Well I'm A Tumblr. Born Under Punches.

...of course, the really interesting thing about this book -- and something I actually didn’t recognize for the first couple of chapters -- is that Charlie Chan Hock Chye doesn’t exist. Liew created him, using the book’s central premise as a disguise for a detailed look back through Singapore’s history. Chan Hock Chye has lived through the most important events, and made comics commenting on them.

Liew plays the book completely straight: apart from a “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer at the very back, there is no suggestion that the artist on display is made up. He goes to great lengths to create this character’s history, peppering the book with sketches, portraits, and childhood drawings attributed to Chan. This isn’t even getting into the comics themselves, which pass through many different styles in accordance with the periods of time they comment on. The artistry is impressive, and creates a world around the central character that makes the book immersive.

This work has a fairly direct predecessor in “Bicycle”, one of Liew’s Malinky Robot comics. In that story, each of the three protagonists shares a vignette they heard about their acquaintance Mr. Bon Bon, and each one tells their story in a different style of comic: one is told in an edgy, artsy, “underground” style, one is told as a superhero comic, and one is portrayed as a page of Sunday funnies. This last example is particularly interesting, because the story is spread out across many different strips, each a pastiche of an existing one. This whole book is based on that structure, which I find fascinating.

If there’s one thing that can be drawn from “Bicycle” and The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, it’s that Sonny Liew is a fantastically accomplished mimic. This might sound backhanded, but it’s really not meant to be.

In fact, the stunning diversity of style on display here gives Liew a unique storytelling tool: he can look at the different periods of Singapore’s history from different angles by associating to each an appropriate homage. The comics describing the fighting between British, Japanese, and communist forces for control of Singapore during and after World War II are patterned after the grim war stories of Harvey Kurtzman, while the political machinations leading up to Singapore’s ill-fated merger with Malaysia are documented in an uncanny imitation of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, with Lee Kuan Yew depicted as a trickster animal outwitting everyone else. This is the book’s major strength.

Most, if not all, of the strips attributed to Chan Hock Chye in this book are direct homages to great comics creators throughout history: Osamu Tezuka, Kurtzman, Kelly, and others. Often, these references are explicitly called out, usually as intentional on the part of Chan, but on one occasion described as an amazing coincidence. Occasionally this pushes up against the illusion that Liew has worked so hard to create, though that’s not really the main purpose of the book.

At times, the satirical comics get a bit heavy-handed. The Pogo lookalike contributes some of the book’s cleverest moments, but as it attempts to cover the somewhat complex politics underlying the merger with Malaysia, its metaphors become somewhat strained and confused. The later Sinkapor Inks strips, about the government’s restrictions of speech, are strained even further, and are accompanied by an appearance from Liew’s own avatar along the bottom of the page, speaking frankly on the issue. This is still interesting reading, but it breaks the immersion of the book. Liew had to strike a tricky balance here, since he also needed to avoid obfuscating the messages of the strips, and it’s impressive how well he pulls it off most of the time.

I think the only significant point of weakness in The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is that it sometimes feels pulled between being a history and a character study. On one hand, Liew’s own viewpoint and thorough research are very clearly reflected in the book; on the other hand, Chan Hock Chye, through whose lens we are seeing all of the historical events described, is not an infallible protagonist. He never finds success in his field, but he seems obsessed with the idea of greatness -- of someday being realized for the great artist he is. The book is really two intertwining stories, about a fictional person and a real country, and they don’t always fit together perfectly.

However, the book meets its high ambitions more often than not, and is cleverly structured on the whole.

One might see a bit of egotism in the way Sonny Liew has attributed all of the comics he created for this book to “Singapore’s greatest comics artist”. (Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he could claim the title at this point.) But as mentioned above, the comics aren’t a display of Chan’s greatness so much as they are windows into Singapore.