The Chinese term “manhua” (漫画) is commonly used in Hong Kong to mean “cartoon” or “comics”. Manhua, in Hong Kong today, also refers to “lianhuantu” (連环图) a Chinese term that means picture books featuring a sequence of Chinese line art accompanied by prose, telling stories about traditional characters. These stories have typically been of the martial arts and kung fu genres.
One only has to glance through the pages of the Eisner-Award winning “The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye”, by Sonny Liew, to see the development of comic book art in Asia over the last several decades. True, the titular character created by Sonny is fictional – but Chan Hock Chye’s journey illustrates the myriad influences that have flowed into the region over the years, and some ways in which they were adapted and transformed by local culture.
Comic books are basically fully illustrated story books. To tell the story well in this media, comic book writers not only have to decide on the prose, but also on the way their stories are told graphically. To do this well, the writers at the major comic publishers would typically have to collaborate closely with their co-creators (pencilers, inkers and colourists) much in the same way that movies are the result of a team of scriptwriters, directors, cameramen and actors. While some may think that grown-ups have no need of pictures to get into stories they read, many adults still marvel at visual interpretations of written prose, such as those adapted to movies and television. One other characteristic of comic books is that they tend to have quicker turnaround times compared to some other modes of modern story telling such as movies and television series. They could be published on a...
We are pleased to announce that SCC's Comics Exhibition at STGCC this year is another massive success. With this exhibition, we generated interest to make comics a larger and more important part of STGCC. The idea is to get fans excited to read comics again. The exhibition will showcase some rare slabbed comics around the theme of “First appearances of Movie/TV Heroes”. For fans of characters such as The Flash, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Spider-man, Captain America or Wolverine, you can come see the issues where they appeared for the very first time - in some cases over 60-70 years ago.
I've been collecting comics for twenty years now. I love the hobby and would go to the local comics store regularly picking up weekly/monthly issues from my pull list. As I progressed further in the hobby, I started to make more friends that started collecting “key” comic issues.
What we mean by the term “key” is that the issue is significantly important in that it might contain an event that can shock a storyline prompting collectors to collect those comics. Events such as Secret Wars, Civil War, The Infinity Gauntlet, Death of Superman and more recently the death of Wolverine are some examples. These are key events and collectors will scramble to get the best copies, variants and also aim for the best possible “condition” of the book available.
