On this week’s Comics Syllabus podcast, I caught up with creator Sonny Liew about “The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” (Pantheon) just a few days after he and the book won Eisner Awards for Best Writer/Artist, Publication Design, and International Material from Asia. After setting the scene and giving context to our conversation, I present my discussion with Sonny about the Eisners and San Diego Comic Con; the artistry, themes, and politics of “Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye;” and which of the book’s homages to comics masters he found most challenging to create. Let’s dig deep!
(Apologies for the sound quality of the interview– explanation is in the episode introduction.)
(Images and links to go with our conversation are below!)
[audio: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/335758126-twoplai-008-sonny-liew-talks-art-of-charlie-chan-hock-chye.mp3]Or download the podcast episode here.
Then afterwards, in the “General Ed” segment, we feature “The Wait List” for August, joined by the podcast brother to look at upcoming collections and trade paperbacks this month.
I’m Paul, and I’m inviting you to join us for another episode of The Comics Syllabus, a comics analysis podcast. Our mantra is, we read widely and we dig deep. Each week, we choose one work from a wide breadth of current and classic comics, including superhero fare, comics from independent publishers and small presses, global comics, newspaper strip archives, and various collected editions. We spend time digging deep into the work from various perspectives, sometimes in actual live conversation with others, sometimes with just me on a mic surrounded by a pile of comics studies and academic books. It’s like a comics seminar, where the only prerequisite is that you love comics.
You can find the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud, or copy this RSS feed to your podcatcher: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:235183739/sounds.rss
or find archives for this podcast (previously named “Study Comics with Paul”) here: http://studycomics.club/
A rating, review, or star on whatever podcast source would help make the world a slightly better place. (No, Really!)
Follow Paul on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TwoPlai It’s the only place on earth he stays under 140 characters.
Thanks for listening!
IMAGES AND LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Following comics images are from “The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye” by Sonny Liew (Pantheon)
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye website lists various articles and reviews
Spotlight Panel with Sonny Liew at San Diego Comic Con (with Paul Levitz), posted by Penguin
Past episode of this podcast (when it was “The Paul List”) reviewing “Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye”
from 15:56 “The King of Comics at SDCC”
from 19:07 The Beat piece “Money Matters Must Read”
from 25:32 New York Times piece Sonny references: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/world/asia/sonny-liew-singapore-charlie-chan-hock-chye.html
from 26:35 “Presented by Sonny Liew”
from 29:45 and 34:32 “Invasion! after Frank Hampton’s “Dan Dare”
from 35:49 “Bukit Chapalang after Walt Kelly’s Pogo”
from 36:54 “Ah Huat after Tezuka”
from 39:41– Sonny mentions various sources about the life of a comics artist in an earlier period, including Lat, Tatsumi, Taniguchi, and Noro Shinpei in Allen Say’s Drawing from Memory
from 52:02 “You’ll have to look after your own family”
