Seminar in English supplemented with Cantonese. Light refreshments will be provided.
Admission is free. Please RSVP by emailing chk.library@utoronto.ca.
Hong Kong comics or `manhua', having a historical lineage to pre-1949 comics in Shanghai and Canton (the present-day Guangzhou), have consistently been embedded with traces of continual. transnational and transcultural influences from North American, European, and Japanese comics. Since the 1960s, Hong Kong comics have developed distinctive visual and stylistic characteristics along with localized narratives.
In the 1980s, action comics dominated the comics scene, marking the golden age of Hong Kong comics in terms of comic book sales, export and cultural significance. However, there was a sharp decline since the mid-1990s, attributed to internal industrial factors such as the lack of new talent and sterile studio production method, as well as external factors such as the rise of other entertainment media.
By the turn of the 21st century, there was a pivotal change in Hong Kong comics. The decline of the mainstream action comics was met with the rise of independent comics which were again highly informed by transnational alternative and transmedia comic trends in Northern America and Europe. The latter steered a departure from the formulaic narratives and style, as well as teamwork studio production characterizing action comics. Not engaging in a zero-sum game, the independent comics became mainstream not in terms of sales but in cultural visibility. Some key features of the Hong Kong comics over the past two decades include their transmedia tendencies as well as their reflections on the socio-cultural and political transformation of Hong Kong.
This talk explores the evolution of Hong Kong comics in the 21st century from a critical perspective. Delving into some case studies, it unpacks the intricacies of the evolving comic production and circulation, establishes a deeper understanding of the complex and nuanced narratives of Hong Kong - a city in constant flux - and engages in a transcultural and transmedia dialogue that resonates beyond borders.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Kin-Wai Chu is a FWO post-doctoral fellow on Comics Studies at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research focuses on the transcultural circulation of graphic humour in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is currently a visiting scholar at York University, with the Research Collaboration Fellowship at York Center for Asian Research. In 2022, she completed her PhD research on Hong Kong comics of the 21st century at KU Leuven, supported by Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO). Her publications can be seen in anthologies and journals such as Comics Studies Here and Now (Routledge 2018); The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies (OUP 2020); and International Journal of Comic Art.
Moderator:
Wendy Wong, Faculty Associate, York Centre for Asian Research, York University