Episode 4: Comic Relief
Summary Keywords
comics, reading, books, graphic novels, comic, read, children, popular, readers, comic book, stories, students, library, Singapore, genre, love, shelves, creators, content, comic strips
00:10 Host, Loh Chin Ee
The total worldwide box office revenue of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series at the end of 2020 is closing in on $23 billion. The films are derived from the titles of Marvel Comics, including the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and X-Men. If the MCU, as it's known, was a country, $23 billion, as a measure of Gross Domestic Product, would rank it 105th, just behind Cyprus, an European member state. The bottom line is that comics are big business. Comics are also drivers of pop culture. Open up the Sunday Times and readers of all ages can enjoy the comic strips, a staple of newspapers for over 120 years. The possible visual styles and narratives are too numerous to mention. From the European classics like Tintin and Asterix, American icons like Watchmen and MAD Magazine, to Asian titles such as Lao Fu Zi and Akira. The influence of comics cannot be understated. In this episode, we explore the history of comic production and reading in Singapore and make the case that comics have a place for the entertainment, education and edification of children and adults. I'm Loh Chin Ee. Welcome to the How We Read podcast.
01:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Chapter One: A Brief History of Comics.
01:48 CT Lim
I read everything from American superheroes to Japanese manga, Hong Kong kung fu comics to newspaper strips, political cartoons, graphic novels about Lee Kuan Yew, Lim Chin Siong, about mental health, well-being, COVID comics and so on. The secret origins of my eventual downfall started when my dad brought me a Super Friends comic book because I was watching the TV show then.
02:09 Host, Loh Chin Ee
CT Lim is the Country Editor of the International Journal of Comic Art and an educator. I spoke to CT to clear up one of the most common misconceptions about illustrated publications. Is there a difference between comics and graphic novels?
02:26 CT Lim
One way to talk about it is it’s a format difference, right? A comic book, slightly thinner. Graphic novel, thicker, usually seen as more literary, more prestigious, more serious in terms of content than comic books. So you study a graphic novel but you don't study comic books. But to me that’s a false divide, right? The highbrow versus lowbrow argument, debate. To me, they're all comics.
02:50 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Comics have their origin story from the late 19th century, starting as comic strips and cartoons in newspapers and magazines.
02:59 CT Lim
As any of the rise of consumption, and basically disposable income, we become richer with decolonization, independence, industrialization, and technically the rise of the middle class. Teenagers with pocket money, then you have more or less a comic industry because comics companies are private enterprises. So it's only when the businessman see that there's a market for it that they will start printing comics. So there is a shift away from so-called free comic strips in newspapers, in magazines, to actual comic books, which you only get to see in 1980s. Towards the end of 80s and 90s, you have popular titles like Mr. Kiasu, Return of Condor Heroes published by AsiaPac. So it’s linked to the idea of pastime.
03:37 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Authors like to say that the pen is mightier than the sword. But in the comic genre, it's the illustrations that set the title apart from the crowd.
03:47 CT Lim
When you read a comic book, you pick it up, you're not just appealing to the prosaic sensors in a sense, but also your visual literacies if you have been engaged. And like any good story, as you turn the page, your mind is engaged, you get involved with the characters, the teams, and maybe at some points, you're imagining what's next.
04:08 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Teo Xing Zhi, Associate Librarian at the Jurong West Regional Library tells us just how popular comics are and the demographic of the readers.
04:19 Teo Xing Zhi
Comics are really, really popular with children and teens. The kids really, really love looking for books that have pictures inside. So as long as it’s an illustrated book, they will really, really love it. Bilingual volumes of Garfield, Doraemon, they will borrow it regardless of whether they can read one of the languages. As long as there’s English inside and they can enjoy the book, they will borrow it. If you go to the library shelves, we have to admit, you’ll see that they are in quite bad condition because they keep getting borrowed out over and over again. So we constantly have to replace them. Western-style comics and graphic novels, you will see children sitting near the shelves again, flipping through volume after volume of, like, Justice League, or, like, the Avengers. Percy Jackson and Cherub actually comes up as comic book format as well as graphic novel versions. So these are really, really popular. They just appear on shelf for a while and then, *poof*, gone.
05:07 Host, Loh Chin Ee
It's not only the children reading comics. The adults and seniors do too. And the stereotype of all male readership is changing too.
05:16 Teo Xing Zhi
10% of the total loans by adults are actually from the comic and graphic novel selection. While comic readers are generally male, the ladies recently have been catching up. So, like, especially with more female protagonists appearing now like Spider-Gwen or Wonder Woman. You just pick one book, you finish that book, and then you don't have another book to go to. So comics has that appeal in which you read one, you can continue with a very long story. Among the female audience, one of the top genres is fantasy romance. Then we can also see that seniors really like comics as well. So seniors, they like to read things like Lao Fu Zi, the old comics that they can find in the library, but they also like to reminisce through reading the illustrated versions of the wu xia comics that they actually have. So the Jin Yong comics are really, really popular among our elders.
06:00 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Being at the crossroads of the world, Singaporeans enjoy access to a wide variety of comics in different languages. A visit to the Kinokuniya Bookstore at Ngee Ann City will open your eyes to the vast range of comics on offer. You'll find classics such as The Adventures of Tintin, Japanese manga, such as Haikyū!!, made popular by its adaptation into an anime television series, and of course, Singapore's Mr. Kiasu.
06:29 CT Lim
This is where Singapore is unique because of that cliché, right, we are at the crossroad between the East and the West. We get stuff from America, we get stuff from Britain of course, and we also get stuff from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China. We do get from different sources, and of course, there are also Malay comics in the past.
06:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Packed with content, oftentimes printed in slim volumes, comics have captured the hearts of many. They are consumed by a diverse audience, unbounded by age, gender, or ethnicity. But where does the magic happen? And how is a comic produced?
07:05 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Chapter Two: The Comics Publishing Industry.
07:09 Felicia Low-Jimenez
I was a very sickly kid, and I spent a lot of time either at the doctors or in hospital rooms because I had very bad asthma. And I started reading comics because my mom and my dad would pick up like Spy vs. Spy, Garfield and Beano and Dandy. And they would be, like, these little floppies that I would read in the hospital room and I think that actually is my earliest comic reading experience. But when I grew up, I think I started reading comics more seriously because of the X-Men cartoons and because of the X-Men cartoons, I started going out and looking for like single issue comics. So that was kind of like my introduction into comics.
07:48 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Felicia Jimenez-Low is one half of the Sherlock Sam duo, a best-selling adventure series about a pudgy boy detective. Felicia is also the publisher at Difference Engine, the first independent comics publisher based in Singapore. Why the name Difference Engine?
08:05 Felicia Low-Jimenez
I happened to be reading this comic called Ada Lovelace and how she worked with Babbage on both the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine is considered like the first computer, but the Difference Engine name sounds a lot more interesting, and it kind of ties in with kind of what we hope to do with the content that we produce. Comic stories that can make a difference. It’s a catalyst for change.
08:31 Host, Loh Chin Ee
To date, Difference Engine has published The Makers Club: Game On, about girls who code, Amazing Ash & Superhero Ah Ma, about a superhero-in-training and her absent-minded, also superhero, grandma, and Sound, a comics anthology with stories from across Southeast Asia.
08:53 Felicia Low-Jimenez
A lot of comic publishing is very Western-centric. In the past, it used to be very male dominated both in terms of the target audience as well as the publishing houses and the creators involved. We're seeing a lot more diversity in comics publishing, but I still think it's very Western-centric. What we want to do is to make sure that we have stories that kids and grownups in Singapore, but also the rest of Southeast Asia can relate to. It can be something just as simple as making sure that your characters, before they come into the house, they take off their shoes. Or the food that they eat. I think maybe Singapore and Malaysia is one of the few places where we eat with a fork and a spoon. Other times, we might have a fork and a knife or chopsticks and a spoon. So it's just small things like these that kids and grownups can read and relate to. So that's kind of what we mean by like diverse content. We want to make sure to amplify voices in Southeast Asia.
09:53 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Comics publishing in Singapore is still young and evolving. Its small market means that creators often write in silo, for a small audience. Difference Engine is different in that it hopes to publish and distribute comics to the rest of the Southeast Asian market. The comics publishing industry is a fast-growing industry, with audiences hungry for this form of reading.
10:18 Felicia Low-Jimenez
Not just locally, but internationally we're already seeing a lot of this happen. Comics and the visual medium is becoming increasingly popular with international publishers. Starting up comics publishing arm, specifically targeting at a middle grade or a young adult audience. It's an audience that has been neglected for a while already. And maybe we only see a lot of attention being paid to this particular audience in the comic industry.
10:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Not everyone processes information the same way, and reading with visuals allow readers to learn in a different way from prose.
10:53 Felicia Low-Jimenez
Some kids might be able to memorize things better if it's accompanied by a visual. So we're seeing a lot more like nonfiction publishing for children that are very infographic heavy and some of them also use the aspects of the comic mediums like speech bubbles, captions and things like that. The creators that are being published is quite different from the creators that are being published maybe, like, 10 years ago. So there's a lot more diversity. There's a lot more deliberate push for diversity. Minority creators, creators who maybe even two years ago might not have gotten a publishing contract, now publishers are actively looking for them to give them a voice as well.
11:36 Host, Loh Chin Ee
There is no death of print when it comes to comics. Rather, there is an ecosystem of eBooks, online content, and print books that coexist to offer readers more choices. Just as the comic print industry is growing, the online comic ecosystem is flourishing. Ask any comic reader and they'll tell you of the many sites you can access to find free or subscription comics. These include Amazon's Comixology, Webtoon by Naver and Digital Comic Museum. Some original comics and webtoons have turned to social media like Instagram to reach their audience. How is Difference Engine moving into the future?
12:18 Felicia Low-Jimenez
Once we sign a project, we don't just treat it as a print comic or an eBook. We try and think of each project as like a source for additional content. Internally, we call it expansion projects. Recently, we just published Sound, a comics anthology, and it is an anthology of 13 stories by creators around Southeast Asia. What we did in addition to the comic book, right, was that we created a website where anyone can go to, there's an interactive canvas, and there are sound prompts. So you can play like a sound, be inspired by the sound and kind of draw on the interactive canvas. And then you can submit your illustration to Difference Engine or you can just share it with your friends. The rationale behind that was to let readers go through the same experience that the creators had in creating comics using the theme of sound. We also have the eBook, which is like just the basic digital book. We'll also be doing another website for Amazing Ash & Superhero Ah Ma, which is our middle grade comic, helping kids explore areas in Singapore that might be dementia-friendly, helping them understand what dementia is about, helping teachers and educators work with kids on this content as well.
13:35 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Looking at the future of reading, comics publishers are innovating on how they can push out content to their readers through different mediums. More exciting is how stories move across different platforms and mediums to immerse the reader in the worlds that comics have created.
13:54 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Chapter Three: What Kids Read
13:57 Tay Min Ern
I'm nine years old and I like playing the violin. I like to read English comics and novels. Some of my favourite comic series are Candy JEM and X-Venture Xplorers. The Candy JEM series teaches good habits, example of how to exercise and eat healthily.
14:17 Tay Tze Ern
Some of the comics I like are Hazardous Tales, Sherman’s Lagoon, Calvin and Hobbes and FoxTrot. They're funny. It's also a bit like a picture book, but more complicated. A picture book usually is just one picture but a comic, there (are) less words. The picture also does some description.
14:43 Host, Loh Chin Ee
We know that children love reading comics but there is a lingering doubt that parents and educators have about the value of comic reading. I asked Sarah Mounsey, Director of Libraries and Teacher-Librarian at Dulwich College (Singapore), if children and teenagers should be reading comics.
15:02 Sarah Mounsey
Comics are good. Comics are excellent. Any reading content is good for children. But different books have different accessibility levels. Graphic novels and comics are excellent because they're heavily illustrated, and students need to read the words but they also need to read the pictures in tandem. And that's a really important skill. So visual literacy is that skill where you need to be looking at the images and in a comic strip, there's like a gap between the panels the students need to fill in that gap to understand the story in context. So comics are absolutely valid reading choices.
15:35 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Comics are extremely popular at Dulwich. They constitute 9% of the collection but account for 15% of the loans. Demand outstrips supply, and Sara is always looking for books to add to her collection.
15:49 Sarah Mounsey
In my library last year, we loaned out 62,000 books and 15% of the books borrowed were actually graphic novels. We can't keep them on the shelf. This trend has increased year after year. They're a really popular reading choice in a wide range of students. Often, they're a popular choice for students who have English as a second language, but definitely not exclusively to this category. Boys enjoy them, girls enjoy them. I have many students as well who voraciously read thick and mature chapter books alongside deep and complicated graphic novels. So many students love comics and use them for different purposes, so they can be light-hearted and funny ones. So The Bad Guys series, Dog Man and Lunch Lady are excellent examples of that. Yet they can also deliver a really heavy message and address very mature themes such as conflict stories and refugee stories.
16:38 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Comics are not just for entertainment. Children learn about different, sometimes difficult topics through reading comics that educate as well as entertain.
16:48 Sarah Mounsey
Some excellent examples are When Stars Are Scattered, Illegal, House, and the graphic novel version of Anne Frank are all very, very popular with students. These are all the sort of graphic novels that would be for the mature 10-year-old right through the teenage years and of course for adults as well who really enjoyed them. Then also some other popular graphic novels some recent years that fit into the realistic genre would include books like El Deafo and Raina Telgemeier’s books including Drama, Guts, and The Baby-Sitters Club. We cannot keep them on the shelves and we have multiple, multiple copies. These books look at a lot of dilemmas that students face including standing up for yourself, friendship troubles, bullying, feeling like the outsider.
17:30 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Reading comic versions of popular books and classics can lead to exploration of other genres.
17:37 Sarah Mounsey
Some really popular ones are graphic novels which are being created after a popular middle grade chapter book, so for example, Alex Rider and Artemis Fowl and Percy Jackson. The chapter books came first and then they've been made into graphic novels. So a lot of children really find the graphic novels first, really enjoyed them, and then it can be a great way of introducing them to trying the chapter book version as well.
18:01 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Librarians spend a lot of time figuring out what patrons like. Like Sarah, Xing Zhi from the National Library Board actively sources for all kinds of comics to feed her patrons’ insatiable need for comics.
18:17 Teo Xing Zhi
Recently, we've been building our Japanese manga collection. This has been gaining popularity. Back when Oishinbo was the only manga that we had in the library, all the copies will be borrowed out. It's almost impossible to find a copy of Case Closed, which is the one about Detective Conan. Most avid borrowers for that particular series are actually young children. And there are also many teens who are like very dedicated to reading manga and completing the whole series in the library. They will binge read things like One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia all standing in front of the shelves. So they don't actually borrow the book. I haven't actually seen the copies of a few of the titles that I've shelved up for a while already. For example, That Time I Reincarnated as a Slime or the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. It's never on shelf because it just keeps going off really, really quickly. And they are constantly being reserved, so people are paying money for them to be shipped to another library so they can collect it in the other libraries.
19:10 Host, Loh Chin Ee
One trend that has been worrying education systems worldwide is that children report that they enjoy reading less than they used to. Should we be concerned?
19:20 Sarah Mounsey
I do think we do need to be worried but I don't believe forcing children to read things that they're not interested in is the solution. And I think that is part of the problem as well. So when educators just teach reading with, like, a focus on moving to the next level or just to answer comprehension questions, it can be a very negative experience for children. Adults should not be telling children to stop reading books which they view as too easy. Reading should be pleasurable. And when it's not a huge challenge, children will become lifelong readers because they're reading for pleasure and not just for purpose. So when children do this really frequently they will associate reading as a really natural positive experience and they'll naturally progress on to more challenging text and want to read more and more and more.
20:02 Host, Loh Chin Ee
We need to focus not just on skills or comprehension in reading, but also on pleasure. Providing books that children like to read and making sure they have easy access to these books can help them enjoy reading more.
20:17 Sarah Mounsey
Mobile phone use in students does correlate with a decline in reading. Parents need to take responsibility for having this conversation with their children and to manage their time on screens and be able to switch off. So reading at the end of the day is not just a good way to slow the mind down, but there is research that links reading to mental and physical well-being. Some of our children don't have the ability to know when to switch off so our job is to help them and guide them and provide opportunities for reading as a positive experience to help in this.
20:46 Host, Loh Chin Ee
So what can we as parents, teachers, and librarians do to encourage children to love reading?
20:53 Sarah Mounsey
We have a quote by JK Rowling outside our library that says, “if you do not like to read, you haven't found the right book yet”. And so we look at that as the role of parents, teachers and teacher-librarians to work with children to find that right book, because every child has different reading preferences. So some children absolutely love comics or graphic novels, others don't like them at all because they like to read text and find actually reading images quite confusing. Some children love realistic fiction and ask for more sad books. We have others who come in want fantasy or adventure or scary books. Teenagers love more mature content and love the genre of young adult fiction. And then some children only want to read non-fiction and only want to read books with information. A part of my job and I think all parents’ and all teachers’ jobs is to share examples of all of the different kinds of genres to children, because sometimes children can get really pigeonholed into the genre of their preference so it is great to share so many with them to sort of extend their reading choices and their awareness of what else might be out there and books maybe they wouldn't have discovered had someone not shared them with them.
22:00 Host, Loh Chin Ee
To build a culture of reading, parents, teachers, and librarians need to be more book savvy to know more about books and children and teens as potential lovers of books. I like to think about the teacher or librarian as a matchmaker. A matchmaker knows the prospective suitor and potential matches well enough to make a good judgment about whether the parties will click. In the same way, a teacher or librarian has to get to know both students and books in order to make a successful match. And if the first match does not work out, we try a second book, or a third, until the student finds the book that he or she can fall in love with. Very often, the book that sparks the love of reading, may be a comic.
22:55 Host, Loh Chin Ee
Thank you for listening to the How We Read Podcast episode, Comic Relief. This episode was written and hosted by me, Loh Chin Ee, and my thanks go to my guests for sharing their love and knowledge of comic reading. For listeners who love Sherlock Sam and want to find out more about writing children's books, you can tune in to the bonus episode where Felicia shares about the process of writing the series. Next week, join me as we learn about reading poetry. This episode was produced by Kenn Delbridge of Splice Studios. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We’re available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes and take a moment to give us a five-star review. For more information, please visit lohchinee.com.