The volume of Taiwanese comics being published has increased steadily over the last ten years, with growing visibility internationally. A new generation of comic artists are showing serious ambition, targeting a variety of audiences and offering diverse content. (Photography / Zi-Lei YANG 楊子磊)

Written by: De-Lun CHEN

Photography by: Zi-Lei YANG

Edited by: Sherry Hsueh-Li LEE, Shih-Yun CHANG (original text); Yu-Ting HUANG (translated text)

Translated by: Gilda Knox Streader

Since the advent of self-published manga and comics known as dōjinshi (or, in Chinese, 同人誌 tongrenzhi), artists in their 20s and 30s have been producing a wide range of content through independently publishing their own comics and engaging with communities of enthusiasts. What sets this generation of Taiwanese comic artists apart is their branding of themselves and their work. Whether promoting their content abroad or bringing popularity garnered overseas back home, they feel out the market and lay the groundwork for getting commercially published.

The Reporter spoke to four groups and individuals in Taiwan’s new generation of comic artists, all under 35, to understand how they are making inroads into the international market, developing unique materials to bring in readership, and telling their stories around the world. With the rise of what is being called a third wave for Taiwanese comics, how do these young artists see the market, their career prospects, and the future of the industry?

“This is 18+? It’s too funny!”, “It’s so liberating,” “Why do Taiwanese girls go abroad to hook up? It’s embarrassing, bringing us shame overseas!”; opinions are thrown around online forums not just in Taiwan, but in Japan too — the series Ms T’s Sexcapades in Japan (《T子％％走》 ) has sparked heated debate. Created by the comic artist Guzi (穀子), the series follows a protagonist’s spontaneous travel adventure focused on pulling handsome Japanese men and her ensuing series of passionate physical encounters.

Guzi jokingly refers to this first commercial publication of hers as getting mixed reviews, but by any online ranking metric it sits comfortably within Taiwan’s top three best-selling comics of 2021. Brazen and eye-catching, the R18 labelled magazine on display in bookstores is also attracting the curious attention of a non-traditional readership, attracting an audience that now ranges from housewives to urologists.

Although Guzi’s works, from *Ms T’s Sexcapades in Japan* to *Not a Good Love Consultant (《無能戀愛諮商中心》)*, focus on the exploration of desire and LGBTQ+ groups, Guzi says that what she’s really interested in is using humor to draw readers in, and extremes to expose to contradictions in the human condition. (Photography / Yang Tzu-lei 楊子磊)

Born in the 1990s, Guzi started attending the dōjinshi convention society back in middle school. In addition to running her own booth, she shared her work on social media and illustration platforms. There, she was discovered by Taiwanese and Japanese publishing editors. She says that it’s thanks to relaxing attitudes towards marriage and relationships that work like hers, which deal with female desire, are getting a foot in the door.

Guzi is not alone; many young Taiwanese creators have been pushing boundaries in recent years. From digging into their personal experiences to exploring pieces of local culture and history and addressing contemporary issues, the realm of possibility for Taiwanese comics is growing.

The Creative Comic Collection 《CCC創作集》has, with support from the Ministry of Culture (文化部) and the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA, 文化內容策進院), has been collaborating with publishers over the last ten years to distribute original comics as single editions. The CCC was first set up by young creators as a digital platform to showcase works and, today uniquely Taiwanese stories are landing in the hands of more and more readers. Taiwan’s comics are also gaining traction abroad, bringing home awards and securing overseas licensing deals.

What has government support for the industry looked like since the advent of the Creative Comic Collection?

What is now run by TAICCA as the Creative Comic Collection (CCC) began with a digital archiving project of Academia Sinica’s (中研院) National Science Council (國科會). Since 2009, the project has invited creators to submit works concerning Taiwanese culture, history, and nature and used this archive to produce print publications. After being transferred to TAICCA in 2019, the collection was then digitized in August of the following year, swapping out physical publications in favour of an online comic platform. In April 2022, works on the platform published by private publishing houses transitioned from free to partially paid access.

Separately, the Narrative Comic Award under the Government Information Office (行政院新聞局) was remodelled in 2010 as the Golden Comic Award (金漫獎) by the Ministry of Culture, with prize money to encourage comic artists and editors and support local works. In 2018, The Ministry of Culture launched Comic Counsellorships (漫畫輔導金) which comic artists and publishers may apply to for grants, boosting the local output of comics. In 2019, the Taiwan Comic Base (台灣漫畫基地) was established to provide information, and services, and match comic artists to publishing houses.

In 2014, the then print-based CCC invited comic artist Zuo Hsuan (左萱) to contribute to a deity-themed edition, sparking the creation of her series Home of the Gods 《神之鄉》. While many were discussing the culture surrounding temples and shrines, Zuo Hsuan realised that her own home in Daxi (大溪) has a unique tradition of different processions and ceremonies — and perhaps this could serve as the basis of a long-form comic series. “This could be the day that decides my fate!” she thought as she formed the outline of her story on a winding bus ride home, and resolved to take the opportunity to pitch the idea to her editor.

Then 25-year-old Zuo Hsuan already had experience as a commercial illustrator, but dreamt of making it as a comic artist; “If I want to make a living from comics, I’ll need a showcase piece.” She travelled back and forth to Daxi for field research and to consult with local experts on folklore and religion, using her grandparent’s connections and gathering materials everywhere from local word of mouth to the town’s library.

In this debut work, Zuo Hsuan tells a story rooted in Daxi’s ceremonial culture and history, about coming home and how family can pull through during times of conflict. Home of the Gods took home the Bronze prize at the 10th Japan International Manga Awards (日本國際漫畫賞), and successfully sold the rights for Japanese and French editions to be made. Few would have believed that the same child who shied away from showing anyone her sketchbooks would grow to be the passionate and professional artist that Zuo Hsuan is today.

Gaia Culture (蓋亞文化), the publishing house of Home of the Gods, is today’s leading publisher of original Taiwanese comics. In 2021, Gaia accounted for one-fifth (32 out of 149) of all commercially published standalone volumes of Taiwanese comics. Sitting in a meeting room piled high with magazines, editor-in-chief Li Ya-lun (李亞倫) says that comic artists are waking up to a sense of identity with the island:

“Textbooks never used to talk much about Taiwanese history and culture, but this generation of creators are looking inwards and starting to tell local Taiwanese stories.”

*The Home of the Gods* protagonist Ah-Xun 阿薰 returns to his hometown in Daxi to fulfil his promise to a childhood friend: to perform in the ceremony (舉神將) for the June 24th birthday of the deity Guan Gong (關公). Pictured is a scene of Ah-Xun dressed as The Third Prince (三太子) in the procession. (Photography / Yang Tzu-lei 楊子磊)

Two golden eras of Taiwanese comics have been and gone in the last half century — are we now seeing a third?

The Creative Comics Collection has driven the rising popularity of historical and cultural content since 2009. Li Ya-lun believes that higher-than-industry manuscript payments to artists, the Comic Counsellorship scheme, and an influx of funding and resources have been indispensable drivers of this ‘third wave’.

But before this point, Taiwanese comics had a flourishing history, severed into two distinct chapters.

In the 1981 hit song Childhood 〈童年〉by Luo Da-you (羅大佑), the lyrics “Zhuge Silang (諸葛四郎) and the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨), who will win the precious sword?” are in nostalgic reference to Ye Hong-jia’s (葉宏甲) classic comic series Zhuge Silang 《諸葛四郎》 that began in 1958. The 1950s was the first golden age for Taiwanese comics, with big names like Ye Hong-jia (葉宏甲), Liu Xing-qin (劉興欽) and others driving this first wave. Buying magazines and reading comic strips became a major source of entertainment for children, and remained so up until the introduction of the comic censorship system (「漫畫審查制度」 ) in 1965, which all but silenced authors until martial law was lifted in the 1980s.

The 1980s saw the emergence of several weekly periodicals, including Wulong Yuan《烏龍院》, Warrior Panther《戰士黑豹》, Young Guns《Young Guns》, Melancholic Princess《傾國怨伶》, and Feng Shen Bang《封神榜》. Comic artists like Chen Uen (鄭問), Ao You-xiang (敖幼祥), Tsai Chih-Chung (蔡志忠), You Su-lan (游素蘭), and Lin Zheng-de (林政德) brought about the revitalisation of comics in what became the industry’s second wave. By 1990, even large-scale publishing houses were running magazines designed to showcase new talent, but the boom wasn’t fated to last. In the 2000s, compounding factors of fierce Japanese competition, the pull of comic artists into mainland China, and a struggling print industry took their toll, and the comic industry stagnated once again.

“Some artists from that golden era would stop working over disputes with publishers and move across the strait instead,” explained Wei Zong-cheng （韋宗成）, author of Ming Zhan Lu 《冥戰錄》 comic featuring the sea goddess Mazu 媽祖 as protagonist. When he first made a name for himself in 2008 with a debut work of political satire, The Arrival of Emperor Ma 《馬皇降臨》, he described the industry as being in a vacuum. Readership losses resulting from the migration of creators were severe, and many complained of comics being cancelled with no resolve (腰斬). As a result, readers instead turned to Japanese manga.

Taiwanese comics have suffered a crisis of spirit, but every generation has those who love to read comics and those who love to create them. So, where are they?

From dōjinshi conventions to the commercial market — independent production, sales, and building personal brands.

Ever since Gaia Culture published the first of their local Taiwanese comics in collaboration with the artist AKRU in 2009, editor-in-chief Li Ya-lun has been in pursuit of a full revitalisation of the industry. He believes that Taiwanese creators are maturing in ability and creativity, and wants readers to know about it. (Photography / Yang Tzu-lei 楊子磊)

In the 2000s, dōjinshi conventions provided a place for enthusiasts to connect and fertile ground for a new generation of creators. Li Ya-lun recalls that because commercial publishers at the time were unable to cover the cost of running local comics, publishing volume had greatly decreased; “So what could those artists who wanted to make comics do? They started sharing their works at the dōjinshi markets, slowly honing their technique and storytelling abilities — and with that, some standout artists started to be discovered.”

“It was all our generation, lots of people in junior high would get involved, and now even some elementary students come along,” said Guzi, observing how practically all the comic artists of her generation had a ‘dōjinshi phase’. Even Ms T’s Sexcapades in Japan started as a self-printed original in the dōjinshi conventions.

From dōjinshi market stalls to online sales, comic artists have an enormous variety in their themes and styles, often self-managing a fully coordinated business practice, from finding an audience to printing copies and selling their product. “People first read and review your work online, and then editors can know where the market is at and who your audience is,” explains Guzi, saying that establishing a personal brand can make you more noticeable to editors, which is another step towards getting published commercially.

An illustrator who independently produces her own collections, Gao-yan (高妍), had her original comic The Song About Green 《綠之歌》 published in May of 2022. The story follows a young woman Lin-lu from a small coastal town who, after being accepted into university, has her first love affair with a boy in a band that she meets in an independent music store named Kafka by the Sea after the real record store in Taipei. As her first commercial work, the single volume was confirmed for a reprint after just one week of being published in Japan. Her success was more than a bout of luck; Gao-yan put a huge amount of effort into social media, managing different platforms, and publishing work regularly. Before rising to fame with her illustrations for Abandoning a Cat 《棄貓》 by Haruki Murakami (村上村樹), many Japanese editors already followed her Twitter (now known as X). She says, “As long as your work is good enough, you have consistent quality, and publishers have something that suits you, they will come to you.”

Five years ago, a 20-year-old Gao-yan travelled to Japan for the first time; aside from browsing record stores and art galleries, she also carried her own self-printed comics with her to give out to independent bookstores, introducing herself as she went. One of these book store’s managers helped her set up her first exhibition in Japan, and the editors that came to see it became the beginnings of her professional network; “Even now I send them copies whenever I publish a standalone volume, and in return they provide me with feedback and help promote it.” The Japanese magazine Comic Bean《月刊Comic Bean》which serialised The Song About Green was also from a connection made at that time.

At only 25, Gao-yan is meticulous in her work. To her, “it’s not just about drawing skills. For example, it's only with all the experience, preparation, and knowledge in this field I’ve gained that I can have confidence in what I’m doing.” Since university, Gao-yan has dedicated herself to studying Japanese, eyes set on the Japanese market. She made notes of the publishing houses that ran interesting works so that someday, when looking to get commercially published, she would know which doors to go knocking on. After securing the Haruki Murakami job, commercial commissions started pouring in one after another. It cemented her conviction that “sometimes your work has to take the long route, first winning favour in Japan before being noticed back home in Taiwan.”

From the independent to the commercially published, and from small audiences to large, Taiwanese comic artists increasingly have their sights set ever further afield.

Paranormal Mystery and Women’s 18+…. Artists develop unclaimed materials and new readerships in an age of niche markets.

Yeh Ming-hsuan (葉明軒) is born in the 1970s but professes that, in mental age, he will forever be 21. Since childhood, he’s loved Japanese mangas like Ranma ½ 《亂馬½》, Dragon Ball 《七龍珠》, and Fist of the North Star 《北斗神拳》. Well known for mixing fantasy and period elements in his Supreme Western Heavens 《無上西天》 and The Great Sorcerer Li Bai 《大仙術士李白》, Yeh is a seven-time nominee and four-time winner of the Golden Comic Award (金漫獎). He says that emerging artists these days know more about how to sell themselves than the last generation, and are not always following the style of Japanese manga, “The more you draw, the better, everyone really has their own style.”

The CCC started encouraging comic artists to experiment with different materials after turning its platform digital in 2012. A prime example is The Agnostic Detective 《不可知論偵探》, Taiwan’s first comic to combine paranormal mystery with detective themes. The work is a collaboration between a novelist Xerses (薛西斯) and an illustrator active in the dōjinshi scene, Parrot Kao (鸚鵡洲). They are subverting the usual model of comics produced wholly by a single creator. Instead, one writes and another draws, with back-and-forth communication for planning and storyboarding as the bread and butter of their production process. Xerses noted how she consulted several detective story comics to get a feeling for the right style of narrative pacing, as well as a sense for those punchlines that are delivered specifically through the artwork. “There are some schemes and plot points that are a real hassle to spell out in a novel, you have to write a lot to do it, but [with comics] the readers can get it with a single look,” she says.

In its beginnings the CCC focused on reinterpreting literature and historical stories, going through reports on bizarre news events from old newspapers like the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō 《台灣日日新報》 from the Japanese colonial period for authors to use as reference materials. “I remember a case of someone leading a cow into a lake and disappearing,” says Parrot Kao, waving her hands in mock disbelief. For the chapter The Self-Sacrificing Arhat (捨身羅漢) based on a story about a human sacrificial ritual, Xerses and Parrot Kao each made trips to Taipei’s Dahu Park, the reported site of the incident, to get a feel for the atmosphere and collect reference materials.

Melding folk beliefs and social issues, The Agnostic Detective is paving the way for a new style of comics, with the hope that Taiwanese readers looking for detective stories will no longer only have Japan’s Detective Conan 《名偵探柯南》or The Kindaichi Case Files 《金田一少年之事件簿》to choose from.

Providing readers with an alternative was also Guzi’s original motivation in creating Ms T’s Sexcapades in Japan. Despite being interested in adult comics for a long time, she also considered working as an illustrator with literary and historical materials, but eventually decided it wasn’t for her; “I used to have this idea that it’s much harder and more impressive to deal with serious topics and that anyone could do comedy. Later I realised that’s not quite the case.” Going back to her roots, Guzi now makes something unique with her mix of comedy and adult themes.

Guzi says that it’s because her work is comedic enough it’s free from being labelled as didactically ‘feminist’. Although some male readers aren’t too pleased, there are still many who recommend it.

Bored with the male audience-orientated tropes of 18+ comics, she says that “male characters have all sorts of internal complexity, but the feelings of female characters are completely neglected. So she can enjoy herself, but that’s basically the end of it.” In this context, where stronger sexual desires are stigmatised and tend to fall into the traditional default of serving men, Guzi wants to draw female characters that are bold enough to express their feelings. In the world of 18+ comics, gender dynamics can be disrupted, and the narrative techniques of appealing to a male audience can instead be applied with a female-orientated perspective.

As a university student, Wei Zong-chen set up the Creative Comic Battle 「創意漫畫大亂鬥」 website as a place where users could freely submit their comics regardless of their professional status; anyone who loved comics was welcome. Having followed the online comic community in Taiwan for more than 20 years, Wei has seen a rise in the number of creators and increasing audience segmentation, saying that “every author has their own readership. What they excel at becomes a kind of weapon for their craft, used to mark out the territory of their niche.”

Are Taiwanese comic artists getting by? In the world of job-juggling where getting full-time work is a still battle, passion continues to burn bright.

Although materials are diversifying and creative freedom is growing, has it gotten any easier to survive as a comic artist in Taiwan? The creators we interviewed agreed that thanks to the CCC’s grants and payments for manuscripts, being a comic artist as a job is no longer totally out of reach, but going full-time is still tough. Unless a series takes off, artists still rely on competition prize money or freelance jobs to make ends meet.

Parrot Kao spoke about having a regular full-time job, and that drawing for comic serials is a side gig with real practical concerns. “Manuscript payments, for example, have gotten a lot better in recent years. But Taiwan is still trying to find a way to make the whole cycle sustainable in the publisher and consumer market.”

The promise of a career in comics might be great, but reality can be harsh. Zuo Hsuan, who works with literary and historical materials, finds that the work of checking the historical accuracy of sources, narrative development, and storyboarding often takes more time than the drawing itself. “It’s different being a comic artist to an illustrator, you’re not only concerned with the art itself, but you’re also developing a plot, writing dialogue, and thinking about the pacing of character arcs and storylines. There’s a lot of moving parts beyond just sitting down and drawing.”

In many ways, the Internet age has set the industry’s barrier to entry at an all-time low. You can become a comic artist without physically publishing, but Guzi still thinks that “many people can see what you put out there as a graphic writer, but it’s still uncommon to make much money out of it. You can spend a lot of time posting your work and developing a following, but it won’t be enough to actually cover your living costs.” To get by, many comic artists take on other projects from stickers, illustrations, and government commissions to judging for competitions and mentoring roles in various clubs and societies.

“For me, it isn’t always doing illustration work, I’d work the rice fields if it paid enough,” says Yeh Ming-hsuan half-jokingly. He admits that if it wasn’t for the Golden Comic Award money, he probably would have already given up on making comics. But to Zuo Hsuan and Gao Yan, juggling multiple jobs isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Aside from drawing for comics, they both take on work as illustrators; Zuo Hsuan explains that “if you can take on other jobs for projects or with artists that you like, there’s a sense of achievement in that too, it’s just a different way of going about it.”

Gao-yan remembers clearly the father who brought his daughter in seventh grade to one of her signing events. The little girl was a super-fan but became so nervous in front of her idol that she could hardly speak. Gao-yan learned from her father that she loved to draw; “I told him about how when I was little and drawing my parents would let me be, not worrying too much about me ending up without a job. I was doing what I loved.” She says that although the professional world of comic artists in Taiwan is still developing, if you can break into the international market and find your own style and commercial niche, illustration can become a real profession.

Opportunities taking root with cross-media IP rights and sustained government support.

Currently, the main income source for comic artists in Taiwan is from manuscript payments. Guzi says that with full-time investment and an ongoing series, it’s possible to make an income equivalent to an entry-level office worker's monthly salary of about 30,000 to 40,000 New Taiwan Dollars (NTD), but the workload fluctuates. Royalties are only a supplementary income; “profit from sales just isn’t very high. One comic sells for 250 NTD, so royalties at 10% are only 25 NTD per sale, which is next to nothing really.” In Japan, 6,000 copies of Guzi’s Ms T’s Sexcapades in Japan were printed in the first run. Despite being considered a bestseller in Taiwan, it still took five runs to meet the same figure —“the market ceiling here is just so low.”

Li Ya-lun explains that printing volume for Taiwanese comics can range from the hundreds to the thousands, but how well a given work might do is anyone’s guess so publishers err on the side of caution with conservative estimates. He admits that the industry is somewhat distorted; that commercial publishers lack a basic level of flexibility and would struggle to pay creators even their manuscript payments without government subsidies. The way Li sees it, the domestic industry is in something of an incubator phase as publishing volume and readership continue to expand.

Right now, this leg-up from the government is still needed for both creators and publishers to allow the industry to bloom.

TAICCA vice president and head of the comic industry group （漫畫產業小組） Lu Jun-wei (盧俊偉) points out that the increase in production, quality, and diversification of works with growing audience numbers lines up exactly what the government set out to achieve with their support. He says that “the role of the public sector is to solve market failures and step in to patch up holes in investment.”

The Ministry for Culture also provides grants for overseas publishing houses to translate Taiwanese comics which can serve as an additional income source for creators. Lu Jun-wei mentions that when Korean online platforms came out with vertical scrolling webcomics (條漫), they were already venturing into adapting content into films, TV series, and games, turning products into larger-scale IP entities to develop and manage.

Zuo Hsuan’s Home of the Gods was adapted into a TV series in 2021. She says that “the audience for the TV series is much bigger than for the comic,” and that even though pieces of the plot and characters have been changed, the spirit remains and both audiences can get something out of the different media types.

Local stories emotionally resonating further afield.

As a child, Zuo Hsuan was raised on Japanese manga and had no idea that Taiwan also had comic artists, but now readers are accepting Taiwanese comics more and more. She believes that having strong competition from overseas can be a good thing for creators, providing inspiration and high-quality references in the pursuit of self-improvement. (Photography / Yang Tzu-lei 楊子磊）

Comics are ultimately another medium of storytelling, at their core seeking to resonate with readers. As for how to reach readers, Li Ya-lun who has mentored many comic artists says, “Don’t be afraid to express yourself honestly, and put yourself into your work.”

To make her stories accessible to Japanese readers, Gao-yan uses familiar novelists, musicians, and filmmakers like Haruki Murakami (村上春樹), Hosono Haruomi (細野晴臣), Iwai Shunji (岩井俊二) and Edward Yang (楊德昌) as reference points in The Song of Green. They become a bridge for readers, linking into Taiwanese streetscapes and living spaces. Although her work is personal and self-reflective, readers from different countries, of different ages, and with different life experiences can all relate to her characters. “Even though it’s totally foreign to them, people somehow develop a sense of familiarity and empathy through the blurriness; I want them to absorb some of this Taiwanese-ness through exposure. It’s an important part of why I created The Song of Green in Japan,” explains Gao-yan.

Detention 《返校》, developed by the Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games (赤燭遊戲), is hotly discussed online and is another prime example. Overseas players may have little to no idea about the White Terror or the martial law period in Taiwan, but Parrot Kao says that “they can still feel that sense of oppression, and it’s done well. The important thing is really whether or not you can get across a feeling that will resonate with people.” To Xerses, the power of stories is in expression, setting up the stage in which emotional responses can play out. From there, the reader’s interpretation and whatever emotions are evoked are entirely open.

Zuo Hsuan recalls a letter she once received showing just how many borders these stories can cross. It was from an Algerian subscriber living in Canada who said that reading the French edition of Home of the Gods had brought back memories of his home which hadn’t surfaced in a long time. With rising popularity overseas, the ability of these works to reach across cultures is becoming clear — whether they explore Taiwanese elements or social issues, it eventually comes down to universal feelings and a portrayal of the human condition.

Although the Taiwanese comic industry is yet to reach maturity, a new generation of creators with support from official and private publishers are forging ahead, their sights set on breaking through in the face of strong international competition. It’s a diversified effort, with no single answer to exactly how Taiwanese comics should be defined, or indeed what form they should take.

“Sometimes you’ll have to ask — is this Taiwanese? The style might look Korean, or Japanese, or European. But we’re an island nation, subject to so many influences that ultimately blend into something new. Just think of moon shrimp cakes （月亮蝦餅, a popular Thai-inspired Taiwanese snack）.” Zuo Hsuan offers up an interesting example, and finishes her thought; “All we can do is keep getting everyone to see and to keep telling them: We’re here, we’re alive, and we’re making comics.”