The New Wave of Taiwan Comics

Those born in the 1940s, 50s or 60s still remember Ye Hongjia’s comic Zhuge ­Silang, which along with its heroes Silang and Zhenping enjoyed a particular period of popularity in the mid-20th century.

Around the same time, Chen Haihong’s Little Hero, Dragon Whirlwind, plus the works of celebrated comics artists such as Lei Qiu (Hsu Hsing-hsiu) and Hsu Mao-sung, joined Zhuge Silang at the crest of the first wave of local comics, becoming iconic representatives of the wuxia comics of the era.

However, when the Regulatory Guidance for the Compilation and Printing of Serial Comics went into effect in 1966, this first wave came crashing down. It was not until two decades later, with the lifting of martial law in 1987, that business began to pick up again.

And so it was that in the 1980s there arose comics like Ao Yo-siang’s Wuloom Family (in a four-panel yonkoma format), Lin Zhengde’s Young Guns, and You Su-lan’s Melan­cholic Princess. Melancholic Princess combined historical and fantasy elements and could be considered the forerunner of Taiwanese shōjo (young women’s) ­comics.

A variety of styles, genres, and themes emerged, with the new wave of comics selling tens of millions of copies and seeing titles licensed for sale in other regions, including Japan and Hong Kong. However, the good times did not last long. With the arrival of the digital age in the 1990s and the sharp decline of hard-copy media, the failure to create a comprehensive industry foundation for ­local comics saw the sector once again dealt a heavy blow.

A third golden age?

Times and conditions change, and with them, the challenges the industry faces. While the market for books might not be as strong as it once was, in the past decade or so a number of works with a historical bent have arrived on the scene. Akru’s Wings of Kopule was launched onto a stagnant comics market in 2008, making its publishers very nervous initially, but it quickly received an unexpectedly warm welcome, even taking the top prize in the Graphic Comic Awards that year.

In 2009 the Creative Comic Collection (CCC) was launched, including a number of works based on Taiwanese literature, history, and nature, such as Akru’s Scrolls of a Northern City and Kiya Chang’s Formosa Oolong Tea. The careful craftsmanship and thoroughness of the books ignited fierce interest in the market.

More recently, Ruan Guang-min’s Yong-Jiu Grocery Store and Zuo Hsuan’s The Summer Temple Fair have even been adapted for television.

On top of this, in 2017, 2019, and 2020, Taiwanese comics have won the Kyoto International Manga Anime Award, widely regarded as a launchpad for greater things.

In 2020, Taiwanese comics took gold, silver, and bronze awards at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ ­Japan International Manga Awards, a turnaround after the domination of the winners list by artists from China and Hong Kong in previous years.

The repeated good news from overseas quietly echoes the return of comics locally. Even publishers say privately that they sense a new wave of Taiwan comics coming. 

Creative Comic Collection editor Wen Chun-ya.

The unexpected success of the CCC

Since the turn of the millennium, Taiwanese local consciousness has been on the rise, and people have a growing desire to see their own stories told. This is one of the reasons why these historical and literary comics have seen such success in the market and forged a new path for the industry.

The CCC, which has nurtured many top-class works, has been a key catalyst for this new wave of Taiwan comics.

The CCC is an outgrowth of the National Science Council’s Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program, and not a typical comics periodical produced and distributed by a publishing house. The program brings together 15 collections and research institutions across the country, and in order to publicize these materials and demonstrate their value, the team has experimented with publishing popular science reports and launching online games, and also hopes to use the material to tell stories. This is where the comics come in.

“From the beginning, the CCC has not been built around the comics industry. In fact, getting so deeply involved with the industry has been an entirely seren­dipit­ous outcome of the work,” says CCC editor Wen Chun-ya. Nevertheless, Wen and her atypical editorial team, hailing from fields as diverse as Chinese literature, history, art, and library sciences, have managed to produce many popular works, even drawing the public’s attention to the many artists they have worked with, leading people to wonder how it is that Taiwan has so many artists, and where they came from.

Kiya Chang, who was born into a tea farming family in Meishan, Chiayi County, invested her comic Formosa Oolong Tea with low-key reflections of her own life experiences.

Dōjinshi markets: A petri dish for talent

Given the rocky road that Taiwan’s comics industry has traveled, competition is fierce. Publishers tend to be conservative, preferring to translate bestselling works from abroad, leaving little in the way of resources for investing in original local works. Although Taiwan’s comics industry is on the bubble, some scholars still maintain that it never actually went away, saying that regardless of the social atmosphere and industry environ­ment, people who like to read comics and those who like to draw them have always existed.

After the golden age of the 1990s, the idea of “dōjinshi markets” was introduced to Taiwan from Japan, and the quick flourishing of such markets serves as the best example of comics’ continuing popularity. The Japanese word dōjin refers to people with shared interests—a fandom or clique. Dōjinshi, meanwhile, refers particularly to comics made by such fandoms as de­riv­ative works based on the commercial comics they love.

Initially, due to a lack of support from the commercial market, and despite the considerable differences between dōjinshi and commercial publishing, the sheer size of dōjinshi markets like Comics World Taiwan and Fancy Frontier still attracted many comics lovers to come together and compete with each other. Such markets could see tens of thousands of people taking part, and it would not be too much to say that in some sense these dōjinshi were heirs to much of the former energy and dynamism of Taiwanese comics.

“Even if most of the works at dōjinshi markets are derived from Japanese comics, the cartoonists use them to hone their skills, accumulate publishing knowledge, and even build their own fanbases. You can even find a few comics based on Taiwan’s own Pili puppet theater, along with some wholly original works. You could say the markets have been a pretty important incubator for Taiwanese creators,” observes Wang Peiti, executive officer at the National Comic Museum Preparatory Office and a notable Taiwanese comic book scholar.

Hence at the inception of the CCC, the editorial team not only took recommendations from teachers of design and multimedia in colleges and universities to find students who were interested in drawing comics, but also broke new ground by looking to the dōjinshi markets for artists to work with.

The CCC has led to an unexpected boom in Taiwan comics. In response to the needs of the industry, it has now transitioned into an online platform.

The best of times, the worst of times

With the CCC having broken the ice and graphic pub­lica­tions gradually coming to greater attention, the stigma once attached to comics is now falling away. A number of government agencies have even begun working with comics artists, leading to a wave of “official” comics.

More importantly, the government has begun to regard comics as an important part of the cultural content industry, formulating policies, investing substantial resources, and working to revitalize the sector’s development. Not only has the CCC been transferred from Academia Sinica to the Creative Content Agency and expanded into an online comic serialization platform, the Taiwan Comic Base has also come into operation, and a National Comic Museum is in preparation. Assistance in finding opportunities for content licensing (such as for film or TV adaptations), substantial subsidies for publishing houses, and the establishment of the Golden Comic Awards (succeeding the Graphic Comic Awards) have all brought with them significant benefits for the industry.

With an increasing number of original works, the themes and styles of Taiwan comics are becoming ever more diverse, and artists are trying to outgrow the influence of foreign comics such as Japanese manga and develop their own personal styles.

Another reason for pride is that Taiwan’s position as a leader in gender equality in Asia is reflected in its comics industry. Not only do female artists and editors account for the vast majority of these positions, a large part of the writing, which was predominantly done by men in golden ages past, is now also by women. There are also a number of iconic and distinctively Taiwanese works on issues of gender equality, which have been warmly embraced by the market.

For example, Huang Tingyu, proprietor of comics shop Mangasick, introduced us to Let’s Go T, which combines female sexual autonomy with comedic elements. The comic was originally self-published by artist Guzi, but became so popular that it attracted the attention of publishers and was even licensed for publication in Japan. Huihui’s Feifei’s Inflatable Adventure! is also self-published, but has none­theless managed to secure a spot near the top of Manga­sick’s sales chart.

Sometimes it is both the worst of times and the best of times. Taiwan comics are at a critical juncture in their development, but going from dormant to blooming and from monolithic to diverse is no easy task. As a witness to this crucial moment, why not seek out some original Taiwan comics that capture your fancy, doing your part to support the industry while also enjoying the unique pleasures this moment has to offer?

Government publications in comics form have become a growing trend in recent years.

Huang Tingyu’s comic shop Mangasick is a mecca for lovers of comics and animation visiting Taiwan.