A prominent local manga artist is taking his work to a new frontier.

Sunday October 4, 2009
By ELIZABETH TAI (Lifestyle, The Star)

BENNY Wong, Malaysia’s International Manga Award runner-up winner in 2007, is now putting up his manga online at a comics portal called Comixo (www.comixo.com).

Wong, whose coming-of-age manga in Bahasa Malaysia entitled Le.Gardenie beat over a hundred others for third prize in the inaugural edition organised by the Japanese government, claims that Comixo is the first online manga portal in Malaysia. The website updates comic strips weekly or daily, and also has articles, drawing tutorials and even a horoscope section.



Benny Wong believes that online manga has a promising future. He now publishes his manga – and those of others – on the portal Comixo. – Photo by KEVIN TAN / The Star

Wong, however, never expected the enterprise to become a comics portal when he and two assistants started Comixo in April last year. The website, which operated in earnest towards the end of 2008, began by featuring comics for the online game Celestial Destroyer (or Zhu Xian in Chinese). It was his business partners who inspired him to expand the website’s scope.

Some manga publishers, such as VIZ Media which recently launched a web magazine called Ikki (www.sigikki.com), have started to place content online.

Acknowledging that the Internet provides another platform for comic artists to present their work, Wong, 29, says the future for manga is to go online, though not fully.

“We still need some printed products or merchandise,” he reckons, adding that it’s dangerous to go “too digital”.

Also, one should not discount the pleasure of reading manga in printed form as compared to online. “Because you can’t touch (the comic) it doesn’t seem real. They’re like ‘air’, you can’t actually feel the presence of the whole thing,” says Wong in a recent interview in Kuala Lumpur.

He believes that many people will still like to buy their manga in book form and collect them. This is why the team is compiling the Celestial Destroyer comics into a printed graphic novel.



Comixo, a local online manga portal at www.comixo.com.

But publishing manga in print form is not an easy business, as Wong discovered when he began a comic magazine, Powder, in 2007.

“The publishing business is not doing as well as 10 years ago when the Internet wasn’t mature yet and many people still bought newspapers and magazines. If you didn’t read them you wouldn’t know what was going on,” he says.

While print media have a unique advantage over others such as television – you can keep the publications or books and read them later – the Internet age has changed things dramatically. The Internet has made it easier and much quicker to transmit and access information, including the downloading of manga – often for free.

“You can’t control piracy ... you can only manage it the best you can,” says Wong when I ask him if he worries about his manga being bootlegged.

As a result, comic magazines (and many of the world’s publications) are going through challenging times. Wong has to not only worry about sales, he has to contend with high printing and labour costs as well.

Powder became a casualty of the times. It was recently discontinued.

Is Wong sad about the magazine’s fate?

“I’m a very business-minded person. I won’t let my emotions control me ... Powder is a way to present my comics. But its failure does not mean that what I was doing was wrong. Perhaps the presentation was wrong,” he shrugs.

Fortunately, Wong now has Comixo to help him flex his artist’s pen.

Wong remains optimistic that the Internet era will open up opportunities for comic artists.

“We are encouraging teenagers to take advantage of this new medium (Internet). Before, if you wanted to learn how to draw comics, you’d have to take a bus to places like Pasar Seni, Masjid Jamek or Wangsa Maju (all in Kuala Lumpur) and look for a comic-book store. Then you’d have to buy a comic book and try to learn from it at home. It’s a very time-consuming process,” he relates.

Artists now have it good as the process has been made easier with the speed and scope of the Internet, which is a treasure trove of knowledge. Wannabe artists can peruse the many drawing tutorials available online.

Wong, a business graduate, began freelancing for comic magazines before going full time.

Submit your work to comic magazines, he advises aspiring full-time comic artists.

“If you want to publish your work with a magazine, ask them what they require. For example, when I first started out in Gempak Starz, I realised they lacked love stories – they had only ‘fighting’ comics – so I started drawing love stories,” he recalls.

Aspiring mangaka would be glad to know that Comixo is looking for talented artists to submit their work.

“I’m working hard to upgrade this industry,” says Wong. “The local comic industry has a bright future. A lot of people are reading manga and watching anime, unlike in the 1980s when our parents thought that ‘this kind of comics’ would affect your studies.”

Anime and manga are familiar things to the children of the 1990s.

“The market is thus bigger, as more have begun accepting manga and anime. The problem is the supply,” he says.

Hopefully, a higher demand will ensure a better output from dedicated comic artists like Wong.

-The Star