Friends have been telling me about Mark Fisher’s hauntology for years. Others have written about this idea / concept.
But let’s claim / appropriate / reverse colonialize this term for ourselves. For sometime, i am advocating the use of the term Hantulogy.
你怕吗？
Anyway, one boy is Sonny and he is really smART and clever and he created ART comics that won international awards. $ingapore always love a winner.
But if you are not an award winner, you better make lots of money. So we have Artgerm aka Stanley, who was originally from HK but since migrating here more than 20 years ago, he has helped to put $ingapore on the mainstream comics map too. You know, the DC, Marvel and Titan Comics stuff. He has a team of artists who he trained and they all draw in his style. Cool beans.
https://sgcartoonhub.com/interview-with-artgerm/
( just that his style is so mainstream that AI is really having a go at him and his disciples )
Which brings me to the last idiot who wants to do comics in $ingapore. You know it’s a foolhardy enterprise right? What are you, mad? To be an artist on this island, and to be a comic artist to boot. I should give you the boot to wake up your ideas! No money, no chicks for you, mate. You really think it’s money for nothing and chicks for free ah? You fool.
And Ken Foo is the fool.
He won the the first graphic novel award in $ingapore in 2024 and then he threw it all away with trash like cum.
Hasn’t he learned anything? You got to be slick and play the game. But he screwed up big time at his one and only SWF $ingapore Writers Fest panel in 2024 and kanna complained by a parent for being un-PC. My fault, my fault for proposing the panel.
(if you don't believe me, just look at the 4 covers of imaginary comics that Foo created for his SWF panel. Don't just offend, but to offend besar)
So Foo should know better to apply for funding from NAC national arts council because apply for fuck? Sure won’t get one. I think already blacklisted don’t waste time.
Anyway these 3 are the past present and future hantu of $ingapore cumics. Who is who, i dont know. Woo hoo!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
