maybe I met him during those dark days but I miss those shit times too - to get the book from him. 

Book 12 was Some Singaporean Drifter Wolf In London, based on his trip to London many years ago. Recently he and the fam went to Spain, maybe that will be in a future book. But for now, it's Book 13: Singapore Masters of Deceit. Is it inspired by the classic Masters of the Seas TV show? - Ye Zhen, do an adaptation of that. We will hold a samosa party to launch it at Pink Ponk Comics. 

But getting back to the issue at hand. Ye Zhen has been on a trajectory since Book 10: Singapore Pok Kai Zai (2017) when he stabilized the characters and storylines. Skateboard P is still the shit and his sidekick is Snoop Eastwood. The main villain was introduced in that book, Nonpander Yingjing. The fighting is bombastic, over the top, intense as fuck. 

Book 13 brings things to another level. Skateboard P has gone to another dimension, Tophet, for further training. It is a 武神 type world of monsters and demons. The king of Tophet, Ecoli, looks like 司徒无量 and his wife, Keres Preta, looks like a jialat ladyboy. (maybe Ye Zhen went to the wrong part of Pattaya recently)

All fight and no declarations make Skateboard P a dull boy. As Ye Zhen declares at the start of the book:

Dad passed away. Covid happened. I moved house. Got married. Iran started their drone and missile attack on Israel. The world is as dramatic as usual. Life is great. (but why he didn't talk about the Hamas' attack on Israel and Israel's massive retaliation? or Russia invading Ukraine? who knows?)

Ye Zhen wears his heart on his sleeves in this book. In the story, Skateboard P also lost his father recently and he cries bitterly. 

And my real father is dead.

And they say blood is thicker than water.

But no blood is thick enough to engulf the soul.

Just like some ties are stronger than blood.

What ties are stronger than blood? Skateboard P does not say. His soul parents and siblings in Tophet? His brotherhood with Snoop Eastwood? There are some dialogue about secret societies and Hongmen in the book.

Skateboard P and his soul sister / trainer, Melisma Preta (seriously, where does he get all these names from??) visited Parklane where Comics World is and Ye Zhen sells his books there. Unfortunately, Ye Zhen only heard about Ah Boy and TNT Studios recently which has since closed. 

Melisma asked:

I'm curious, P. Why are bookshops dying left and right in your country?

Knowledge is king. Is it not?

P:

Yes, but unfortunately, our country favors more academic books. Which explains why places like Popular are still around. Plus with the e-books boom. Less people buy books anymore. But a small minority still do.

Some small indie bookshops still pop up every now and then. But it hasn't been easy as compared to like 10, 20 years ago.

Melisma:

Life is tough no matter what, huh?

Some of the shops that used to sell Ye Zhen's books have closed down. Those still around are under new management and take less of his books. Life is tough indeed. There are no avenues for comics reviews. Is knowledge still king?

This book was done 3 years ago. Or rather Ye Zhen penciled two books 3 years ago. He drew 500-600 pages and cut them into half for two books. Let's hope Book 14 will not take another 3 years to come out as it's already penciled. Ye Zhen used to put out one book a year. Why like this now?

Ye Zhen rejected my idea of getting P and Melisma to have hardcore incest sex ala hentai for the next book. Oh well.

I miss the covid and pre-covid years.

2017 - I organized Ye Zhen's launch of Book 10 at The Arts House during the Singapore Writers Festival. I got Laek1yo to perform.

2019 - I curated 10 Years of Ye Zhen exhibition at Artblovk.

2019 - I put together and moderated a panel on outsider comics with Ye Zhen, Weng Pixin and Dave Cooper from Canada. Those days of free wheelin' comics panels at SWF are over.

2021 - Archifest, I put together a panel on comics and architecture that had Ye Zhen in it. It wasn't appreciated and things just went downhill from there.

I sound like I am Ye Zhen's pimp. It's all I, I, I, me, me, me. I am sorry. 

More likely I am someone's bitch. I am a pump. I am plum.

2024 - now what? Who do you love? Where do you go to get those butt cheeks to spread?

Who are the masters of deceit? Who is deceiving us? Those who told us to buy crypto? Are we deceiving ourselves? Do we deserve it??

NB: if there is one criticism I can offer, it is to leave out the details of characters in the list of characters pages. They are spoilers. 

Review of Cockman by Ken Foo

Can one write an objective review about a book they have helped to sponsor? Should you write a review of a book drawn by a friend? Can you be critical or should you be ‘nice’ and go gentle on said friend? But if you have helped to sponsor the book, wouldn’t it be in your interest to write a positive glowing review to recover your cost? After all, if you don’t look out for yourself in this country, no one will. That will be a very cock thing to do - to talk about maintaining journalistic integrity when no one gives a shit. Cronyism and capitalism are more important to get ahead in life. 

[to digress. All great magazines (like this one) face this moral and philosophical dilemmas. Just like BigO giving a 5-star review to the Oddfellows. And The Comics Journal giving a full hard-on review of Love and Rockets. We learn best practices only from the bestest.]

But that’s the thing. Ken Foo doesn’t give a shit about all these. Of course, he wants to be loved, to be famous, he wants the chicks and sell thousands and thousands of Cockman. But the fool wants to do it on his own terms. And that’s why I’m friends with him. He is a no nonsense, take no prisoners, no retreat, no surrender kind of artist. In other words, he is a cock. Only fools think that they can don’t sell out and survive in Singapore. This place just makes you compromise little by little until you have no pride and no integrity left. Life is full of disappointments and filled with compromises.

It is just damn fucking sad.

So to pick myself up, I read Cockman. It is the best book I have read this year. But you guys know I don’t read ‘real’ books. I only read books with pictures. Gin nah cheh with ang kong kia inside. Ang kong kia like Cockman, Policeman, Gym Master, Dr Sanjay Bala aka Buttboon, Uncle Lee and Blackcock. 

All these are classic characters who will join the pantheon of other classic Ken Foo characters. Like Darby. What? You have not heard of Darby?

Shame on you.

To share a backstory of how cool Cockman is, it was actually completed before covid. Ken asked me to recommend foreign and local comics companies to publish Cockman. They refused to do so. Some didn’t even bother to write back to tell him to fuck off.

How rude.

Anyway, Ken decided to self-publish his cock at great cost. Then he threatened to beat us with his cock if we don’t buy his book.

Ok he didn’t really do that.

It’s just a bit of rubbing.

But before you think we are bending over backwards (or just bending over) for some ken love, let’s acknowledge how difficult it is to be published overseas when your content is so local. Should you change your story / art to accommodate to the foreign market? But even if you stay local, you can’t sell either because the local readers won’t buy.

There lies the rub. Ken insists on local content, low brow, tasteless, obiang humour. He claimed it is not offensive at all. That his cockness is very mild.

“Can’t you losers take a joke?”

(anyway I told Ken no one will be offended because hardly anyone will buy and read it in the first place)

There is no censorship, editing or changes made to the book. Ken would not allow it. He will beat you very hard with his cock.

This is pure unadulterated Ken Foo in his full glory.

We are so lucky to live in this age.

 

To prove that there is character development in Cockman, see these. 

My only request – for ken to bring Cassandra back.

 

If you really want to buy the book despite of my review, try Kinokuniya and WH Smith. Don’t bother with Popular, MPH, Times and all other not so good bookshops. 

I agree. The aunt / mom is hot. I like it how ken's character only have whites in their eyes. most of them do not have pupils. 

Drawing the Line

The first piece of comics scholarship I wrote back in the 1990s was on political cartooning in Singapore. Since then, I have written about comic books, graphic novels, manga but not so much on comic strips, except for The House of Cheah exhibition I curated in 2020 on Cheah Sin Ann, the comic strip artist of The House of Lim. I focused largely on Singapore and Southeast Asian comics. But things have a funny way of circling back. 

My assessment of political cartooning in Singapore back then, and unfortunately still holding true today, was that the form was stunted after the country gained independence in 1965. A new nation did not need frivolous political cartoonists to criticize its policies and to make fun of its political leaders. The new government required consensus, not cartoons, for national building. In their minds, politics was a serious business, a matter of life and death, of political survival. They had enough trouble from their political foes, economic woes and social problems. If you want to comment on political issues, you either get into the ring and run for the polls or you shut up. 

This had two long lasting effects. It determined the kind of political space and discourse that we had from the 1960s to the 1980s. Politics was only meant for the serious-minded, the elites and not for the semi-serious, the armchair critics who snip from the side. This led to a disengagement of political affairs among the young which was detrimental when the state sought renewal of its political leadership and raise civil consciousness. 

The other long lasting effect it had was on the medium of political cartooning itself. We had a strong tradition of political cartooning in the 1950s and our best caricaturist was Tan Huay Peng. His caricatures were spot on and anyone could identify the politician he was satirizing. But caricaturing a political leader was seen as disrespectful and subverting the institutions of power and authority from the 1960s onwards. The message was sent out that politics was no laughing matter and political cartoons and caricatures were a no no. 

Some editorial cartoons were allowed in the 1970s and 1980s but they were largely about foreign events and politicians. If you want to comment on local current affairs, you could reflect the policies but you could not caricature the politicians. Cartoonists should be supportive of government policies and only gentle humor was allowed. Nothing in your face, do not wield the savage pencil or hold up the mirror. It is not for you to comment on the emperor’s new clothes. To me, these are not political cartoons, they are just illustrations. 

There was no official ban on political cartoons but when editors stop stopped accepting local political cartoons for publication, the artists got the hint. 

There was some improvement in the 1990s with a change of political leadership (gracious society and the need for Singapore to be a cool city in the global economy) and we did have some political cartoon books by George Nonis, Joe Yeoh and a just returned from HK Morgan Chua. But these were older artists. The damage was done, the young cartoonists did not draw caricatures or did not have the skills to do so. A cartoon book about young Lee Kuan Yew (the first prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990) was quickly rushed out after the run away success of Lee’s memoirs in the late 1990s. Lee did not like to be caricatured in the 1960s and 1970s and his dislike of political cartoons became the unofficial policy. So when caricatures of Lee were ‘allowed’ to return in a cartoon book aimed at younger readers, they were some of worse cartoons drawn of Lee that I have seen. It was just badly drawn. 

The lack of caricaturing ability is debilitating. This could be seen in the case of Leslie Chew. After the 2011 general elections in Singapore, Chew started to draw political cartoons using the moniker Demoncratic on social media. Chew would be the first to admit he was not an artist but just fooling around with cartooning software to depict certain injustice he witnessed. Two years later, he got into trouble with the law for his cartoons and he was initially charged with sedition and later that was amended to contempt of court. Part of problem was that there was no subtlety in Chew’s cartoons as he did not use the tools of political cartooning in his computer generated drawings. I am not sure if he was aware of our rich history of political cartooning in the 1950s, but if he was able to draw proper caricatures and avail to himself other tools like the use of symbolism, metaphors and puns, he might not have given up drawing cartoons after his brush with the law. 

                                                                 (Anngee Neo)

Which brings us to today’s political cartoons found on online. The local newspapers still do not run many political cartoons about Singapore, much less caricatures of local politicians. One would expect more of the latter on social media since many of the cartoonists are drawing for themselves and using IG to express their opinions. But looking at the works of Anngee Neo and Highnunchicken, they do not draw caricatures much either although their political cartoons are no less hard-hitting. Both are some of the more interesting current affairs cartoonists to emerge in Singapore in recent years. Anngee, the more polemic of the two, specializes in PSA - public service announcements, especially during the period of general elections in Singapore. Highnunchicken, a collective of artists, draw in The New Yorker style of one panel cartoons, making digs at Singapore life. 

                                                                 (Highnunchicken)

I moderated them in a political cartoon panel called Where to Draw The Line for the Singapore Writers Festival 2021 and I wanted them to exchange views with an international veteran, KAL, the famed political cartoonist of The Economist. To reclaim our heritage, we need to look back and look beyond Singapore and at places where political caricatures speak truth to power. 

But these days, it is difficult to know where to draw the lines. As much as the state still makes the call of what is permissible such as the recent banning of Red Lines, ironically a book about political cartoons and the struggle against censorship, cancel culture is also a threat to what political cartoonists can or cannot draw. Anngee is being realistic when she said there are some topics she would not touch because she knows there will be a shit storm if she goes there. She was not referring to government sanctions. The people can easily turn on you.

There are more political satire and humor in Singapore now as seen in theatre and social media. Maybe we need not be so hung up about the lack of political cartoons and caricatures. But the space afforded to political cartoons by the politicians and the people says very much of the kind of society we live in. Can we laugh at ourselves? Do we know how to after so long? 

Check out Anngee Neo, Highnunchicken and KAL on Where to Draw The Line, happening on 13 Nov, 2.30 - 3.30 pm. 

https://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/programme-details/conversations/where-to-draw-the-line

SWF 2021 - Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna

The thing I like about the Singapore Writers Festival is that it exposes me to new writers and new books. I tried to keep up but there are so many books out there that sometimes you just need that push to read that book that is under your radar.

I have heard good things about Tian Veasna’s Year of the Rabbit (Drawn & Quarterly, 2020) but never got the chance to explore it. Until I got to moderate a panel related to Southeast Asian comics for SWF 2021. I proposed the panel and Tian’s name came up, so why not? Any gentle nudge to read a new book is good. 

And I am glad I did as Year of the Rabbit is one of the best books I have read this year. Tian was born three days after the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia in 1975 and this book detailed his family eventual escape to the Thai border in 1979. It is a harrowing story told with much of the actual violence taken place off panel (intentional of Tian). He is not the ‘hero’ of the story as he was only a baby between 1975 and 1979, but this family story of running, hiding and the years of living dangerously had a big impact on him and his psyche. I have always wondered how people live their lives during wartime and in long periods of chaos and instability. It is to be in a constant state of stress but the human mind is an amazing thing - you adapt and you adjust. I realized that after visiting cartoonist friends in Jakarta in 2000, just two years after the riots and the physical city was still recovering from the violence. 

What struck me about the Year of the Rabbit is why this book had taken off. I am revealing my vintage, but stories of Indochinese refugees have been in my cinematic consciousness since the 1980s. From Hong Kong, we have Ann Hui’s The Story of Woo Viet (1981) and Boat People (1982). The actual events of Khmer Rouge’s Year Zero were explored in The Killing Fields (1984), the Oscar winning film. In recent years, the experiences of Vietnamese refugees have been documented in GB Tran’s Vietamerica (2010) and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do (2017). Online, there is also Matt Huynh’s interactive comic, The Boat (2015). 

For what happened in Cambodia, Tian is not the first comic artist to mine his family history. French-Cambodian comic artist, Sera is probably the first to do so. He is older than Tian and could remember entering the French embassy with his French national mother in 1975 but his Cambodian father could not enter the compound. His father did not survive and for years he was angry with the French for letting his father die. We invited Sera for SWF in 2017 and we had beer and makan at Newton Circus. Benjamin Dix, who wrote the graphic novel, Vanni, about the Sri Lanka civil war and refugee crisis, was also a guest of SWF in 2017.

So, in my mind, what happened in Cambodia was not that remote or unfamiliar. I was teaching Southeast Asian history in the late 1990s and saw together with my students history unfolding in front of us - the final defeat of the Khmer Rouge by Hun Sen, the death of Pol Pot and the arrest and trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders. 

During our discussion, I asked Tian have the people really forgotten about the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields. He shared that that was one of the reasons he did this book. Other than to find out more about his own family history and to make sense of who and where he came from, from his visits to Cambodia, he had realized that many of the young people in Cambodia did not know about this tragic past. He felt that such stories need to be told and retold and every generation should be reminded of what happened in 1975. It was not a story with lessons confined to Southeast Asia but it has parallels to similar events in Serbia, Croatia and Rwanda. I am reminded of my own trip to Cambodia many years ago. I saw many young people and old folks but the in-betweens I was told by a local guide were killed. The person i spoke to is the only survivor in his family. I looked at the young people in the streets of Phnom Penh and they were just hanging around, doing the things young people all over the world do, and I wondered if they knew. 

Tian’s answer is that many of them don’t. And thus the Year of the Rabbit. To me, the book testifies to the power of comics in telling stories, in communicating, in putting us in communion with the past and learning about ourselves and our failings. There are still many stories to tell - the Rohingya crisis and what is happening in Myanmar now. I wondered how the political cartoonists I met in Yangon are doing. 

Tian will be featured in this SWF panel on 10 Nov, 7-8 pm.

https://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/programme-details/conversations/from-disposable-to-desirable-talking-trash-about-comics