The exhibition that became Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form, now at MoPOP, began when London-based comics historian and curator Paul Gravett was writing his book Mangasia: The Definitive Guide to Asian Comics, and Barbican International Enterprises invited him to turn his research into an art show. Gravett’s Mangasia was published in 2017 with over 1,000 illustrations, mostly in color. The art show based on the book was called Mangasia: Wonderlands of Asian Comics and premiered in Rome. Since then, it has travelled to Monza, Italy; Nantes, France; Santa Ana, California; and now Seattle.
In his book, Gravett used the term “mangasia” to suggest that manga originated in Japan and then “spread throughout Asia and the world beyond,” so “mangasia” describes “all the comic art produced in Asia.” This overstates Japan’s influence (and Gravett’s book supplies the evidence that things were more complicated than that). Still, Japanese manga, although it peaked in sales 30 years ago, remains the world’s largest comics industry. With 20 Asian nations represented in the art show, Japanese artists produced about half the works on display.
Rather than centering the show on bestselling comics of the past or present, Asian Comics focuses on how the art of comics continues to evolve and to create works of great power and imagination. Some fan favorites are either missing altogether or are quietly mixed in with less popular works.
The first thing the enthusiastic MoPOP tour guide told us as we entered the Asian Comics show was that this was one of her favorite exhibits “because it’s another form of visual storytelling.”
Indeed, from the beginning, one of the main uses for comics has been to tell stories. This exhibition, though, tells its stories in various languages, uses brief excerpts of one or a few pages, does not translate their dialogue into English, and provides captions with only the most basic information. Although this can be frustrating (like watching a film with the sound turned off), for a project of such mammoth size, it seems necessary. If enough text were supplied to explain each of the 400 pieces of comics art, visitors might spend most of their time reading instead of looking and seeing, and would only have time to get through a small fraction of the comics on display.
Consider, for example, one work that appears both in Asian Comics and in Gravett’s book. Its MoPOP caption reads simply: “‘The Hainan Incident, April 1st 2001,’ 2007, Changrui Nie, Ink on paper, China.” The book’s caption for the same two pages has more words and provides more meaning:
“Original art from The Sino-US Collision Incident | [the title is then repeated using Chinese characters] | Zhōng mĕi zhuàng jĩ shijuàn by Nie Chongrui (China, 2007). The English title is The Hainan Incident, April 1st 2001. This comic deals with the mid-air collision of a US plane and a PRC aircraft over the Hainan Islands in April 2001 that led to the death of one of the Chinese pilots and a diplomatic incident between the two countries.”
Gravett’s book, and a few others, like Frederik Schodt’s pathbreaking classic Manga! Manga!, are available in the museum gift shop.
Comics, and their printed 19th century antecedents, were designed to be reproduced. Cartoonists traditionally regard their “real” works as their publications rather than the pieces of paper on which they drew their “original art.” This show takes that principle to an extreme, displaying in the same cases both original drawings and digital prints (indistinguishable in their high quality from the works labeled as original drawings), and displaying both old comics and old reprints of older comics together, as if being an original drawing, an equally sharp reproduction, a publication, or a republication makes no difference.
The pages shown were not selected for those features that interest fellow cartoonists. Only on rare occasions do we see any faint pencil markings, white-out, paste-overs, or other signs that help us understand how the work was done. Although manga frequently uses shading screens, I did not see any example of an old, discolored shading screen coming loose as its adhesive failed. Some of the works have confusing descriptions, like “Ink and color on paper.” Perhaps somewhere the exhibit provides an explanation of where such a thing could fit in with the production process for a cheaply printed comics magazine. (The show seems so vast that it would be foolish to describe any information, cartoonist, or character as definitely missing from it.)
I was interested to see two large kaavads, a storytelling tool developed in Rajasthan in Northwest India that seemingly owes nothing to manga. A kaavad is a series of narrative illustrations arranged in a portable, hinged, wooden shrine that a storyteller would use like a deck of hand-painted PowerPoint slides. The first kaavad displayed here, about micro finance, was designed to teach women how to apply for a loan to start a small business. The second kaavad is accompanied by a video by Indian animator and scholar Nina Sabnani, “Baat Wahi Hai (It’s the Same Story).”
I expected to see atom-bomb survivor Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen included in Asian Comics, and I was not disappointed. One of the cartoons that was enlarged to a great size on the walls was a panel of his work. His originals are in the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, but the digital prints made of his work allowed me to appreciate better than ever his assistant’s beautiful inking. In this case, unlike other works labeled as “digital prints,” the typeset text has not been added on top, but scanned together with the art. We can see where some type has fallen off, leaving just dried rubber cement.
One piece stands apart stylistically from the rest by strongly following the European ligne claire comics tradition associated with The Adventures of Tintin. Peter van Dongen’s large black-and-white page of art comes from his graphic novel about Indonesia’s war for independence against the Dutch after World War II. When I got home, I found the same page as it had appeared in pencil and how it looked when colored and with the text added in English. Van Dongen was inspired to create this work by stories he heard from his Indonesian mother.
I expect that anyone who looks carefully and patiently will come away from Asian Comics with ideas about works and artists that they would like to learn more about. (When you visit the exhibition, take notes!) For example, the show includes a page in English from a remarkable project that I had not heard of: This Side, That Side, Restorying Partition (an Anthology of Graphic Narratives). This anthology was written and drawn by cartoonists from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. I fear, though, that those who first encounter great works, like Singapore-based Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye or Kunwu Li’s A Chinese Life, as the wordless excerpts presented here would not realize why they should read these comics.
One change of pace that will appeal to the young at heart is Mechasobi, 2017, an interactive digital installation created for this traveling exhibition by Shōji Kawamori. It allows the visitor to control the movements of a giant robot on a huge screen. (For more background, see The Making of Mechasobi.)
Two short and worthwhile videos show highly skilled artists at work: South Korean cartoonist Jiheun Hong’s The Making of People Who Crossed Over, 2019 is one of two works in this show that commemorates the miraculous voyage of the SS Meredith Victory, a cargo ship built to comfortably accommodate a dozen passengers that carried 14,000 refugees out of North Korea in 1950 in a single trip. The second video shows Chinese cartoonist Zao Dao coloring a cartoon drawing as “a daily painting exercise.” Zao Dao also designed the character that MoPOP uses to advertise this exhibition.
Osamu Tezuka’s work is scattered throughout the show. The most unusual example is “Unfinished rough page from an unknown manga series c. 1960, Tezuka, unpublished ink on paper.” (That caption fails to mention that most of the page is sketched out in a few quick pencil lines.) Tezuka has inked in only the characters, leaving the rest of the work for his assistants to complete.
Don’t forget to climb the stairs (or take the elevator) to the last two sections of Asian Comics. The attractions upstairs include music videos of “Vocaloid” Hatsune Miku, “the world’s first virtual pop star,” who was designed by manga artist Kei Garō; several manga-inspired costumes; and, tucked in a far corner, a large acrylic painting by an extraordinary pop artist, the late Keiichi Tanaami.
Upstairs is also where you find the curtained-off room on “Censorship and Sensibility” for those 18 or older. Some of the works that communicate most powerfully across language barriers are those that deal in sex, violence, and humor. In this room, a variety of works are collected that thrill or appall. Most, but not all, of them are Japanese. In the section titled “The Darkest Depths,” Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s 1876 woodblock print of The Murder of a Woman named Shin stands out as particularly horrifying. For more upbeat works, see the nearby examples of “Eroticism Unleashed.”
The exhibition solves the problem of how to show films (both animated and live action) that have been inspired by Asian comics without overshadowing the art exhibit by simultaneously showing them on a grid of nine screens in a small video room. Hooray for the excerpts of the Philippines’ Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh!
Comics the world over are not a single genre, but an art form with something for everyone. They include slice-of-life stories, action-adventure fantasies, protest comics, mythology, jokes, propaganda, edification, smut, and much more. This exhibition provides only a well-designed, introductory taste of the great world of cartooning in Asia. It does so on a larger scale than has ever been seen before.
You will not be able to see all of Asian Comics in one trip. (From opening until closing, you have just seven hours, and the museum has more exhibits to see.) Accept that you’re not going to see it all (or not all at once), and you may find the experience of being immersed in these Asian comics overwhelming, yes, but overwhelming in a good way.
The exhibit Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form is showing at the Museum of Pop Culture through January 4, 2026. More information: mopop.org/exhibitions/.
