Manhua () are Chinese language comics produced in Greater China. Chinese comics and narrated illustrations have existed in China throughout its history.
They are usually graphic and can be written for a myriad of genres, including romance, fantasy, historical, thrillers, paranormal and horror. The storylines are varied but could include tropes and plotlines common to Asian culture and settings.
There is no fixed word count for a manhua, but each panel could contain an average of 30 words and about 90 words per page. Though, this may vary widely. Depending on the writer and the popularity of the manhua, it could have one or several issues and can be published digitally or in a printed form.
The Chinese characters for manhua are identical to those used for the Japanese manga and manhwa. Someone who draws or writes manhua is referred to as a manhuajia ().
The introduction of lithographic printing methods derived from the West was a critical step in expanding the art in the early 20th century. Beginning in the 1870s, satirical drawings appeared in newspapers and periodicals. By the 1920s palm-sized picture books like Lianhuanhua were popular in Shanghai.Lent, John A. 2001 (2001) Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books. University of Hawaii Press. They are considered the predecessor of modern-day manhua.
One of the first magazines of satirical cartoons came from the United Kingdom entitled The China Punch. The first piece drawn by a person of Chinese nationality was The Situation in the Far East from Tse Tsan-tai in 1899, printed in Japan. Sun Yat-Sen established the Republic of China in 1911 using Hong Kong's manhua to circulate anti-Qing Dynasty propaganda. Some of the manhua that mirrored the early struggles of the transitional political and war periods were The True Record and Renjian Pictorial.
Up until the establishment of the Shanghai Sketch Society in 1927, all prior works were Lianhuanhua or loose collections of materials. The first successful manhua magazine, Shanghai Sketch (or Shanghai Manhua) appeared in 1928. Between 1934 and 1937 about 17 manhua magazines were published in Shanghai. This format would once again be put to propaganda use with the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. By the time the Japanese occupied Hong Kong in 1941, all manhua activities had stopped. With the surrender of the Japanese in 1945, political mayhem between Chinese Kuomintang and Communists took place. One of the critical manhua, This Is a Cartoon Era by Renjian Huahui made note of the political backdrop at the time.
One of the most popular and enduring comics of this period was Zhang Leping's Sanmao, first published in 1935.
During the Anti-Japanese War, begun in 1937, many Chinese cartoonists, including Ye Qianyu, fled Shanghai and other major cities and waged "cartoon guerilla warfare" against the Japanese invaders by mounting roving cartoon exhibitions and publishing cartoon magazines in inland cities like Hankou.Christopher G. Rea, A History of Laughter: Comic Culture in Early Twentieth-Century China, Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation, 2018, chapter 9.
The rise of Chinese immigration turned Hong Kong into the main manhua-ready market, especially with the baby boom generation of children. The most influential manhua magazine for adults was the 1956 Cartoons World, which fueled the best-selling Uncle Choi. The availability of Japanese and Taiwanese comics challenged the local industry, selling at a pirated bargain price of 10 cents. Manhua-like Old Master Q were needed to revitalize the local industry.
The arrival of television in the 1970s was a changing point. Bruce Lee's films dominated the era and his popularity launched a new wave of Kung Fu manhua. The explicit violence helped sell comic books, and the Government of Hong Kong intervened with the Indecent Publication Law in 1975. Oriental Heroes was one of the pieces which absorbed all the social changes. The materials would also bloom in the 90s with work like McMug and three-part stories like "Teddy Boy", "Portland Street" and "Red Light District".
Since the 1950s, Hong Kong's manhua market has been separate from that of mainland China.
Si loin et si proche, by Chinese writer and illustrator Xiao Bai, won the Gold Award at the 4th International Manga Award in 2011. Several other manhua have also won the Silver and Bronze Awards at the International Manga Award.
In the second half of the 2000s and early 2010s, various Chinese cartoonists began using social media to spread satirical Webcomics. Print publishing, being strictly controlled in China, is slowly being traded in for microblogging websites such as Sina Weibo and Douban, where manhua can reach a wide audience while subject to less editorial control.
Despite China being a major consumer of comics for decades, the medium has never been taken as "serious works of art". R. Martin of The Comics Journal describes the Chinese outlook on comics as "pulpy imitations of films". Furthermore, China strictly controls the publishing of comics, and as a result, cartoonists faced difficulty reaching a large audience. Many cartoonists in the late 2000s began self-publishing their work on social media instead of attempting to issue paper editions. Websites such as Douban (2005) and Sina Weibo (2009) are popular venues for digital comic and webcomics.
The Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival celebrated the coming of a "webcomics era" in 2015. With increased smartphone usage with a younger generation, web manhua, webcomics, and webtoons are expected to become more popular. With an increasing prevalence of Chinese-language online comic platforms, young artists have more opportunities to publish their work and gain a reputation. In the second half of the 2010s, manhwa and webtoon platforms have become increasingly popular in China.
In 2016, two manhua have been adapted into anime television series: Yi Ren Zhi Xia and Soul Buster. Another series, Bloodivores, based on a web manhua, will start airing on October 1, 2016. Another series, The Silver Guardian, is scheduled to premiere in 2017.
During the Japanese occupation, interest in comics grew, and publications began to include colored cartoons and satirical works. In 1921, the Taiwan Daily News began publishing a comic section, which became an important source of content for the local population.
After World War II, the influx of Chinese Lianhuanhua and American comics like Blondie and Dennis the Menace, along with the piracy of Japanese manga, helped solidify the popularity of comics in Taiwan. In the following decades, especially after the island’s democratization in the 1990s, manhua gained recognition as a legitimate form of artistic and cultural expression.
如意畫 / 如意画 |
諷刺畫 / 讽刺画 |
政治畫 / 政治画 |
時事畫 / 时事画 |
報導畫 / 报导画 |
紀錄畫 / 纪录画 |
滑稽畫 / 滑稽画 |
笑畫 / 笑画 |
Today's manhua are simply distinguished by four categories.
Satirical and political manhua |
Comical manhua |
Action manhua |
Children's manhua |
These are due to differences in the Style guide prescribed by the governments of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Cartoonists such as Kuang Biao and Rebel Pepper make use of the Internet to criticize the Communist Party and its leaders. Communist propaganda and figures such as Lei Feng are openly mocked on microblogs and in online cartoons, despite efforts of censorship by the Chinese government. David Bandurski, a researcher with the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project, stated that social media has "dramatically changed the environment for cartoonists as they now have a really good platform to find an audience." Chinese animator Pi San criticized internet companies and web portals for being "pretty cowardly" and "too sensitive", as they take on the role of first line of defense through self-censorship. Rebel Pepper's account on Sina Weibo, where he posts his satiral cartoons, had been deleted over 180 times by 2012.
Blogging websites such as Sina Weibo are also highly censored by the Chinese government. Reuters reported in September 2013 that about 150 graduates, all male, were employed to censor Sina Weibo day and night, and automatic censors processed around three million posts per day. A research team from Rice University, Texas, stated that they saw "a fairly sophisticated system, where human power is amplified by computer automation, capable of removing sensitive posts within minutes." Images censored from Sina Weibo include a portrait of Mao Zedong wearing a pollution mask, a photo compilation identifying the expensive watches on the wrists of supposedly low-waged local officials, and criticism on police action, censorship in education, and the one child policy.
The comics industry expects webcomics to prosper financially, though no accurate figures exist as of yet. Prize-winning cartoonists such as Chung Yun-de and Yeh Yu-tung were forced to turn to webcomics as their monthly income was too low to live from.
Beijing cartoonist Bu Er Miao sells her webcomic Electric Cat and Lightning Dog on Douban's eBook service for 1.99 CNY (roughly 0.30 USD). When asked about whether she makes a profit off of her webcomic, Miao described the 1.79 CNY she makes per comic sold as "an amount of money that if you saw it on the street, no one would bother to pick it up."
Kakao, operating the Korean webtoon portal Daum Webtoon, has collaborated with the Chinese Huace Group in order to produce live-action, Chinese language films and television dramas based on South Korean webtoons.
|
|