10 years on, The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye still makes waves

The graphic novel paved the way for comics to be taken seriously, and also inspired many local creators. A 10th-anniversary edition of the book is coming out in August

- Shawn Hoo

Ten years after The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015) had its funding pulled by the National Arts Council (NAC), Singaporean cartoonist Sonny Liew hopes the fracas will be consigned to a "minor footnote" in the book's history.

On the brouhaha over the book, which went on to snag three 2017 Eisner awards in the United States — considered the Oscars of the graphic novel world — he muses: "I can only guess that they made a stance back then and have seen no reason to revisit it. Maybe it remains a signal to book publishers or creators that some things remain off-limits, if they're hoping for public grants or funding."

The mild-mannered 50-year-old says in an interview at his Jalan Batu studio and home, not far from his former studio at the NAC-run Goodman Arts Centre: "We talk about the Streisand effect and how controversy sells, but it's the content that has given the book legs for 10 years."

A 10th-anniversary edition of the graphic novel is forthcoming in August from Epigram Books, the original publisher.

In 2015, the NAC had highlighted "sensitive content", but stopped short of identifying the offending parts — a puzzle which Liew shrugs off now. His book, which has sold 36,700 copies in Singapore, imagines, among other things, that founding premier Lee Kuan Yew and his exiled political rival Lim Chin Siong switched places.

But Liew's foreign readers do not seem to care about the politics.

Since the book has been translated into nine languages, Liew often gets comments from overseas readers about its formal experiments and melange of styles. "Part of the appeal of this comic overseas is not the controversy. It's more of the formal aspects and the metanarrative."