Comics, On the Road
By Aho Huang ( Curator of 2014 Angoulême
International Comics Festival Taiwan Pavilion)
A journey, is like the eternal dream of
humanity.
On the one hand, one wishes for peace and
warmth at home, but on the other hand one also looks forward to the unknown and
the surprises on the road ahead.
Like when reading Szu-ma Cien’s Records of the Grand Historian, Homer’s Odyssey, or Greek mythology, your
thoughts and your feelings spread far and wide: winding along the Silk Road or
floating in the Mediterranean Sea, boundless golden sand and blue oceans that are
at one moment quiet and another fierce; reading, imagining, growing, confronting,
just like this crossing one step at a time.
In comics, journeying also plays an
important role.
European readers, through the travels and
experiences of the main characters in The
Adventures of Tintin and Corto
Maltese came to know the world.
In Asia, readers also through works like Chen
Uen’s Heroic Tales of the Eastern Zhou
Dynasty and Inoue Takehiko’s Vagabond
(or the even more classic Lone Wolf and
Cub), set foot on a journey, and came to know the scenery and lives of people
in Eastern lands as well as the small tracks of human beings in the grand
history.
Characters and plot, land and life, authors
and readers; all roaming together on the road.
In 2014, for three years now Taiwan comics
have visited Angoulême. Seven Taiwanese comic artists came together to come up
with the exhibition theme “Travel With Comic”.
For some authors, a simple recollection of
a trip to Europe, a young grand tour and the first feeling of nostagia arise at
the same time.
For some authors, from within creating
comics and catching inspiration, wander around the city and in the country in
their thoughts.
Furthermore, from young to old, falling in
love and being infatuated with comic reading and comic creating, is also a
touching memory.
By allowing characters to go out on a
journey, it is the easiest and most probable way for authors to realize their
own dreams.
The call of the journey, exploring the
unknown, and distant objects… they all allow the author to finally be able to
join in and set out on a journey.
There are already quite a few years of
history of European comics traveling to Taiwan, but it is always an
intermittent one-sided memory. Tintin
in the 70s and 80s, Moebius and Manara in the 90s, and within the last ten
years European comics have continued to appear on scene, up to these past two
years.
The most important thing on a journey often isn’t what we plan or
imagine in advance, and that is the most enchanting aspect of a journey.
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