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Transnationalism in
East and Southeast
Asian Comics Art
Edited by
John A. Lent · Wendy Siuyi Wong ·
Benjamin Wai–ming Ng
Transnationalism in East and Southeast Asian
Comics Art
 John A. Lent · Wendy Siuyi Wong ·
Benjamin Wai–ming Ng
Editors

Transnationalism
in East and Southeast
Asian Comics Art
Editors
John A. Lent Wendy Siuyi Wong
International Journal of Comic Art Department of Design
Drexel Hill, PA, USA York University
Toronto, ON, Canada
Benjamin Wai–ming Ng
Department of Japanese Studies
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-3-030-95242-6 ISBN 978-3-030-95243-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95243-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Maram_shutterstock.com

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

History and Development of the Project

The genesis for this book project was the one-day (May 12, 2018)
symposium held at Chinese University of Hong Kong, organized by
Wendy Siuyi Wong and Benjamin Wai–ming Ng. The seven speakers
from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and North America discussed a variety
of transnational subjects related to comic art, including cultural flows,
comics industry ownership, comics creation and labor, national iden-
tity and universal styles, the diaspora, and cross-national representations.
They dealt with Japan, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, and Singapore.
In an effort to make this book geographically inclusive, contribu-
tors knowledgeable about Mongolia, South Korea, and Taiwan in East
Asia, and about Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam in Southeast Asia
supplement the conference presenters. The result is a study of aspects of
transnationalism and comic arts in all of East Asia, except North Korea,
and all of Southeast Asia, except Brunei, Laos, and Myanmar (The bound-
aries of these regions were drawn many decades ago by the Association of
Asian Studies). Brunei, Laos, and North Korea were omitted because of
scant information and lack of contacts, while Myanmar was not covered
because of a lack of connections between comics and transnationalism as
determined from interviews with local cartoonists conducted by John A.
Lent in 2018. Though the first cartoons published in then Burma, in
1912, were drawn by British amateur painters who were colonial teachers

v
vi PREFACE

and the railway commissioner, the rest of the country’s comic art history
lacks transnational links, save for a few Burmese cartoonists, who, in the
early 2000s, exposed the oppression and absurdity of the government and
military while they were in exile.
The end result is a book of an introduction and thirteen other chapters,
six covering East Asia and seven, Southeast Asia, dealing with offshore
comics production, transnational ownership, multinational collaboration,
border crossings of comics creators and characters, expansion of over-
seas markets, as well as other topics such as Chinese cartoonists in
political exile working in Japan; South Korea’s foreign expansion of
manhwa through translations, Webtoons, and U.S.-based manhwa firms;
Cambodian artists’ spring-boarding from strong European and East Asian
influences to the creation of indigenous styles; the colonial underpin-
nings of Indonesian comics; transnationalism by borrowing, swiping, and
adapting in Thailand; the impacts of global styles on Malaysian cartoons;
representations of Filipinas in Japanese manga; efforts to build transna-
tional ties in Southeast Asian comics, and Vietnamese attempts to find
the country’s own comic art voice.
The chapters cover a wide expanse of topics that relate by varying
degrees to transnationalism; in the process, bringing coherence to the
total manuscript.
Authors of these chapters include comics/cartoon researchers,
cartoonists/illustrators-cum-scholars (e.g., Muliyadi Mahamood and Chi
Huu Do), and a former coordinator of a comic art group within his
adopted country (John Weeks). With the exception of John A. Lent and
John Weeks, all are native to the countries/territories about which they
write.

Framework of Project
As with a large percentage of edited books, Transnationalism…tends to
be uneven in the approaches and methodologies used. There are chapters
that are case studies of individual comics personnel, such as the late Cheng
Uen of Taiwan who plied his creativity for Japanese publishers, Wang
Ning of China, an entrepreneur who intermingles Chinese and Franco-
Belgian cartoonists in joint workshops and collaborative book projects,
and the late Lee Wai-Chun of Hong Kong, whose long-running 13-Dot
Cartoon projected Western images to young Chinese women, and an
isolated comic book title, such as Bumbardai in Mongolia. Conversely,
 PREFACE vii

other chapters provide broad overviews of a country’s comics and how

they affect or are affected by transnationalism, examples being those
on Malaysia, with its trail of influences brought by British colonialism
and the manga invasion, and South Korea, also inundated with manga,
that has sought transnational links through offshore production, expor-
tation and/or overseas publication of its manhwa and animation, and
collaborative arrangements.
The editors make no apologies for any unevenness in approaches and
methodologies used; on the contrary, they believe such variety is justified,
even beneficial, when discussing such an array of different cultures, each
incorporating transnationalism in its own distinctive way.
Using a geographical framework to organize East and Southeast Asia
makes sense because of the marked differences within the regions and
their component countries, relative to culture, language, religion, socio-
economic, colonial, and political heritages. To use religion as an example
of this diversity, in Southeast Asia, one finds Muslim majority countries
such as Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, Theravada Buddhist majority
nations such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, Chinese
Confucian-influenced entities such as Singapore and Vietnam, and the
Christian majority of the Philippines. Almost all East and Southeast Asian
countries experienced colonization—by Japan, Great Britain, France,
Spain, the U.S., The Netherlands, and Portugal, and a range of govern-
mental and political systems, including various shades of communism,
other forms of authoritarianism, socialism, democracy, and monarchy.
Such diversity does not encourage a comparative approach.
Common threads tie these chapters historically, politically, and socio-
economically. Except for Thailand, all of them had been under colonial
or occupation rule; in most instances, it was the colonizers who intro-
duced cartoons and comics often through humor magazines: the British
in Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Myanmar; the French in Japan and
Vietnam; the Dutch in Indonesia; the Americans in the Philippines. In
most cases, the earliest of these cartoon periodicals were designed for the
use and enjoyment of the colonizers.
Tied to this tread were later influences by U.S. comics, especially super-
hero and Disney titles, and Japanese manga. The Japanese eventually
designated manga as cultural ambassadors, making their appearance very
prominent throughout the region.
Another significant transnational feature common to East and South-
east Asia is an international division of labor. Seeking less-expensive
viii PREFACE

and strike-free labor, North American and European comics and anima-
tion companies leaned heavily on Asians to do the actual production
work for their own artists. This transfer of labor was accomplished in
various ways: by establishing offshore companies, e.g., animation studio
offshoots in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and then Southeast Asia;
enticing talented comics creators from the Philippines to move to the U.S.
and work for Marvel, DC, Disney, and others, or “farming out” produc-
tion (coloring, inking, etc.) to cartoonists in at least Taiwan, Hong Kong,
the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
The other transnational string tying together East and Southeast comic
art is the desire to seek overseas markets. This has been the goal partic-
ularly of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean comics and animation, but most
other regional countries have sought to sell their comic art with varying
degrees of efforts and success.
Transnationalism continues to gain a foothold in comics studies, and
the aim of this book is to add to that volume of research.

Drexel Hill, PA, USA John A. Lent

Toronto, Canada Wendy Siuyi Wong
Shatin, Hong Kong Benjamin Wai–ming Ng
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
John A. Lent

Part I East Asian

2 On Transnationality: A History of Negotiations
of Self-Identity in Selected Works by Women Comic
Artists in Hong Kong 25
Wendy Siuyi Wong
3 Transnationalism via Political Exile: Chinese Political
Cartoonists in Japan 53
Benjamin Wai–ming Ng
4 Representational and Symbolic Dimensions
in the Inter-Asian Developments: Taiwanese
Cartoonist Chen Uen’s Comic Aesthetics and Legacy
in East Asia 73
Hong-Chi Shiau
5 South Korean Manhwa’s Long and Strong Association
with Transnationalism 93
John A. Lent

ix
x CONTENTS

6 The Transnationalization of Chinese Comic Books:

A Case Study 117
John A. Lent
7 The Embryonic Stage of the Transnationalizing
of Mongolian Comics 129
John A. Lent

Part II Southeast Asian

8 Cambodia’s Emerging Digital Hybrids 139
John Weeks
9 Indonesian Comics: Zig-Zagging Between
Indigenousness and Transnationalism 169
John A. Lent
10 A Historical Overview of Transnationalism
in Malaysian Cartoons 187
Muliyadi Mahamood
11 Wife, Child, Illegal: Static Representations of Filipinos
in Japanese Manga 213
Karl Ian Uy Cheng Chua and Benjamin A. San Jose
12 The Migration of Labor in Cartoons: The Story
of Morgan Chua in Singapore and Hong Kong 231
Cheng Tju Lim
13 Thai Comics’ Grappling with Various Shades
of Transnationalism 253
John A. Lent
14 Nationally, Much Less, Transnationally: A Struggle
to Grow: Comic Art in Vietnam 271
Chi Do Huu
 Notes on Contributors

Chua Karl Ian Uy Cheng received his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from
Hitotsubashi University, Japan. He is Assistant Professor in the Depart-
ment of History and prior to May 2020, he served as Director of
the Japanese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University. He
co-authored Covid-19 and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia Digital
Responses to the Pandemic for the Kyoto University’s Center for South-
east Asian Studies Covid Chronicles series, and “Japanese Representation
in Philippine Media” as a section for The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity.
He has been an Asia Public Intellectual Junior Fellow. He is part of
the editorial board of Social Sciences Diliman and East Asian Journal
of Popular Culture and a steering committee member of the Japanese
Studies Association of Southeast Asia (JSA-ASEAN).
Do Huu Chi is a Vietnamese comic artist and art advocate. Since 2006,
he has been creating comics and illustrations for several magazines and
publishers in Vietnam. He was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Best
Comics Strips in Asian Youth Animation and Comics contest in 2010.
After graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a
MFA in Sequential Art in 2013, he returned to Vietnam and founded the
creative hub Toa Tàu, which offers a dynamic creative platform for a wide
range of audiences. Besides drawing, Chi loves graphic design, photog-
raphy, and writing. His diverse body of work draws from one question:
how to use the arts as an instrument to leverage and deepen the human
experience. Chi is based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Lent John A. taught at the college/university level from 1960–2011,

including stints in the Philippines as a Fulbright scholar, Malaysia, where
he started the country’s first mass communication program; Canada,
as Rogers Distinguished Professor; China, as a visiting professor at
four universities; and the USA. Lent pioneered in the study of mass
communication and popular culture in Asia (since 1964) and Caribbean
(since 1968), comic art and animation, and development communication.
He has authored or edited 82 books, published and edited Interna-
tional Journal of Comic Art (1999–), Asian Cinema (1994–2012), and
Berita (1975–2001), and chaired Asian Popular Culture (PCA) (1996–),
Asian Cinema Studies Society (1994–2012), Comic Art Working Group
(IAMCR, 1984–2016), Asian-Pacific Animation and Comics Association
(2008–), Asian Research Center for Animation and Comics Art (2005–),
and the Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei Studies Group of the Association for
Asian Studies (1976–1983), all of which he founded.
Lim Cheng Tju is an Educator who writes about history and popular
culture. His articles have appeared in the Southeast Asian Journal of
Social Science, Journal of Popular Culture, and Print Quarterly. He is the
country editor (Singapore) for the International Journal of Comic Art
and also the co-editor of Liquid City Volume 2, an anthology of South-
east Asian comics published by Image Comics. He is one of the authors
of The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled
Strands of Modernity (Amsterdam University Press/National University
of Singapore Press, 2012).
Mahamood Muliyadi is Professor of Cartoon Studies in the Faculty of
Art & Design, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia and the founding
President of the Malaysian Cartoonists’ Association in 1990. He received
his Ph.D. in Cartoon Studies from the University of Kent, England in
1997. Among his books are The History of Malay Editorial Cartoons
1930s–1993 (Utusan Publications & Distributors, 2004) and Modern
Malaysian Art: From the Pioneering Era to the Pluralist Era (Utusan
Publications & Distributors, 2007). Muliyadi was a member of the
National Visual Arts Development Board, National Art Gallery, Malaysia
(2016–2018) and is currently a member of the Panel of Fine Arts Experts
of the National Heritage Council of Malaysia. In 2012, he received the
National Academic Award from the Ministry of Education in Malaysia.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Ng Benjamin Wai–ming is Professor of Japanese Studies at the Chinese

University of Hong Kong. He is a historian of Japanese thought and
culture by training. He also teaches and researches on Japanese popular
culture. His articles on Japanese popular culture have been published in
International Journal of Comic Art, Animation Journal, Asian Cinema,
Game Studies, Asian Music, etc. His manga research focuses on the
interaction and collaboration between Japan and Hong Kong.
San Jose Benjamin A. received his Ph.D. in International Public Policy
from Tsukuba University, Japan. He is Assistant Professor in the Depart-
ment of Political Science and since August 2020, serves as the Director
of the Japanese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University. He
authored “Impediments on Reaching Human Security for Migrants:
Prospects for the Philippines and Japan” in Thinking Beyond the State:
Migration, Integration and Citizenship in East Asia. His research interest
includes labor migration issues, Philippine migration, and international
relations.
Shiau Hong-Chi is Professor of communications management at Shih-
Hsin University in Taiwan. He had taught in the U.S. before his academic
career in Taiwan. He is passionate in building a more nuanced under-
standing of how increasingly communication flows have helped engender
new collectivities. His recent research examines how individuals form
impressions of the world through their media use and how transcultural
power is negotiated in a global context. He has recently published articles
in Social Media + Society, Chinese Journal of Communication, Language
Communication, Leisure Studies, Journal of Asian Pacific Communica-
tion, Asian Cinema, Cogent Arts and Humanities and International
Journal of Comic Art and also contributed several book chapters mainly
on East Asian Popular Culture.
Weeks John is a comics scholar and creator based in Cambodia. His
writing on Khmer art has appeared in the International Journal of Comic
Art. He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from Monash University. He
has worked at American publishers Eclipse Comics and Dark Horse
Comics. In Cambodia, he has worked with arts and research organi-
zations including the Center for Khmer Studies, the Cambodian Book
Federation, Nou Hach Literary Journal, Cambodian Living Arts and Our
Books.
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Wong Wendy Siuyi is Professor in the Department of Design at York

University in Toronto, Canada. She has taught in Hong Kong, the U.S.
and Australia, and has established an international reputation as an expert
in Chinese graphic design history and Chinese comic art history. She is
the author of Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua (2002), published
by Princeton Architectural Press, and she often receives invitations to
speak on the topic at international venues. Her latest book, entitled The
Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising and Graphic Design
(2018), published by Palgrave Macmillan, utilizes the city as a case study
to demonstrate the potential of these three media to offer us a global
understanding of contemporary visual cultures.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 From Lau, Lily Lee-Lee. 1998. Mom’s Drawer Is

at the Bottom. In Mom’s Drawer Is at the Bottom,
83. Hong Kong: The Association for the Advancement
of Feminism 34
Fig. 2.2 Old Girl Mailbox. Cactus. First published in Sunday
Supplement, Ming Pao. Date: September 21, 2008.
Retrieved from http://www.stellaso.com/gallery/old
girl_letterbox/3/1.htm 38
Fig. 2.3 Mandycat’s Website. Retrieved from https://mandycat.
com/ 41
Fig. 2.4 Silly Way comics series. By Ma Chai. Published
by Flying House Publishing 2007–2012 43
Fig. 2.5 Little Thunder’s Instagram https://www.instagram.
com/littlethunder/ 48
Fig. 3.1 The Weathercock (Hua Junwu, 1957), the homepage
of the National Art Museum of China (Source http://
www.namoc.org/zsjs/gczp/cpjxs/201507/t20150729_
290925.htm) 56
Fig. 3.2 Cheng Tao’s “You Can Kill All Roosters, But You
Cannot Stop the Morning to Come,” Twitter post
on October 14, 2014, 12:07 am. https://twitter.com/
taocomic/status/521874941335977984 58
Fig. 3.3 The best-selling Anti-Chinese Manga in Japan: Manga
Chūgoku Nyūmon (George Akiyama 2005) 62
Fig. 3.4 Rebel Pepper’s first comic book (Author’s copy) 64

xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.5 Some of Sun’s comic books owned by the author 67

Fig. 4.1 Poster of “The Legacy of Chen Uen: Art, Life
and Philosophy” on display outside the National Palace
Museum Taipei (Source https://www.facebook.com/
chenuen2018/) 74
Fig. 4.2 Cover of Spider-Man, Issue #1. By Ryoichi Ikegami. It
was originally published in Japan from January 1970
to September 1971 in Monthly Shōnen Magazine. Image
courtesy of Tong Li Comics Ltd. 77
Fig. 4.3 Drawing for the cover of Magical Super Asia (深邃美
麗的亞細亞). Volume 4. 1994. By Chen Uen. In this
image, Chen used shuı̌-mò ink wash painting to create
a sense of mystery and historical distance. Image
courtesy of Dala Comic Publisher 78
Fig. 4.4 Heroes of the East Chou Dynasty is a historical fiction
set against the backdrop of China’s Spring and Autumn
period as well as during the Warring States periods
(770–221 BC). The Japan Cartoonists Association
honored Chen for his work on the series in 1991.
Image courtesy of Dala Comic Publisher 80
Fig. 4.5 Cover of Chen’s Abi-Sword I . Abi-Sword (or Avici) is
a technique of sword fighting used to revenge the death
of one’s father. Image courtesy of Dala Comic Publisher 83
Fig. 4.6 Cover of Chen’s Abi-Sword II . Abi-Sword (or Avici) is
a technique of sword fighting used to revenge the death
of one’s father. Image courtesy of Dala Comic Publisher 84
Fig. 4.7 Romance of Three Kingdoms in video game format,
which Chen repainted for the most part. The game
required the background and the detailed weaponries
to be rendered differently using computerized
techniques. Image courtesy of Dala Comic Publisher 87
Fig. 4.8 Portrayal of Wu Xung, a well-known character in Water
Margin. Image Courtesy of Dala Comic Publisher 89
Fig. 5.1 Office website of the 24th Seoul International
Cartoon & Animation Festival (Source http://www.
sicaf.org/) 96
Fig. 5.2 Promotional leaflet of the Korea Manhwa Museum
(Source http://www.sicaf.org/) 98
Fig. 5.3 Covers of Kim Dong-Hwa’s Color Trilogy (Source
https://firstsecondbooks.com/books/kim-dong-hwas-
color-trilogy/) 102
 LIST OF FIGURES xvii

Fig. 5.4 Official website of Webtoon (Source https://www.web

toons.com/en) 105
Fig. 5.5 Longtime cartoonist Park Jae-dong was a strong
opponent of the manga inflow and was an organizer
of Uri Manhwa Hyophoe. Seoul. August 10, 2018
(Photo by Kim Chunhyo. Permission of Park Jae-dong) 111
Fig. 6.1 The homepage of Beijing Total Vision Culture Spreads
Co. Ltd. https://totalvision.cn/en/ 119
Fig. 6.2 Wang Ning, founder and general manager of Total
Vision, with Emmanual Lepage (Courtesy of Wang
Ning) 120
Fig. 6.3 French artists in China as part of the exchange
between the two countries. Left to right: Michel Suro,
Laurent Verron, Emmanual Lepage, and Christian Lax
(Photo by Wang Ning. Courtesy of Wang Ning) 121
Fig. 6.4 Drawing by Dong Zhequn while an exchange artist
in Paris (Courtesy of Wang Ning and Dong Zhequn) 123
Fig. 7.1 Samandariin Tsogtbayar (Satso) in Drexel Hill, PA,
U.S. May 8, 2019 (Photo by John A. Lent. Permission
of Samandariin Tsogtbayar) 130
Fig. 7.2 Zaluuchuudin unen (youth’s truth) propagated
messages of the Mongolian people’s revolutionary
party and Soviet Union. This World War II front page
cartoon shows the USSR stopping Germany. (Courtesy
of Dan Erdenebal) 131
Fig. 7.3 The adventures of Borkhuu, Odkhuu, and Tumurkhuu,
(created in 1993, by Samandariin Tsogtbayar,
was Mongolia’s first comic book. Permission
of Samandariin Tsogtbayar) 132
Fig. 7.4 Erdenebayar Nambaral. Nomadic comics. Ulaan
Baatar. July 27, 2018. (Photo by Xu Ying. Permission
of Erdenebayar Nambaral) 133
Fig. 7.5 Bumbardai is a Mongolian comics series (Written
and illustrated by Erdenebayar Nambaral) 134
Fig. 7.6 Dan Erdenebal and Erdenebayar Nambaral with copy
of Bumbardai in Nomadic office. (Photo by Xu Ying.
Permission of Dan Erdenebal) 135
Fig. 8.1 Cover and verso of Concombres amers: Les raciness d’une
tragédie Cambodge 1967–1975. Graphic novel by Séra.
Marabulles, 2018 (Source https://www.bedetheque.
com/BD-Concombres-amers-Tome-1-347055.html) 144
xviii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.2 The narratives end with proceedings at the ECCC,

from My Story, Your Story. Art by Sao Srymao. 2016
(Courtesy of Kdei Karuna) 147
Fig. 8.3 Captain Cambodia. Illustration, story, and text
by Patrick Samnang Mey. Cover and page 1. 2015
(Source https://www.facebook.com/patricksamna
ngmey/photos/419096574926761) 151
Fig. 8.4 Enfant Soldat. By Akira Fukaya/Aki Ra. Delcourt,
2009 (Courtesy of Delcourt) 156
Fig. 8.5 Miley Manga, Khmer unlicensed comics scanlation
portal (Source https://www.mileymangakh.com/) 160
Fig. 8.6 Doraemon and Tintin: One Piece imagery adorns
Phnom Penh marquee (Courtesy of John Weeks) 161
Fig. 9.1 Cover of Put On, created by Kho Wang Gie. 1931 171
Fig. 9.2 “Papaya Pa’ chan” by Saseo Ono. Kana Djawa
Shinbun. Jakarta. In 1944 or 1945 (Courtesy
International Journal of Comic Art ) 173
Fig. 9.3 R.A. Kosasih’s Sri Asih, Indonesian heroine akin
to Wonder Woman 175
Fig. 9.4 Hikajat Dewi Kembang Melati, an example of silat
cergam. 1960 177
Fig. 9.5 A wayang cergam starring Petruk and Gareng. Cover
of Dagelan Petruk-Gareng. Credit: Indri Soedono,
artist. Courtesy of Lambiek. 181
Fig. 10.1 M. Salehuddin’s “Jenaka.” “Pak Ngah Inspects
A Battalion,” published in Utusan Zaman on August
28, 1949 192
Fig. 10.2 John Millar Watt’s “Philosofist,” published in Pop
Annual 1: Nearly 100 cartoons reproduced from The
Daily Sketch 192
Fig. 10.3 Saidin Yahya’s “Let’s strengthen the position
of the nation by ourselves,” published in Majlis
on January 27, 1948 193
Fig. 10.4 Raja Hamzah’s “Keluarga Mat Jambul” [Mat Jambul’s
Family], published in Berita Harian on July 1, 1957 194
Fig. 10.5 Lat’s “Keluarga Si Mamat” [Mamat’s Family], published
in 1979 (Courtesy of Lat) 196
Fig. 10.6 A David Low cartoon published in Berita Harian
on August 10, 1957 198
Fig. 10.7 Peng’s Berita Harian, published on October 4, 1958 199
Fig. 10.8 Gila-Gila, 40th Anniversary Issue, published in April
2018 (Courtesy of Jaafar Taib) 201
 LIST OF FIGURES xix

Fig. 10.9 Gempak, published on July 15, 2012 205

Fig. 10.10 Zunar’s “Ketawa Pink Pink,” published in 2018
(Courtesy of Zunar) 207
Fig. 11.1 Population pyramid of Japan circa 2019
(populationpyramid.net 2019) 214
Fig. 11.2 Cover of Maeda Musashi’s Firipin tsuma 4 koma nikki 219
Fig. 11.3 Cover of Hideki Arai’s Itoshi no Airin 220
Fig. 11.4 Cover of Kurasumeito wa Gaikokujin 223
Fig. 11.5 Cover of Makoto Arai’s Motto Tonari no Seki wa
Gaikokujin 226
Fig. 12.1 A photo of the author together with political
cartoonists, Morgan Chua (center) and Dengcoy Miel
(left), August 2013 (Courtesy of the author) 233
Fig. 12.2 The cartoon that appeared on the front page of the May
19, 1971 issue of The Singapore Herald (By Morgan
Chau) 237
Fig. 12.3 Cartoon drawing inspired by Tank Man (By Morgan
Chua) 239
Fig. 12.4 Morgan’s 2014 recreation of his 1971 Singapore Herald
tank cartoon (By Morgan Chua) 244
Fig. 12.5 Morgan’s 2010 cartoon about the influx of foreign
talent into Singapore in the 1990s 245
Fig. 13.1 An early phap lo by King Rama VI, parodying the head
of the royal railroads 255
Fig. 13.2 A cartoon likay strip by Prayoon Chanyawongse, late
1938 in Suphapburut (Source Resemblance to Tarzan
and Popeye. Reproduced from Prayoon Chanyawongse
Foundation) 256
Fig. 13.3 Vithit Utsahajit, former director, Banlue Sarn. Bangkok.
August 3, 1993 (Source Photo by John A. Lent.
Courtesy of Vithit Utsahajit) 259
Fig. 13.4 Tezuka’s Astro Boy and Shirato’s Kaze no lshimaru
in the Thai-translated manga magazine, Katun
Dek (Child Cartoon). April 1967 (Source Courtesy
of Nicolas Verstappen) 262
Fig. 13.5 Cover of initial issue of comics magazine, Katch.
November 1998 265
Fig. 13.6 Panels from Suttichart Sarapaiwanich’s Joe the Sea-Cret
Agent. In Katch. Issue 5. March 1999 266
Fig. 14.1 Cartoons by Nguyen Gia Tri for the newspaper Ngay
Nay, 1936 275
xx LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 14.2 A double page from Than Dong Dat Viet, Volume 80,
2006 280
Fig. 14.3 A double page from Long Than Tuong old version,
Chapter 2, 2004 282
Fig. 14.4 A commercial advertising comic by Facebook page “Bà
Già Kêu Ca” (The Nagging Old Lady), 2019 285
Fig. 14.5 Cover of Biếm Ho.a Viê.t Nam (Cartoons in Vietnam)
by Ly Truc Dung (2011) 289
Fig. 14.6 A cover and inside cartoons of Tuoi Tre Cuoi (Laughing
Youth), 2019 290
Fig. 14.7 Pages from Vietnamerica by GB Tran, 2011 293
Fig. 14.8 Pages from The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, 2017 294
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

John A. Lent

Historical Context
In New York City, an Indian American mother brings home a Mumbai-
published Amar Chitra Katha, a comic book to familiarize her
American-educated daughter with Indian culture. In Thailand, a Burmese
cartoonist-in-exile draws about his homeland’s political troubles, while
in Kenya, Gado (Godfrey Mwampembwa), originally from Tanzania,
finishes one of his hard-hitting, online political cartoons that will be
seen worldwide. Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey, Islamic
parliamentarians and protestors are urging the recall of their envoys in
Paris and the boycott of French products because of Charlie Hebdo
cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad. In Marvel Comics’ New
York City offices, an editor is contacting a slew of freelance cartoonists
scattered across Asia, Oceania, and South America, offering commissions
to draw the company’s superhero characters. Perhaps at the same time,
Nelson Shin returns to Seoul after overseeing DPR Korean animators in
Pyongyang producing work for his Akom Studio, itself under contract by

J. A. Lent (B)
International Journal of Comic Art, Drexel Hill, PA, USA
e-mail: john.lent@temple.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
J. A. Lent et al. (eds.), Transnationalism in East and Southeast Asian
Comics Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95243-3_1
2 J. A. LENT

Euro-North American animation houses. These are but a few examples of

the transnationalization of comic art.
It is becoming evident in comic art scholarship that comics and
transnationalism are linked in many ways, a phenomenon existent
throughout the medium’s history. A few examples suffice to make the
point.
After the comical weekly Punch was started in London in 1841,
other imitators using the name Punch popped up all over the vast
British commonwealth, on every continent except South America. In
Asia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and India sported their own Punches.
Australian cartoon scholar Richard Scully (2013, 14, 29), who mapped
the “Punch Empire,” did not include all Indian vernacular Punches
because he said there were so many. Though not as extensive, the Amer-
ican cartoon magazine Puck (1871–1918) had sprouts such as Puck, or
the Shanghai Charivari, Shanghai Puck, and Osaka Puck (see Lent 2015).
Cross-national impacts also affected the development of comic strips,
comic books, and political cartoons in Asia. These comic art forms were
introduced and nourished in a variety of ways.

1. By the intermingling of Asian and Western cartoonists, such as

European artists Charles Wirgman and Georges Bigot settling in
nineteenth-century Tokyo and starting cartoon magazines, Japanese
pioneer cartoonist Ippei Okamoto brought home comic strip char-
acters (e.g., “Bringing up Father,” cloned into “Nanki no Tosan”
or “Easy-Going Daddy”) after a visit to the New York World in
1922, or French artists Lelan, André Joyeux, and Albert Cézard
introducing cartoons to Vietnam;
2. By colonists such as the Dutchman Clinge Doorenbosi and his 1938
strip “Flippie Flink” in Indonesia or the British commissioner of
Burma’s railroad who is credited with drawing the first cartoon in
Myanmar in 1912;
3. By visiting or resident Western cartoonists such as some of the
early English-language political cartoonists in Hong Kong, or
British businessman Ernest Major, who while resident in Shanghai,
pioneered producing Chinese illustrated magazines as early as 1877,
or the Russian Sapajou who worked as a cartoonist in China from
1925 to 1940 and influenced major artists such as Hua Junwu (see,
Lent and Xu, 2017, 41);
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

4. By exposure to outside artists, periodicals, and schools of art,

examples being Miguel Covarrubias, Aubrey Beardsley, George
Grosz, and others in China; British comics magazines The Beano
and The Dandy in Malaysia; Mad magazine in Bangladesh
(Unmad) and Malaysia (Gila Gila); Americanized comics characters
“Kenkoy,” “Kulafu” (“Tarzan”), “Goyo at Kikay” (“Bringing Up
Father”), “Lukas Malakas” (“Popeye”), “Kaptayn Barbell” (“Cap-
tain Marvel”), and others in the Philippines, and diverse art styles
such as art nouveau, art deco, cubism, surrealism, and symbolism
in 1930s’ Shanghai manhua and manga learned by Feng Zikai, the
“father of Chinese cartooning,” while studying in Japan in 1921
(Harbsmeier 1984, 19);
5. By the spread of United States comic strips distributed throughout
Asia by King Features of New York.
6. By military personnel who left American and British comic books
behind when they were discharged from the Philippines and other
Asian territories after the Second World War, and from South Korea
after the Korean War.

Conceptualization of Transnationalism
Transnationalism is loosely delineated in this work—not specifically
defined, but rather conceptualized by what the term can encompass. It
makes sense to avoid being strapped by a single of many descriptions of
the notion of transnational across different disciplines. Most often, the
term applies to immigration and crossing borders; other times, it refers
to the global reorganization of the production process. It is sometimes
used interchangeably with globalization or as the vehicle of globalization,
and in media studies, it can encompass transborder media exports, “cap-
ital flows (and ownership concentration), individualization of technology,
and consumption practices” (Christensen 2013, 2402). One researcher,
in attempting to “disentangle” the term, clustered transnationalism as
a “social morphology, as a type of consciousness, as a mode of cultural
reproduction, as an avenue of capital, as a site of political engagement,
and as a reconstruction of ‘place’ or locality” (Vertovec 1999, 447).
Still another thought is that comparative and transnational “generally go
hand in hand, because transnational exchange illuminates similarities and
differences” (Hoffmann 2011).
4 J. A. LENT

Transnationalism here refers to the movement of products, technology,

ideas, and people across national borders—pure and simple. The term
“comics studies” encompasses a multitude of forms, including comic
books, comic strips, editorial (political) cartoons, graphic novels, anima-
tion, and Webtoons, although not all are represented in this collection of
studies.
Comics studies, according to Kate Polak (2015), recognized before
other disciplines (particularly, literary studies) that analyses carried out
strictly along traditional national borders were becoming “increasingly
obsolete.” She contended that “comics scholars have historically grappled
with approaching graphic narratives that are explicitly transnational at the
levels of authorship, form, and content,” because the comics often have
been collaborative efforts. She is correct about the transnational nature
of comics production; however, although that phenomenon was there to
be studied, researchers did not take up the challenge, to any extent, until
the twenty-first century.
Along the same lines, though transnational phenomena existed for
centuries (more likely, millennia), the term “trans-national” came about
only in 1916, credited to writer Randolph Bourne, who used it in an
Atlantic Monthly article (Bourne 1916, 86–97). In media studies, the
term was popular at the tail end of the twentieth century in discussions
of transnational media flows and ownership, especially in the 1970s and
early 1980s during the campaign for a New World Information Order,
carried out by UNESCO and the Non-Aligned Countries Movement.
An Asian example of pre-nineteenth-century transnationalism—though
by another name—was the Siwilai project during the reign of King
Mongkut (1851–1868) of Thailand. Siwilai was a localization process
that selectively adopted socio-cultural traits from the West and hybridized
them into a Thai setting, at the same time, retaining Thai sovereignty (see
Chapter 13).

Contemporary Scene: Transnational Ownership

In contemporary Asia (and elsewhere), transnationalism and
comics/cartoons are bound in other dimensions, most perilously for
comic art, by media conglomerates’ large-scale, global acquisition of
newspapers and magazines that carry comic strips and political cartoons
and of some comic book firms.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

The extent to which these media conglomerates have gobbled up

comic art is mindboggling. A look at a 2017 report by Publishers Weekly
on the world’s six largest media conglomerates with a total value of US
$430 billion reveals that comics, animation, and video games hold an
important place in these staggering collections of properties. First-ranked
National Amusements, which encompasses Viacom, CBS, and Simon &
Schuster, also owns Nickelodeon and its offshoots, MTV Animation,
Paramount Animation, and CBS Games. Among second place Disney’s
many holdings are the US$4 billion-dollar Marvel Comics empire, Disney
Comics, Ultimate Comics, Lucas Film Animation, Pixar, Industrial Light
and Magic, Fox Animation, Blue Sky Animation as well as video games,
television channels, film studios, and theme parks. Third-ranked Time
Warner Inc., which AT&T purchased in 2016, owns DC Comics, Mad
Magazine, Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers Animation Studios, which
in turn owns Looney Tunes, Rooster Teeth Animation, Warner Animation
Group, Williams Street Animation, and videogame companies, in addi-
tion to Time, CNN, HBO as well as film and television studios. The
second-tier conglomerates include Comcast with DreamWorks Anima-
tion, Universal Animation, and Illumination; News Corp with Avon
Books; and Sony, owners of Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures
Imageworks. Since 2017, the order of the top-earning conglomerates has
shifted so that by 2020, AT&T was first, followed in order by Comcast,
Disney, and Viacom/CBS (National Amusements).
In fact, buyouts, mergers, and other transfer financial arrangements
occur so frequently that data become outdated rather quickly. However,
one can gauge the degree of conglomerization that exists by looking
at the latest figures available and building in the factor that if there
are changes, they will be toward lowering, rather than expanding, the
number of outlets as the big fish consumes the smaller ones down the
line. As already surmised, it is not unusual to see publishing conglomer-
ates consume each other. In recent years, the centuries-old Casterman,
a publisher later of Franco-Belgian comics (including the Adventures
of Tintin), became a part of Groupe Flammarion which, in turn, was
bought by RCS Media Group of Italy. Germany’s huge comics publisher
Carlsen was owned by Sweden’s Bonnier Group before it was sold to
the Egmont Group of Denmark and Norway, and the once-powerful
Robert Maxwell media conglomerate owned Fleetway Editions repre-
senting sixty to seventy percent of the UK’s comics market before the
Danish Gutenberghus Group took it over.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “There's something else, sir,” he continued. “This Mrs. Marple
wasn't at the house that night. What evidence is there that Silverdale
and the Deepcar girl ever went home at all after they'd dined down
town? There's no corroboration of that story. Why not assume that
the Deepcar girl was an actual accomplice on the spot? She and
Silverdale may have driven out to the bungalow after dinner, and she
may have stood at the window during the whole affair. There's
nothing against that, if you discount her story. My reading of the
Deepcar girl is that she may be surface-shy, so to speak, but she's
got good strong fibre in her character underneath. Look how she
faced up to you not ten minutes ago. Not much shyness about that.”
“I think I'd have been a bit stirred up myself, Inspector, if you
came along in my absence and pawed over all my private
possessions. One isn't necessarily a scoundrel if one turns peevish
over a thing of that sort.”
The Inspector let the point pass.
“Have you any notion who this Mr. Justice can be, sir?”
“I've a pretty fair notion, but it's only a notion. Who stands to profit
by the affair?”
Some recollection seemed to cross the Inspector's mind.
“Spratton, of course, sir. And now I come to think of it, if you
shaved off your moustache, he's very like you in face and build. If
Spratton's going to collect his insurance on young Hassendean, then
murder's got to be proved.”
“Well,” said Sir Clinton lightly. “I trust Mr. Spratton will get what he
deserves in the matter.”
 Chapter XVI.
Written Evidence
Inspector Flamborough had to wait a couple of days before his
unknown ally, Justice, made any further move. It so happened that
Sir Clinton was not at headquarters when the post brought the
expected communication; and the Inspector had plenty of time to
consider the fresh evidence, unbiased by his superior's comments.
As soon as the Chief Constable reappeared, Flamborough went to
him to display the latest document in the case.
“This came by the midday post, sir,” he explained, laying some
papers on the table. “It's Mr. Justice again. The results of his raid on
the Deepcar house, it seems.”
Sir Clinton picked up the packet and opened out the papers.
Some photographic prints attracted his attention, but he laid them
aside and turned first to a plain sheet of paper on which the now
familiar letters from telegraph forms had been gummed. With some
deliberation he read the message.

“I enclose photographs of part of the correspondence which has

recently taken place between Dr. Silverdale and Miss Deepcar.
“Justice.”

Sir Clinton gazed at the sheet for a moment or two, as though

considering some matter unconnected with the message. At last he
turned to the Inspector.
“I suppose you've tried this thing for finger-prints? No good, eh? I
can still smell a faint whiff of rubber from it—off his gloves, I
suppose.”
Flamborough shook his head in agreement with Sir Clinton's
surmise.
 “Nothing on it whatever, sir,” he confirmed.
The Chief Constable laid down the sheet of paper and took up
one of the photographs. It was of ordinary half-plate size and
showed a slightly reduced copy of one page of a letter.

that things cannot go on any

longer in this way.
The plan we talked over last
seems the best. When I have given
Hassendean hints about the use of
hyoscine, he will probably see for
himself how to get what he wants.
After that, it merely means watching
them, and I am sure that we shall soon
have her out of our way. It will be
very easy to make it seem intentional
on their part; and no one is likely
to look further than that.

Flamborough watched the Chief Constable's face as he read the

message, and as soon as he saw that Sir Clinton had completed his
perusal of it, the Inspector put in his word.
“I've checked the writing, sir. It's Silverdale's beyond any doubt.”
The Chief Constable nodded rather absent-mindedly and took up
another of the prints. This showed a largely-magnified reproduction
of the first two lines of the document; and for a minute or so Sir
Clinton subjected the print to a minute scrutiny with a magnifying
glass.
“It's an original, right enough,” Flamborough ventured to
comment at last. “Mr. Justice has been very thorough, and he's given
us quite enough to prove that it isn't a forgery. You can see there's
no sign of erasing or scraping of any sort on the paper of the original;
and the magnification's big enough to show up anything of that sort.”
“That's true,” Sir Clinton admitted. “And so far as one can see,
the lines of the writing are normal. There are none of those halts-in-
the-wrong-place that a forger makes if he traces a manuscript. The
magnification's quite big enough to show up anything of that sort. I
guess you're right, Inspector, it's a photograph of part of a real
document in Silverdale's own handwriting.”
“The rest of the things make that clear enough,” Flamborough
said, indicating several other prints which showed microphotographic
reproductions of a number of other details of the document. “There's
no doubt whatever that these are all genuine bits of Silverdale's
handwriting. There's been no faking of the paper or anything like
that.”
Sir Clinton continued his study of the photographs, evidently with
keen interest; but at last he put all the prints on his desk and turned
to the Inspector.
“Well, what do you make of it?” he demanded.
“It seems clear enough to me,” Flamborough answered. “Look at
the contents of that page as a whole. It's as plain as one could wish.
Silverdale and the Deepcar girl have had enough of waiting. Things
can't go on any longer in this way. They've been discussing various
ways of getting rid of Mrs. Silverdale. ‘The plan we talked over last
seems the best.’ That's the final decision, evidently. Then you get a
notion of what the plan was. Silverdale was going to prime
Hassendean with information about hyoscine, and practically egg
him on to drug Mrs. Silverdale so as to get her into his power. Then
when the trap was ready, Silverdale and the Deepcar girl were to be
on the alert to take advantage of the situation. And the last sentence
makes it clear enough that they meant to go the length of murder
and cover it up by making it look like a suicide-pact between young
Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale. That's how I read it, sir.”
Sir Clinton did not immediately endorse this opinion. Instead, he
picked up the full copy of the manuscript page and studied it afresh
as though searching for something in particular. At last he appeared
to be satisfied; and he slid the photograph across the desk to the
Inspector.
“I don't wish to bias you, Inspector, so I won't describe what I see
myself. But will you examine the word ‘probably’ in that text and tell
me if anything whatever about it strikes you as peculiar—anything
whatever, remember.”
Flamborough studied the place indicated, first with his naked eye
and then with the magnifying glass.
 “There's no sign of any tampering with the paper that I can see,
sir. The surface is intact and the ink lines run absolutely freely,
without the halts and shakes one would expect in a forgery. The only
thing I do notice is that the word looks just a trifle cramped.”
“That's what I wanted. Note that it's in the middle of a line,
Inspector. Now look at the word ‘shall’ in the fifth line from the bottom
of the page.”
“One might say it was a trifle cramped too,” Flamborough
admitted.
“And the ‘it’ in the third line from the foot?”
“It looks like the same thing.”
Flamborough relapsed into silence and studied the photograph
word by word while Sir Clinton waited patiently.
“The word ‘the’ in the phrase ‘about the use of hyoscine’ seems
cramped too; and the ‘to’ at the start of the last line suffers in the
same way. It's so slight in all these cases that one wouldn't notice it
normally. I didn't see it till you pointed it out. But if you're going to
suggest that there's been any erasing and writing in fresh words to fit
the blank space, I'll have to disagree with you, sir. I simply don't
believe there's been any thing of the sort.”
“I shan't differ from you over that,” Sir Clinton assured him
blandly. “Now let's think of something else for a change. Did it never
occur to you, Inspector, how much the English language depends on
the relative positions of words? If I say: ‘It struck you,’ that means
something quite different from: ‘You struck it.’ And yet each sentence
contains exactly the same words.”
“That's plain enough,” Flamborough admitted, “though I never
thought of it in that way. And,” he added in a dubious tone, “I don't
see what it's got to do with the case, either.”
“That's a pity,” Sir Clinton observed with a sympathy which hardly
sounded genuine. “Suppose we think it over together. Where does
one usually cramp words a trifle when one is writing?”
“At the end of a line,” Flamborough suggested. “But these
crampings seem to be all in the middle of the lines of that letter.”
“That's what seems to me interesting about them,” Sir Clinton
explained drily. “And somehow it seems to associate itself in my
mind with the fact that Mr. Justice hasn't supplied us with the original
document, but has gone to all the trouble of taking photographs of it.”
“I wondered at that, myself,” the Inspector confessed. “It seems a
bit futile, true enough.”
“Try a fresh line, Inspector. We learned on fairly good authority
that Mr. Justice took away a number of letters from Miss Deepcar's
house. And yet he only sends us a single page out of the lot. If the
rest were important, why doesn't he send them. If they aren't
important, why did he take them away?”
“He may be holding them up for use later on, sir.”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“My reading of the business is different. I think this is Mr. Justice's
last reserve. He's throwing his last forces into the battle now.”
“There seems to be something behind all this,” Flamborough
admitted, passing his hand over his hair as though to stimulate his
brain by the action, “but I can't just fit it all together as you seem to
have done, sir. You can say what you like, but that handwriting's
genuine; the paper's not been tampered with; and I can't see
anything wrong with it.”
Sir Clinton took pity on the inspector's obvious anxiety.
“Look at the phrasing of the whole document, Inspector. If you
cared to do so, you could split it up into a set of phrases something
after this style: ‘that things cannot go on any longer in this way. . . .
The plan we talked over last seems the best. . . . When I have
given . . . Hassendean . . . hints . . . about the . . . use of . . .
hyoscine . . . he will probably see for himself how . . . to get what he
wants. . . . After that, it merely means . . . watching them . . . and I
am sure that . . . we shall soon have . . . her . . . out of our way. . . . It
will be very easy . . . to make it seem . . . intentional . . . on their
part . . . and no one is likely . . . to look further than that.’ Now,
Inspector, if you met any one of these phrases by itself, would you
infer from it inevitably that a murder was being planned? ‘Things
cannot go on any longer in this way.’ If you consider how Mrs.
Silverdale was behaving with young Hassendean, it's not astonishing
to find a phrase like that in a letter from Silverdale to the girl he was
in love with. ‘The plan we talked over last seems the best.’ It might
have been a day's outing together that he was talking about for all
one can tell. ‘He will probably see for himself how my wife is playing
with him.’ And so forth.”
“Yes, that's all very well,” Flamborough put in, “but what about the
word ‘hyoscine?’ That's unusual in love-letters.”
“Miss Deepcar was working on hyoscine under Silverdale's
directions, remember. It's quite possible that he might have
mentioned it incidentally.”
“Now I think I see what you mean, sir. You think that this
document that Mr. Justice has sent us is a patchwork—bits cut out of
a lot of different letters and stuck together and then photographed?”
“I'm suggesting it as a possibility, Inspector. See how it fits the
facts. Here are a set of phrases, each one innocuous in itself, but
with a cumulative effect of suggestion when you string them together
as in this document. If the thing is a patchwork, then a number of
real letters must have been used in order to get fragments which
would suit. So Mr. Justice took a fair selection of epistles with him
when he raided Miss Deepcar's house. Further, in snipping out a
sentence here and there from these letters, he sometimes had to
include a phrase running on from one line to another in the original
letter; but when he came to paste his fragments together, the original
hiatus at the end of a line got transferred to the middle of a line in the
final arrangement made to fit the page of the faked letter. That's what
struck me to begin with. For example, suppose that in the original
letter you had the phrase: ‘he will probably see for himself how’; and
the original line ended with ‘probably.’ That word might be a bit
cramped at the end of the line. But in reconstructing the thing,
‘probably’ got into the middle of the line, and so you get this
apparently meaningless cramping of the word when there was space
enough for it to be written uncramped under normal conditions. Just
the same with the other cases you spotted for yourself. They
represent the ends of lines in the original letters, although they all
occur in the middle of lines in the fake production.”
“That sounds just as plausible as you like, sir. But you've got the
knack of making things sound plausible. You're not pulling my leg,
are you?” the Inspector demanded suspiciously. “Besides, what
about there being no sign of the paper having been tampered with?”
 “Look at what he's given us,” Sir Clinton suggested. “The only
case where he's given a large-scale reproduction of a whole phrase
is at the top of the letter: ‘Things cannot go on any longer in this
way.’ That's been complete in the original, and he gives you a large-
scale copy of it showing that the texture of the paper is intact. Of
course it is, since he cut the whole bit out of the letter en bloc. When
it comes to the microphotographs, of course he only shows you
small bits of the words and so there's no sign of the cutting that was
needed at the end of each fragment. And in the photograph of the
full text, there's no attempt to show you fine details. He simply
pasted the fragments in their proper order on to a real sheet of note-
paper, filled up the joins with Chinese White to hide the solutions of
continuity, and used a process plate which wouldn't show the slight
differences in the shades of the whites where the Chinese White
overlay the white of the note-paper. If you have a drawing to make
for black-and-white reproduction in a book, you can mess about with
Chinese White as much as you like, and it won't show up in the final
result at all.”
Flamborough, with a gesture, admitted the plausibility of Sir
Clinton's hypothesis.
“And you think that explains why he didn't send us the original
document, sir?”
“Since I'm sure he hadn't an original to send, it's hard to see how
he could have sent it, Inspector.”
Flamborough did not contest this reading of the case. Instead, he
passed to a fresh aspect of the subject.
“Mr. Justice is evidently ready to go any length to avenge
somebody—and that somebody can hardly have been young
Hassendean, judging from what we've heard about his character.”
Sir Clinton refused the gambit offered by the Inspector.
“Mr. Justice is a very able person,” he observed, “even though he
does make a mistake now and again, as in this last move.”
“You said you'd some idea who he was, sir?” Flamborough said
with an interrogative note in his voice.
The Chief Constable showed no desire to be drawn. He glanced
rather quizzically at his subordinate for a moment before speaking.
 “I'll give you the points which strike me in that connection,
Inspector; and then you'll be just as well placed as I am myself in the
matter of Mr. Justice. First of all, if you compare the time of
publication of the morning newspapers with the time, at which Mr.
Justice's telegram was collected from the pillar-box, I think it's fairly
evident that he didn't depend on the journalists for his first
information about the affair. Even the Ivy Lodge news wasn't printed
until after he had despatched his message.”
“That's true, sir,” Flamborough admitted.
His manner showed that he expected a good deal more than this
tittle of information.
“Therefore he must have had some direct information about the
bungalow business. Either he was on the spot when the affair
occurred, or else he was told about it almost immediately by
someone who was on the spot.”
“Admitted,” the inspector confirmed.
“Then he obviously—or is it ‘she obviously,’ Inspector?—saw the
importance of hyoscine as a clue as soon as any word about it got
into the newspapers. Immediately, in comes the code advertisement,
giving us—rather unnecessarily I think—the tip to inquire at the
Croft-Thornton Institute.”
Flamborough's face showed that he felt Sir Clinton was merely
recapitulating very obvious pieces of evidence.
“Then there was the writing on the advertisements which he sent
to the papers—Mrs. Silverdale's writing rather neatly forged, if you
remember.”
“Yes,” said the Inspector, showing by his tone that at this point he
was rather at sea.
“Then there was the fact that he managed to choose his time
most conveniently for his raid on Miss Deepcar's house.”
“You mean he made his visit when only the maid was at home,
sir?”
“Precisely. I rather admire his forethought all through the
business. But there's more in it than that, if you think it over,
Inspector?”
“Well, sir, if your reading's correct, he wanted some of
Silverdale's letters to serve as a basis for these photographs.”
 “Something even more obvious than that, Inspector. Now, with all
that evidence in front of you, can't you build up some sort of picture
of Mr. Justice? You ought to be able to come fairly near it, I think.”
“Somebody fairly in the swim with the Silverdale crowd, at any
rate. I can see that. And someone who knew the Croft-Thornton by
hearsay, at any rate. Is that what you mean, sir?”
Sir Clinton betrayed nothing in his expression, though the
Inspector scrutinised his face carefully; but he added something
which Flamborough had not expected.
“Final points. The date on the fragment of an envelope that I
found in the drawer in Mrs. Silverdale's room was 1925. The date
inside that signet-ring on her finger was 5–11–25. And there was the
initial ‘B’ engraved alongside the date.”
Inspector Flamborough quite obviously failed to see the
relevancy of these details. His face showed it in the most apparent
way.
“I don't see what you're getting at there, sir,” he said rather
shamefacedly. “These things never struck me; and even now I don't
see what they've got to do with Mr. Justice.”
If he expected to gain anything by this frank confession, he was
disappointed. Sir Clinton had evidently no desire to save his
subordinate the trouble of thinking, and his next remark left
Flamborough even deeper in bewilderment.
“Ever read anything by Dean Swift, Inspector?”
“I read Gulliver's Travels when I was a kid, sir,” Flamborough
admitted, with the air of deprecating any investigation into his literary
tastes.
“You might read his Journal to Stella some time. But I guess
you'd find it dull. It's a reprint of his letters to Esther Johnson. He
called her ‘Stella,’ and it's full of queer abbreviations and phrases
like ‘Night, dear MD. Love Pdfr.’ It teems with that sort of stuff.
Curious to see the human side of a man like Swift, isn't it?”
“In love with her, you mean, sir?”
“Well, it sounds like it,” Sir Clinton replied cautiously. “However,
we needn't worry over Swift. Let's see if we can't do something with
this case, for a change.”
He glanced at his watch.
 “Half-past five. We may be able to get hold of her.”
He picked up the telephone from his desk and asked for a
number while Flamborough waited with interest to hear the result.
“Is that the Croft-Thornton Institute?” Sir Clinton demanded at
length. “Sir Clinton Driffield speaking. Can you ask Miss Hailsham to
come to the telephone?”
There was a pause before he spoke once more.
“Miss Hailsham? I'm sorry to trouble you, but can you tell me if
there's a microphotographic camera in the Institute? I'd like to know.”
Flamborough, all ears, waited for the next bit of the one-sided
conversation which was reaching him.
“You have two of them? Then I suppose I might be able to get
permission to use one of them, perhaps, if we need it. . . . Thanks,
indeed. By the way, I suppose you're just leaving the Institute
now. . . . I thought so. Very lucky I didn't miss you by a minute or two.
I mustn't detain you. Thanks again. Good-bye.”
He put down the telephone and turned to Flamborough.
“You might ask Miss Morcott to come here, Inspector.”
Flamborough, completely puzzled by this move, opened the door
of the adjoining room and summoned Sir Clinton's typist.
“I want you to telephone for me, Miss Morcott,” the Chief
Constable explained. “Ring up Dr. Trevor Markfield at his house.
When you get through, say to his housekeeper: ‘Miss Hailsham
speaking. Please tell Dr. Markfield that I wish to see him to-night and
that I shall come round to his house at nine o’clock.’ Don't say any
more than that, and get disconnected before there's any chance of
explanations.”
Miss Morcott carried out Sir Clinton's orders carefully and then
went back to her typing. As soon as the door closed behind her, the
Inspector's suppressed curiosity got the better of him.
“I don't quite understand all that, sir. I suppose you asked about
the photomicrographic affair just to see if these prints could have
been made at the Croft-Thornton?”
“I hadn't much doubt on that point. Photomicrographic apparatus
isn't common among amateur photographers, but it's common
enough in scientific institutes. No, I was really killing two birds with
one stone: finding out about the micro-camera and making sure that
Miss Hailsham was leaving the place for the night and wouldn't have
a chance to speak to Markfield before she went.”
“And what about her calling on Markfield to-night, sir?”
“She'll have to do it by proxy, I'm afraid. We'll represent her,
however inefficiently, Inspector. The point is that I wanted to be sure
that Markfield would be at home when we called; and I wished to
avoid making an appointment in my own name lest it should put him
too much on his guard. The time's come when we'll have to
persuade Dr. Markfield to be a bit franker than he's been, hitherto. I
think I see my way to getting out of him most of what he knows; and
if I can succeed in that, then we ought to have all the evidence we
need.”
He paused, as though not very sure about something.
“He's been bluffing us all along the line up to the present,
Inspector. It's a game two can play at; and you'll be good enough to
turn a deaf ear occasionally if I'm tempted out of the straight path.
And whatever happens, don't look over-surprised at anything I may
say. If you can contrive to look thoroughly stupid, it won't do any
harm.”
 Chapter XVII.
Mr. Justice
Just before entering the road in which Markfield lived, Sir Clinton
drew up his car; and as he did so, a constable in plain clothes
stepped forward.
“Dr. Markfield's in his house, sir,” he announced. “He came home
just before dinner-time.”
Sir Clinton nodded, let in his clutch, and drove round the corner
to Markfield's gate. As he stopped his engine, he glanced at the
house-front.
“Note that his garage is built into the house, Inspector,” he
pointed out. “That seems of interest, if there's a door from the house
direct into the garage, I think.”
They walked up the short approach and rang the bell. In a few
moments the door was opened by Markfield's housekeeper. Rather
to her surprise, Sir Clinton inquired about the health of her relation
whom she had been nursing.
“Oh, she's all right again, sir, thank you. I got back yesterday.”
She paused a moment as though in doubt, then added:
“I'm not sure if Dr. Markfield is free this evening, sir. He's
expecting a visitor.”
“We shan't detain him if his visitor arrives,” Sir Clinton assured
her, his manner leaving no doubt in her mind as to the advisability of
his own admission.
The housekeeper ushered them into Markfield's sitting-room,
where they found him by the fire, deep in a book. At the sound of Sir
Clinton's name he looked up with a glance which betrayed his
annoyance at being disturbed.
“I'm rather at a loss to understand this visit,” he said stiffly, as
they came into the room.
 Sir Clinton refused to notice the obviously grudging tone of his
reception.
“We merely wish to have a few minutes’ talk, Dr. Markfield,” he
explained pleasantly. “Some information has come into my hands
which needs confirmation, and I think you'll be able to help us.”
Markfield glanced at the clock.
“I'm in the middle of an experiment,” he said gruffly. “I've got to
run it through, now that it's started. If you're going to be long. I'd
better bring the things in here and then I can oversee it while I'm
talking to you.”
Without waiting for permission, he left the room and came back in
a couple of minutes with a tray on which stood some apparatus.
Flamborough noticed a conical flask containing some limpid liquid,
and a stoppered bottle. Markfield clamped a dropping funnel, also
containing a clear liquid, so that its spout entered the conical flask;
and by turning the tap of the funnel slightly, he allowed a little of the
contents to flow down into the flask.
“I hope the smell doesn't trouble you,” he said, in a tone of sour
apology. “It's the triethylamine I'm mixing with the tetranitromethane
in the flask. Rather a fishy stink it has.”
He arranged the apparatus on the table so that he could reach
the tap conveniently without rising from his chair; then, after
admitting a little more of the liquid from the funnel into the flask, he
seated himself once more and gave Sir Clinton his attention.
“What is it you want to know?” he demanded abruptly.
Sir Clinton refused to be hurried. Putting his hand into his breast-
pocket, he drew out some sheets of typewriting which he placed on
the table before him, as though for future reference. Then he turned
to his host.
“Some time ago, a man Peter Whalley came to us and made a
statement, Dr. Markfield.”
Markfield's face betrayed some surprise.
“Whalley?” he asked. “Do you mean the man who was murdered
on the Lizardbridge Road?”
“He was murdered, certainly,” Sir Clinton confirmed. “But as I
said, he made a statement to us. I'm not very clear about some
points, and I think you might be able to fill in one or two of the gaps.”
 Markfield's face showed a quick flash of suspicion.
“I'm not very sure what you mean,” he said, doubtfully, “If you're
trying to trap me into saying things that might go against Silverdale, I
may as well tell you I've no desire to give evidence against him. I'm
sure he's innocent; and I don't wish to say anything to give you a
handle against him. That's frank enough, isn't it?”
“If it relieves your mind, I may as well say I agree with you on that
point, Dr. Markfield. So there's no reason why you shouldn't give us
your help.”
Markfield seemed slightly taken aback by this, but he did his best
to hide his feelings.
“Go on, then,” he said. “What is it you want?”
Sir Clinton half-opened the paper on the table, then took away his
hand as though he needed no notes at the moment.
“It appears that on the night of the affair at the bungalow, when
Mrs. Silverdale met her death, Peter Whalley was walking along the
Lizardbridge Road, coming towards town,” Sir Clinton began. “It was
a foggy night, you remember. He'd just passed the bungalow gate
when he noticed, ahead of him, the headlights of a car standing by
the roadside; and he appears to have heard voices.”
The Inspector listened to this with all his ears. Where had Sir
Clinton fished up this fresh stock of information, evidently of crucial
importance? Then a recollection of the Chief Constable's warning
flashed through his mind and he schooled his features into a mask of
impassivity. A glance at Markfield showed that the chemist, though
outwardly uninterested, was missing no detail of the story.
“It seems,” Sir Clinton went on, “that the late Mr. Whalley came
up to the car and found a man and a girl in the front seat. The girl
seemed to be in an abnormal state; and Mr. Whalley, from his limited
experience, inferred that she was intoxicated. The man, Whalley
thought, had stopped the car to straighten her in the seat and make
her look less conspicuous; but as soon as Whalley appeared out of
the night, the man started the car again and drove slowly past him
towards the bungalow.”
Sir Clinton mechanically smoothed out his papers, glanced at
them, and then continued:
 “The police can't always choose their instruments, Dr. Markfield.
We have to take witnesses where we can get them. Frankly, then,
the late Mr. Whalley was not an admirable character—far from it.
He'd come upon a man and a girl alone in a car, and the girl was
apparently not in a fit state to look after herself. An affair of this sort
would bring two ideas into Mr. Whalley's mind. Clothing them in
vulgar language, they'd be: ‘Here's a bit o’ fun, my word!’ and ‘What
is there in it for me?’ He had a foible for trading on the weaknesses
of his fellow-creatures, you understand?”
Markfield nodded grimly, but made no audible comment.
“The late Mr. Whalley, then, stared after the car; and, to his joy,
no doubt, he saw it turn in at the gate of the bungalow. He guessed
the place was empty, since there hadn't been a light showing in it
when he passed it a minute or two before. Not much need to analyse
Mr. Whalley's ideas in detail, is there? He made up his mind that a
situation of this sort promised him some fun after his own heart, quite
apart from any little financial pickings he might make out of it later
on, if he were lucky. So he made his best pace after the car.”
Sir Clinton turned over a page of the notes before him and,
glancing at the document, knitted his brows slightly.
“The late Mr. Whalley wasn't a perfect witness of course, and I'm
inclined to think that at this point I can supply a missing detail in the
story. A second car came on the scene round about this period—a
car driving in towards town—and it must have met the car with the
man and the girl in it just about this time. But that's not in Mr.
Whalley's statement. It's only a surmise of my own, and not really
essential.”
Inspector Flamborough had been growing more and more
puzzled as this narrative unfolded. He could not imagine how the
Chief Constable had accumulated all this information. Suddenly the
explanation crossed his mind.
“Lord! He's bluffing! He's trying to persuade Markfield that we
know all about it already. These are just inferences of his; and he's
put the double bluff on Markfield by pretending that Whalley's
statement wasn't quite full and that he's filling the gap with a guess
of his own. What a nerve!” he commented to himself.
 “By the time the late Mr. Whalley reached the bungalow gate,” Sir
Clinton pursued, “the man had got the girl out of the car and both of
them had gone into the house. Mr. Whalley, it seems, went gingerly
up the approach, and, as he did so, a light went on in one of the front
rooms of the bungalow. The curtains were drawn. The late Mr.
Whalley, with an eye to future profit, took the precaution of noting the
number of the motor, which was standing at the front door.”
Flamborough glanced at Markfield to see what effect Sir Clinton
was producing. To his surprise, the chemist seemed in no way
perturbed. With a gesture as though asking permission, he leaned
over and ran a little of the liquid from the funnel into the flask, shook
the mixture gently for a moment or two, and then turned back to Sir
Clinton. The Inspector, watching keenly, could see no tremor in his
hand as he carried out the operations.
“The late Mr. Whalley,” Sir Clinton continued, when Markfield had
finished his work. “The late Mr. Whalley did not care about hanging
round the front of the bungalow. If he stood in front of the lighted
window, anyone passing on the road would be able to see him
outlined against the glare; and that might have led to difficulties. So
he passed round to the second window of the same room, which
looked out on the side of the bungalow and was therefore not so
conspicuous from the road. Just as he turned the corner of the
building, he heard a second car stop at the gate.”
Sir Clinton paused here, as though undecided about the next part
of his narrative. He glanced at Markfield, apparently to see whether
he was paying attention; then he proceeded.
“The late Mr. Whalley tip-toed along to this side-window of the
lighted room, and, much to his delight, I've no doubt, he found that
the curtains had been carelessly drawn, so that a chink was left
between them through which he could peep into the room. He
stepped on to the flower-bed, bent down, and peered through the
aperture. I hope I make myself clear, Dr. Markfield?”
“Quite,” said Markfield curtly.
Sir Clinton nodded in acknowledgment, glanced once more at his
papers as though to refresh his memory, and continued:
“What he saw was this. The girl was lying in an arm-chair near
the fireplace. The late Mr. Whalley, again misled by his limited
experience, thought she'd fallen asleep—the effects of alcohol, he
supposed, I believe. The young man who was with her—we may
save the trouble by calling him Hassendean, I think—seemed rather
agitated, but not quite in the way that the late Mr. Whalley had
anticipated. Hassendean spoke to the girl and got no reply, evidently.
He shook her gently, and so on; but he got no response. I think we
may cut out the details. The net result was that to Mr. Whalley's
inexperienced eye, the girl looked very far gone. Hassendean
seemed to be thunderstruck by the situation, which puzzled the late
Mr. Whalley considerably at the time.”
Markfield, apparently unimpressed, leaned across and ran some
more of the liquid out of his funnel. Flamborough guessed the
movement might be intended to conceal his features from easy
observation.
“The next stage in the proceedings took the late Mr. Whalley by
surprise, it seems,” Sir Clinton went on. “Leaving the girl where she
was, young Hassendean left the room for a minute or two. When he
came back, he had a pistol in his hand. This was not at all what the
late Mr. Whalley had been expecting. Least of all did he expect to
see young Hassendean go up to the girl, and shoot her in the head
at close quarters. I'm sure you'll appreciate the feelings of the late
Mr. Whalley at this stage, Dr. Markfield.”
“Surprising,” Markfield commented abruptly.
Sir Clinton nodded in agreement.
“What must have been even more surprising was the sequel. The
glass of the front window broke with a blow, and from behind the
curtains a man appeared, who fell upon Hassendean. There was a
struggle, a couple of shots from Hassendean's pistol, and then
Hassendean fell on the ground—dead, as Whalley supposed at the
time.”
Flamborough stared hard at Markfield, but at that moment the
chemist again turned in his chair, ran the remainder of the liquid from
the funnel into his flask, and then refilled the funnel from the bottle
on the tray. This done, he turned once more with an impassive face
to Sir Clinton.
“By this time, the late Mr. Whalley seems to have seen all that he
wanted. Just as he was turning away from the window, he noticed
the new-comer take some small object from his waistcoat pocket and
drop it on the floor. Then Mr. Whalley felt it was time to make himself
scarce. He stepped back on to the path, made his way round the
bungalow, hurried down the approach to the gate. There he came
across a car—evidently the one in which the assailant had arrived.
The late Mr. Whalley, even at this stage, was not quite free from his
second idea: ‘What is there in it for me?’ He took the number of the
car, and then he made himself scarce.”
Sir Clinton stopped for a moment or two and gazed across at
Markfield with an inscrutable face.
“By the way, Dr. Markfield,” he added in a casual tone, “what was
the pet name that Mrs. Silverdale used to call you when you were
alone together—the one beginning with ‘B’?”
This time, it was evident to the Inspector, Sir Clinton had got
home under Markfield's guard. The chemist glanced up with more
than a shade of apprehension on his face. He seemed to be making
a mental estimate of the situation before he replied.
“H'm! You know that, do you?” he said finally. “Then there's no
use denying it, I suppose. She used to call me ‘Bear’ usually. She
said I had the manners of one, at times; and perhaps there was
something in that.”
Sir Clinton showed no sign that he attached much importance to
Markfield's explanation.
“You became intimate with her some time in 1925, I think, just
after the Silverdales came here?”
Markfield nodded his assent.
“And very shortly after that, you and she thought it best to
conceal your liaison by seeing as little of each other as possible in
public, so as not to draw attention to your relations?”
“That's true.”
“And finally she got hold of young Hassendean to serve as a
blind? Advertised herself with him openly, whilst you stayed in the
background?”
“You seem to know a good deal about it,” Markfield admitted
coldly.
“I think I know all that matters,” the Chief Constable commented.
“You've lost the game, Dr. Markfield.”
 Markfield seemed to consider the situation rapidly before he
spoke again.
“You can't make it worse than manslaughter,” he said at last. “It's
no more than that, on the evidence you've given me just now. I saw
him shoot Yvonne, and then, in the struggle afterwards, his pistol
went off twice by accident and hit him. You couldn't call that a case
of murder. I shall plead that it was done in self-defence; and you
haven't Whalley to put into the box against me.”
Sir Clinton took no pains to conceal a sardonic smile.
“It won't do, Dr. Markfield,” he pointed out. “You might get off on
that plea if it were only the bungalow business that you were
charged with. But there's the murder of the maid at Heatherfield as
well. You can't twist that into a self-defence affair. No jury would look
at it for a moment.”
“You seem to know a good deal about it,” Markfield repeated
thoughtfully.
“I suppose what you really wanted at Heatherfield was a packet
of your love-letters to Mrs. Silverdale?” Sir Clinton asked.
Markfield confirmed this with a nod.
“That's all you have against me, I suppose?” he demanded after
a pause.
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“No,” he said, “there's the affair of the late Mr. Whalley as well.”
Markfield's face betrayed neither surprise nor chagrin at this fresh
charge.
“That's all, then?” he questioned again, with apparent unconcern.
“All that's of importance,” Sir Clinton admitted. “Of course, in the
guise of our friend Mr. Justice, you did your best to throw suspicion
on Silverdale. That's a minor point, so far as you're concerned now.
It's curious how you murderers can't leave well alone. If you hadn't
played the fool there, you'd have given us ever so much more
trouble.”
Markfield made no answer at the moment. He seemed to be
reviewing the whole situation in his mind, thinking hard before he
broke the silence.
“Good thing, a scientific training,” he said at length, rather
unexpectedly. “It teaches one to realise the bearing of plain facts. My