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In everyday life, there are all types of holes – big ones, little ones, round ones, and long ones. Pay close attention as you join this boy to observe what each hole reveals! – cover introduction

Along with this picture book’s curious title, What’s This Hole?, the keyhole and question mark illustrated on its cover suggest exploration and discovery. Smiling through the portal, the young protagonist probes and inspects his surroundings at every turn, sharing his close-up perspectives with the reader. Together, we witness ants ferrying biscuits to their colony, mice chewing on cheese, bats dangling upside-down in a cave, rain sloshing through a street grate, Mama feeding a piggy bank, and steam puffing from a kettle on full boil.

These otherwise random, prosaic moments are nonetheless remarkable for the child, and his enthusiasm is captured through Baba’s camera lens, which happens to be another “hole” identified in the story. The penultimate spread shows accumulated snapshots that are records of the child’s encounters, and the exuberant joy is evident as he revisits these memories and recounts the details, asking aloud what might have been in a particular hole. In this light, it becomes apparent that each of the prior spreads is a story unto itself, adding a new dimension to the reading experience.

The colorful and endearing illustrations are reminiscent of childhood drawings that center each young creator’s unique point of view, which is key in this picture book. While this work is literally about holes, its underlying theme deals with apertures and the ways in which individual focal points – factual or fantastical – shape narratives in storytelling. Readers might wonder, for instance: Who left out the cheese? Where did the mice come from? Did this really happen? Such playful questions may encourage conversations about what is possible and promote novel ways to engage with one’s environment.

Designed as a read-aloud and for emerging readers, this picture book’s text is simple and the recurring prompt: “Hey, what’s this hole?” is an invitation not only to examine the opening in question, but also to imagine to what or where it may lead. The intriguing final spread advances this spirit of inquiry and adventure by depicting numerous round holes and showing the child inside one of them, destination and surroundings unknown.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

According to the definition in researcher Mizoguchi Akiko’s book On the Evolution of BL, the boy’s love genre (BL) is made up of “all kinds of stories that develop from the love relationships between two men, yet the creators and readers are mostly heterosexual women”. She further states that the love affairs between men found in the plots of BL stories provide readers a temporary escape from the shackles of reality by creating an artificial world where love and sex can be pursued freely. By representing a utopia where gender diversity is respected to a greater degree than in our present world, BL works become more than entertainment – they present a subtle challenge to contemporary society, or even a push towards reform. 

With their massive market and loyal fan base, BL comic books are a consistent mainstay of comic book publishing. With minimal exaggeration it could said that BL comic books are a touchstone of the health of the entire comics industry. When BL sales are strong, the industry has a stable core, and can weather any storm or challenge. However, to those who have never read the genre, particularly male readers, the appeal of BL can be difficult to comprehend. One has to spend some time getting acquainted with the genre to understand its irresistible charms. Among the best introductions to the genre is Day Off, the new comic from artist Dailygreens and publisher Rusuban Studio, and winner of the 2022 Golden Comic Award’s Best Editor category.

Set against the backdrop of office life at a large enterprise, the story follows the evolving relationship between the head of the planning department and his attractive subordinate. Their devoted exchanges of affection emanate a healing warmth and sincerity, but their relationship is far from perfect. As with all couples, there are episodes of jealousy and self-doubt, as well as the difficulties of keeping their relationship secret from coworkers, and, of course, the discomfiting gaze cast upon them by society. But through all of these setbacks, their relationship grows stronger. The strength of their bond, and the support of some family members, give them the energy to face the challenges, and fills them with hope for the future.

Day Off began as a web comic strip consisting of quickly-resolved independent episodes (which now constitute the first three chapters of the comic book). The elegantly composed swathes of color and distinctively warm palette of these short narratives set a tastefully breezy and comforting tone that kept readers coming back for more. It also attracted the attention of Huang Szu-Mi, BL author and Editor-in-Chief of Rusuban Studio, an established publisher of BL fiction and comics. At Huang’s suggestion, Dailygreens began working with Rusuban to adapt Day Off into a full-length comic book.

The change in format, however, doesn’t diminish the appeal of Day Off. If anything, the book-length format further develops the potential of the original characters and setting, and gives Dailygreens a larger canvas on which to showcase her talent for visual storytelling. The interactions of the main characters unfold in an unhurried manner, revealing the full emotional spectrum of their relationship, and the strength and comfort each finds in the other. Those who’ve experienced love will find themselves reliving their own past loves, or possibly wishing that they could. The workplace setting adds an element of interest, and, for many readers, wish fulfillment. Through its tight arrangement of narrative elements, Day Off envisions the unattainable ideal of pure love in the real world, all within the framework of BL comic books. This is what makes it such an excellent introduction to the genre. Lacking in steamy artwork, the book may come across as somewhat chaste to hardcore fans of the genre. But for general readers, Day Off’s refreshingly unsensational approach will evoke the sweetness of past relationships, and reaffirm their faith in the possibility of love.

Huang Szu-Mi once said in an interview that the process of creating a comic book is like assembling a team of heroes to defeat an evil tyrant; the editor plays the supporting role of the wizard while the comic book artist is the courageous warrior, always fighting at the front lines. Indeed, Dailygreens has shown great courage and strength. In this dark era where all traces of pure love seem to be gradually fading away, she has sought out the light on behalf of all those who still believe in love. In a separate interview, Dailygreens stated, “That’s just how I am. I hope that there still people in this world with the gentleness of Hsiao-Fei, or bosses who are as kind as (his lover) the department head.”

Don’t we all.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

At the end of August, I went to my weight training class as usual. My coach has three children, and his eldest daughter was starting grade three in two days. Being the mischievous auntie I am, I couldn’t help but tease his adorable kids; as they bounded into the room, I turned to the eldest and taunted, “well, have you finished your summer homework yet?” To my surprise, she threw me a look and responded coldly, “I finished it ages ago.”

What?! Wasn’t today the last day of summer? A time when the whole family should be scrambling, while mom and dad help the kids complete their assignments? I recall loathing summer homework as a kid, especially the daily journal. Who could remember what the weather was like for the past 59 days? The worst part was sitting at my desk, reliving the summer in my head; after all, what did I do that was possibly worth writing about in my journal?

The protagonist of Open Eyes, Open Mind! is not like me at all. When her new art teacher assigns the students to “get to know someone”, she is somewhat bemused, but is named “Angel” after all, so begins to work on this task right away. She comes home and asks for help from her mother, who is a senior strategist at work and has written countless business proposals. Her advice? “Make it up.”

Because her mom won’t come to the rescue, Angel turns (virtually) to her dad, who often works abroad. Over video, her dad is pleased to help, and offers his advice: “It’s best to find someone who’s interesting and has a strong sense of style. That would make your assignment easier! Your dad, for example, is a perfect choice. What do you think? Wanna get to know your dad?”

At this point, Angel begins to feel frustrated; what does it mean to “get to know someone”? Meeting their parents? Knowing their interests? A student who wears glasses raises their hand and asks: “Can you get to know someone you already know?” It is through this question that author Pam Pam Liu reveals the purpose of the art teacher’s assignment: “Everyone has many different sides. Through this experience you’ll get to know someone you already knew even better, and you might even learn something new!”

Pam Pam’s graphic novel is based on the sociological text Struggling to Raise Children: Globalization, Parental Anxiety and Unequal Childhoods by Distinguished Professor Lan Pei-Chia of Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University. Professor Lan visited nearly 60 households to conduct field interviews and observed different teaching environments to analyze the differences between the middle class and the working class, ultimately drawing certain conclusions about Taiwan’s educational models. The result was an important field report on the state of education in contemporary Taiwan.

But perhaps Open Eyes, Open Mind! is not so much an adaptation, but a continuation of Professor Lan’s work. Breaking away from the structure of a sociological text, Pam Pam has decided to adopt a different perspective in her graphic novel, that of a child. Through the “get to know someone” homework assignment, our protagonist explores the lives of relatives and friends, revealing the different family structures and parenting styles around her.

It’s no easy feat to tell a story through the eyes of a child; how do kids communicate? How do they interact? Why does an annoying classmate suddenly become less annoying once you get to know their backstory? Pam Pam even draws from her personal experience of being invited to a friend’s house as a kid, and being asked to take out the trash.… In a setting that is at once grounded in reality, yet absurd, Angel gets to know her classmates, relatives, and mother in a new light, armed with her art class textbook.

Open Eyes, Open Mind! is Pam Pam’s fifth commercially-published work. From My Friend, Cancer to A Trip to the Asylum to Super Supermarket, behind the cute, round characters Pam Pam creates is always sharp social commentary. In My Friend, Cancer, she uses the experience of taking care of her mom who has cancer to explore the conflicted disposition that comes with being an eldest daughter. A Trip to the Asylum is set in a mental hospital, but asks us to think about who in the “real world” may be mad.  

Reading Pam Pam’s graphic novels often makes me think of the lyrics of “Deserts Chang”: “the deepest words must be said plainly”, “painful wounds must be touched gently”. Pam Pam interrogates Taiwan’s class dynamics, and the educational and familial structures of urban and rural areas, through the lens of a primary student’s homework assignment. What choices can parents make given their different social standings and the class gap between urban and rural areas? And how will their children interact with the world?

I particularly like how the story ends:

NOTE: Be warned: if you don’t want any spoilers, I suggest you leave this page, put this book in your shopping cart, check out, and finish reading the graphic novel in your own time.

We tag alongside Angel on her journey of getting to know someone, including her close friends, unfamiliar classmates, her cousin who lives in the countryside, and seemingly enviable classmates from other families. But in the end, Angel decides to get to know her own mother. This is an exceptional twist, and Pam Pam handles it deftly. Angel gets to really know her mother, and the dreams she had before she became a mother. Why does she sign Angel up for so many tutoring classes, packing her day-to-day life with activities?

Pam Pam has ingeniously turned the case studies of a sociological report into a 190-page graphic novel that looks beautiful, has a clear theme, and is well-paced. She captures the same ideas explored in Struggling to Raise Children without losing the allure of a graphic novel; perhaps this is her version of a “reader’s report”. I recommend readers peruse Struggling to Raise Children and Open Eyes, Open Mind! together, which is bound to result in a compelling, intriguing reading experience.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

Comics as “the ninth art” in Francophone culture is a discourse repopularized by BD Louvre, a 2003 exhibition of comics at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The concept was subsequently introduced to Taiwan by Dala Publishing Company and became prevalent in discussions about Taiwan comics. The “ninth art” status is mostly mentioned to elevate Taiwan comics, which has long been awarded little respect, as epitomized by the controversy of The Legacy of Chen Uen: Art, Life and Philosophy exhibition in 2018. All ostensible reasoning aside, the challenge of whether Chen Uen’s work deserves to be exhibited beside the “national treasures” of the National Palace Museum is a poor veil for the prejudice that disregards comics as great works of art.

Still, to use this saying as a sort of polite comeback diminishes its full implications. To define comics as an art form is to admit it to the “palace of art” where they can be collected, displayed, and appreciated. More importantly, it liberates the creative freedom that comics can offer to its artists. Like other art disciplines, comics is a form that comes with infinite possibility and does not need to be limited by the genre tropes or the graphic and language conventions of commercial comics. Artists should be given creative license to explore and discover, and rather than gratify the reader, they should center their artistry and confront the reader’s expectations on an intellectual and emotional level – like graphic novels, which have become prominent in Taiwan these several years. While there are different definitions as to what a graphic novel is, the general consensus is that it is not strictly commercial and is a form that expands visual storytelling. For this reason, graphic novels are also seen as an avenue for Taiwan comics, once deeply influenced by Japanese manga, to assert itself.

Sleeping Brain, published by Tōkhiu Books, is one of the most compelling new Taiwan comic and graphic novel titles that exhibits the qualities of “art”. Tōkhiu Books was founded by renowned Taiwan comic critic Wu Ping-Lu, who studied comic art and publishing in France and Belgium and is also an advocate for graphic novels in Taiwan. The release of Sleeping Brain was one she spared no expenses for. The design of the book, the selection of paper and printing – they were all of the highest quality. The book is like a fine art catalog, exquisite to touch and showing complete disregard to market practice or people’s expectations of how comics are to be published.

Sleeping Brain is also unique for its story and storytelling. Gong Wei-Hua, a second-generation immigrant entomologist from China, and Aramura Kiichi, a freelance Japanese photographer, venture into Taiwan’s woodlands in search of butterflies. They meet in a chance encounter deep in the mountains of Yilan. Kung wants to catch butterflies and turn them into specimens for his collection, while Aramura wants to take photos of the butterflies with his camera. Both characters have the rare Papilio maraho butterfly as their ultimate goal, despite their different motivations. They come across a mysterious girl who cannot speak but keeps a large collection of endangered butterflies among trees. In this dreamlike wilderness, the trio encounter phantoms from their past in the scintillating light and darkness of the present. Their entanglement in a series of pursuits and complications arising from the butterflies becomes what is ultimately an allegory of the White Terror in Taiwan.

KUCHiXO uses a highly imagistic approach for this book, which is rife with symbols and signs. The story is drawn in color pencil with a childlike sketching style to resemble illustrations for fairytale books. Changes in the color tone convey alterations in time and space, while colorful silhouettes depict the flight of the mysterious butterflies. It may seem like Sleeping Brain was made with a sense of freehand nonchalance, but every aspect of the book is meticulously designed, from its colors and illustrations to its storyboard and shading, and all of these aspects deserve attention and study. With how the story progresses, Sleeping Brains may read like a fantastical fairytale of an incredible journey in search of butterflies, but it is in fact an unflinching contemplation on Taiwan’s history. The characters and the butterflies are symbols of us living on this island with our complicated past, our embroiled present, and our unpredictable future.

Sleeping Brain may not be the easiest read with layers of symbolism that call for associative thought and interpretation. However, the book’s refusal to offer that unthinking “thrill” of commercial comics is what gives readers room to feel the story emotionally and reflect on it from an analytical point of view. These qualities are what make Sleeping Brain so impressive as it demonstrates what comics can achieve as works of art.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

Tender Is the Night is a collaboration between comic artist Huihui and playwright Chien Li-Ying. The text version of this work, which was originally a submission to a call for scripts, also appears in Observations of a Transvestite, a collection of Chien Li-Ying’s plays. In the epilogue to that work, Chien wrote, “Sexuality is the greatest window into an individual’s behavior, the subtleties of interaction, the unfathomable depths, the shame, joy, and quotidian life all find abundant expression within sexuality. This subject has always fascinated me, and I’ve always wanted to write a play that could bring life to various forms of human sexuality, which is why I’ve included the work in this collection.”

I have always admired Chien Li-Ying’s plays and still remember the profound impact Observations of a Transvestite, had on me the first time I saw it. Later on, after reading Tender Is the Night, I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to see the play staged. Of course, in reality this would be impossible. Why? Because the play depicts nine sexual encounters playing out in nine different rooms. At least for now, a racy performance including nudity and sexual acts would probably not be allowed on Taiwan stages.

Then the graphic novel version of Tender Is the Night was published.

Huihui’s previous graphic novel series Blowing-Up Adventure of Me had a dedicated readership in the independent comic market. The novel follows the protagonist as she honestly confronts her own sexual timidity – in Huihui’s pictorial world, the desire and longing for intimate encounters find both gentle and ardent embodiment. With Tender Is the Night, Huihui brings Chien Li-Ying’s script to life, providing a visual representation not just of the script’s many stage changes, but also the deeper desires, and subtle expressions of alienation underlying the physical act of sex.  

This is how the novel’s publisher, Faces Publishing describes the book: “A romantically ostracized printshop worker, a lesbian’s clandestine encounter with her wife’s paramour, a woman’s feeling of emptiness with her hearing-impaired boyfriend, a gay little person practices fellatio, an impasse between a self-abasing portly woman and her chapstick-seeking male bedfellow, and elderly illicit lovers acting as each other’s emotional anchors…with its depictions of nine physical and sexual relationships rejected by the mainstream market and its appetite for conventional stories of love and marriage, Tender Is the Night has laid the first brushstrokes of a contemporary Taiwanese ukiyo-e, an exploration of the unlimited possibilities and stringencies of gender and sexual identity.”

The nine short graphic novels that unfold in the nine different rooms of Tender Is the Night might all find a common thread in the book’s catchline: “Can you treat me like you would a normal person?” What seem like the stories of strangers are ultimately our own: even if the sexual experiences and body types of the characters differ from the reader’s, there is no sense of “other” in these 9 stories, they are narratives in which we can all find common ground. After all, who hasn’t felt the solitude, loneliness, self-abasement, masochism and longing for bodily warmth and connection experienced by the comics’ characters?

Huihui renders act upon act of sexual romance with a gentle touch, deftly attending to the minute details of every scene and carving out the fine grains of each character’s semblance and personality. Their acts of mutual longing and rejection form an exquisite engenderment of the human interactions as well as the relationships between people and sexuality captured in the original script. With scenes of lovemaking and nudity appearing every few pages, Tender Is the Night is clearly an x-rated graphic novel, but Huihui isn’t so much interested in arousing readers’ sexual desires and bodily urges as she is in stirring those deeper and more profound levels of the psyche – whether you’re a hot-blooded lover or a cold and distant recluse, as long as you’re human, chances are that deep inside you, too, wish to be loved.

What makes Tender Is the Night so enthralling is its authenticity: the sexual acts themselves and the humanity that unfolds around them all evince a sense of honesty and sincerity. There is an austere and unvarnished quality to Huihui’s storytelling, so much so that it almost seems to derive from the perspective of an indifferent bystander. Three of the nine stories involve encounters between a couple and a third person – yet, the outsiders’ perspectives often highlight the simultaneous complexity and purity of the couples’ love. In “Chapstick”, Huihui has her slightly homely female protagonist ask a man who is trying to flee from her: “Is there something wrong with me?” This blunt outburst is no doubt a symptom of her continual frustration with the judging eyes of her peers.

In the postscript, Huihui asks her readers to reflect on which of the chapters had the deepest impact on them.

For me, it was “The Turning of the Seasons”.

In this tale of an elderly love affair, Huihui uses an identical framing for the male and female protagonist in each slide; only the background changes to reflect their peripatetic journey through a shifting series of hotel rooms. The rooms feature the standard trappings of most cheap hotels – the sprawling double bed with bedside tables on either side and the obligatory framed prints of famous western paintings. As time passes and conversations and scenery shift, so to do the selection of paintings on display. In the very last room, the painting hanging on the wall is Gustav Klimt’s famed “The Kiss”.

“The Turning of the Seasons” is short in length and, tucked as it is in the very center of the book, serves as an ellipsis that aptly separates the chapters that come before and after it. Yet, this fleeting vignette focuses on a much more profound kind of relationship. In the love and companionship of the elderly, each is witness to the most unsightly aspects of their partner, to the atrophy and wasting of their physical bodies. As such, they cling not to each other’s corporeal flesh but to the heart and soul nestled within. As they conclude their lover’s hotel rendezvous and return to their families, we see that it is these brief escapes which give them the courage to once again face reality.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

Comics may be sequences of still images, but this has not stopped artists from using the form to make titles about music, for which there is already a considerable list – like the widely popular Japanese manga Nodame Cantabile on classical music; NANA, about a rock band; and BLUE GIANT, whose protagonist is a jazz musician. Taiwan has also been releasing comics about music in recent years, including DEMO and BLA BLA SONG. Among them, Island Rhapsody has to be one of the most intricately conceived titles. Different from the works mentioned, it is a two-volume collection of short comics by ten artists, each working with a different style. The short pieces do not have multiple growth arcs for its main characters or complicated plot twists, nor do they divulge knowledge about music and its instruments. They are inspired by songs, but rather than being mere visual adaptations, they get to the heart of the tracks, reaching through the cracks of time and space to explore different narratives.

Island Rhapsody is configured after the travel program Listen! Taiwan Is Singing hosted by popular musician Chen Ming-Chang, who likes to travel and sing. In the show, Chen went around Taiwan to experience its regional cultures, and together with his friends, he would play his signature yueqin or guitar while they sang famous tunes from the places they visited. Ten of those songs were later selected for this collection. Each short comic comes with a QR code that links to the actual track, as well as printed lyrics and an introductory text and commentary by music critic Hung Fang-Yi.

Appreciators of the collection may worry about its specificity to Taiwan, that despite all these materials providing context, other readers may still find this to be a barrier. Or, alternatively, that readers may not be able to accept this sort of “adaptation” or “translation” because of their musical taste. But even if one skips all the commentary and goes straight to the comics, one can still get pleasure out of it.

The first volume starts with “If I Open My Heart’s Door” by Sen, told through the eyes of a female protagonist as she revisits the streets and her old home in her hometown. Like a metaphorical door to the heart, the story draws readers into its imaginary world. In a somewhat similar vein, the second volume finishes with GGDOG’s “Salt Ponds – The Home of the Black-faced Spoonbills”, which has the protagonist waking up in the summer heat of his room at the end. Although the “salt zone” of his dreams is reduced to a small, mundane complaint of daily life, there is a sense of lingering aftertaste savored by both the protagonist and the readers. Inexplicably, as if in a reverie, the beginning and the end of the collection connect despite showing vastly different artistic portrayals.

Four of the ten comics are influenced by science fiction, while the other six take place in real life. As the stories intermingle, reality and fantasy become indistinguishable. If one were to insist upon a central theme, each story features a main character exploring their sense of belonging, whether permanent or temporary, to the places they reside as well as their careers and lives, which leads them to action or contemplation.

Each of the stories exhibits the unique visual languages of their artists. Ding Pao-Yen uses short, urgent strokes and gray tones to portray a desolate city besieged by rain, while Tseng Yao-Ching adapts the regional festivity of the song “Miss So-Lan Wants to Get Married” into a modern-day vignette on the subtleties of human relationships. ROCKAT sets his story in the year 2040, when the traditional Lukang becomes a famous tourist spot under a Chinese Federation. Zuo Hsuan’s story of a young foley artist trying to find meaning in his career is heartwarming and inspiring, while Lo Ning depicts scenes from the countryside and opera performances in the rain to express the nostalgia of visiting one’s hometown. Cao Chian visualizes the physical and psychological struggles suffered by Beitou hostesses with thick, dark lines, while Peter Mann’s comic about the strife of women pursuing success is told as a lighthearted tale of parents and children working together. Mu Ke Ke narrates the meeting and separation of childhood friends, showing how loneliness comes to all regardless of age.

In an interview, Alan Lee, editor-in-chief of the comics department of Gaea Books, said, “It would be too boring if these comics were complete adaptations of the lyrics, readers can just listen to the songs. The artists should also get to show their creativity, they’re not here to only illustrate the lyrics.” With this direction, the artists commissioned for this project only had to consider the number of spreads they were given and were otherwise given the freedom to work on their comics. Judging from their striking contributions, this approach has allowed them to come up with different narratives as well as ways to enliven the reading and listening experience – appreciators of the collection may come across pleasant surprises as they go through the songs and the comics.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

Ebi is a Taiwanese comic artist who specializes in romantic comedy and has also created a line of stickers on the social media app Line featuring her cutesy cartoon alter-ego. She is perhaps best known for her romantic comic trilogy centered around an old apartment complex called “Sunshine Manor”. The cast of characters that inhabit the fictive world of Ebi’s Sunshine Manor all seem to encounter adversity – a beautiful college girl strives to succeed in life but is harmed by her own boyfriend, an enthusiastic young girl is teased for being short and chubby, a male comic artist is haunted by introversion and solitude – but ultimately, under the steady hand of Ebi’s prose, they all grow to find their own form of happiness.   

By introducing elements of folk religion into the familiar romance trope of the “quarrelsome lovers”, My Forty-Nine Days with the Chenghuang presents a breakthrough in Ebi’s oeuvre. Scenes are set not just in the modern world, but also in the netherworld and in a past life of the protagonist, creating a much more complex and fantastical mise-en-scène than in Ebi’s previous works.

The “Chenghuang” mentioned in the title is the Mandarin term for a god that protects over a city and, in this comic, refers to the male protagonist, Chang Liu-Sheng. In Taiwanese culture, Chenghuang temples serve as something like the city halls of the spirit-world, but due to the fact that Chenghuangs are in charge of punishing evil-doers, escorting the dead into the afterlife and exorcising demons, they often evince a stern and severe disposition. Subordinates that appear alongside the Chenghuang are often rendered with ferocious expressions meant to intimidate and deter evil ghosts and demons, and throughout Chenghuang Temples, aphorisms cautioning against evildoing line the sides of doorways. Given the severe and solemn atmosphere that these temples evoke, it would be highly unlikely for the average person to associate them with romance. Yet, in a move that will surely surprise and inspire curiosity in her readers, Ebi has chosen a Chenghuang as the protagonist in her latest romance.

In many East Asian belief systems, the netherworld is thought to have an administrative system not unlike the bureaucratic organizations that govern the world of the living – the Chenghuang is just one small cog in the vast machinery of this system. Indeed, Chang Liu-Sheng, the Chenghuang depicted in My Forty-Nine days with the Chenghuang, is a fairly low-ranking official serving under the Grand Lord Chengchuang. (If we were to liken the Grand Lord Chenghuang to a city mayor, a Chenghuang would be more like a village ward.) Classical Chinese literature abounds with legends of the netherworld – Pu Song-ling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, for instance, satirized the corruption and injustice of Qing Dynasty bureaucracy with a collection of stories detailing the negligence of netherworld officials. Yet, compared with Pu’s depiction of netherworld bureaucracy, Ebi’s seems even truer to life: Teams led by different Chenghuangs compete and bicker and Old Lady Meng whose heady potion helps the departed forget the memories of their past life gets updated as a young stunner who seems to be engaging in extracurricular activities with the Grand Lord Chenghuang. Against this backdrop, it is not such a surprise, then, that the female protagonist Chen Chih-Yao’s love story begins with her mistaken entry into the netherworld.   

Like many other tales of quarrelsome lovers, Chen Chih-Yao and Chang Liu-Sheng’s relationship is born out of conflict: When Chih-Yao finds herself inexplicably cast into the netherworld and realizes her time among the living is not yet up, she gets in an argument with Liu-Sheng’s subordinates “Heipai Wuchang”[1] who had mistakenly taken her in. Liu-Sheng is suspended after protecting his subordinates and, in a fit of anger, casts a spell on Chih-Yao that allows her to see ghosts in the world of the living. From a reader’s perspective with the benefit of hindsight, Liu-Sheng seems almost like a schoolboy who picks on the girl he has a secret crush on – it might have all just been a ploy to get closer to Chih-Yao. When Liu-Sheng returns to the world of the living, he finds an excuse to become the Chen’s houseguest and ensuing hauntings of the Chen’s home become the kindling that fuels Chih-Yao and Liu-Sheng’s budding romance.

Yet, is marriage truly the ultimate expression of a loving relationship? In the opening scene of the comic in which Chih-Yao’s grandmother arranges a meeting for her with a prospective suitor, her total disinterest in marriage is already on full display. Knowing her grandmother is well-intentioned, she stops short of rejecting the whole arrangement outright and instead opts to scare away her potential suitor by arriving late, dirtying her clothes and deliberately making herself look less attractive. Halfway through the comic, we learn that Chih-Yao’s parents got a divorce, a traumatic memory that sheds a deeper light on Chih-Yao’s reluctance to participate in arranged meetings. In an interesting turn of events, as Chih-Yao’s relationship with Liu-Sheng evolves, she begins arranging meetings with suitors for her grandmother and even lends support to her friend who is going through a crisis in his marriage. Perhaps, Chen Chih-Yao’s indifference towards marriage is not entirely a product of deep-seeded fear, but rather a symptom of the importance she places on not acting in ways she’ll later regret. That is, marriage is one way that people can be happy together, but it is not the ultimate goal.

Like many other love stories between the living and the dead, the conclusion to My Forty-Nine Days with the Chenghuang will inevitably leave readers feeling despondent. Ultimately, Liu-Sheng must return to his post as Chenghuang in the netherworld, just as Chih-Yao must eventually choke back Old Lady Meng’s heady brew to wipe her mind clean of any memory of the great beyond. In the final scenes, Liu-Sheng’s new outlook towards his past-life memories presages a possible change of fate: He had always remained in the netherworld serving as a Chenghuang due to his distaste for the brutality of the world of the living and his unwillingness to forget the kind deeds of benefactors in his past life, but what new life will await him now that he no longer despises the land of the living and prepares to drink Lady Meng’s brew and reincarnate?

As for the novel’s conclusion, most readers were quite satisfied with how Ebi chose to bring the story to a close. Whether or not the protagonists ultimately do forget each other, characters like Heipai Wuchang, who turned into cute little dogs, the ravishing Lady Meng prancing along with her parasol, and the stylish Chenghuangs who managed to pull off ancient ceremonial robes and modern tailored suits with the same panache, will certainly live on in the memory of readers. This vibrant cast of characters has injected our conventional understanding of the underworld with new color and perspective.

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

I have loved Russian dolls ever since I was a child and how the process of nesting them inside one another is like an endless world that you can just keep extending again and again. I’ve always been fascinated by this kind of form, and at night if I ever had a dream within a dream, my senses all felt exceptionally real, so I’d wake up feeling satisfied up even if the dream within a dream had been scary or painful. There are a lot of films and novels where “the dreamer has a dream within a dream”, but I hadn’t expected to read a modern graphic novel from Taiwan that evoked a similar feeling.

Of course, Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf isn’t a story about a dream within a dream or Russian doll, but it’s fascinating to see how one story after another is woven into the narrative. Even though this is BliSS’s first commercially published graphic novel, the overall narrative is comprehensive and mature with three-dimensional characters that are filled with emotional details. The highly skilled storytelling technique and smooth pacing of the frames help readers easily immerse themselves in the narrative which combines nuanced moments of both sadness and humor to stunning overall effect.

Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf begins with Helena, a seven-year-old girl living in an orphanage who loves to read picture books and has just won an invitation to a book signing by her favorite graphic novelist. The author is Mr. Big Bad Wolf, whose books are always solitary and brutal. He also refuses to face his readers, and reluctantly appears wearing a wolf head and bluntly declines to take any questions about it. In a room full of adults, Helena is the youngest person and fearlessly raises her hand to ask, “Why do you wear a wolf’s head?”

Yes, why indeed? The story starts to unfold as young orphan Helena brings the reader along and opens the first Russian doll. One of them is a grown man and the other is a young girl, but both characters carry deep wounds inside them and the scars from their rough lives are buried in the stories they tell and, then they heal each other as the book progresses. Both of them have a deep desire to tell stories, for Mr. Big Bad Wolf it’s The Scientist and the Giant and for Helena it’s Lara the Witch, but why did they start? And who are they telling the stories to? And why tell them in that way?

I’ll spare you the spoilers here, so maybe instead I’ll talk about the story within the story. Helena, who has lost her parents, is living in an orphanage with her little brother Arthur and has loved telling him stories and reading picture books to him ever since she was small. She used to use stories to block out the sound of the adults arguing and there was a story that she read to him over and over again while she sat beside his hospital bed. That story was The Scientist and the Giant by Mr. Big Bad Wolf but Helena was still waiting for the end because Mr. Big Bad Wolf was going through a slump and couldn’t draw the rest of the story.

In The Scientist and the Giant, a scientist comes across a lonely giant who lives underground, and the scientist tells him stories and shares what he’s seen of the earth which brings light to the giant’s world. It’s almost as if hurt people have a special ability to sniff out wounds. As a wounded child, Helena may have smelt the same thing and ran towards Mr. Big Bad Wolf in a time of great sadness and depression. However, she doesn’t understand what Mr. Big Bad Wolf calls a “slump”, and on the tram the two of them have this conversation:

Helena: What is this slump you keep talking about?

Mr. Big Bad Wolf: …It’s a state that makes you feel powerless, afraid, or even repulsed by something you originally loved and thought was important.

Helena: That seems so scary.

Mr. Big Bad Wolf: It is.

During their brief conversation, Helena seems to suddenly understand and continues: “Ah so that’s what a slump is! It’s when something that was obviously very important to you suddenly feels awful, and you don’t want to be anywhere near it.…”

I particularly love moments like these in graphic novels where I’m silently struck by the characters and their lines, and how they clearly feel a strong sense of empathy for each other even though they’ve had completely different experiences. I mean, who among us hasn’t had been through a slump? The story is about Mr. Big Bad Wolf’s pain, but what I really felt was the person behind the drawings. In those painful, lonely moments, Mr. Big Bad Wolf had to rely on his creativity to get him through. However, creating the work itself was also painful as he desperately wanted to tell a good story but had no way of doing so, and in the process, it was like seeing the shadow of Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf’s author grafting herself onto the story.

There are also some small things in Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf that I found particularly interesting and have brought me great pleasure as a reader. Firstly, all the characters have English names, but I was really intrigued by how the surnames were set up. Helena’s surname is White, and Mr. Big Bad Wolf’s is Blake, and while I know it isn’t the same as Black, the pronunciation is similar! It seems like the author has deliberately used them to create a contrast between lightness and darkness. And after all, the author also called the doctor Rowan Brown and the teacher Melrose Green! (That might just be me overthinking it? XD)

Another detail I really liked was the “book within a book” concept. This story has two protagonists – Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf – one is an adult and one is a child, one is male and the other is female, and both of them love to draw and tell stories. In the graphic novel, their own books also appear throughout the story which lets us see their respective personalities and projections of their characters. When I finished reading the book, I couldn’t help thinking, “I’d buy Lara and the Witch and The Scientist and the Giant if they were published!”

Overall, Helena and Mr. Big Bad Wolf is a well-structured, smoothly narrated, and moving story that conveys universal values which can be felt by readers of all nationalities. Comprised of only two volumes, it is light while still being deep, which should make it well-suited for foreign rights sales. Finally, I just want to add that I really enjoyed the little four-panel strip in the appendix in which BliSS gives Helena’s friends at the orphanage their own little stories so that all the characters get a look in, which was very thoughtful of the author!

(This article is originally published at Readmoo)

Take a team of intrepid adventurers, multiply by BL romance, add monsters both vicious and cute… it sounds like a formula for manga success. But what if that reliability brings its own risks. Perhaps the reader has just finished a similar work and will find the formula formulaic? Or maybe expectations continually ratchet up, meaning every story has to be bigger and better than the last?

Formulas for success are helpful, but come with their own problems. Particularly so now, when genres are constantly subverted and mashed-up and the “guaranteed bestseller” formula of last century is now little more than a distant legend. So how to move on? One route is disruptive innovation. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, for example, switches up the point of view, defying the reader’s “natural” expectations. Another option is to stick to what you know, but know it better. Rather than churn out another formulaic tale, identify the essence of the formula, the variables that attract readers, and put those back at the heart of the story.

Gene’s The Shimmering Summoner takes the latter approach, and with great success.

The story’s protagonist, Robin, is a summoner. Magic runs in his family: his father is a skilled mage. Robin, though, is a magical weakling. He tries to conjure up warriors and monsters, but gets only random useless objects. But he is not the type to let a lack of ability stand in the way of ambition and still dreams of becoming a supernova-level summoner and defeating a Demonic Dragon. But with his skills lagging so far behind his hopes, Robin spends most of his time boasting of achievements yet to come, while sponging off Bao, his loyal childhood friend. Bao, by the way, is a boy who loves to wear dresses.

By a remarkable coincidence (or perhaps, given his failure rate, a statistical inevitability), Robin one day summons up Kai, a boy prince. Kai tricks Robin into visiting the Demonic Dragon’s castle and Robin, too proud to admit incompetence, fights the beast alongside Kai. It’s a one-sided fight, until Robin discovers his true powers. The dragon is defeated and Robin wins his supernova-level stripes. Victory reconciles Robin with his father and leads to a spark between him and Kai, who is now revealed to be no boy prince but a full-grown man prince.

Robin’s new status brings a steady flow of up-and-coming challengers. To escape, Robin teams up with Kai and Bao and the trio sets off on a quest. During their travels Kai’s secret and Bao’s past come to light, while romance blossoms between Robin and Kai. Ultimately, the three face their final challenge.

Gene’s characterizations reacquaint the reader with the essence of heroic manga: growing, moving past self-doubt, and finding yourself. True heroes don’t perform great feats, they self-affirm and self-accept. Those who accompany the heroes, meanwhile, lend more than skills with sword or staff. They provide friendship and support.

The Shimmering Summoner features rich world-building, vivid characters, a fun and flowing story, but not one ounce of filler. Visually, there is plenty of detail with no loss of pace, easy switching between action and internal drama, and a range of terrifying monsters and cute little creatures. All this creates the charm of The Shimmering Summoner – an impressive achievement made to appear easy.

Developing that ability has taken years. Gene is not professionally trained, but has built up over a decade of experience since she started producing self-published works in high school. She drew webtoons for Comico before beginning the hand-to-mouth existence of a young creative, publishing serials and entering competitions. In 2019, she took the Bronze Prize for manga in Japan’s MCPO Awards. In 2020 she walked away from the Kyoto International Manga Anime Awards with the Grand Prize in both the manga and illustration categories.

Perhaps Gene too has been on her own adventure and the dazzling The Shimmering Summoner is, like those prizes were, steps on that journey? We’re sure to be seeing more extraordinary tales from this supernova-level artist.