World Comic Book Review

28th March 2024

Sonny Liew, the Attack Dog, and Singapore’s historical comic book controversy

Comic book writers should spare a thought for colleagues in countries where politics intersects with creation. In this article, we look at a controversy which has arisen in Singapore pitting a comic book creator against its government. Singapore is a democracy with rule-of-law institutions inherited from its time as part of the British Empire. Singapore … Read more

Zan al ann (Review)

In September 2017, an Egyptian comic book fair, CairoComix Festival, celebrated its third birthday. The website Africanews.com quoted a local comic artist, Dina Mohamed, who was in attendance: “It is a great future however we already have a rich past with comics. You can see ‘Samir’ comic here from the 1960’s. We do have heritage … Read more

Russians in Comic Books

As tensions between the West and Russia have dramatically increased in the past year, so too has the characterisation of Russia in Western comic books.

As we discuss below, most of Western comics’ attention this century has been directed towards the menace of the Soviet Union and its state-sponsored spread of communism as an ideology and a system of government antithetical to Western democracy and capitalism. But in the past five years, particularly, there is a new orientation towards perceptions of Russia in comic books.

In addition, we also take a quick look at the contemporary Russian comic book industry, and its penchant for copying American concepts.

1. Vladimir Putin and Post-Soviet Russia

A brief rundown of the geopolitical sequence of events leading to where we are now is worthwhile:

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