By Dylan Kwok

Drawn to Satire: Sketches of Cartoonists in Singapore
CT Lim (story), Koh Hong Teng (illustrations)
Pause Narratives (2023) / 141 pages / SGD 27.67

Imagine a comic book about a Singaporean cartoonist, born and raised in colonial Singapore, who used his acerbic wit to dissect complex issues and skewer wily politicians. No, it's not Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. It's Drawn to Satire, which tells of the story of eight different Singaporean cartoonists, who each in their own way used their art to make a difference, make a statement, make a stand.

Or at least, that's what author CT Lim claims in the blurb to his book. But did they really?

On one hand, it seems they really did. Tchang Ju Chi drew cartoons to protest Japanese aggression and raise funds in the 1930s, which resulted in his disappearance – or probably murder by the Japanese – during the Sook Ching Massacre. Morgan Chua drew for the short-lived Singapore Herald, managing to personally insult Lee Kuan Yew through a cartoon before the paper had its publishing licence revoked by the government. Liu Kang (yes, the Liu Kang) wrote and illustrated a series called Chop Suey about his experiences of the Japanese occupation, which the Japanese translated for themselves to remind themselves of their war atrocities.

But on the other hand, it is difficult to tell from the book if any of them really made any ripples in the pages of history. And that is because none of the stories are really "sketches". Instead of capturing the essence of each cartoonist's work and impact in one or two anecdotes, Lim tries to summarise their whole lives, taking every high and low and smoothing it out into a Straits Times obituary. Lim claims that cartoonist Shamsuddin H. Akib was a playboy and that Morgan Chua was a mover-and-shaker, but instead of showings scenes that back the claim, Lim just moves on. In fact, the next we see of Shamsuddin, he is married with a young family, and the only moving and shaking we ever see from Chua is the moving of his feet and shaking of his fists as he fights villains from the author's imagination. The cartoonists are reduced to Pokémon cards, shells of their true personalities. Which is a shame, because some of them really did seem to have done something interesting from their childhood and first published comic to their retirement.

As a comic book, a lot of attention, inevitably, falls on the art. It's not bad by any means – Koh Hong Teng's drawings service the narrative well enough – but for a comic book about cartoonists, we are denied the pleasure of actually seeing their original art. Instead, when Lim wants to show one of their drawings, Koh draws a copy. Perhaps this was a logistical choice rather than an artistic one – maybe they could not get the rights to the originals – but even the way the images are displayed do an injustice to the pioneering satirists, because it was difficult to tell which images are Koh's originals and which belong to the eight cartoonists, as they are blended together almost indistinguishably.

Separating them would not have been difficult. In fact, Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye shows exactly the way they could have done it, as Liew highlighted the art drawn by his eponymous character by putting it on its own pages, with the appropriate labels and fictitious years of creation.

Ironically, what the book fails to blend well is its text and illustrations. The book shifts between long paragraphs of exposition with little action occurring in the illustrations to sections with speech bubbles which are essentially monologues – again, with the illustrations quite irrelevant to the text at hand. At many points the illustration felt unnecessary, and the points where illustrations were actually necessary to comprehend the page, the information drawn was unimportant at best, uninteresting at worst.

As one reads this 141-page comic book, the question that begins to form in one's mind – and even more so on the second read – is this: why is Lim telling this story? Is he just telling grandfather stories? Or is there a greater story he is trying to tell, a greater point he is trying to make?

On the surface the answer to the last question seems to be no. Each chapter begins with little reference to the one before, and ends with a contrived scene so the author can share some aimless musings. As if that doesn't break the immersion of the story already, each chapter then closes with a list of citations.

At points, it seems Lim is trying to tie the eight stories together. He begins the first chapter with this line: "Our lives… are they guided by the hands of Fate? Or decided by ourselves?" As promising of a start that may sound (despite the kitschiness of phrase), he barely follows up on the thought, and the only sign the thought is even remembered is when the fictional narrator tells Tchang Ju Chi, who is thinking of going to China, that he must settle in Singapore. Twice, and rather loudly. Skip to the end of the book and the only other sign Lim is attempting to construct a cohesive narrative is when the narrator launches into a rambling monologue about how we can learn from art and artists. What exactly we are learning from them – besides their names and the summary of their Wikipedia articles – he never really says.

In the end, we are left knowing almost as little about these cartoonists as when we had begun.

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